world two years ago.
Haidar went on. “He was decorated a war hero, paid off his guardian’s debts, accumulated graduate degrees and promotions at supersonic speed, and took part in two more armed conflicts by the time he was twenty-eight. We were still speaking then.”
Which meant it was around the time she’d left Haidar that his breakup with Rashid had also occurred. “So whatever you did before he joined the army wasn’t what caused the rift?”
“It caused a rift. He’d answer one call out of five, and when he came back on leave, our relationship was never the same. He wasn’t. He rarely went out with us, together or one on one, and when he did, he was subdued, weighing every word. It made me so resentful, so damn worried, I think I …” He gave an exasperated wave.
“Overcompensated?” she put in.
His lips twisted in agreement. “Then one day he told me he’d been offered a major promotion, wouldn’t say what it was, but that he’d be traveling all the time and off the grid for most of it. I sensed he was telling me not to expect to hear from him again. And again I …”
“Made it sound as if it wouldn’t matter to you either way.”
“Will you stop retro-predicting what I did?” He drove his hands into his hair, every move loaded with self-recrimination. “But aih. Though it didn’t happen quite so … peacefully.”
She could fill in the spaces with the worst she could imagine.
“He dropped off the face of the earth. Then three years ago, he suddenly called me. He sounded as if he was drunk or high. I was stunned, since the Rashid I knew was a health and sobriety freak. But what did I know about what he’d become in the years since I last saw him? He said he needed help, gave me an address then hung up. I rushed there, found nothing.”
“You didn’t find him?”
“I found literally nothing. No such place existed. I kept calling him, but the number he’d called from was out of range. Days later, he texted me, saying he’d been drinking, and to please forget it. I texted back, begged to see him. He never answered me. Frustrated with his on-off behavior, I did my best to forget it. And him. A year later, right after the mess in Zohayd was resolved, he came back into my life. As enemy number one.
“I thought he was giving me a hard time to get payback, and to prove that he was ‘a year older and a light-year better.’ So I called him, offered him a partnership, the one we’d dreamed of as boys. He responded that the only and last time he’d put his hand in mine again would be after I’d signed everything I had over to him, and to never contact him again. I was so frustrated with him and his grudge-holding that I never spoke to him again. Until today.”
He was telling her things she already knew—how he couldn’t see beyond what he wanted and felt. He’d done the same with her. With Jalal. She shouldn’t sympathize. But she did.
Maybe because he was explaining the motives behind his actions for the first time …? It changed him from a callous brute to someone who’d never learned how not to appear so. It painted him in grays instead of blacks.
But it still made no difference to those he’d injured.
He looked at her as if he needed her to tell him he wasn’t crazy. “But none of that explains his enmity, does it? It was all just … words. And he had to know I didn’t mean them.”
“So he’s a mind reader, too, among his other talents?”
He grimaced. “I mean he should have put what I said in context. Even if he bought every word I said, that still wasn’t a good enough reason to want to bury me alive.”
“Depends on what you said.”
Admission blared in his eyes. “Unforgivable things.”
Another shock to hear him admit that.
“And at first I felt so guilty, I let him tear into me. But soon his actions made me so mad, I threw myself into what escalated into a war. I was resigned I was responsible for our conflict, deserved his enmity and could do nothing but continue our battles. But seeing him in person again today jolted through me like a thousand volts.”
She had to nod. “Quite understandable. He’s one scary dude.”
“But that’s the problem. That’s not the ‘dude’ I knew. And that scar … Ya Ullah.”
She frowned. “Scar?”
He looked at her as if she was crazy. “How can you miss it? How isn’t it common knowledge?”
“I haven’t seen him up close. And according to my sources, Rashid’s first appearance in Azmahar in the past seven years was today. Seems no one has seen him before to spread the news.”
He nodded slowly. “That makes sense.”
Not to her. “That’s what shook you so much? The change in his appearance?”
“It’s not only that. He’s become someone totally different.”
“Being a soldier can change you. Being in armed conflicts certainly will.”
He shook his head. “I thought that, too, but it’s more. Something happened to him. Something terrible.”
“More terrible than being in a war?”
“Yes. And he believes I had a hand in it.”
Her heart kicked her ribs, hard. “Is he right?”
His whole being stiffened, as if she’d kicked him in the gut. “What do you think?”
Haidar was many things. A criminal wasn’t one of them. And he would be worse, a monster, if he’d had a hand in his former friend’s physical and psychological disfigurement.
She bit her lip. “What will you do to prove him wrong?”
Tension seeped from him—something like … thankfulness?—staining his gaze as he acknowledged her exoneration. “I need to investigate before I can formulate a plan. It’ll be harder because I can’t have anyone finding out anything I discover when Rashid has gone to such lengths to cover it up.”
“Let me know what I can do to help.”
This time when his eyes bored into hers, there was no mistaking it. He was grateful. More. Moved.
Tears suddenly stung her eyes. “Haidar …”
Before she could utter another word, she found herself pressed against the wall with two hundred–plus pounds of hard maleness and demand pressing into her every inch. Her gasp of shock was swallowed by his openmouthed possession. His tongue breached her, thrust into her, driving, claiming, conquering.
The taste of him, the heat and feel of him, what he was doing to her, the way his hands sought all her secrets, sparked her ever-simmering insanities. She writhed against him, nothing left inside her but the need for his long-yearned-for assuagement.
He bent,
