There had been many times in the darkness of her cell that Fahimah had prayed, chanted quietly and meditated. No one had freed her. What her captors thought of her could not be further from sainthood. Despite it all, she'd been able to reach the peace inside she'd been after. She'd discovered her dreams.
She closed her eyes and started her meditation now. She had to observe, guard and control her thoughts. She had to escape this room… this body.
The noise outside of the cell cut through her concentration with razor sharpness. There was the sound of grinding metal, footsteps, voices. She forced her eyes to remain shut. Somebody was coming. Perhaps they were going to move her again to another cell, perhaps to a different prison. Even though they had just moved her in here, that was the way they worked. They never allowed her to feel settled, especially since she had made trouble for them by refusing food. She inhaled deeply, and the closeness of the cell made her stomach turn slightly.
The door opened loudly on rusty hinges. Even with her eyes closed, Fahimah could feel the light pour over her.
"Dr. Banaz."
It was a new voice. She held her breath. No one had called her that for nearly her entire imprisonment. To them — to the Americans — she was Rahaf. She was called by her sister's first name.
"Dr. Banaz," the man's voice called out gently again. "My name is Austyn Newman."
Another American, she thought. She knew their accents, understood their ways. She would never trust them.
"My partner and I were sent here to make arrangements for your release," the man said in the same quiet tone.
Fahimah wrapped the blanket more tightly around her shoulders and dipped her chin to her chest. Another lie. She willed herself to shut the voice out.
Chapter Four
Boynton Canyon consisted of a dry, rugged landscape boxed in by distant buttes and cliffs of varying shades of red rock. Because of its close proximity to Sedona and the paved roads that added to its accessibility, the canyon crawled with visitors who loved walking its trails. In recent years, the beautiful scenery wasn't the only thing that drew the tourists. Boynton Canyon's popularity had grown tenfold since it was included on a flyer identifying it as a local vortex — a sort of energy field emanating from the inner earth. Whether or not one believed in this bit of modern mysticism, locals and tourists alike agreed that some sort of powerful feeling could be experienced here among the buttes, the crimson cliffs and the natural desert gardens.
It was one of those locals who'd called the police at six in the morning about a red pickup truck sitting in a gully beyond the barricades, not too far off the hiking trail.
In twenty minutes a police cruiser skirted a luxury resort and drove past the signs and around the barricades to the canyon floor to a spot designated for emergency vehicles. Last night, there'd been the report of a stolen red pickup truck from the front of the movie theater. It would be too good if this were the stolen vehicle.
The driver of the cruiser radioed in their location as a young officer stepped out of the vehicle. The sky was overcast, giving the cliffs a grayish hue. This was Sedona's rainy season, but nothing kept the tourists away. In another hour, there'd be quite a few out hiking the trail.
"See anything?" The driver opened the door and stood beside the car.
The younger cop glanced back at him. "The caller mentioned he'd seen it from the Kachina Woman rock formation." He looked down. Tire treads were visible, leading off through the brush. He pointed them out to his partner. "You wanna drive it or hike?"
"Let's walk," the driver replied with a grin. "If we have a couple of lovebirds out there, we don't want to shake 'em up too bad."
"Shake 'em up." The younger cop shook his head. "Who're you kidding? You're just hopin' to see a little skin, Floyd, I know you."
The older cop laughed, and the two started following the tracks. They didn't have to go too far to spot the vehicle in a gully edged by scrubby ponderosa pines. As they moved closer, two coyotes, which looked up at them from the far side of the ditch, turned and trotted off into the brush.
"If somebody's sleeping in that truck," Floyd said, "they don't know nothing about the flash floods out here."
The younger cop nodded. "Starting to look like teenagers took it for a joyride last night and dumped it here."
"Long walk back to town," Floyd replied.
The men approached the vehicle cautiously. In a moment, they were close enough to see the license plate.
"It matches," Floyd said, checking it against the notebook he'd taken out of his shirt pocket.
From some twenty or so yards away, no one appeared to be inside the truck. It looked as if the driver had just run it straight down into the ditch. It was hard up against a pine on one side. Both of the windows were open.
"The driver wouldn't be able to open his door," the younger officer noted.
"He might have got out the other way or just climbed through the window."
Both men approached the truck more cautiously.
"What's that stink?" Floyd asked, looking around.
The younger officer approached the passenger side and then froze, his face going white. A second later, he turned away from the truck and emptied the contents of his stomach into the gully.
"What is it?" Floyd asked, approaching the truck and looking through the open window.
The odor was foul, but the sight was worse. The older cop had never seen anything like this. Two partially decomposed bodies were slouched next to each other on the seat.
Both still had their seat belts on.
Chapter Five
Austyn didn't know what kind of reaction he'd expected, but this wasn't it.
"Dr. Banaz," he said again. "Did you hear me?"
She never moved. Her head must have been shaved a month or two ago, he noted. He could see nothing of her face, for she had her chin pressed against her chest. Her frame was small and she appeared to be physically fragile. Except for the lowered head, she appeared to be in a meditation posture. With the old wool blanket around her shoulders, the peacefulness of the pose reminded Austyn of images of Gandhi.
He crouched down just outside the door. The cell looked like a small kennel with a very low ceiling. He'd have to bend down to enter.
"Rahaf?" He called her by her first name. There was still no reaction. He stood up.
Captain Adams had led Matt and Austyn here. She was now giving them a knowing look. She shrugged.
"Would you like us to bring her out of there?" Adams asked quietly. "We can move her to one of the interrogation rooms."
Austyn shook his head. They would never get her to cooperate there. The scientist looked so thin. He looked at her arms and wrists, extending from the cover of the blanket. They were like twigs, he thought, frowning.
"When was the last time she ate?" Matt asked, obviously following the same path of Austyn's thoughts. She looked like she was starving herself to death.
Captain Adams turned to the female guard who was standing by the open door. The young soldier didn't have an answer, since the prisoner was moved into this cell only a few hours earlier. The captain turned to another guard behind them and ordered him to find out when the prisoner last ate.
"What would you like to do?" Adams asked, looking back at the two visitors.
As the ranking investigator, Austyn had been coached on the psychological aspects of interrogation before he left Washington, specifically on the interrogation of women. Despite the fact that the U.S. government had denied Rahaf's rights by hiding her for all these years without a trial, they were abiding by the Geneva Convention IV and Amnesty International guidelines regarding treatment of female detainees. Female guards had to be present during the interrogation of female detainees and prisoners, and they had to be solely responsible for carrying out any body searches to reduce the risk of sexual abuses. He'd been assured by Adams that there was no contact between male guards and Rahaf without the presence of a female guard. When they had to seek medical assistance for her, Rahaf had been put under the care of a female doctor.