Free Desert Rose by Laura Taylor

my jailer. You are my ally and my most trusted confidant. Jailers don’t hold hands with their prisoners, console them after nightmares, make them feel safe in an impossibly dangerous environment, try to protect them, or share their survival skills."
    He laughed, but the sound contained no humor. "You don’t have too many other options for friendship at the moment."
    She searched for and found the right words to express a truth that she’d already confronted. "This is more than friendship. You fill me with hope, and you strengthen my determination to survive this place and these people so that we’ll be free to explore what I think we both have begun to feel for each other."
    The silence that followed nearly deafened her, but she waited—waited for him to speak, waited for him to wrestle with his surprise at her honesty.
    "I want that, too."
    The sudden squeal of the cellblock’s door made her jerk with surprise. "Oh, God! Please, not again."
    David gripped her wrist as footsteps sounded at the far end of the hallway. "Listen!" he ordered, his voice like a sharp blade.
    "To what?" she gasped.
    "Two sets of footsteps."
    She concentrated on the sound, and what he was trying to tell her finally penetrated the fear spiking inside of her.
    "Whatever’s going on, the guards are moving more slowly than usual, aren’t they, Emma?"
    "Yes."
    "Step back from the bars and into the shadows. If we’re really lucky, this might be the food they neglected to bring us yesterday. If it’s not, don’t panic and don’t let them know you’re frightened."
    Emma gave David’s hand a quick squeeze of acknowledgement before she released it. Slipping out of her corner, she worked her way down the cell wall and stepped into the shadows at the rear of the shoe–box shaped enclosure. Her heart thudded wildly against her ribs, her hands fisted at her sides, and her empty stomach growled at the prospect of a crust of unleavened bread or a bowl of watery broth.
    Two young men clad in ill–fitting uniforms paused before Emma’s cell. They peered into the cell, their curiosity about her evident. Although they carried weapons, neither one seemed inclined to wave them at her in a threatening manner, which was the custom of the other guards.
    If anything, they appeared awkward and uncertain. New recruits, she decided. One stepped forward and fumbled with the rusty lock of her cell door. He slid open the door, seized her, and propelled her forward into the hallway.
    "Emma?" David said. "You okay?"
    "So far," she answered, her eyes darting between the two uniformed youths. "I don’t understand what’s happening. Where are they taking me?"
    "Stay calm," he urged. "Don’t antagonize them."
    She looked back, spotting David’s powerful, white knuckled hands as he gripped the bars of his cell. "They’re not as mean or experienced as the other guards," she managed to say before one of the guards clapped a dirty hand over her mouth.
    "You’ll be alright, babe."
    Emma jerked free, crying, "David, don’t forget me!"
    "Never, Emma. Never!"
    They hustled her out of the cellblock and down an endless succession of hallways. Five minutes later, the youthful guards shoved her through an open doorway.
    She stumbled and fell forward, landing on her hands and knees just as the door to the room slammed shut behind her. She heard the lock being secured in the same instant that she noticed the two women who towered over her. Clad in the native garb of concealing burqas and abayas, both women held deadly looking handguns and glared down at her.
    Scuttling backward, Emma scanned the room and searched for an avenue of escape. But all she saw were sealed windows at the top of tiled walls and an ancient water spigot mounted high on the far wall.
    She retreated as the two women advanced on her. Even when the wall she backed into forced her to stop, the women kept advancing. She cringed when one of them reached out and jerked on the sleeve of her blouse. The second