Excerpt of The Desert Virgin by Sandra Marton

AT THIRTY-TWO, Cameron Knight stood six foot four inches tall. He had green eyes and a leanly muscled body, courtesy of his Anglo father; jet-black hair and knife- sharp cheekbones, thanks to his half-Comanche mother. He loved beautiful women, fast cars and danger.

In all the ways that mattered, he was still the dangerously handsome bad-boy half the girls in Dallas, Texas, had lusted after when he was seventeen.

The only thing that had changed was that Cam had turned his passion for danger into a career, first in Special Forces, then in the Agency, and now in the firm he'd started with his brothers.

Knight, Knight and Knight had made him rich as hell. Men on three continents asked for his help when things got out of hand.

Now, to Cam's surprise, so had his father.

Even more surprising, Cam had agreed to give it. That was why he was flying high over the Atlantic in a small private jet, heading for a dot on the map called Baslaam.

Cam checked his watch. Half an hour to touchdown. Good. Things had happened so fast that he'd had to spend most of the flight reading his father's files on Baslaam. Now, he had time to try to relax.

A man about to drop into an unknown situation needed to be ready for anything. Deep breathing exercises, what one of his instructors at the Agency had always referred to as tai chi of the mind, did the job.

Cam put back his leather seat, closed his eyes and let his mind drift. Maybe because he was on a mission for his father, he thought about his life. What he'd made of it. What he hadn't.

How close he'd come to meeting his father's bitter predictions.

"You're worthless," Avery used to tell him when he was a kid. "You'll never amount to anything."

Cam had to admit he'd seemed determined to prove his father right.

He'd cut school. Gotten drunk. Smoked dope, though not for long. He didn't like the loss of self-control that came with the short-lived high.

By seventeen, he was a kid heading for trouble. Angry at his mother for dying, at his old man for caring more for money than for his wife or sons, he'd been a time bomb ready to go off.

Late one night, driving a winding back road, watching the speedometer needle of his souped-up truck climb over one hundred, he'd realized he was going past the dark house of a cop who'd roughed him up a year back. It hadn't been much, just a little hard handling.

What mattered was that the cop had done it as a courtesy to Cam's father.

"His old man wanted me to give the kid somethin' to think about," Cam had heard the cop tell his partner.

With those words echoing in his head, Cam had pulled his truck to the side of the road. Climbed a tree, jimmied open a window, stood over the sleeping cop while the bastard snored, then went out the same way he'd gone in.

It was an exhilarating experience. So exhilarating that he did it again and again, breaking into the homes of men who danced to his old man's tune, taking nothing from the break-ins but the satisfaction of success.

One night, it all came apart. He was in college by then, home for a long weekend...and he'd come within a whisper of getting caught.

Playing dangerous games was one thing; being stupid was another. Cam quit school, joined the Army, got recruited into Special Forces. When the Agency expressed interest, he said yes. Risk was what you ate and breathed in covert operations.

He thought he'd found a home.

Not true. It turned out the Agency sometimes asked things of you that made you a stranger, even to yourself.

His brothers had taken similar routes. Fast cars, beautiful women, playing Russian roulette with trouble, seemed the path a Knight took to manhood.

A year apart in age, they attended the same college on football scholarships. They'd even all scored touch-downs in the same game, one memorable championship season.

They'd all quit school after a couple of years, joined the Army, then Special Forces and, finally, maybe inevitably, the clandestine labyrinth of the Agency.

Just as inevitably, they'd grown disillusioned with what they found there.

The brothers returned to Dallas and went into business together. Knight, Knight and Knight: Risk Management Specialists. Cam had come up with the name after hours of solemn planning and not-so-solemn drinking.

"But what in hell does it mean?" Matt had asked.

"It means we're gonna make ourselves a fortune," Alex had said, grinning.

And they did. Powerful clients paid them exorbitant amounts of money to do things that would have made most men's bellies knot with fear.

Things that the law just wouldn't — or maybe couldn't — handle.

The only person who seemed oblivious to their success was their father...and then, last night, Avery had turned up at Cam's Turtle Creek triplex.

Avery hadn't wasted time on preliminaries. He'd explained that his oil contracts negotiator in the sultanate of Baslaam hadn't reported in for almost a week and was unreachable by cell phone or satellite computer.

Cam had listened, expressionless. Eventually Avery fell silent. Cam still said nothing, though by then he knew what had brought his father to him.

Moments crawled by. Avery grew red-faced. "Goddammit to hell, Cameron, you know what I'm asking."

"Sorry, Father," Cam said tonelessly. "You'll have to tell me."

For a second, Cam figured Avery was going to walk out. Instead, he took a deep breath.

"I want you to fly to Baslaam and see what the hell's going on. Whatever your fee is, I'll double it."

Cam had tucked his hands in the pockets of his trousers, leaned back against the railing of the wraparound terrace that looked out on the city.

"I don't want your money," he said quietly.

"Then what do you want?"

I want you to beg, Cam had thought. But the damnable code of honor drummed into him by the Army, by Special Forces, by the Agency and maybe even by his own convictions, kept him from saying the words.

This was his father. His blood.

Which was why, less than eighteen hours later, he de- planed into a desert heat so fierce it slammed into him like a fist.

A small man in a white suit hurried toward him. "Welcome to Baslaam, Mr. Knight. I am Salah Adair, the sultan's personal aide."

"Mr. Adair. Good to meet you." Cam waited a couple of seconds, then made a show of looking around.

"Isn't the rep from Knight Industries with you?"

"Ah." Adair smiled brightly. "He has undertaken a survey beyond the Blue Mountains. Did he not notify you of his plans?"

Cam returned the bright smile. The negotiator was an attorney. He wouldn't have recognized signs of oil from signs for a neighborhood gas station.

"I'm sure he notified my father. He must have forgotten to tell me."

Adair led him to a black limo, part of a mixed convoy of old Jeeps and new Hummers. All the vehicles held soldiers bristling with weapons.

"The sultan sent an escort in your honor," Adair said smoothly.

The hell it was. No escort would involve so many armed men. And where were all the regular citizens of Baslaam? The paved road that led into town was empty. As the only road in a country trying to claw its way into a semblance of the twenty-first century, it should have been crowded with traffic.

"The sultan has arranged a feast," Adair said with an oily smile. "You will taste many delicacies, Mr. Knight. Of the palate...and of the flesh."

"Great," Cam said, repressing a shudder. This part of the world, delicacies of the palate could make a man's stomach roll. As for delicacies of the flesh...he preferred to choose his own bed-mates, not have them chosen for him.

Something was wrong in Baslaam. Very wrong, and dangerous as hell. He had to keep alert. That meant no strange foods. No booze. No women.

Definitely, no women.

Where were all the women?

Leanna wasn't sure exactly how long she'd been locked in this all but airless, filthy cell. Two days, maybe two and a half — and in all that time, she'd yet to see a female face.

She kept hoping she would because a woman would surely listen to her. Help her escape from this hellhole.

That was right, wasn't it?

It had to be.

Leanna eyed what little water remained in the bucket she'd been given that morning. If she drank it, would they give her more? Her throat was parched from the heat, though the worst of it was over. She had no watch — the men who'd kidnapped her had torn it from her wrist — but the blazing eye of the sun had begun its descent behind the mountains. She knew because the shadows in her squalid prison were growing longer.

That was the good news.

The bad was that the darkness would bring out the centipedes and the spiders. Dinner plates with legs, was what they were.

Leanna closed her eyes, took a deep breath, told herself not to think ahead. There were worse things than centipedes and spiders waiting for her tonight. One of her guards spoke just enough English to have told her so. Remembering the way he'd laughed still made her shudder.

Tonight, she would be taken to the man who'd bought her. The king or chief or whatever he was called of this horrible place. The bugs, the heat, the taunts of her captors would all seem like pleasant memories.

"The Great Asaad will have you tonight," the guard had said, and his gap-toothed grin and obscene hand gesture had guaranteed she understood exactly what that meant.

Leanna began to shake. Quickly she wrapped her arms around herself, willed the trembling to stop. Showing her fear would be a huge mistake. It was just that it was hard to imagine how this could have happened. One minute she'd been rehearsing Swan Lake with the rest of the corps on the stage of a tired but beautiful old theater in Ankara. The next, she'd stepped out a side door for a break, been grabbed and tossed in the back of a stinking van...

The door swung open. Two enormous men, their hands the size of hams, stepped into the cell. One stabbed his thumb upright in the air and mumbled something she assumed meant she was to go with them.

She wanted to fall to the floor. She wanted to scream. Instead, she stood tall and glared at her captors. Whatever came next, she'd face it with as much courage as she could manage.

"Where are you taking me?"

She could see that she'd surprised them. Why not? She'd surprised herself.

"You will come."

The giant's English was guttural but clear. Leanna put her hands on her hips.

"The hell I will!"

The men lumbered toward her. When they clamped their meaty paws around her arms, she dug her heels into the vermin- infested straw that covered the floor but it didn't do much good. They simply lifted her to her toes and dragged her between them.

Still, she fought. They were strong but so was she. Years spent en pointe and at the barre had toughened her muscles. She had a terrific high kick, too. It had once earned her a spot in a Las Vegas chorus line and she put it to good use now.

She got the Talking Giant right where he lived.

He doubled over in pain. His partner found that vastly amusing but before Leanna could give him the same treatment, he twisted her arm high behind her back, jammed his ugly face into hers and snarled something she couldn't understand.