on the video.
“Simplistic and yet—” Kate broke off. Tara was surprising her in ways she hadn’t expected. Morse code was not something a young woman of Tara’s generation would have any exposure to. “Or would she?” she asked softly.
Emir turned. There was a troubled frown on his face as he watched her, his eyes seeming to lock with hers. “What are you thinking?”
“The implausibility of this...” She remembered the bookshelf. Tara wasn’t just a modern girl with an attitude, she was also a serious student and an avid reader. The books on her shelves had been everything from contemporary novels to history. But one shelf had stood out. The section filled with procedural books and one, she remembered, labeled, “Code This.”
“She studied Morse code?”
Emir nodded. “Not so much studied as read some books she’d found in what had been our father’s private library. Like I said, it was nothing serious—goofing around, she called it. She was only fourteen or fifteen. Back then we often practiced it together in English and French. I didn’t think she remembered.”
Kate looked at the video. Now she watched the subtle, yet clear when you noticed it, up-and-down movement of Tara’s thumb. Because her hand was a bit behind her, it wasn’t something that caught your eye, or, she suspected, the eye of the cameraman. She narrowed her eyes, watching the furtive movements, the rhythm and the pattern in the long and short gestures.
Around Tara were the canvas walls of what seemed to be a tent but the video was edited enough that what was around her wasn’t clear. It could be a tent anywhere or, from what Kate could see, it could not be a tent at all. But one thing was now clear. She looked closer, but once she’d made the determination, the truth was inescapable.
Emir’s attention was solely on the video. Kate frowned at the thought of the obsolete code in a time when even cursive writing was almost extinct. But there was no denying that Tara was definitely trying to tell them something. The video cut off just as her thumb lifted again.
Emir looked at Kate with a frown ridging his brows. He rubbed the back of his hand across his cheek. “T-e-n e-t-e,” he said, spelling it out. “It makes no sense.” He ran the video again, as if going through the series of taps would change anything. The video cut off again before any more information could be divulged and before Tara’s kidnappers could see what she had done. “And there’s nothing more.”
The room felt suddenly close, as if there were no oxygen. Kate could feel the energy of the man beside her as the tension and fear for his sister seemed to pulse between them and something else.
“Été,” he said. “French for ‘summer.’ What summer? Where?”
“Ten,” she murmured, moving what he’d just said to memory for later consideration. “Could refer to anything, but my best guess is that it refers to something about her.”
“She wasn’t finished. She thought she had more time. That’s why it was cut off the way it was.”
“Possibly.”
Kate was quiet, thinking of what it all might mean. When she met his eyes she saw the silent strength and the determination in his chiseled jaw and, for a moment, it was like she forgot to breathe.
“Do you remember she gave a victory sign at the beginning?”
He frowned. “She used to do that as a kid on the first day of summer vacation or on the announcement of a family trip.”
There was silence for a moment before he spoke.
“Ten,” he repeated just as she had earlier. “Could she have mixed English and French? Tara is fluent in both. She’s stressed. She could have used the languages interchangeably.”
“Go on,” Kate encouraged.
“The year Tara was ten, the most notable thing was that that was the summer my parents took her and Faisal for a short tour of the Sahara.” He stood. “Could it be that easy?”
“She wouldn’t want to make it difficult, yet she didn’t know how much time she’d have. Thus the cut-off words.” She looked at him. Saw the hope in his eyes.
A thought came to her that, somehow, what Tara’s security, now so critically wounded, and what Tara had just tried to tell them were connected. “Could what Ahmed have been trying to tell you also have been a place?” She looked at him. “Emir? Where in the Sahara did your parents take Tara that summer? What was their final destination?”
“El Dewar.” He smacked his hand on the desktop. “I’d forgotten about it. I don’t know how I could have.”
“It was trivial detail at the time, especially since you weren’t involved in the trip,” Kate said. “Understandable.”
“That was the farthest they went before returning home. But is that the clue?”
He was quiet for a minute, considering what she had said. “Davar. Could Ahmed been trying to name the place and now she’s trying to tell us the same? That she’s near El Dewar, or there’s information to be had at El Dewar, the same Berber village she saw at ten?”
“It’s a possibility but it’s also a big stretch,” Kate said. She grabbed the map. “It’s a small place. I doubt if she’s there now. She couldn’t be hidden and there are enough people that not everyone would be complicit. So, could she be near there? Is that possible?”
He didn’t answer. Instead his fists were clenched, his lips in a straight line, his mind obviously elsewhere. Fighting, she imagined, with long-forgotten memories.
“Emir!” Her voice was sharp. It was the only way to get through to him. He was ready to hit the desert without a plan, with only guns and rage, and neither of those would be successful in rescuing his sister.
He looked at Kate as if seeing her for the first time. “I’m sorry. I lost it, I shouldn’t have...” He paused, as if he needed time to breathe. “You have no idea,” he said.
Time seemed to beat slowly between them and, for a second, all she could do was look at the strong jaw, feel his solid presence, and wish that was all it took—a minute in his arms to make all of this right for him. She shoved the thought away.
“You’re right, I don’t. But what I do know is that my decisions aren’t clouded by emotion. Yours are.” She took his hand in both of hers and tried not to acknowledge the irony of her words. “Listen to me.” She looked at him. His rich dark eyes were pools of pain. “That’s what the kidnappers want, for you to irrationally follow their demands without thought. That was more than likely part of the purpose behind that video. Maybe...” she began, thinking of the lack of ransom detail. “All of it. You falling for that ploy won’t help Tara. But it might ensure that, if their plan was to kill you at the airport, that scenario will still play out. Only this time, someplace else. You’ve got to let me lead and help you keep a cool head. It’s the only way.”
This time when she met Emir’s eyes, she saw that, for once, they were dark with hope rather than despair. And something else, as if he were looking at her for the first time. She looked away.
She let go of his hand as he nodded and turned away from her. The tension seemed to noticeably lift from the room as she blew out a quiet sigh of
