“Without my help, you risk yourself and the baby.”
“I have no reason to trust you or anyone else.” Another jab. This time the giant hissed. “So back off.”
“I am Quamar Bazan, Miss Cambridge. Do you remember me?”
“Quamar—” Her jaw snapped shut.
Of course she recognized the name. Quamar Bazan had worked as an agent with Labyrinth, a black ops organization connected with her father. One she hadn’t found out about until recently. “I’m supposed to take your word for that? When I can’t see your face?” She jabbed at him again for emphasis.
Quamar quickly grew impatient. “I can prove it, if you will allow me.” It was one thing to distrust him, quite another to keep poking at him with her blade. “But I must reach into my pocket.”
“All right. But slowly or you’re going to lose some fingers.”
Quamar heard the tremor in her voice, then the bite as she clamped down her fear. She was terrified, yet she maintained her stance.
She has courage, he admitted silently, almost reluctantly, as he pulled his light out of his pocket. And she would need it to see her through the next few hours.
He thumbed the switch, igniting the lighter. The dim fire cast an amber glow between them.
Beautiful, he thought, before he could stop himself. Even the streaks of mud over her brow and across the soft curve of her cheek didn’t detract. She studied him with blue eyes that were big and set apart, wide enough to balance the feminine cut of her chin, soften its stubborn edge. Her lips were full and wide with the balance toward top-heavy. Enough to entice most men, he imagined, to taste.
Slowly, she lowered her knife.
“Quamar.” There was no relief in her voice or fear. Just anger.
And his name trembled with it.
Since he’d expected the relief, her anger surprised him. But it shouldn’t have. He had been critically wounded a year ago while on an assignment to protect Anna’s grandmother from an assassin. And he had failed.
He, more than most, understood that past transgressions were never forgotten.
“You could have told me earlier.” She brushed her hair out of her face. Mud-splattered, it spilled down her back in a stream of blond tresses that curled between her shoulder blades. Thick enough to bury a man’s hand under its weight.
When his fingers itched to do the same, he tightened them on the lighter. “When was I supposed to tell you?”
“Outside, where I could’ve seen you.”
He growled, a harsh grinding of his vocal chords. “If I had, I would be dead. And you would be Zahid’s prisoner,” he snapped with more abruptness than intended, resenting her anger and the connotation behind both. “Or dead, too.”
“I could have killed you,” she said, her tone matching his. With jerky motions, she sheathed her knife in her waistband.
So, he thought, that is where the anger came from. Her fear of almost hurting him.
Not from their past.
“No, you could not have,” Quamar responded, his mind back on their position. It had been years since he’d explored the tunnels. Erosion could have weakened the passages for all he knew.
“In the future, do not warn your enemy before you strike,” he said, deepening the tone to soothe, allowing his words to settle before he pushed the blade away. “Strike to kill.”
“You’re damn lucky I didn’t.”
“It was not luck,” Quamar answered with forced equanimity. Quamar was a patient man by nature. The desert life killed those who weren’t. But somehow with Anna Cambridge the edge of his patience became slippery, making it difficult to hold on to.
“Where did you come from, Quamar?”
“The desert,” he answered abruptly.
“I see,” she said, frustration underlining her response. But when he wasn’t willing to give more information, she asked, “Where in the desert?”
“Where I was before does not matter. What matters is we are here and cannot stay.” His eyes ran over hers, checking her for injuries. “Rashid did not cry over the explosion.” He pulled open the sling, allowing the light to shine on the boy. “Is he dead?”
Anna felt his body tighten, the only give of emotion.
“Only sleeping,” she said, sensing rather than seeing him relax at her explanation. “His nanny drugged him for his own protection.”
“I understand,” he said, and let his hand drop.
“So, where do we go from here?”
“We get you both out of Taer safely.” He motioned toward the baby. “And to do so, you will need to trust me, Miss Cambridge.”
“Trust you? When just minutes ago you were talking ransom to Zahid? I’ve only met you once, and you were unconscious at the time. That isn’t a foundation for trust.” The harshness was gone, but wariness kept her eyes wide, the bow of her lips tight and pale.
After her grandmother’s murder, Anna had visited Quamar at the hospital. He remembered the cool flutter of her fingers on his hand. The brush of a kiss against his lips—an act of forgiveness that he did not deserve.
Over the past months, he had thought of that one kiss a thousand times. “I was not unconscious,” Quamar remarked. “Tell me now, do you ever do what you are told? Or do it without argument?”
“Do you?”
This one wasn’t startled easily. Cool, collected. But he had surprised her. He saw the flush rise over the pale cheeks.
“Yes, I do,” he lied without qualm before his eyes moved to the baby.
“Quamar,” Anna said with impatience. “I have promised to see Rashid to safety. I do not make promises I can’t keep. So I will trust you. Only because I have no other choice. But do not expect me to follow you blindly. Not with Rashid’s life at stake.”
Her jaw tightened, hardening the stubborn lines. Still, the trepidation was there in the shadows of her eyes.
Something pulled at him, deep from his belly. A familiar tug, one he’d felt before and many times since.
The threads of fate.
Quamar pushed the feeling away. “Agreed.” He shut off the lighter and pocketed it.
Catching her elbow in a viselike grip, he urged her forward. “We have wasted enough time. We must go.”
They traveled in silence, occasionally stopping to listen and wait. The air turned dank and the chill seeped through the soles of her feet, making her bones ache, her body shiver. The sling bit into her neck and shoulders. Without thinking, she shifted the baby, relieving
