Barbara Dunlop - Millions To Spare

Not to mention Julia if she didn’t get her body calmed down.

“I hope they followed Alex and Brittany. And the music should cover our sound. But if they start to chase us, hang on tight. And for God’s sake, do up your seat belt.”

Julia nodded again.

He looked at her closely. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she managed, her pulse finally slowing, her body coming back under control.

“Good to hear.” He slowly opened the door.

They passed through, and he pointed her in the direction of the Jeep. “Feel your way along the wall. I’m going to fill a water bottle and pull a few other things together.”

She tripped a couple of times over unseen objects in the dark, but managed to feel her way past one, two, then three cars. She found the Jeep, and made her way into the passenger side, fastening her seat belt tight.

She heard Harrison at the driver’s side. He shoved some gear into the backseat.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

She nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her. “Yes.”

She heard a click, then a groan and a whine, and the overhead door in front of them cranked upward.

The lights from the palace appeared, then the palm trees, then the stars. So far, nobody seemed to have raised an alarm.

Harrison started the engine and eased their way out. His profile came clear as he hit the garage-door remote, and the door whined shut again behind them.

Still driving slowly, he turned them away from the palace.

So far, so good.

They crossed the lawn, then followed a rutted track down a sloping hill, and the buildings disappeared behind them.

She watched over her shoulder, then looked at Harrison. “Did we do it?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure yet.”

Then a pair of headlights appeared on the hill, rocking airborne at the crest, then slamming down onto the rutted tracks.

“Hang on,” Harrison called, yanking the gearshift and revving the engine.

Harrison pointed the Jeep toward the northeast corner of his property. He knew how to find a short, dirt road that would take them to a small wadi. They’d cross it, and then they’d be onto the dunes.

He glanced at the bouncing lights in the rearview mirror. Whoever was behind him was in a sedan. So they wouldn’t be following onto the desert. Well, hopefully, they’d follow about twenty meters or so, then sink to the axles.

Putting the Jeep into third, he spared a quick glance at Julia. She was white as a ghost, her eyes wide in the dim light, and her hands squeezed the armrests in a death grip.

“Will they shoot at us?” she rasped.

“I certainly hope not.”

Oops. Bad answer. She looked even more terrified, if that was possible, shrinking down in her seat.

“Nobody is going to shoot at us,” he assured her, even though he wasn’t sure it was true. He couldn’t worry about bullets at the moment. He turned his attention back to the terrain.

“You should turn me in,” Julia shouted to him above the noise of the bouncing vehicle.

“I don’t think so,” he responded as they picked up the dirt road.

“You’re going to be in trouble.”

“Not if we get away.”

“Won’t they radio ahead?” She’d seen enough car-chase movies to know about roadblocks, spike strips and air surveillance.

“They won’t be putting up a roadblock on the sand dunes,” he said.

The ground fell away, and he made a sharp right turn on the goat track that would take him to the bottom of Wadi Wasmi.

Julia gasped as the Jeep fishtailed, the tires spitting out sand and rocks, before getting traction on the bumpy trail.

Harrison gave the sedan a fifty-fifty chance of making the turn. He grabbed second gear, bouncing wildly in his seat. Julia was staring straight ahead at the headlight beams flashing on rocks, sand and the occasional boulder or outcrop.

He wrestled the steering wheel, keeping them on course, until they finally made it to the relatively smooth surface at the bottom. Then, he dared to glance in the rearview mirror, pressing on the accelerator, and bringing the Jeep up a gear.

The sedan had made the turn, but it was forced to slow down on the trail. Good. He was bringing them out on the dunes behind Hebba Hill. He hoped they’d have radio trouble after they got stuck.

Julia turned to watch him.

“You’re crazy,” she said.

He couldn’t help but grin. “Are you wishing you’d taken your chances with the police?” He watched carefully for the signs of the track that would take them up the other side of the wadi.

She glanced at the headlights behind. “Not exactly. But this isn’t looking so good.”

“I have a plan,” said Harrison, as he spotted the trail.

He jerked left on the wheel, bouncing them up a trail equally rough and steep. Julia shut up and hung on, while he glanced at the tachometer to optimize each gear.

They were down into first before they crested the hill. It was a short fifty meters before the rocks and packed dirt gave way to full-on sand. Harrison used the time to get his speed up, hitting the dunes, fishtailing for a moment before he settled in, then streaking off across the unbroken desert.

“Watch out behind us,” he told Julia. “Tell me what happens.”

She swiveled in her seat, stretching her arm across the back.

“Nothing,” she said. Then, “Wait. I see headlights. They’re out of the valley. Speeding up. Coming.” She paused.

“Did they make it to the sand?”

“I think they might be stuck.”

Harrison smacked the steering wheel with his palm. “Yes!”

She turned to him. “That was your plan?”

“That was my plan.”

“What about planes?”

He shook his head. “Planes are unlikely. Even if they wanted to send one up, it would take quite a while to get it here, and this is a very big desert. They have no idea which way we’ll go.”

All in all, he was feeling pretty satisfied.

Then her small hand covered his on the gearshift.

He warned himself not to react to her touch, nor to react to the contrast of her pale, delicate hand against his rough, larger one.

“I can’t let you do this,” she said in a voice that was both brave and terrified at the same time.

“It’s done.”

“No, it’s not done. They know who you are. They know where you live. You’re a fugitive from justice.”

“I’m taking a pretty girl out for a ride in the desert. I don’t believe there’s a law against that.”

“Nobody’s going to believe you didn’t notice the police car in high-speed pursuit.”

“Who’s to say that was a police car?”

She compressed her lips, eyes narrowing in annoyance.

“Seriously, Julia. We do not know that was a police car.”

“It was. And eventually you’ll have to go home. And I can’t let you put yourself in trouble for me.”

“As I told you before, I have options.”

She drew in a shuddering breath. “Turn around, Harrison. Let’s go back.”

He chuckled. “Right. Because I’m not already in trouble.”

“You can tell them-”

“Julia.”

“You can explain that-”

“Shut up.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket, extracting the red booklet he kept on him at all times.

He tossed it into her lap. “Get out of jail free card,” he told her.

Her hand left his, and she picked the booklet up. “What?”

“Diplomatic passport.”

“Who are you?”

He took a breath.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “The Right Honorable Lord Harrison William Arthur Beaumont-Rochester, Baron Welsmeire.”

“I get a kick out of the fact you can remember all that.”

“Why do you have a diplomatic passport?”

“I’m a special ambassador to the UAE.”

“And they can’t put you in jail.”

“They can’t put me in jail. They can send me home. But that’s a pretty big gun. They would run the risk of causing an international incident by sending me back to Britain.” This time, he reached out and covered her hand. “I can’t see them doing that over charges of attempted horse theft. Particularly when I was the victim.”

But then Harrison frowned to himself. Truth was, he couldn’t see them chasing Julia and him through the desert over those charges, either. Something strange was happening here, and it was something that had little to do with the enforcement of law in UAE.

Somebody was after Julia. And, Alex was right, Millions to Spare and Leopold’s Legacy had to be involved. Either Julia knew something, or somebody thought she knew something. Either way, Harrison had to keep her out of their hands until he could figure out what was going on.

Brittany was grateful when Alex finally decided the horses were getting tired. She’d been exhausted for an hour, and her inner thighs were burning from the friction of the leather saddle. She gritted her teeth, dismounting slowly and painfully.

The horse grew impatient, and shifted, and she grabbed for the saddle horn.

“Whoa.” Alex was beside her in an instant, bracing her from behind.

She gasped as one of his hands contacted her chafed skin. But his support allowed her to get safely to the ground.

“You okay?” he asked, stepping back to stare worriedly down at her.

“Fine,” she told him, brushing off the skirt and settling the soft shoes back on her feet. She was sweaty and sticky, and her thighs were going to take days to heal. Not to mention the fact that she smelled like a horse.

This was not what she’d pictured when she’d agreed to visit Harrison. She sucked in a thick breath of the sultry midnight air. It wasn’t what she’d pictured at all.

“We can stow the saddles.” Alex nodded toward an abandoned hut on the opposite side of the dusty road. “And put the horses in the paddock. I’ll call Nuri later and let him know where to find them.”

Then he gazed up and down the dark road. “What do you think? We’ve come fifteen, twenty miles?”

“I have no idea,” said Brittany, debating whether to unsaddle Cedar Twist or leave that chore for Alex.

“I think we’re a little way west of Route Eleven. But I’m not sure how far…”

“Are we lost?” In the end, she took pity on the horse, edging carefully over to it and reaching for the cinch.

“We’re not lost. I’d just like to give the taxi a precise location.” He flipped open his cell phone.

Brittany’s heart sighed at the thought of a taxi. A lovely, soft-seated, air-conditioned taxi that would take them back to Cadair and her lovely, large bathtub. She’d have something tall and cool, an iced tea, or maybe champagne and orange juice. They’d served some flakey almond croissants earlier, and she was starving. The party was probably over by now, but surely they could rustle up something.

Visions of frosted glasses and ice cubes dancing in her head, she heard Alex speaking Arabic on the phone. Then he clicked it off and stuck it back in his tuxedo pocket.

“Why didn’t you call someone at Cadair?” she asked.

“They might be monitoring the phones.”

“Oh.” She pulled off the saddle.

Alex quickly lifted it from her arms.

“Then, won’t they check the taxi?”

Halfway to the little hut, he looked back over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, when it drops us off at Cadair, the police are going to see us.”

“The taxi’s taking us to a hotel.” He continued his journey, climbing the single step and pushing open the pale-green door that hung on one hinge.

A hotel?

Well. She supposed that made sense. And she could live with a hotel. Just, please, let them have a nice suite available, with a whirlpool tub and twenty-four-hour room service.

“Are we going into Dubai?”

“To Ajman.” Alex went to work on the other horse. “It’s closer, and I want to leave a trail of bread crumbs.”

Brittany watched him work efficiently on the buckles and straps of Roc’s saddle. Even the expensive tuxedo couldn’t make him look civilized. His shoulders were too broad, his chest too deep. He had big, rough hands, a darkly defined brow, a broad nose and the kind of square chin that would make other men think twice about crossing him.

“So you’re an American,” she ventured.

He cracked a small smile. “I’m an American.”

“How did you meet Harrison?”

“He advertised for an international lawyer.” Alex straightened and effortlessly lifted the saddle from the big animal. “We have newspapers in America, you know. And I do read.”

She ignored his sarcasm. “I thought you said you were a soldier.”

“I was a soldier.” He crossed the road to the shack once more, talking over his shoulder while he walked. “When I wasn’t busy shooting people, I studied law.”

“They let you do that?” she called.