Desire In The Desert. Ryshia Kennie

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СКАЧАТЬ can’t turn back the clock,” she said softly.

      Her gaze went to the sofa as she walked over to the bookcase. “She’s very serious,” she said, her eyes skimming the titles. “And yet she has a lighter side, fun-loving.” There were characteristics of Tara that were obvious in her choice of furnishings. The sleek, butter-yellow leather sofa hinted at a lighter side. The heavy, teak desk with generations of wear marring the surface and the three volumes of Wells’s The Outline of History leaning against an economic text were testament to her seriousness.

      Kate glanced at a collection of graphic novels but picked up an archeological magazine from a pile and thumbed through it. It was a unique collection for a young woman whose major was computer science with a minor in psychology. She put the magazine back on the stack that seemed to cover the prior year.

      “Did she just read about archeology or had she gone on a dig?”

      “What does it matter?” he asked.

      “Anything you remember could help, you know that.”

      He nodded. “You’re right. She wanted to go check out a new find. It was a day trip into the desert and another back.”

      “And you told her no?” Kate guessed and got her answer from his silence. “That must have been hard for her to take. Maybe impossible, considering she’s legally an adult. Is it possible that she planned to go anyway, that maybe...?”

      “No!” A minute of silence hung between them before he spoke again. “What are you implying?”

      Tara picked up another magazine and thumbed through the pages, deliberately putting off her answer. It was best that he knew now, before this investigation went any further, that she wouldn’t be intimidated. She also knew he was a hard man to convince, considering a gunfight hadn’t done it.

      She would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so serious. Instead she continued her perusal of Tara’s living space, finding bits of information that would give her insight the file and Emir hadn’t. Finally, after a minute had passed, and then two, she looked up, met his gaze and saw a hint of what might be admiration.

      It was vital that she had his full attention. What she had to say could be very important to who, at least, some of the perpetrators might be. She didn’t expect him to take what she was about to imply well, but it had to be said. “Is it possible that days or even weeks ago, she made first contact, made the culprits aware of her vulnerability?”

      This time his look was thunderous as he turned away from her. The tension between them was thick and bleak before he turned back. Now his eyes glimmered with anger, agony—maybe a combination of the two, it was impossible to tell.

      “Is that so unbelievable? I’m not saying it was her fault but only that...” She paused.

      “Yes, it’s possible. But I don’t know anything more than I’ve already told you and what was in the report.”

      “What about that night? What wasn’t in the report, Emir?”

      “She was celebrating the beginning of the school year, getting together with some old school pals on a few days’ jaunt home before going back to the States. And...” His full lips thinned and his jaw tensed, and she could see he was struggling with something.

      “Sit,” she offered with a wave of her hand to the chair opposite her.

      He sat.

      “I admit the report is missing some information. It wasn’t all known. I learned it after your plane took off and—” he wasn’t looking at her “—I’ve filled in all the blanks.” He opened his mouth as if to say more.

      She cut him off. “I need to know what Tara was doing last night—all of it.”

      “I...”

      She met his rich, dark eyes, saw the trouble, the doubt, that lurked deep within them, and still she didn’t back down.

      “She left the restaurant alone with her security. She managed to ditch them shortly after—no one knows why.” He blinked, as if that would change the words she knew, for whatever reason, he didn’t want to admit.

      “It won’t help to hold anything back.”

      Silence ticked between them.

      “The only thing that matters now is having all the information so we can figure this thing out and find her. What aren’t you telling me?”

      “She’d been drinking,” he admitted. “That’s what her friends said.”

      “What else did her friends say?” she asked softly.

      “I didn’t want this in the report, it...”

      “Could ruin her reputation.” She paused. “Look, Emir, we’ve all gone there. A youthful mistake—a bit too much to drink. It happens. Usually it turns out well—we luck out. Let’s make this turn out well. Tell me what happened. Everything you know, including what you screened from the report.”

      She looked at him as if he were no different from any other witness.

      “You knew this before I left the States and you left the fact that she’d been drinking out of the report. You did that on purpose, thinking it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t change anything or help us find her.”

      She sank onto the luxurious softness of the leather couch and thought how she’d love such a piece for her small apartment. Then she turned her focus on Emir. “That’s where you’re wrong—and you know it. Everything matters, every piece of evidence.”

      He ran his hand along his brow and his gaze dodged hers. “I’ve never known her to overindulge. Her friends admitted it happened rarely.” He looked at her as if daring her to say otherwise.

      “A mistake that many of us have made at one time or another.”

      He shook his head.

      “Where are they, her friends?”

      “I’ve already spoken to them. They left her, from what I can determine, over an hour before she was taken. They didn’t see her after that. That part is in the report.”

      “I read it,” Kate admitted as she got up and went over to the window. She didn’t remind him of what hadn’t been in the report. Her fingers skimmed the window frame. “Bulletproof.” She glanced at the door. She’d noted the hinges earlier; the door swung out rather than in, difficult for a man to break down. Not that it mattered. The crime had happened elsewhere.

      “Let’s go back to the airport and the attack,” she said. “There’s a connection, but what is it?”

      He stood, pacing along the couch to the window and back, and then stopping a few feet from her.

      “So we have two bodies and one gives us some clues,” she said when she was met by silence. “Camel hair and his boots—the sand on them, it was caked, not something you get hanging around the city. I’d say he’d recently been in the desert. What better place to get lost in or to request a ransom and remain out of reach of detection? Even the best technology СКАЧАТЬ