Surgeon Sheik's Rescue by Loreth Anne White

Author:Loreth Anne White
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Susense, Sahara Kings 4
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-09-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

The first thing Bella did upon returning to her room was open her laptop.

It had been accessed. She could tell by checking the properties of the files in there, what time they’d last been opened.

Tariq’s men had been here, in her room. They’d poked around in her computer, touched her things.

She lurched to her feet, wrapping her arms tight across her stomach. Then she swiveled, dropped to her knees, pried up the floorboard. Her passport, driver’s license, credit card, wad of cash, were just as she’d left them.

But had they seen her ID? Was Tariq, at this very moment, being told of her real identity?

From the back pocket of her jeans Bella removed the photograph she’d stolen from his wallet and set it on her desk. She took the flash drive off the chain around her neck and slotted it into her laptop. Scrolling quickly through the flash-drive files, she searched for the digital scan of the newspaper article and photograph taken at a medical convention in Chicago more than ten years ago.

Bella clicked on the file. The image opened, filled her screen. She enlarged the photo and reached for the family shot she’d taken from Tariq’s wallet. Comparing the two side by side Bella’s hands began to shake. Quickly she opened her Skype program and clicked on Hurley’s video-call icon.

No answer.

Bella checked her watch. D.C. was six hours behind—Hurley should be awake and in the office. Digitally, she cropped the image part of the article, saved it as a separate file and tried Hurley again.

Still no answer.

Tension twisted through her. She grabbed her cell, punched in the emergency number Hurley had sent her for his own prepaid phone. He picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hurley, thank God.”

“Bella?” A pause. “You okay?”

“Are you near your laptop?”

“It’s in the other room—I’m using it only to connect with you. Hang up and I’ll video call you right back. I don’t want to stay on this phone too long—I don’t know how far they’ll go to trace you.” He hesitated. “There’s been a strange van in the street outside for a couple of days. I’m worried they’re tapping into the phones.”

While she waited, Bella connected her small portable scanner to her laptop. Inserting Tariq’s family photo, she pressed Scan. The image began to roll through. She saved the file to a folder on the flash drive.

An electronic sound announced Hurley’s call. She hit Accept, and as his round face filled the small screen she felt a punch of warmth, solidarity. Hurley, Scoob, Agnes—the Watchdog crew had become a family to her.

“I’m sending you another image, Hurley. It’s a face I’ve cropped from a group family photo. It’s small, but I’m hoping you can still run it through your facial-recognition software and compare it to other known images.” She loaded the file to Skype as she spoke, hit Send. “I need to be sure it’s who I think it is.”

She was sure—she just couldn’t wrap her head around it.

“Who’s the cropped photo supposed to be of?” Hurley asked as he waited for the file to download on his end.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.