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She never traveled alone, had learned the value of hiring escorts and guides, bodyguards and translators when necessary. She knew how to slip a few coins into the right hands to get what she wanted.
In remote parts of the world, her native guides and escorts allowed her access to places she normally couldn’t visit—temples, mosques, holy cemeteries, inaccessible mountain towns. She’d been warned that being a female would put her in danger, but on the contrary, people were curious and realized quickly she wasn’t threatening. Even the most difficult situations she’d encountered were smoothed by slipping a few more coins into a few more hands. It wasn’t bribery. It was gratitude. And who couldn’t use money?
She’d thought this desert town was no different from the others she’d visited and this morning when she crouched by the medina’s well, she’d heard only the bray of donkeys and bleating of goats and sheep. It was market day and the medina was already crowded, shoppers out early to beat the scorching heat.
There’d been no danger. No warning of anything bad to come.
With her camera poised, she’d watched a group of children dart between stalls as veiled women shopped and elderly men smoked. She’d smiled at the antics of the boys, who were tormenting the giggling girls, and she’d just focused her lens when shouts and gunfire filled the square.
Tally wasn’t a war correspondent, had never worked for any of the big papers that splashed war all over the front pages, but she’d been in dangerous situations more than once. She knew to duck and cover, and she did the moment she heard the gunfire. Duck and cover was something all children learned on the West Coast in America, earthquakes a distinct possibility for anyone living on one of the myriad of fault lines.
As she lay next to the well, she’d tried to avoid the bright red liquid running between cobblestones and that’s when the desert bandit seized her.
If she hadn’t looked, maybe the bandit wouldn’t have noticed her…
If she hadn’t moved maybe she’d be safe in town instead of being dragged into the middle of the desert.
Inside the stifling black fabric Tally struggled to breathe. She was beginning to panic despite her efforts to remain calm. Her heart already beat faster. Air came in shallow gasps.
She could feel it coming on. Her asthma. She was going to have an asthma attack.
Tally coughed, and coughed again.
The dust choked her. She couldn’t see, could barely breathe, her throat squeezing closed in protest at the thick clouds of dust and swirling sand kicked up by the wind and the horse’s pounding hooves.
Eyes wet with tears, Tally opened her mouth wider, gasping for breath after breath. She was panicking, knew she was panicking and panicking never helped, certainly not her asthma but it was all beyond her, the heat, the jostle of the saddle, the wind, the dust.
Reaching up, out, her hand flailed for contact, grappling with air before landing against the bandit’s side. He was warm, hard, too hard, but he was the only one who could help her now. She clung convulsively to the fabric of his robe, tugged on it, hand twisting as frantically as her lungs squeezed.
One, two, she tugged violently on the fabric, her hand twisting in, out, pulling down, against the body, anything to express her panic, her desperation.
Can’t breathe…
Can’t breathe…
Can’t…
Tair felt the hand grappling with his shirt, felt the wild frantic motion and then felt her go slack, hand falling away limply.
He whistled to his men even as he reined his horse, drawing to a dramatic pawing stop.
Tair threw the fabric covering off the foreign woman captured in the town square.
She was limp and nearly blue.
He lifted her up in one arm, turned her cheek toward him, listened for air and heard nothing.
Had he killed her?
Tipping her head back, he covered her mouth with his own, pinched her nose closed, blowing air into her lungs, forcing warm air where there had been none.
His men circled him on their horses forming a protective barrier, although they should be safe here. This was his land. His people. His home. But things happened. They knew. He knew.
He felt their silence now, the stillness, the awareness. They wouldn’t judge him, they wouldn’t dream of it. He was their lord, their leader, but no one wanted a death on his hands. Especially not a foreign woman.
Much less a young foreign woman.
Not when Ouaha still fought for full independence. Not when politics and power hung in delicate balance.
He covered her mouth again, forcing air through her once more, narrowed gaze fixed on her chest, watching her small rib cage rise. Come on, he silently willed, come on, Woman, breathe.
