Desert Sheikh vs American Princess (20 page)

Now
she
had it. And these women were all imagining why.

"I'm not quite sure why," she added.
Because I slept with your king and now he's trying to distract me so I don't jump out of more windows. Or maybe it's because he forced me to talk to my parents and then psychoanalyzed me and this is sort of an apology?

No one seemed to buy it. The stares had turned to silent blinks. Suzette crossed her arms over her chest. "What will you do with it, Miss Oldrich?"

"Find the treasure," Bonnie said, using Noelle's mouth.

Suzette considered this for a second, while the other women buzzed with excitement around her.

"What do you need?" she finally asked.

Yes!
crowed Bonnie.

"Here." She pointed at in the lower corner of the map, where the mostly hidden Arabic lay. "Can you read this?"

Suzette squinted at the faint text, then muttered an order to one of her underlings. A few seconds later, a pair of reading glasses was delivered to her. She perched them on her substantial nose.

"Who knows me will interpret this map well," she grunted. "Or something like that."

"It's not code or anything?"

Suzette shook her head, as if she'd used up all her words.

A painful lump throbbed under Noelle's heart. This was a problem.

"Do you give up so easily?" challenged a familiar voice.

Two of the women parted to let Faridah into the circle. Noelle's arms solidified to pure lead. She could barely keep the weight from dragging her to the industrial tile floor.

Faridah was right. The text had been her only clue and she'd actually been on the brink of tossing the whole thing aside. "Of course not." She licked her bottom lip. "It's just a handicap. If you need to know the creator of the map to find the treasure, this is a problem."

Since he's dead
, she refrained from adding.

Faridah sniffed the air. "Inaya Al Hurra would not give up so easily. This would hardly be an issue in her mind."

The paralysis in her arms crept into her ribcage, making it hard to breathe. Why did the woman keep comparing her to someone she never claimed to be like? Who maybe hadn't existed? Of course she was going to come up short.

"Then maybe you should finally realize that I'm not Inaya Al Hurra and that life is not a fairy tale. I'm just a stupid rich girl who isn't even from Askar and dreams don't come true." The words burst from her. At least she managed to bite back what she so much wanted to add. That Inaya Al Hurra probably didn't exist.

Every head turned from the map to her. A dozen pairs of eyes stared her down with various degrees of anger and surprise.

That wasn't very nice,
Bonnie said.

Well, what did they expect? I never asked for them to put their hopes on me.

Faridah is our friend.

Her heart panged, a visceral jolt of pain under her ribs. But she doubled-down anyway.
It's a good thing to tell friends the truth. I've been letting them all keep their illusions until now. Let them see me for who I am.

"So," she prompted, pretending to ignore the stares, "what's the trick of this map? Does anyone know?"

Suzette answered. "Many believe it has to do with the chapel that was built in haste before the invasion of the Germans, at the same time the map was created."

Now we're getting somewhere.
Bonnie sounded a bit slow, though. Like she was still trying to process what Noelle had said to Faridah.

"Chapel?" asked Noelle. "Where can I find that?"

The mistress of the kitchen flicked her eyes over her obedient minions, as if ticking them off a list. Who was she going to offer up as sacrifice?

"Faridah shall take you there," Suzette stated.

"Faridah," said Faridah, sticking her nose in the air, "is far too busy and has many things to do. She does not have the time to take Miss Oldrich anywhere."

The circle of women fell silent and disapproving. Faridah had just broken some kind of unwritten rule--or maybe a written one. She'd challenged Suzette's orders in the kitchen.

Not good. But nothing bad happened when Faridah flounced off in a haze of gauzy mauve. As soon as she left, Noelle's arms lightened and air came into her lungs way more easily.

"Just tell me where the chapel is and I'll find my way," Noelle offered, ignoring the scene between Suzette and her niece.

Suzette flicked a thumb at one of the other kitchen workers, who acknowledged the silent order with a silent nod.

The map was securely back in Noelle's Prada crossbody (it deserved to be carried around in the best), and she was following her new escort out the door when she heard Suzette grunt for attention behind her.

"What will you do when you need to go to the location of the Palm?" the big woman asked.

"I haven't thought that far ahead," Noelle admitted.

Suzette nodded. "When it happens, come to me," she ordered. "It can be arranged."

*****

The map was a
distraction
.

Noelle licked her bottom lip as she entered the chapel, the word
distraction
echoing in her head as if she'd said it out loud and made it bounce off the dome high above her head. The map was a solid, hard presence making her purse sling heavily on her shoulder. She barely registered walking into a large open space, the things glittering around her.

At least she remembered to flip her scarf up over her head. She might not be religious, but she didn't have a problem respecting other people's traditions. She was also barefoot, obeying the sign (in Arabic, but also French, which she'd learned at Angelique's knee) that told anyone who entered to first remove their shoes.

Thank God this chapel wasn't a full-on mosque, or she might not be allowed in the main part. Most mosques separated men and women during worship. Some didn't even let women in.

Distraction
. How many times had people told her this? But still... Hadn't the map been created to protect the jewel? The Arabic text said that you had to know "me" to read the map, and she'd assumed that "me" had meant Walid's great-grandfather. What if it didn't? What if "me" meant the map itself?

X always marks the spot,
said Bonnie.

Yeah
, she agreed. There was no reason why the map couldn't hide the Palm
and
reveal it, too. To the right person.

The map had to reveal the treasure. She knew it like she knew the sun would rise tomorrow. So it was time to get to work.

Layers of carpet covered the floor. She'd been in a couple of mosques before and knew that the people who worshipped here didn't sit in pews like a church. They knelt on the floor, so the gorgeous, thick carpet wasn't just there for decoration. The carpets also gave worshippers' knees a break.

A dais in one corner had a few raised steps. Probably where the
imam
gave his Friday sermon, she guessed. Sounded like a good theory to her. That alcove would be oriented toward Mecca, and during prayers, everyone would prostrate themselves toward the ancient stone in the city as a symbol of their obedience to Allah.

Pillars carved out of deep gray marble with stunning white veins interrupted the large open space. Sort of like a parking garage, actually, which was a gearhead's temple.

Okay, she decided. So much for respecting other people's religions. Next she'd be comparing the pope to the car nuts on
Top Gear
. Better find this altar before any other heretical thoughts popped into her head.

There. She spotted an alcove splitting off the side of the main area. Just like Suzette had described, a rough wooden altar stood in the center of the half-moon shape. Yup, the three-foot-tall box looked like it had been thrown up in a hurry compared to the intricately carved stone all around. The dark wood hadn't been sanded or stained, and sported jagged corners that threatened splinters if you weren't paying attention.

If she wasn't wrong, the top of the altar was exactly the same size as...

Noelle lifted the map from her purse as if it were a Hermes scarf. Unrolling it, she smiled to herself. She hadn't been wrong. The map fit to the top of the altar like the perfect jigsaw piece snapping into place. This was no coincidence. The two things had definitely been made to go together.

She could picture it in her head now. Sheikh Osman, just as smart as his descendant (and in Noelle's head, the part was played by Walid himself), knowing that the Nazi war machine that had swallowed up his neighboring countries had crossed his own border. Had looked at his options and come up with a solution that minimized the damage of an overwhelming force he couldn't hope to fight. Walid would do exactly the same thing, she knew. The guy who didn't like to lie would come up with a tricky tactic that distracted his enemies. Not a lie, but something they could sink their teeth into while he made the best of the situation.

As she spread the map (and wondered which way was north so she could orient it--oh yes, Mecca was southeast of here, according to that alcove), a tiny spotlight appeared.

Her heart iced over, thumping painfully against the sudden cold coating.
Yesyesyesyes!

A dot of light zoomed down from the ceiling, landing on the map like a pinprick of hope.

X marks the spot,
Bonnie said.

Noelle lifted her eyes. The ceiling of this nook wasn't made from the same stone as the rest of the chapel. It was a kind of pounded metal. Maybe tin? Something that could have been forged quickly. And one tiny hole poked through it.

She could kiss Walid's great-grandfather right now. This was some serious Indiana Jones stuff here.

But the map. With a waterfall of adrenaline rushing through her, she stared at the map. The laser dot highlighted a spot in the mountains. She instantly imagined leading a mule train of old-timey prospectors into the heights... No, no, that was just stupid. They'd take 4x4s or ATVs.

Except. Wait. Those mountains weren't in the right place on the map, were they? So was she supposed to go to the mountains, or maybe to the actual spot the light spot indicated, which should be smack in the middle of the desert? Could they work out GPS coordinates from a dot on a map?

Wait, no. Looking again, she saw the dot wasn't in the mountains at all. It was near the coastline, close to Deira. Then it was north, on the border with Zallaq.

Noelle stepped back. The dot was in all those places, actually. Three dots. And as she watched, in horror, another dot appeared. Then another. Seven shafts of light threaded down from that tin ceiling.

Are you stupid?
she asked herself.
Of course there wasn't one shaft of light that would instantly show you where to dig! You think the Nazis would have just
missed
that? That you would just find something in five minutes, on your first try, that the German army hadn't found in months of trying?

The sun. The Askari sun had been behind a cloud. And the tin roof did not have one hole in it. Instead, there were a dozen, all sending tiny spotlights onto the map.

Noelle blew a sigh out of one corner of her mouth.

Whatcha gonna do now?
asked Bonnie.

There are lots of Xs
, she pointed out.

Uh-huh. Same question. What's your move, matey? Are you going to give up, as usual? Or are you going to pirate princess it out?

For some reason, she got a slideshow of last night's activities with Walid in her brain. Hopefully some part of her brain that her underage imaginary friend didn't have access to.

What had happened between them last night had been special. He'd asked if she regretted it. How could she? Sure, she'd had sex with other guys--maybe not as many as everyone imagined--but Walid and she had a connection. Not just a physical one. It had turned oddly emotional. Touching him, and being touched by him, hadn't felt like a fling or a fun experiment or a physical release of their monumental sexual tension.

It had felt
important
. She didn't have any other word for it.

Important
felt dangerous.

Important
could hurt her.

Important
could break her heart.

Except it didn't feel like
important
was going to do any of those things.

Until now, the two of them had been closed off from each other. She'd had her agenda; he'd had his. But something had shifted. Not because they'd slept together. Nope, it had shifted right before that, when he asked about her life and she'd actually told him. He hadn't judged her or made fun of her stupid problems. Instead, he'd offered to help her.

Since they'd met, there had been bursts of connection between them, like that time in the tower. Now, there was a new kind of openness. They were, in short, deep in relationship territory here.

How long they stayed in this new country seemed to depend on Walid getting some money. She definitely needed to find out why. For now, she'd just accept he did, and work from there.

She wasn't going to be able to convince her dad to pay up what he owed. If Winston Oldrich didn't want to pay, he wouldn't. No matter what.