It was the kind of night that made a man long to ride his
favorite stallion across a sea of desert sand.
Black silk sky. Stars as brilliant as bonfires. An ivory
moon that cast a milky glow over the endless sea of sand.
But there was no horse beneath Sheikh Karim al Safir. Not on
this night. His Royal Highness the Prince of Alcantar, heir
to its Ancient and Honorable throne, was twenty-five
thousand feet above the desert, soaring through the darkness
in the cabin of his private jet. A rapidly-cooling cup of
coffee stood on a small glass-topped table beside him; his
leather attache case lay open on the next seat.
Minutes ago he'd started to go through its contents until
he'd suddenly thought, what the hell was the point?
He knew what was in the case.
He'd gone through the contents endlessly during the last two
weeks and then again tonight, flying from the British West
Indies toward his final destination, as if doing so would
somehow make more sense of things when he knew damned well
that was not going to happen.
Karim reached for the cup of coffee and brought it to his
lips. The black liquid had gone from cool to chilly.
He drank it anyway.
He needed it. The bitterness, the punch of caffeine. He
needed something, God knew, to keep him going. He was
exhausted. In body. In mind. In spirit.
If only he could walk to the cockpit, tell his pilot to put
the plane down. Here. Right now. On the desert below. Crazy,
of course.
It was just that he ached for the few moments of tranquility
he might find if he could take only one long, deep breath of
desert air.
Karim snorted. His head was full of crazy thoughts tonight.
For all he knew, there would never be a sense of peace to be
drawn from this land.
This was not the desert of his childhood. Alcantar was
thousands of miles away and its endless miles of gently
undulating sand ended at the turquoise waters of the Persian
Sea.
The desert over which his plane was flying ended at the
eye-popping neon lights of Las Vegas. Karim drank more cold
coffee. Las Vegas.
He had been there once. An acquaintance had tried to
convince him to invest in a hotel being built there. He'd
flown to McCarran field early in the morningβ
And flown back to New York that same night.
He had not put his money into the hotelβor, rather, his
fund's money. And he'd never returned to Vegas.
He'd found the city tawdry. Seedy. Even its much-hyped
glamour had struck him as false, like a whore trying to pass
herself off as a courtesan by applying garish layers of makeup.
So, no. Las Vegas was not a city for himβbut it had been one
for his brother.
Rami had spent almost three months there, longer than he'd
spent anywhere else the past few years. He'd have been drawn
to it like a moth to flame.
Karim sat back in his leather seat.
Knowing all he now knew about his brother, that came as no
surprise.
He'd finally had to face the truth about him. Tying up the
loose ends of his dead brother's life had torn away the
final illusions.
Tying up loose ends, Karim thought. His mouth twisted.
That was his father's phrase. What he was really doing was
cleaning up the messes Rami had left behind, but then, his
father didn't know about those. The King believed his
younger son had simply been unable or unwilling to settle
down, that he'd traveled from place to place in an endless
search to find himself.
The first time his father had said those words Karim had
almost pointed out that finding oneself was a luxury denied
princes. They had duties to assume, obligations to keep from
childhood on.
Except Rami had been exempted from such things. He'd always
had a wild streak, always found ways to evade responsibility.
"You're the heir, brother," he used to tell Karim, a grin on
his handsome face. "I'm only the spare."
Perhaps adherence to a code of duty and honor would have
kept Rami from such an early and ugly death, but it was too
late for speculation. He was gone, his throat slit on a
frigid Moscow street.
When the news had come, Karim had felt an almost unbearable
grief. He'd hoped that "tying up the loose ends" of his
brother's life would provide some kind of meaning to it and,
thus, closure.
He drew a long breath, then let it out.
Now, the best he could do was hope that he had somehow
removed the stain from his brother's name, that those Rami
had cheated would no longer speak that name with disgust..
Cheated?
Karim almost laughed.
His brother had gambled. Whored. He'd ingested a
pharmacopoeia's worth of illicit drugs. He'd borrowed money
and never repaid it. He'd given chits to casinos around the
world, walked out on huge hotel bills.
The bottom line was that he'd left behind staggering debts
in half a dozen cities. Singapore. Moscow. Paris. Rio.
Jamaica. Las Vegas.
All those debts had to be settledβif not for legal reasons
then for moral ones.
Duty. Obligation. Responsibility.
All the things Rami had scoffed at were now Karim's burden.
So he had embarked on a pilgrimage, if you could use such a
word to describe this unholy journey. He had handed over
checks to bankers, to casino managers, to boutique owners.
He'd paid out obscene amounts of cash to oily men in grimy
rooms. He'd heard things about his brother, seen things that
he suspected he would never forget, no matter how he tried.
Now, with most of the "loose ends" gone, his ugly journey
through Rami's life was almost over.
Two days in Vegas. Three at the most. It was why he was
flying in at night. Why waste part of tomorrow on travel
when he could, instead, spend it doing the remaining cleanup
chores?
After that he would return to Alcantar, assure his father
that Rami's affairs were all in order without ever divulging
the details. Then, at last, he could go back to his own
life, to New York, to his responsibilities as head of the
Alcantar Foundation.
He could put all this behind him, the reminders of a brother
he'd once loved, a brother who'd lost his wayβ"Your Highness?"
Karim bit back a groan. His flight crew was small and
efficient. Two pilots, one flight attendantβbut this
attendant was new and still visibly thrilled to be on the
royal staff.
She knew only what everyone else knew: that the duty of
settling his brother's affairs had fallen to him. He assumed
she misread his tight-lipped silence for grief when the
truth was that his pain warred with rage.
It was difficult to know which emotion had the upper hand.
"Sir?"
As if all that weren't enough, she couldn't seem to absorb
the fact that he hated being hovered over. "Yes, Miss Sterling?"
"It's Moira, sir, and we'll be landing within the hour."
"Thank you," he said politely.
"Is there anything I can do for you before then?"
Could she turn back the calendar and return his brother to
life so he could shake some sense into him?
Better still, could she bring back the carefree, laughing
Rami from their childhood?
"Thank you, I'm fine."
"Yes, Your Highnessβbut if you should change your mindβ"
"I'll ring."
The girl did a little knee-bob that was not quite the curtsy
he was sure his chief of staff had warned her against.
"Most certainly, Your Highness."
Another dip of the knee and then, mercifully, she walked
back up the aisle and disappeared into the galley.
He'd have to remember to have his chief of staff remind her
that the world was long past the time when people bowed to
royalty. Hell.
Karim laid his head back against the head-rest.
The girl was only doing what she saw as her duty. He, better
than anyone, understood that.
He had been raised to honor his obligations. His father and
mother had instilled that in him from childhood on.
His father had been and still was a stern man, a king first
and a father second.
His mother had been a sometime
movie-star-cum-Boston-debutante with great beauty,
impeccable manners and, ultimately, a burning need to spend
her life as far from her husband and sons as possible.
She'd hated Alcantar. The hot days, the cool nights, the
wind that could whip the sea of sand into a blinding frothβ¦
She'd despised it all.
In some of his earliest memories of her he stood clutching a
nanny's hand, holding back tears because a prince was not
permitted to cry, watching as his beautiful mother drove off
in a limousine.
Rami had looked just like her. Tall. Fair-haired. Intense
blue eyes.
Karim, on the other hand, was an amalgam of both his parents.
In him, his mother's blue eyes and his father's brown ones
had somehow morphed into ice-gray. He had her high
cheekbones and firmly-sculpted mouth, but his buildβbroad
shoulders, long legs, hard, leanly muscled bodyβhe owed to
his father.
Rami had favored her in other ways. He hadn't hated Alcantar
but he'd always preferred places of sybaritic comfort.
Karim, on the other hand, could not remember a time he had
not loved his desert homeland.
He'd grown up in his father's palace, built on a huge oasis
at the foot of the Great Wilderness Mountains. His
companions were Rami and the sons of his father's ministers
and advisors.
By the age of seven he'd been able to ride a horse bareback,
start a fire with kindling and flint, sleep as contentedly
under the cold fire of the stars as if he were in the
elaborate palace nursery.
Even then, twenty-six years ago, only a handful of
Alcantaran tribesmen had still lived that kind of life, but
the King had deemed it vital to understand and respect it.
"One day," he would say to Karim, "you will rule our people
and they must know that you understand the old ways." Always
there would be a pause, and then he would look at Rami and
say, not unkindly, "You must respect the people and the old
ways as well, my son, even though you will not sit on the
throne."
Had that been the turning point for his brother?
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