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Terror was crawling through her now. She hadn’t believed Azir Mustafa would retaliate against Khalid. He’d threatened before. How many times had Paige been locked behind protective walls because Khalid and Azir were feuding again, or because Azir had, in one of his periods of insane fury, threatened to kidnap Paige’s mother and bring her back where he believed she belonged?
There had been too many times to count. And he’d never done it before. Evidently he had grown tired of simply threatening.
He had actually managed to kidnap her, and evidently Abram had no idea. If he knew, he would have been there when she awoke, she told herself. He wouldn’t have allowed her to face this alone.
Now he had her. A monster.
Her chest tightened, her throat nearly closing with fear and tears as she fought against it. She wasn’t going to allow him to see her cry. It was a sign of weakness, and like any jackal, she couldn’t allow Azir Mustafa to see her weakness. Or her fear.
Pulling the sheet and throw closer around her nakedness as fear began to send shudders through her body, Paige’s breath hitched as she pushed back her screams.
She was stronger than this, she assured herself. Azir Mustafa would be looking for fear. And he might have her now, but not once Abram found her, or learned she was there, which would be as soon as Khalid contacted him. If he hadn’t already.
No. Her hands tightened on the sheet and throw convulsively. If Khalid had contacted Abram then Abram would be here. He would be assuring her everything was going to be okay. He would be finding a way to get her home. And he really needed to get on that. Sometime before her heart burst from terror.
She was naked, in a bed. Breath hitching, gasping from her lips she began to check her body, to feel between her thighs. Desperation was an oily stain across her mind as she checked her body, praying to God she hadn’t been raped, because she knew Azir Mustafa wasn’t above drugging a woman to rape her.
There were no signs of it, but the fact that she was naked, that someone had undressed her to bare skin while she was unconscious was a violation as well. It made her feel helpless and out of control and that terrified her.
She’d always sympathized with her mother for what she’d gone through with Azir. She’d hated the bastard for it. But now, she understood much better exactly how her mother had felt, and she was scared.
She should have listened to Khalid and not left the house. If she had just stayed in place, this wouldn’t have happened. At least not yet. Not this way.
Every time she ever refused to listen to him, she had paid for it. That was why she hadn’t fought against him as hard as she could have when he first had her taken to the house by Daniel Conover. Because she knew Khalid wouldn’t have done it without good reason.
Rising from the bed she moved around the room, searching for the clothes that had been taken from her. Her jeans and shirt, her underclothes. Her shoes. Oh God, she really needed her shoes. How was she supposed to escape without running shoes?
Se couldn’t bear to be naked as she was. She felt too exposed, despite the sheet and throw she had wrapped around herself. The material didn’t even begin to be protective. Not that clothing would have been.
She couldn’t bear to feel this helpless. That was what Khalid didn’t understand, and what she could never tell him. She had only been this helpless once before in her life and the memories of it sent a surge of terror racing through her again.
She tried to shake the memory away. Dealing with the memories of that night right now would shred what little control she had left over the hysteria bubbling inside her.
She had to clear her head. She had to be able to think and find a way out of this.
She had to find a way out. She had found a way out the last time she was this helpless and had escaped. She had to do it again. She didn’t think her sanity could survive otherwise.
The door was locked. The shutters on the windows were locked. Her mother hadn’t mentioned hidden doors or passageways in this room.
She couldn’t find her clothes. There were no dressers and the four armoires in the room only held bedding materials. There were no clothes.
Her breath felt trapped in her lungs. Her heart was racing out of control and panic was beginning to close in.
She would go crazy in this place.
* * *
Abram sat back in the comfortable leather of the modified Land Rover as Tariq drove into the fortress compound. His gaze narrowed at the men and women milling around in the outer yards. The women were covered from head to toe in the required burka, while the men were dressed in fatigues or combat-ready pants and shirts.
The face of the Mustafa province was changing and he hadn’t been able to stop it during the years when stopping it had mattered to him. All he did now was look on in regret.
Once, this land had thrived, if not from oil then from the small mines outside of town where precious ore was eeked out and sold to the government. It had been a minimal income, but when added to the funds the monarchy had once sent, the lands and mines had been sufficient to keep the small farms pulling precious water from the deep wells and the crops growing.
The province had held a small but thriving area of trade due to those crops and the ore. Something it no longer held because of Azir’s greed and murderous inclinations.
“Look who showed up. ” Tariq nodded toward the fortress castle where a lone figure stood at the top of the stone steps against the stone wall.
The tall double doors were his backdrop, emphasizing the slender, muscular form, his dark hair pulled back from a lean, Arabic face.
