He plucked the gun from Sabal’s hand and checked the magazine. He rammed the clip back in place and flicked the safety. After a quick glance at Cressida, he continued searching the body. “He was armed and ready to fire. He probably never dreamed you’d shoot. The fact that you didn’t hesitate saved your life.” And mine, he silently added. If Cressida had been shot, Ian might well have been too stunned to react and save himself. He’d never doubted his ability to do his job before, but he didn’t have a stellar track record for doing the right thing when it came to Cressida Porter.
It appeared he’d found his Achilles heel.
Back in the barn, he finished searching Rajab. Coldly, methodically, he ran his hands through his pockets. Trying to forget the fact he’d considered this man a friend. That he’d just killed him.
He checked his watch. Five minutes since the shot. They’d pushed their luck to the limit. Time to get the hell out of the village.
He was tempted to take Rajab’s car, but it was too identifiable and would limit them to the roads. It was back on the bike for them. At least he’d managed to fill both the tank and the spare gas can strapped to the back. They had enough fuel to ride for hours.
Cressida waited until the bike was out and engine revving before she tucked away her gun and donned the helmet. She was moving like a regular operative, and damn he was impressed.
They set out over the wicked, rocky hills, the loud engine announcing their exit as surely as the bullet had heralded their presence. Minutes later, they were back on the steppe, waking only sheep and goats as they crossed the uneven ground.
* * *
They stopped just after dawn, having traveled several miles in the wrong direction, away from Adana. Ian parked the motorcycle in the lee of a hill and shut off the engine. “We’ll stop here and rest for a few hours.”
Every muscle ached as Cressida swung her leg over the bike to dismount. “You sure this is safe?” she asked.
“Nowhere is safe. This is better than every other option.”
She rubbed her eyes, which ached from the strain of trying to see the rough ground ahead as they barreled through the dark night.
“The river we’ve been skirting, it’s the Tigris, right?”
He nodded as he plucked his backpack from the saddlebag. “What can you tell me about this area?”
She shrugged. “Not much. My research into the terrestrial archaeology of Turkey is relatively recent. My specialty is underwater.”
His brows lowered. “Yeah. I was wondering about that. What the hell is an underwater archaeologist doing studying the landlocked borders of Turkey?”
She really didn’t want to get into the hows and whys with him. She’d had enough trouble with the dissertation committee. “Trade routes on land are a strong influence on the water routes. And the illicit routes even more so.” She plopped down onto the hard ground with a water bottle in hand and leaned against the slope of the hill. “If you can find where the secret route meets sea, you’ll find the smugglers’ ships. The pirates. It’s all connected.”
Ian shrugged. “That’s no different from the modern drug trade—a water route is no good if you can’t sneak the drugs on shore or over the border.”
“Exactly.”
He dropped down beside her. She held out the water bottle, and he took a long drink. He set the bottle down, then pulled a gun from his backpack and checked the load. Satisfied with his inspection, he held it out to her.
She hesitated. It was the gun she’d used to kill Sabal.
“I want it by your hand whenever we aren’t riding,” he said.
She took the weapon. “It’s so sweet the way you keep giving me guns. Most men start with flowers.”
He smiled.
She studied the killing tool. Had it killed others, or just Sabal? “I recognized him. The man I killed. He was Sabal. You introduced us by the train platform.”
He nodded. “He would have killed you without hesitation. He and Rajab seemed to believe you have the microchip. They would have killed and gutted us both, to be certain neither of us swallowed it. That’s what Rajab meant about the blood, why he wanted us in the barn, not the house.”
She shuddered. She knew he was telling her this so she could accept what she’d done. And she did. At least, right now her plan was to save the freak-out over killing Sabal for later. Right now she needed to stay focused so she could protect the microchip.
The one Ian didn’t know she had. Or probably had.
She couldn’t let terrorists get the microchip.
Ian’s mission was now hers.
Again, she considered telling him, and again, she wondered if he’d take the chip and leave her to her own devices. Getting the microchip out of the country would be far easier without her weighing him down.
She didn’t think he’d be so callous, but why take the chance? The pendant was safe with her for now.
Ian pulled a bag of trail mix from his pack and offered it to her. She shook her head. A hard knot had formed in her belly when she killed a man, and she had no intention of eating again this month.
“You need to eat,” he said firmly.
“I think I’ll vomit if I eat.”
He put an arm around her, pulling her snug against him, then lay back onto the hillside, his chest her cushion against the hard ground. “We’ll rest first, then you have to eat.”
She nodded. He was right, but she was glad he didn’t insist she eat now. “This is so not what I imagined when I planned this trip,” she muttered as she listened to his beating heart.
He chuckled. “Strange, because this is how my trips to Eastern Turkey usually go.”
“Bull.”
He laughed fully and threaded his fingers through her hair. It felt heavenly after wearing the tight helmet for what had to be a million bumps. “There’s been a fight or two. Okay, four. But I haven’t killed anyone since I was in Delta.”
“I don’t…get it. Why did Rajab help us at all? Why feed us and give us a room?”
“He wasn’t in charge. He had to get in touch with his boss and await orders. His job was to keep us there until his organization could send someone. I took a chance, believing his separatist group wasn’t affiliated with Hejan’s, but clearly I was wrong.” Ian looked up, his gaze becoming a thousand-mile stare that probably didn’t take in the deep blue of the sky.
He stroked her back. “I won’t lose sleep over killing Rajab. He betrayed us. I knew it was a possibility, but I’d hoped…” He sighed. “My worry is he probably told his contact we’re on a bike, going overland. Which means heading west overland is out. And we probably need to ditch the bike. It’s too loud and visible every time the land flattens out.”
“So what do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
The words were so flat. So bare. It hadn’t occurred to her Ian had run out of options, out of backup plans.
An idea formed. She gripped the pendant as a frisson ran through her. She knew in her gut this was the right move. She leaned up on an elbow and kissed him—the first time she’d initiated a kiss since she learned his real name. “Ian, if you had information on a tunnel—one that might even cross under the Syrian border—could you use that information to get the Turkish government to help us?”
* * *
Cressida had Ian’s full attention. “What do you mean?”
“I should probably tell you more about why I came to Eastern Turkey. As you mentioned, it’s a little odd for an underwater archaeologist to write a dissertation on terrestrial archaeology. It all started with a map.”
“A map?” Ian’s gaze strayed to her backpack. “A map you have with you?”
“Sort of.” She paused, her gaze dropping to his chest.
It hit him in the gut, the realization that Cressida had been holding out on him. He stiffened and pushed back, separating his body from hers. He tried to get a grip on his temper, reminding himself she’d had a hell of a lot of reasons to hold back.
&
nbsp; The awful truth was, against all the rules of spydom, he’d started to care about her. And the idea that she still didn’t trust him was a kick in the balls.
He’d sat down to play Texas Hold’em, but the game had switched to blackjack. He hated blackjack. There was no bluffing and the opponent was the house. Blackjack was for the devil.
Texas Hold’em was a covert operative’s game. In Hold’em, the shared cards leveled the field, while the hidden ones gave the game meaning. You never played the cards, you played the person across the table.
But with Cressida, he wasn’t sure who his opponent was, or why they were in opposition. All he could see when he looked at her was a woman who made him want something he’d never had. He was the bastard son of a cold-hearted whore. Never loved. Never valued—at least, not until he’d become an asset to his country. A status he’d now lost. Yet he looked at Cressida and imagined—even wanted—the impossible.
While his world had shifted on its axis, nothing had changed for her. When this was all over, odds were she’d hate him with every fiber of her being. And he could hardly blame her.
He pushed past the pain in his chest and asked, “What map?”
With her heel, she scraped an arc in the thin layer of dirt that coated the rocky ground. “I probably shouldn’t have photographed it with my personal camera… My job was to photograph and catalogue everything in the cabinet—so I wasn’t totally cheating. It’s just…a few of the maps intrigued me. So I took pictures of them with my own camera, without telling anyone.”
“I’m lost here, Cressida.”
She continued in the same distracted manner. “It wasn’t until later, when I noticed the signature, that I realized that particular map was special.”
“What map?” He took pride in the way he kept his voice even when he was dying the death of a thousand cuts inside.
She pursed her lips, then sighed, finally meeting his gaze with clear, focused eyes. “Last summer, when I interned at NHHC, I was given the chore of cataloging the contents of an old armored file cabinet. The cabinet had been labeled as top secret sometime after World War II and then forgotten. It’d floated from cubicle to cubicle for as long as anyone could remember. Trina was the last one to house it. Mara decided enough was enough and got permission for me to catalogue the contents.”
“You were authorized?” Ian asked. This could become an important point later if Mara Garrett’s ass were on the line.
“Yes. It was approved by the top brass.”
Good. The attorney general’s wife hadn’t screwed up royally there. “So what’s the deal with the map? How old is it?” And why the hell is it important now? But he kept his impatience at bay. Barely.
“My best guess is the map was drawn in 1914—a few months before World War I broke out.”
“And who created the map?”
She looked down. No longer willing to meet his gaze. “An archaeologist.”
“Dammit, Cressida, stop being coy. I need to know what the big deal is.”
“T. E. Lawrence.” She sucked in a long slow breath, then blurted in plain English. “The map I found was drawn by Lawrence of Arabia.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cressida’s heart pounded with the admission. She’d never told anyone that detail. Not even Suzanne. And she’d always felt like crap for keeping that little tidbit back. It was just that, when one finds a map drawn by T. E. Lawrence pinpointing a heretofore unknown Roman aqueduct, and one needed a stellar subject for one’s dissertation, what was the lucky grad student to do?
If she found the aqueduct, she’d give full credit for the find to T. E. Lawrence. The man deserved it, along with all the other accolades that had come his way during his short life. It wasn’t like she planned to steal his glory. She just wanted to be the first person to re-locate the aqueduct. She still had to do the groundwork. She’d spent months poring over satellite images, coming up with a Lidar protocol that was most likely to not only find the Lawrence aqueduct, but others as well. She suspected there were more.
“Prior to being a brilliant military strategist for the Brits in Arabia, T. E. Lawrence was an archaeologist who worked in northern Syria. His work included forays into the Ottoman Empire before the Empire’s demise.”
“Stop,” Ian said in a harsh, clipped tone. “Beating. Around. The fucking bush. What was on T. E. Lawrence’s map?”
She winced. She supposed that was exactly what she’d been doing. It was just difficult to finally tell someone everything. “He found an ancient Roman aqueduct. A tunnel that could well be over fifty miles long, and there’s a chance it passes under the Turkish/Syrian border.”
Ian stared at her in silence for a long moment, his face unreadable. Then his eyes flattened and he surged to his feet. “Sonofamotherfuckingbitch! You’re telling me this now?”
She rubbed her eyes and tried to digest his hostility. She hadn’t thought he could be angrier than he’d been in Siirt, but this was much worse. She suspected that if she doused herself in gasoline, he’d offer her a match. “Ian, you’re the first person I’ve ever told about T. E. Lawrence’s find.”
He kicked a rock, sending it skittering across the rugged ground. “You beautiful fool. Don’t you get it? They know. That’s why you were chosen to be the mule. You were about to embark upon an expedition deep into Eastern Anatolia to find the most valuable tunnel since…fuck. I don’t know…ever. And you tell me this now? Me. The only person in the entire country who is helping you.”
She jumped to her own feet and stared him down. “Get your head out of your ass and listen up. I didn’t tell anyone about that map. No one. So Hejan couldn’t have known what I was about to do or why. And you can drop the outrage that I didn’t trust you enough to tell you, because I don’t trust ANYONE!”
It was true. How on earth could she trust anyone, when everyone—even her own mother—let her down? Hell, especially her mother. No one, ever, had loved her enough to put her first. So she’d never put anyone else first. It was simple math.
She grabbed her backpack and shoved the water bottle and gun back inside.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m done resting. You can come with me or not, your choice.”
“You aren’t calling the shots here, sweetheart. It’s going to get damn hot in the next hour. We aren’t going to walk fifty miles in the worst heat of the day. So sit your ass back down. You aren’t escaping me now that I know why you’re so valuable.”
He might be right about the heat, but his choice of words rankled. They were back to the vocabulary of kidnapping. He considered her his prisoner. Screw that. One thing she did know about Ian at this point—probably the only thing she knew—was that he would never hurt her.
She backed away from him, slowly. “You’re wrong. I’m not valuable to anyone. Certainly not to Zack—how could he possibly know about the tunnel? No one knows.”
“He knows.” Ian spoke with such certainty.
“I didn’t tell my advisor or Suzanne, or Mara, Trina, or Erica. Hell, I didn’t even tell Todd, when I lived with him and we were supposedly in love—”
She stopped abruptly as her own words hit her.
She dropped her backpack, which landed on the ground with a dull thunk. “Oh. Shit. Todd.” Her stomach burned, and she wondered why this realization hurt so much. She’d faced and accepted Todd’s betrayal months ago. She’d boxed him up and put him where he could never hurt her again.
Except, he just had. What a lovely, double-edged sword he wielded.
She paced in a tight circle. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” She sucked in a gasping breath. “It must have been Todd.” She could barely breathe as the connections came together, a mental assault, so many betrayals.
Ian grabbed her shoulders, halting her frenetic pacing. “Tell me everything. Everything about Todd. Everything about the map.”
She cleared her throat against the pain that had lodged there. “Todd and I started dating right
before I went to DC for my internship. I really liked him. He was different. Really smart, for starters. His parents were immigrants from Jordan, which he’d visited a lot along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria, before the civil war started. He was exotic. Well traveled. Fascinating. But his parents put a lot of pressure on him, being an only child and first-generation American.”
“Jordanian immigrants named their son ‘Todd’?”
“His real name is Todros.” She glanced at him askance. “But I’m guessing you already know that.”
He nodded. “Checking to see if you knew.”
“Yeah. I knew my boyfriend’s frigging name.”
Ian raised a brow, a silent reminder that she’d been ready to jump into bed with him the first night—when they both were using aliases.
“We lived together,” she said flatly.
Did his hand clench into a fist at that? Was it possible James Bond was jealous?
Don’t flatter yourself.
“My DC internship was…amazing. I mean, it was cool to be working for Mara Garrett and Erica Scott.” She cocked her head. “I’m guessing you know who Erica Scott is.”
He nodded. “Better known as Erica Kesling.”
“The wedding was last spring.” She paced the small strip of ground between Ian and the bike. “I lived with Trina, and we really clicked. Between Trina, Erica, and Mara, they’re hella connected. I got to go to fundraising parties at the Smithsonian and National Geographic. They even took me along to a political schmooze fest for Alec Ravissant at Dr. Patrick Hill’s Annapolis mansion.”
“Dr. Hill, the oceanographer?”
“Yes. The head of the MacLeod-Hill Exploration Institute. His organization is a large source of funding for the shipwreck excavation I was working on in Antalya. He’s tight with my advisor, so going to a party at his house was a pretty big deal. Such a big deal I invited Todd to go to the party with me,” she said, returning to the reason for the tangent in her explanation. “He flew up for the weekend so he could go.”
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