Page 109 of Rescuing You

She explained that, adding, “I had no good answer. While I distracted Waleed, the boy ran away.” She let a smile tug her lips up. “I said, ‘What? Are you going to hurt a little girl?’ I think he thought I’d cower. So I pressed on. ‘I suppose someone like you is only strong enough to pick on small boys and little girls. Perhaps if you were a real man, eh?’”

“Oh, Leila.” Michael dropped his head and shook it. “Please tell me you didn’t say that.”

“I was young. And not very wise. Waleed was no longer laughing.”

“You had no way to defend yourself. You were completely vulnerable. You ever get into a situation like that again, be agreeable. Be compliant.”

“I will not!”

“I’m not saying…” He sighed. “Fake it, sweetheart, until you find a way to defend yourself. Why egg on a bully if you can’t beat him? Just…let him think he’s won. Let him think you respect him. Get him to let his guard down. Meanwhile, find a way to fight back.”

His words were wise. She wished she’d known Michael back then. Maybe she’d have learned to be wise too.

She could still see the look on Waleed’s face in that schoolyard. He wasn’t angry, but it wasn’t a good look, either. “I didn’t know what to call it at the time. When he looked at me like that, I was more afraid than I had been before. Thank God teachers pushed into the circle. One took me away, and it was over.”

“Was it, though?” By Michael’s tone, he doubted it.

“I tried to avoid him, but often I felt him watching me. I was very happy when he graduated.”

“And then he got to know your uncle. Did you see him a lot after that?”

“Not again until I was sixteen or seventeen. He tried to make friends with me, but I was not interested.”

“Friends?” Michael’s old-man-bushy eyebrows hiked.

“I think more than friends.”

“Mmm-hmm. You’re an adult now. Can you go back and see the look on his face? Can you name it?”

“I would say maybe…hunger.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” Michael walked away, shaking his head.

She spoke to his back. “You are angry with me?”

“No. With me. I had him in my sights. He moved at the last second, and I missed.” Michael paced in front of the window. “He’s a terrorist. According to our intel, he was behind that bombing in Baghdad last year, the one that killed eight people, mostly Iraqis, and injured dozens more.”

She hadn’t known that, but she wasn’t surprised.

“He and Vortex—Qasim—work together.” Michael didn’t seem to be asking her, just processing what he’d learned. “Qasim found you and brought you back. But Waleed’s the one chasing you.” He stopped pacing and returned to sit across from her. “Why? Why is he spending time and resources to get you back? Do you know something? Don’t take this the wrong way, but why are you important enough for all this effort?”

She could see no good reason not to tell him the truth. Even so, the thought of it frightened her.

“Waleed.” She took a breath and blew it out, bracing for Michael’s reaction. “He is the man Baba planned for me to marry.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Let’s take a break.” Before Leila could respond, Michael stood and marched to the door and into the hallway. He had to get away.

To think.

He closed the door behind him and walked to the elevator, then thought better of that and headed for the staircase. He needed to burn off his pent-up rage.

The thought of Leila being forced to marry a terrorist—not just a terrorist, but that terrorist, a man who picked on the weak and vulnerable.

A man who’d looked at her with hunger when she was eleven years old.

A man who’d latched onto her uncle. A flatterer and flunky to a psychopath.