Free Zealot by Donna Lettow

eagerly around her, as if a shield, but drew no warmth from it. “Whoever they are,” she said, “this changes
     everything. It wasn’t just some lone fanatic listening to voices in his head. This is different. This is organized, deliberate.
     We don’t know anything about them—they could be anywhere, planning anything.” A shiver ran through her, and instinctively
     she pulled the ancient shawl, the emblem of her family and her people, more tightly to her. “Forty-three men praying is only
     a start for them, Duncan—my God, just think what could be next.”
    Despite a murdereous look from Assad, MacLeod put an arm around her trembling shoulders and drew her to him in a comforting
     embrace, willing the heat and strength of his body into hers. They’d known each other such a brief time, but there was something
     about her—her beauty, her inner strength, her vulnerability, maybe all of the above and more—that called forth the Protector
     in him. “We should go back now,” he whispered. “You’ll be safe there.”
    “It’s not
my
safety, Duncan. It’s my people.” At Assad’s signal to depart, she pulled away from the embrace, but allowed MacLeod’s arm
     to stay protectively across her shoulders as he escorted her to the door. “It’s the children on their way to school, women
     in the marketplaces. I’m not afraid for me, I’m afraid for them. And for the future. We’re so close to peace, Duncan,
so
close. Something like this could ruin everything.”
    As he helped her into the car, MacLeod looked at her and a hint of sadness touched his heart. A beautiful but poignant mix
     of East and West, of the runways of Paris and the caravans of the Arabian desert. The legendary Palestine of her past and
     the very real Israel of her present. Maral Amina might claim she was no martyr, but he’d seen devotion like hers end in tragedy
     too many times. It took a very special kind of person to put the onus of three thousand years of history ahead of her own
     life.
    As he settled next to her and Assad closed the door behind him, he pulled the gift box from his pocket. He’d hoped to give
     it to her at a more auspicious time, but now it appeared that such a time might never exist for them. “I’d like you to have
     this.” He did his best to make the tattered paper more presentable.
    Maral had to laugh at his earnest attempt at the impossible. “Don’t tell me—you have a puppy?” she said, looking at the sorry
     wrapping. Her face brightened with anticipation as he handed it to her and although she reached for the box with studied casualness,
     he thought he could see peeking out the excited little girl held barely in check. He suspected Maral was a woman who could
     use more unexpected gifts in her life.
    “A puppy named Farid. I don’t think he’s housebroken yet, either.” As they touched and he transferred the gift to her, the
     last traces of paper fluttered away, leaving Maral with a plain white box the size of her hand. “You can’t say he’s not thorough,
     though,” MacLeod said wryly.
    Maral quickly pulled the top from the box and withdrew her prizes—two gazelles, intricately hand-wrought of iron, their elongated
     faces wise but sad. Their graceful legs had been carefully formed into combs for a lady’s hair. With a quick intake of breath,
     she was beaming like a ten-year-old with a new bike. “Duncan”—she held them out in front of her to admire them—”they’re breathtaking.”
    “Then they’re in good company.” With Assad and his trusty sidekick in such close proximity, MacLeod resisted the temptation
     to reach up and remove the wooden combs binding her luscious hair. Some other time. “There once was a small tribe in a region
     of the grasslands of East Africa where metals are very, very scarce,” he said in his best storytelling voice. “The people
     of the tribe believed that Father Iron was the most sacred of all the metals, and those in the tribe who