Hidden Steel Read Online Free Page B

rolled up and she folded to the ground in an absurdly graceful faint, just missing the barrel with her head on the way down.
    No panic. Not like he hadn’t been here before. His brother’s face, curly black hair damp with sweat, that same dazed and somehow surprised expression …
    Steve gave the class a reassuring word and left them long enough to scoop her up—oh yeah, way too thin—and deposit her on the cot in the office. He left a cool damp washcloth on her head, a tall plastic cup of water on the desk, and checked his watch. He’d take just a moment to give the class some familiar warm-up exercises, and then he’d make sure his assessment—that she just needed rest—was on the mark.
    He hesitated at the door, looked back at her. Small in those scrubs. Her face wan and pale, her eyes deep with shadows. For the moment, peaceful.
    For the moment.
    Here we go. …

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Chapter 3

    Naia Mejjati stopped in the act of placing demure diamond studs in her ears, swamped in a wave of homesickness. It stopped her breath short.
    Not because of the depth of her feelings. No, because she’d had them at all.
    She quite deliberately slipped the back over her earring before thinking or feeling anything else. Then she gave herself a critical eye in the mirror. Foolish girl, she told her reflection—classically Irhaddani, those features. Olive skin, big dark eyes, generous lips and a long nose, delicately shaped. In her own country, she was a beauty. In the United States, she was yet another ethnic set of features not quite conforming to the standards of beauty set by Hollywood and advertising.
    At least in this country, other people could actually see those features. They could see the sparkle of her earrings, the expression of a mouth lightly glossed with color. They could see by her clothes that she was a conservative young woman, but one who understood quality. The composed, appropriate daughter of President Sayid Mejjati.
    None of those things were true in her homeland, where she went veiled outside the presidential household, and where her own people knew only that she existed. The Irhaddan princess in a tower … but it was no fairy tale. It was any woman’s life in Irhaddan.
    True, she hadn’t initially been excited about the prospect of traveling overseas to attend Stanford—her father’s grand gesture to prove that Irhaddan was indeed modernizing its attitudes toward women. Not after her initial schooling was entirely handled by tutors in an extravagant indulgence … a gift from her father to her mother. Not when she was used to the relative anonymity of the veil and chador. Here in the States, anyone could see her— everyone could see her.
    But once she’d gotten used to it …
    She dreaded her graduation, and the inevitable call back to Irhaddan. She’d come here as a symbol, and she’d learned to embrace a different kind of life. She’d even learned to see the corrupt nature of her father’s regime—not her father himself, but his advisors and cabinet members. Her father might be old-fashioned and inflexible, but he honestly strove to lead his people through a tumultuous time in a tumultuous region. Others … had their own agendas.
    And it was for the sake of her father that she’d allowed herself to be drawn into Anna’s world of espionage. She’d quickly understood the value of her contributions—how easy it was for her, a practically invisible member of the presidential family, to pass along details of secure building structures, of overheard conversations. Things that would help the States to keep on top of the corruption her father refused to see.
    Even if Irhaddan intelligence suspected they had a leak, they’d never look to Naia. Not proper, demure Naia, loyal and obedient to her father. They simply neglected to understand that she could distinguish between her father’s efforts and their own.
    And still, it had taken all her nerve to leave the recent notes at her first dead