Karida Barak cowered in the dark corner of the Riyadh prison cell that she'd been thrown into weeks before... she couldn't recall exactly how long she'd been there. The whole experience had just turned into some horribly surreal nightmare that she couldn't seem to wake up from...
She was numb for the moment... her body was no longer suffering the hunger pangs she'd endured after the first week or so when she kept throwing up every time she tried to eat whatever horrid thing they'd tossed at her through the bars. It wasn't so much the food that made her sick... it was the stench that filled every corner of the prison from the pits in the dirt floors of the cells that passed for toilets and were swimming with human waste.
But she'd gradually grown accustomed to the putrid smell so that she could eat and keep what little strength she had so her mind could continue to function. If she'd allowed herself to lose her mind, she would be dead already... her "gift" was the only thing keeping her alive.
She'd managed to sneak into Saudi Arabia by acquiring an abaya and hajib through one of her IOPF contacts as well as some false travel documents. But she'd made the mistake of not having a male escort traveling with her and they'd grown suspicious right away and took her in for questioning.
When they realized her Arabic was not so good and she couldn't answer their questions, she'd grown nervous and started trying to influence their minds to think she wasn't doing anything wrong, but it hadn't worked. In their minds, she was a lone female, who'd traveled without a male family member and she couldn't even communicate properly... she was a stupid, sinful woman...
She'd panicked when they'd dragged her to that prison and when they'd stripped the veil and abaya off of her and gotten a good look at her, her "gift" had kicked into high gear. The guards had ogled her and she could feel the lust radiating from them in waves... they were going to gang rape her!
Her initial scream of fear when they'd grabbed her was choked off when one of them slapped her hard. She'd closed her eyes, summoned all of her strength and roared like a feral beast inside her head. The resulting mental "blast" of ferocity had so startled the guards that they'd yelped and leapt back from her as if they'd all been electrocuted...
They'd stood staring at her as she cowered in a ball on the floor, and then they'd come at her again, not believing it could have been anything she'd done! So she'd done it again... and they'd jumped back again... their fear growing. She'd fed off of that as she stood up and faced them fearlessly and "blasted" them yet again, even stronger than before...
The guards had all turned and fled the cell... unfortunately the last one had remembered to pull the door closed so that she was locked inside. Karida had dropped to the dirt floor... her energy sapped from her efforts. She could do that only so many times before she was drained... thank God the guards had not hung around long enough to figure that out!
And then the reality of where she was and the horrible conditions surrounding her had sunk in and she'd spent that first week or so sick all of the time. Thank God none of them had attempted to come near her during that time, either... she'd been so weak there was no way she could've fought off even a lone man much less a whole gang of guards!
Someone had come close enough only to toss in some kind of food or a container of water once or twice a day, so they hadn't seen her weakly cowering in the darkest corner. They hadn't attempted to approach her again until she'd been strong enough to feel their fear and had used it against any of them who'd tried to come near her until they'd realized there was something... frightening about her.
They weren't about to let her go, but they were also afraid not to feed her... she'd picked up on enough of their fears to understand that they thought she might be able to retaliate somehow if they tried to kill her. She couldn't do that... unless she could "scare" them to death...
She'd taken to crying herself to sleep every night, wondering how long it would be before anyone realized that something had gone wrong and came looking for her. But the only person who knew where she'd gone was her IOPF contact because she'd sworn her to secrecy. She could only pray her friend would alert her family and the network soon and that they'd be able to find her...
But here she was... still there another night after weeks of waiting and hoping and her numbness was fading into fear again. The only thing that had helped to keep her fear under control was the dream she'd been having every night since she'd been thrown into this hell on earth. Another pair of aqua blue eyes staring into hers and the greatest sense of comfort she'd ever felt...
But during the past week, the comfort had been accompanied by other emotions as well... deeper emotions... almost like... love. And that morning, she'd woken up with a start when those aqua eyes had conveyed what felt like a wave of passion and desire as well... It was the first time those feelings had not felt unwelcome to her...
**********
Jonathan North had been staring at the printed out photo of Karida Barak for a week... she was his soul mate... there was no doubt in his mind. As soon as he'd seen her eyes he'd known... she was the other half of his soul. Just like his father had always known when he'd first looked into his mother's eyes... even when they were kids.
But Jonathan had always known he'd have to search for her and he'd find her at a time when her life was in danger... because it was the only way she'd recognize him instantly.
According to her stepfather, Karida had spent the majority of her life in Israel struggling to figure out with other IOPF members how to bring about peace between Israel and the surrounding Arab world... while fighting off terrorist attacks. Most Israelis only tolerated her because her stepfather had legally adopted her... but she was not Jewish.
Her skin tone was more like her Saudi father... a dark caramel color and her hair was a dark golden brown. The only saving grace that kept people from thinking she was Islamic were her aqua eyes. According to her mother, her Saudi father had deep brownish green eyes, which had evidently blended with her mother's ice blue eyes to give hers the same distinctive shade of aqua as Jonathan's.
Karida's blended ethnicity had enhanced her beauty beyond anything Jonathan had ever seen... or could have imagined. But her confusion over who or what she was supposed to be had haunted her most of her life and she still tended to distrust most people... especially men. She'd never been able to trust any man enough to let them love her... and she was still a virgin at the age of twenty-five.
Or at least Jonathan hoped so... he'd heard horror stories of what happened to women in Saudi prisons. He closed his eyes for a moment and clenched his jaw and then looked out the passenger window of Nuri's Mercedes as they traveled toward the prison on the outskirts of Riyadh.
An IOPF contact had dug up some information on a woman who'd been incarcerated for about a month for traveling without authority and was under suspicion of being a spy. Jonathan was praying it was her as they pulled up to the main gate of the prison. Nuri spoke to the guard while Jonathan influenced his mind to let them in and to erase the security tape of their vehicle entering the gate...
