Sheikh's Scandalous Mistress by Jessica Brooke, Ella Brooke Page B

roommate. If he were calling him outside of the regular schedule of check-ins, then something had happened.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “We’re not sure. We broke into the apartment after Miss Sinclair missed her doctor’s appointment and Miss Simmons didn’t show up for work.”
    “I should have made you put in cameras.”
    “That might have been obvious if they’d found them,” Waalid said. “There’re signs of a struggle, and I’m calling in all forensic contacts and investigative friends of the crown here in Washington. I suggest that—”
    “It’s that damn senator, I know it. I’ll be on the next plane. And find out where they were taken. I need to get there and I need to get there fast.”
    ***
    Margery was breathing, but they were slow, deep breaths. There was a deep gash on her forehead, and Amanda was worried her friend might have suffered a concussion or something even more severe. Amanda’s own head was swimming from the shock, and her back felt tight, but at least her son was still kicking. That was the one blessing in all of this.
    Part of her expected to be waking up in the bowels of a warehouse or out by the docks of the Potomac. Instead, she blinked awake in a tastefully decorated bedroom with a Georgian décor and antique wood furniture.
    “What? Am I at Senator Jackson’s guest house?”
    “Actually, it’s a lake house out quite aways from my home. It’s the place that I take mistresses to, so a bit more secure than a guest home,” the senator replied, his deep Texas drawl grating on her.
    She tried to stand and realized that her ankles and wrists were bound. Standing up, restricted as she was, became almost impossible around the swell of her abdomen. “You son of a bitch.”
    “Now, now,” he said, running a hand through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. “That’s no way to speak in front of the little one. You don’t want to raise him wrong, cursing like that.”
    “I want out of here, you asshole.” She gestured as best she could with her shoulder toward the still gushing wound in Margery’s forehead. “You have to get her help and stress is terrible for the baby. Margery doesn’t even have anything to do with this.”
    “Her name wasn’t on the first article’s byline, but I’m sure you’ve picked her brain for ideas and shared your sources with her. If you won’t crack, then if Miss Simmons wakes up, perhaps she will.”
    “She’s hurt!”
    “If I don’t get exactly what I want out of you both, then you’ll both be dead ,” the senator replied, dropping all pretense of two people just talking out on the porch in the summer sun with some sweet tea between them. Rushing across the way to Amanda, he gripped her jaw so tightly that tears sprang to her eyes. That was where she’d been struck, and she was pretty sure something was badly bruised, if not strained from the blow. “Did you ever think about that? That when you kept sticking your nose in my business, it would go unnoticed or unpunished?”
    “I was going to end you,” she said. “I’m still going to end you. I’ve talked to so many people you’ve hurt, seen the way you’ve let those cartels grow and destroy countries. You think I’m not going to go after you every day with everything I have until you’re in prison? If you think I’d let this go on forever or let you get close to the presidency…”
    “Well, those plans have been in place a long time, darling, and if you don’t like it, then that’s a shame,” he said, striking her hard with the flat of his palm. It was enough to make her see stars.
    He dropped Amanda’s head, and she let it fall forward and coughed as blood pooled in her mouth. God, maybe the combinations of blows had broken something in her jaw. Coughing again, she spit blood out onto the rose-embroidered bedspread.
    See that bastard replace that .
    “You see, Miss Sinclair, you and your friend might not even care about yourselves. Journalists are so valiant and so stupid