“I don’t know what the hell happened,” Tariq hissed back. “I was with our contact arranging extraction when he got the call that the Matawa were moving in on the fortress to arrest the three of us, and that Jafar couldn’t be found. Azir contacted them from what our contact, Yassir, learned and he rushed me back to the cave entrance. From what we were being told as we ran for the caverns, Azir called them in and informed them of the charges. He’s also having an ‘arrest on sight’ order placed against Khalid, Paige’s mother, and her father if they enter Saudi Arabia. It’s a f**king mess, and I still haven’t figured out how Azir arranged it.”
Azir, Abram’s father. He had found another way to betray his son.
“He has minor influence with the Matawa,” Abram growled. “He’ll be able to keep the order in force only until the authorities in Riyadh hear of it and bring it before the king. But until then, they can do exactly that; kill on sight.”
He didn’t even sound breathless or tired and Paige knew her legs would have already given out on her.
She tried to draw enough air into her lungs to keep from collapsing, her heart racing hard and fierce as Abram all but carried her at a dead run.
“Did you complete the extraction plan?” Abram’s voice was lifeless, all emotion stripped from it now.
“Extraction was all but complete when the call came in. Yassir managed to call in emergency extraction at that point,” Tariq informed him. “We have three hours to reach the pickup point in the mountains. If we’re not there, then they leave without us. I talked to the commander of the rangers myself and he intends to make damned certain nothing stands in the way of that information getting into their hands, but he’s not willing to watch his men die to get it. Did you get the files?”
Had any of them had time to get anything?
“On my back,” Abram bit out. “My pack holds everything we’ve gathered over the past year. Don’t worry; extraction won’t leave without us, Tariq. They need this too damned much and they know it.”
He had made certain he wouldn’t become a casualty to politics or indifference in the plans made to pull him and Tariq, and now Paige as well, out of Saudi Arabia.
“Jafar had Chalah driven to the desert airstrip where a private Learjet made a quick stop and picked her up before heading out again, earlier9;t worry;ening. That’s where we suspect he is, on his way back from the airstrip,” Tariq reported, as Paige swore there was no end to the tunnel.
“At least she’s out of here,” Abram bit out roughly. “Having my friends endangered in this war Azir has been waging against us is going to get him killed.”
And she could hear the certainty in Abram’s voice that he would be the one to kill his father.
“What I’d like to know is why the hell Jafar was so damned intent on getting her out of here tonight,” Tariq questioned, his voice harsh.
“Why hasn’t he kept her here, as Azir has been pushing him to do?” Abram asked in return. “God only knows what either of them have planned.”
“There are horses waiting in the cavern, and we should arrive at the extraction location just in time if we’re damned lucky,” Tariq stated as they rounded yet another curve in the tunnel.
“Is there any way they can find the hidden door in Abram’s room?” Paige whispered as the fear clenched her stomach and trembled in her voice at the thought of being followed.
“Azir has searched that room and every other room in the castle for the doors to the tunnels he’s already closed in. He still hasn’t found some of those. Many of the tunnels veer off in several different directions with the ones leading to more strategically located rooms accessed by more than one hidden stone door and tunnel, like a damned underground maze with no map,” Abram told her. “This particular corridor empties into an old mine. It’s easily millennia old and the exit is no more than a narrow slit in a wall surrounded by fallen boulders. If it were going to be found, Azir would have done so by now.”
They hadn’t slowed. Both men kept a steady pace that never slackened, one Paige couldn’t have had a hope of keeping up with if it weren’t for Abram’s arm locked around her waist.
Still, she was breathless, tired, and fighting to keep up just enough to keep him from having to slow his pace. She felt helpless, weak, and unable to fight enough to even participate in her own escape.
“Why did Azir turn you into the Matawa?” She gasped as she struggled to help Abram keep her on her feet. “What was the point?”
“The hell if I know,” Abram growled. “It’s at least two more weeks before the emissary is due to arrive and Azir has to have me there to give that vow, not under arrest, awaiting death, or dead. It served no purpose.”
“He would have held Paige and me until you gave your vow, then saw to our deaths once you gave it,” Tariq stated, his voice heated and rough as he led the way through the corridor. “He’ll nt risk allowing you even a single ally if he can keep you here.
“Paige is an American citizen whose family is more than aware of where she is,” Abram growled. “He knows he can’t get away with that, just as he knows I would find a way to contact the American consulate, the Saudi royal offices, and any journalist willing to listen.”
“And accidents happen in jails all the time, especially the detention cells the Matawa keep. When they did release her, Abram, you know the shape she would be in.”
Paige didn’t want to imagine the shape she would be in. She’d heard enough about the Saudi prisons from Khalid as he recounted the horrors friends of his had suffered when being held by the Matawa.
“Doesn’t sound like my idea of a favored vacation activity,” she whispered, her voice trembling as she thought she felt a breeze and detected a touch of fresh air ahead.
“Yeah, well, you need to talk to your travel agent about that, baby,” Abram assured her somberly.
“Maybe demand a refund,” she whispered.
Yes, that was definitely fresh air.
Thank God. She hadn’t known if she could stand it much longer in that enclosed corridor with its dark, dank air and sense of forced enclosure.
The narrow slit of the opening in the cavern wall deposited them first onto a shallow pile of boulders that reached toward the roof of the rock ceiling overhead.