And that was his nightmare.
The enmity between Khalid and his father was at a breaking point. Khalid had gone to one of the reigning princes and the Saudi ambassador concerning Azir’s sanity and Ayid and Aman’s attack against him. And he knew it was a matter that was being investigated. Azir would know it as well. He had his own spies within the monarchy, and his own ways of gaining information.
Thank God Abram hadn’t officially defected after Ayid and Aman had been killed. If he had, there would have been no one there to protect Paige.
“It’s been about two hours since I found the door open and Paige gone,” Daniel stated. “We have all the airports covered and we’re checking all the private planes on the ground. There are officers checking out the private landing strips as well.”
Khalid shook his head. “They were in the air within thirty minutes or less of having taken her. She’s gone, Daniel.”
And it was his fault.
He looked down at Marty again, misery crawling through his body as guilt raked sharpened talons across his heart.
“I need to contact Abram.” He sighed. “I can only do that from the house. The satellite link we’ve established can only be made from one location and only at certain times of the day.” He checked his watch as Marty moved back.
Catching her hand with his he looked around the room once again. “It will be another two hours before I can send the message to Abram. Until then, I can still get ahold of a few contacts I have in Saudi and see what can be done.”
“Someone needs to tell your mother and Pavlos,” Marty reminded him gently. “They’re flying into D.C. tonight. We should be there when they arrive.”
His mother had been worried. She had been certain Azir wouldn’t wait much longer to attempt to take Paige, and she had been right.
God, this was going to kill her.
Fragile, gentle, his delicate mother may not survive if her daughter never returned home to her.
He breathed out heavily.
“We’ll meet them,” he told her. “After I send a message to Abram. Let’s get back to the house.” He turned to Daniel. “Lock up the apartment. Check with her neighbors and see if they heard anything. We may not be able to catch them, but hopefully we can track down whoever helped them. They couldn’t have pulled this off without help.”
Daniel nodded, then paused. “I’m sorry, Khalid,”he said, his voice low. “This happened on my watch, and it shouldn’t have. I take full responsibility for it.”
“As Marty said, he would have found an opportunity eventually,” he stated, though a part of him blamed the investigator/security consultant. It had been his job to protect her and to ensure no gaps were open in her security.
It was a no-win situation though. Sooner or later, it would have happened, Khalid knew. Everyone had to blink eventually.
Holding Marty’s hand, Khalid turned and headed for the door. He was almost there when something caught his eye. A glimmer of gold on the floor.
Stopping, he bent and picked up the delicate little hoop with its fragile, dangling chains attached to tiny gold feathers.
The earrings Abram had sent to her for her twenty-first birthday.
He grimaced at the thought.
He’d fought to keep them apart over the years, even knowing it was doing little good, and that the day would come when nothing could stop it.
It wasn’t that he believed Abram would hurt her, or even that he wouldn’t be good for her. It was simply that Khalid knew his brother, and he knew, after the deaths of his first two wives, any lover he had would suffer the ultraprotective possessiveness Abram would feel.
Independence would go to hell along with the hearts. Abram wouldn’t be able to control himself, and all that dark, tortured hunger inside him would become a ravening beast in the face of Paige’s determination.
And this was where Paige would struggle.
There was no hunger strong enough, no love vital enough and no woman with enough patience or enough understanding to stand against a man determined to lock her away from the world.
Khalid had always feared that was exactly what Abram would attempt to do with the fiery independence that was so much a part of Paige.
And there wouldn’t be a damned thing he could do to save her from it.
4