Sandstorm Read Online Free PDF Page A

need.
    Tears rose in Safia’s eyes. She remembered another hug, similar words. I won’t lose you.
    At the age of four, Safia’s mother had died in a bus accident. With her father already gone, Safia was placed in an orphanage, a horrible place for a child of mixed blood. A year later, the Kensington estate took Safia on as a playmate for Kara, put up in her own room. She barely remembered that day. A tall man had come and collected her.
    It had been Reginald Kensington, Kara’s father.
    Because of their closeness in age and a shared wild nature, Kara and Safia had become fast friends…sharing secrets at night, playing games among the date and palm trees, sneaking out to the cinema, whispering of their dreams under bedcovers. It had been a wonderful time, an endless sweet summer.
    Then, at the age of ten, devastating news: Lord Kensington announced Kara would be traveling to England to study abroad for two years. Distraught, Safia had not even excused herself from the table. She had run to her room, panicked and heartbroken that she’d be returned to the orphanage, a toy put back in a box. But Kara had found her. I won’t lose you, she had promised amid tears and embraces. I’ll make Papa let you come with me.
    And Kara had kept her word.
    Safia went to England with Kara for those two years. They studied together, as sisters, as best friends. When they returned to Oman, theywere inseparable. They finished their schooling in Muscat together. All seemed wonderful until the day Kara returned from a birthday hunting trip, sunburned and raving.
    Her father had not returned with her.
    Killed in a sinkhole was the official story, but Reginald Kensington’s body had never been found.
    Since that day, Kara had never been the same. She still kept Safia close to her, but it was more from a desire for the familiar than from true friendship. Kara became engrossed in finishing her own education, in taking over the mantle of her father’s enterprises and ventures. At nineteen, she graduated from Oxford.
    The young woman proved a financial savant, trebling her father’s net worth while still at the university. Kensington Wells, Incorporated, continued to grow, branching into new fields: computer technology platforms, desalination patents, television broadcasting. Still, Kara never neglected the fountainhead of all her family’s wealth: oil. In just the last year, Kensington surpassed the Halliburton Corporation for the most profitable oil contracts.
    And like Kensington’s oil ventures, Safia was not left behind. Kara continued to pay for her education, including six years at Oxford, where Safia earned her doctorate in archaeology. Upon graduation, she remained under the employ of Kensington Wells, Inc. Eventually she came to oversee Kara’s pet project here at the museum, a collection of antiquity from the Arabian Peninsula, a collection first started by Reginald Kensington. And like his former corporation, this project also prospered under Kara’s mantle, growing into the single largest collection in the entire world. Two months ago, the ruling family in Saudi Arabia had attempted to buy the collection, to return it to Arabian soil, a deal rumored to be worth in the hundreds of millions.
    Kara had declined. The collection meant more to her than money. It was a memorial to her father. Though his body had never been found, here was his tomb, this lone wing in the British Museum, surrounded by all the wealth and history of Arabia.
    Safia stared past her friend’s shoulder to the live-feed monitor, to the smoky ruin of her hard work. She could only imagine what the loss would mean to Kara. It would be like someone desecrating her father’s grave.
    “Kara,” Safia began, attempting to soften the blow that would come, to hear it from someone who shared her passion. “The gallery…it’s gone.”
    “I know. Edgar already told me.” Kara’s voice lost its hesitancy. She pulled out of the embrace, as if suddenly feeling