Rafe cursed. His frustration brought a desert wind howling into the foothills. Trees bent before him and animals ran. Umar Haya hadn’t the sense to run. His brain had rotted with the evil he planned and his own sense of power. His dirty clawed hands, stained from chain smoking, clutched Rafe’s djinni bottle to his narrow chest. He waited in the ramshackle corner room of the terrorist compound, the rat hole he called his own. He was confident Rafe would obey his summons. He was the master in this relationship. Rafe tore into the compound, sending flying the rusty sheets of corrugated iron that littered it. The lounging guards saw only a desert storm and cried out against the grains of sand that stung them. They ducked into the shelter of concrete-walled buildings, guard duty forgotten. “Donkeys have more courage.” But Rafe’s scorn was a minor thing. His fury was for Haya. The man had torn him from Mischa. Mischa. As soon as he saw her, Rafe had wanted her. The fall of wheat-gold hair, the proud carriage, the beautiful body, her power and her compassion.
