101 Nights Box Set: Volume Two Read online

  I dread that call, but not as much as I dread what happens when I take Elijah and Alisha into Nijala and am charged with protecting them all from a ruler best described as unhinged.

  Returning to my bedroom, I freeze in the doorway.

  Alisha’s not in bed. My first instinct is that she left, probably with all my equipment.

  The sound of someone’s fingers clicking on a keyboard in the computer room is almost as troubling. I don’t want her hacking my shit and know better than to trust her alone with my hardware, even if she melts when I touch her.

  Crossing to the office, I pause in the doorway. She’s wearing my t-shirt and nothing else, leaving much of her gorgeous body on display. She’s redone her braids and fastened them with mismatched ribbons that make me start to smile. The opposite of everything I ever thought I’d want in a woman, Alisha has a way of enchanting me without so much as a word or look.

  I wasn’t expecting the grin on her face after she made me come earlier. I probably won’t see it again, since a hostile environment isn’t the greatest place for sex. It’s a terrible place for relationships, too, which will play in my favor.

  Assuming I can keep her alive. No pressure, George.

  “Good news or bad first?” I ask her.

  “Good!”

  “You’ll get plenty of sleep on the flight to Nijala.”

  Her fingers stop, and she spins in the chair to face me, astonishment on her pretty features. Her soft brown eyes study me hard. “Nijala? Then what the hell’s the bad news?”

  “We’re going to Nijala,” I reply with a half smile.

  The longer we look at each other, the more color creeps up her face, and her eyes sparkle. If there is a next time, I want those full lips around my dick instead of her hand, and I intend to fuck her long and hard after seeing up close how perfect her pussy is.

  The familiar, irresistible pull between us is back, and the timing couldn’t be worse.

  “Is Natalie there?” she asks.

  “She will be. It’s a calculated risk, but I’m pretty sure Hassan will make a beeline for Nijala. We need to be there as close to the time he gets there as possible to keep Elijah’s father from doing anything stupid. I’ve got friends who will help, and Elijah’s aunt has a plan.” Relatively speaking.

  “That sounds good.” She clears her throat. “To clarify, you’re taking us to a place known for various human rights violations, with no real judicial system and is ruled by a king who wants his son and everyone associated with him – meaning us – dead. Is that right?”

  “Beats being assassinated by the Russian mob in your own flat,” I point out.

  “I’m not so sure about that.” She sighs, frustrated. “I’ll go for Natalie’s sake.”

  “I’ll take care of you, Alisha.”

  “You mean you’ll toss me in a Nijalan gulag the minute you’re done with me.” The worry on her face is real.

  “On the bright side, Tony can’t find you there.”

  She gives me a dismayed look. “Fine. Since you’re leading me to my death, I get to ask you a question.”

  “Very well.”

  “Who is Tracy?”

  The smile I didn’t realize was on my face fades, and tension fills me. This is why it’s dangerous to leave a hacker like Alisha alone in your house for more than sixty seconds. I lowered my guard again, and the result is that she now knows one of my darkest, most painful secrets.

  “Don’t ever, ever mention that name again,” I say slowly through clenched teeth. “Or you will wish I dropped you in a Nijalan gulag.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize how harsh they are.

  But I don’t care. Alisha doesn’t understand boundaries, but she will respect this one.

  Alarm crosses her expressive features.

  “Get dressed. We leave in an hour for the airport.” Spinning away, I leave her alone and go to the gym, determined to beat out the emotions swirling within me.

  I need to be at the top of my game for this trip, and it’s starting out with a sense of doom settling heavily in my stomach.

  The success of this journey, and the survival of everyone involved, rests on my shoulders. No matter what the cost to me, I can’t let anyone else end up like Tracy. I won’t be tempted by Alisha’s sweetness and intelligence, by her beautiful brown eyes, quirky sense of humor or the way she cries my name in bed and how wet she gets when I touch her. I couldn’t live with myself if I lost anyone else.

  With bitterness, I realize how right she was when she chose the name The Gladiator for me. Because you hurt anyone who gets near you.

  What she may never understand: I drive people away, because I care, not because I want to hurt them.

  Whatever I feel towards her, it stops now, or we might not survive what’s coming.

  Captured

  (Serial 5)

  Chapter One: Alisha

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  Nijala is nothing like what I expected. I kinda like it here. For the first time in my life, I’m not worried about how I’m going to pay the rent, where to find my next client, or whether or not Tony is going to fuck me up again.

  Not that those issues don’t still exist, just that I feel too far away for them to touch me. I like this sense of peace, and I’m not willing to think about what happens when it’s gone, and my horrible world comes back to smother me.

  That said, I’m making preparations for the inevitable. Natalie always teased me about being ready for every kind of apocalypse there is. I can’t plan as well as usual, but I’ve got a stack of money waiting for me at a Western Union near the palace and only one shot at getting to it. I can’t risk George discovering my intentions. My plan is to find her, grab the money and disappear.

  With any luck, it’ll happen soon, in shah allah – God willing – as the Arabic speaking natives of Nijala say.

  It’s just after sunset, and the air smells of ocean, exhaust and the jasmine necklaces being sold by eagle-eyed children on every street corner. The evening prayers finished blaring around the city fifteen minutes ago, and those shops and markets that closed for the prayers are reopening. Traffic jams the streets. There’s an entire language built around horn blasts, one I found annoying until I realized it resembles the language of hackers: precious ones and zeroes that appear indecipherable on the surface and yet are filled with all the life in the universe to those who understand them. I can’t always interpret the language of the horns, but I figured out which one means I can cross the street without being hit.

  As much as I love the luxury of the palace, I don’t fit in with Elijah’s stuck up family or the flood of people that always seem to surround them, ready to dismiss anyone who can’t grant them a royal favor. George won’t even look at me, though he’s tried more than once to permanently attach one of his security team members to my hip.

  I glance around. The sidewalks are packed with people. No six foot four white guy is visible among the throngs of olive-skinned Middle Easterners, so I’m assuming the guard put on my ass by George hasn’t managed to track me down yet.

  Content, I meander through the streets to an evening market supplying food for the late night meal and trinkets for any tourists wandering off the massive cruise ships docked at the Nijalan port nearby. There’s a billboard plastered on the wall of one building, and I stop to smile at it the way I always do.

  “Hi, Natalie.” There’s more than one building-sized display of her in the city, and the tourist traps are littered with pictures of Natalie with a crown Photoshopped on her head. I may hate her fiancé, Elijah, but I can totally see her as a queen. She deserves a royal life.

  The Nijalans love my best friend and haven’t even met her yet. Every time I come to this spot, I imagine how much more they’ll love her when she’s found, and how much she could do for them, if she were to stick around. As much as I like it here, this place needs someone like Natalie. The wealthy live in an enclave around the palatial estate while the rest of the city exists in abject
poverty. The division runs deeper than the walls that shield the wealthy from everyone else. It’s like a first world and a third world country being crammed together in one city. The contrast is stark and depressing.

  Despite this, the people are incredibly generous hosts who don’t mind me wandering down their streets and never fail to invite me in and share what food they have. Before Nijala, I believed Western media and how it painted Arabs and the Middle East. I assumed I’d be the next American to be beheaded on live television.

  Fourteen days in, and I not only have my head but I’m also not afraid to roam the streets alone after dark and wander into the houses of strangers for dinner.

  “Ms. A’isha!”

  Alisha. I’ve given up correcting the friendly people here. A’isha has some sort of historical significance to them, so I go by either name.

  “Hey, Miriam!” I greet the woman I came to meet. Pretty and tiny, Miriam is wearing a brilliant headscarf of fuchsia streaked with yellow.

  Another thing I love about Nijala: the women are more concerned about outdoing each other in bright colors than whether or not they match. I fit in like a champ here.

  “You escaped!” she says cheerfully.

  I laugh. She and her family listened with awe the first time I described the palace. They somehow found it in them to pity me for being trapped in a world of obscene wealth and beauty, so much so that I’ve eaten dinner with them four nights in a row. “I couldn’t miss your mama’s kuftah and rice!”

  “We have bakalawa for you tonight, too. Come!” Miriam links her arm through mine, and we weave through the crowds together. Her eyes go up to the billboard of Natalie, and a dreamy look overcomes her. “When do you think we will get to meet her? She is so beautiful.”

  When we find her. Just like that, my brittle happiness breaks. The reason I look forward every day to fucking with George’s security members and finding new random families to adopt me is because I can’t get close enough to him to uncover what’s going on. He’s always gone or on the move or simply unavailable. I’m locked out, bored, alone and worried. Every day, my room is searched, and any electronics I manage to buy at the markets are taken. I’ve got absolutely no money now to buy more, and I can’t risk tapping the emergency fund George doesn’t know about yet.

  The only thing I can do: fuck with his men in passive aggressive revenge and hang out with people like Miriam in an attempt to stay occupied. The desperation I’ve been trying to lose in my daily jaunts to the city rears its ugly head again. This past week was the longest I’ve gone without a computer or electronics of some kind. I can’t help find her, even though it’s why George brought me here.

  I’m just … lost. No Natalie, no internet, nothing. There’s freedom in not being chained to my desk and gizmos, but there’s also a familiar neurotic edge, one that makes me do really stupid shit, that’d growing harder for me to contain.

  “Are you okay, A’isha?” Miriam is watching me curiously.

  “Na’am, sadiqati,” I reply in terrible Arabic that makes her smile. “Hopefully we meet the new queen soon.” Assuming she’s still alive.

  It’s hard to smile when I feel this way. My good mood is gone for the evening.

  Somehow, I manage to fake my way through the dinner, which runs more than three hours and includes board games. Miriam’s two older brothers, one younger sister and parents live in a two-bedroom apartment in their version of the slums. But they’re happy, and I feel at home whenever I’m with them. Miriam is my age and working on her Masters degree. One of her older brothers is in his internship at a hospital after completing his medical doctorate.

  There’s no work in Nijala, another reason for the poverty despite the speculation I read in a newspaper that the kingdom is worth something insane like a trillion dollars. It’s all concentrated inside the walls in the hands of the rich.

  Natalie will fix that, if she has the chance. God help me, I’d do anything for one small piece of information about her.

  Roughly four hours later, at midnight, I leave Miriam’s place and stroll out into the much quieter city. I’m full and distracted, ready to go to sleep and restart my restless cycle of staying occupied somehow again tomorrow. If I give myself too much room to think or act, I’ll become impulsive. The only reason I’m somewhat in control is that I fear what might happen to Natalie if I cause a scene.

  The streets are well lit and the moon overhead shrouded behind either clouds or smog. I’m not sure which.

  Miriam showed me a short cut earlier this week, though she warned me not to take it at night. The security and police forces here are pretty unforgiving about crime, but there remains some in the worst parts of town.

  I don’t really give a shit tonight and cut through the alleys. I’m feeling raw - worried about Natalie and unable to control of my own fate. Seeing Miriam’s lively family together is a cheerful distract that leaves me depressed once I leave. Aside from Natalie, I’ve never experienced that kind of love or support or happiness in my life, and it makes me sad to acknowledge it.

  I’ve also decided something else during all the time I’ve had to think the past two weeks. I’m tired of being me. I’m tired of regrets and fear and being fucked over. It’s aggravating as hell to realize that I need to take control of my life and then have every attempt I make to do so countered by George’s goons.

  I can’t think of him without a flutter of emotion I refuse to acknowledge – and the accompanying sense of regret. If I hadn’t been afraid, cowering in Tony’s shadow, I might’ve been able to change my life starting the night I could’ve slept with him. Maybe my time in Nijala would’ve gone down differently. Maybe I wouldn’t feel like I cheated myself out of something that might’ve been really, really good.

  Maybe I hate how alone I’ve felt without the daily interaction I had with him for two months. Because I miss it. I miss him and how freaking smart he is. He truly challenged me, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so mentally or physically stimulated. I didn’t feel alone before meeting him, but I do now, and it’s torture knowing someone like him exists and I lost him already.

  Something runs into the dumpster near the mouth of the alley behind me, and what sounds like a metal hubcap hits the concrete. The loud ring jars me out of my melancholy thoughts. I twist to see a man I don’t recognize in the middle of the alley, staring at the cap like he, too, is surprised.

  He’s not a normal thief. The undercover security forces in the city, to include tourist police, dress like American cops from the eighties in jeans and sports coats. They stand out in a crowd, and I’ve wondered more than once why they choose to wear clothes that identify who they are. Miriam says it’s because the Nijalan government wants Western tourists to feel comfortable reporting crimes.

  I’m not feeling comfortable about one of them following me in a dark alley for damned sure.

  Quickening my pace, I hunch my shoulders out of instinct after the several months I spent with Tony, the Russian mobster I was blackmailed into fucking. This time, I hear the pursuing footsteps, and they’re fast.

  Whoever he is knows I saw him and has decided to give chase.

  I bolt. Adrenaline washes over me, and my senses sharpen in a way that makes it sound like he’s right behind me.

  Emerging from the alley, I whip around the corner onto a side street vacant of cars. Miriam taught me the alleys, and I debate for a split second before deciding I’d rather lose him while making my way back to the palace than take a chance navigating unfamiliar streets.

  I dash across the street and duck into another alley, pressing my back to the wall.

  His footsteps are joined by someone else’s, and I peek around the corner. My breathing is loud and rough in my ears.

  There are three of them. One points, and his sports coat lifts enough for me to glimpse the weapon at his hip.

  Westerner-friendly tourist police don’t carry guns. I don’t have a clue who these guys are. Swallowing hard, I sink deeper
into the shadows. They debate which way I might have gone with each pointing in a different direction. Nijalans are notorious for talking with their hands, and I will them to move on.

  If I had a phone, I’d call my bodyguard. My hand goes to the back pocket where I used to keep my cell. After two weeks, it still feels like it’s there when I know it’s not.

  I pat the pocket nervously and inch away from the mouth of the alley, starting to think a bodyguard isn’t such a bad idea.

  “So you’re the high value target.”

  George’s soft purr makes me jump out of my skin. “Jesus!” I whirl, my heart slamming into my chest hard enough that I feel like I’m about to explode. Any courage I thought I’d have after cursing his name daily for two weeks flees when his scent reaches me, a combination of man with a dash of some expensive cologne. He’s standing two feet away. I didn’t hear him approach or notice him when I ducked into the alley, a reminder of who I’m dealing with – and how fucking fast he can snap my neck if he decides to. “What the … are you stalking me?” I manage in the tense silence.

  “I’m stalking them. I intercepted a message saying they’d identified a target and were going to pick her up tonight. Took me two seconds to figure out who they were talking about and another two to realize you had already bid your bodyguard adieu. So I followed them to find you.”

  I really, really hate how he can discuss a dangerous situation in such a polite way that it sounds like we’re debating what color of curtains to buy over tea. It’s the English in him, and his polished accent hides his snark.

  What I hate more: the way my body lights up when he’s around. The memory of how good his tongue felt in my pussy, and how gentle he was despite his immense strength, flickers through my mind’s eye. I don’t want to like him. I definitely don’t want to lust after him.

  What I do want: answers.

  “You’ve been avoiding me for two weeks,” I start, not about to let my hormones get the better of me. “I want to know why.”