palace at this time of the night just to get her.
In the distance, she heard sirens indicating that the police had already been notified and was surprised that they were on the way. She never got this kind of service back home! The cab driver looked behind him, obviously worried that the police were here so quickly. His eyes frantically scanning the side streets as if waiting for someone to appear out of the darkness.
Dana was searching through her purse, trying to find her identification when the police officer pulled up, his car angled directly to the side of hers while another one pulled up behind the cab driver.
She was just about to pull her wallet out when the police officer approached her. “Everything is okay, ma’am. Please just go on back to your car,” he said politely. The officer approaching the cab driver didn’t appear to be as polite and Dana wanted to argue that it had only been an accident.
“Oh, but don’t you need….” She started to say but the officer was already shaking his head, putting his body in front of her and looking around quickly. It was almost like he was protecting her from the cab driver, but that seemed ridiculous. Of course it was the cab driver’s fault, but that didn’t seem like a good enough reason to arrest the poor guy.
“No need,” the police officer said, his arms spread wide as he moved in front of her, blocking her view of the cab driver. “We’ll take care of this.”
Dana heard another accident a couple of blocks away but the officers near her didn’t appear surprised or even concerned about the accident.
Two car accidents so close together? And at this time of night?
She glanced over at the cab driver and a funny feeling invaded her mind. Something was definitely wrong here.
“You’re free to go. You must return to the palace,” the officer said. He nodded to the other officer who approached the cab driver. A moment later, the officer was handcuffing the man and putting him into the back seat of the police car and oddly, the cab driver was accepting this as normal.
No, something definitely wasn’t right.
The officer bowed with deference and gestured for her to get back into her car. He was painfully polite as he said, “Please, Ms. Miller. You must return to the palace. Sheik Faiser-Al-Takar himself is waiting for you at the entrance. He will explain.”
“Hassan is waiting for me?” she asked, her head spinning with the events unfolding around her. The thought of Hassan knowing already that she was gone was a huge problem. But when he found out that she’d been in an accident, he was going to be completely livid! No, it was better if she just continued on her way as if nothing had happened. She’d figure out how to deal with the legal issues of this accident later on. As it was, she was already delayed from her goal of getting out of town since this whole scene had taken up more time than she had tonight. She had been hoping to be over the border before he woke up this morning.
“Please ma’am. You must move quickly.”
She really didn’t want to go back to the palace but she wasn’t sure she was going to be given a choice. The police officer seemed intent on getting her back to safety and, in his mind, the palace was her only destination.
Dana put a hand to the roof of her car and considered how she was going to explain her absence to Hassan. She knew he wouldn’t be pleased and if the roles had been reversed, she would be pretty hurt if she’d woken up after having sex with someone only to find they had spirited off in the middle of the night.
Well, this wasn’t her fault, she thought with more than a touch of defensiveness. In fact, the whole reason she was here this late, or early depending on one’s perspective, was because he’d been adamant that she not leave the palace grounds. It was his fault that she was out here in the dead of night and had gotten into an accident. He had no right to be unhappy about this turn of events, she told herself in an effort to try and wiggle out of his upcoming tirade.
Okay, so it wasn’t that he wasn’t going to be happy. He was going to be downright furious with her.
With shaking fingers, she put her car in gear