by Rachel Grant
She shook her head. “I don’t have it.” The pendant was hidden beneath her shirt, but she felt it, sticking to her skin thanks to the sweat that had pooled between her breasts during the terrifying climb.
“Well then, I will just have to kill you and then take my time searching you. Every…little…crevice.” The last was said with such a repugnant leer. Shit, this guy had necrophiliac fantasies…and he wanted to play them out on her.
“You kill her, Rajab, and no one will ever find the chip. Hejan told her where it is. She’s the only one who knows where to find it.” Ian made the statement with such authority, even Cressida believed him for a second.
Rajab wasn’t nearly so trusting. “What is the American word you are so fond of, Ian? Bullshit?”
Ian took a step closer to Rajab, tucking her behind him. “If you so much as touch her, I will slice you open and piss on you as you bleed out.” His voice was low and menacing.
Rajab flinched, and Ian sprang. He kicked Rajab’s hand, dislodging the gun, and then landed a blow on the man’s throat. Rajab went down. Ian went after him and landed another blow to the head, but Rajab managed to get a hand on Ian’s throat.
“Get his gun, Cress,” Ian croaked.
She was already scrambling after it. It slid across the hard-packed dirt floor toward the barn opening. She plucked the weapon from the dirt. Behind her, inside the barn, a sickening cracking sound was followed by a soft grunt.
“The guy in the house will be here any moment,” Ian said.
A noise in the darkness beyond the barn alerted her, and Cressida turned as she raised the gun. A man charged toward her.
“He’s here,” she said and pulled the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The crack of the bullet split the silent morning. Ian’s gaze jerked from Rajab’s lifeless form to Cressida, who held the gun clasped between wildly shaking hands. She was still standing. Presumably, whomever she had shot at was not.
He plucked his own gun from the holster at the small of his back. With weapon raised to the ceiling, he approached her slowly so as not to rattle her. Who knew how she’d react? He pitched his voice low and adopted a soothing tone. “Is he down?”
She nodded without looking away from the dark morning into which she’d fired.
Ian scanned the shadows, seeing a lump on the ground ten meters away. “Rajab is dead. I’m going to check out the other. I need you to cover me. Can you do that?”
She nodded again, and light from the crescent moon revealed wide, scared eyes. But they weren’t wild. Not losing-her-shit-crazy eyes. Good.
“We’ll approach him slowly. Together.”
“He was coming straight at me, Ian. I didn’t think…I…I didn’t mean to…”
“You did good, Cress. I’d have done the same thing.” He had done the same thing when he snapped Rajab’s neck.
They reached the second man. Ian pointed his gun down at the body and prodded the mass with his foot. The guy wasn’t twitching.
The silvery moonlight splayed across the man’s head and shoulders.
Holy shit. Neck shot. She’d severed his carotid artery with one clean bullet. A one-in-a-million hit.
More stunning, though, the man she’d shot was Sabal.
Ian took a step back. Rattled.
He’d guessed but still hadn’t wanted to believe Sabal was in league with Zack. Sonofabitch. Sabal. Rajab. Cressida was right. Spies didn’t have friends. Even spies who weren’t really spies but case officers.
Cressida gasped, and the gun slipped from her slack fingers. Ian caught it, before it could hit the ground. “Careful. This sucker has a hair trigger after the first pull.” He uncocked the Sig.
“Ohmygod. I—I was aiming for his belly.”
“You were shaking.” He wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her, but there wasn’t time. He needed to search the body and get the hell out of here. There could be more coming. Hell, there could be another one in the house.
The gunshot had ensured everyone in the tiny village was now awake. The only question left was, would they descend on them with pitchforks, or would they ignore the sound as another skirmish in the ongoing unrest between Kurds and Turks?
“Hold together just a few minutes more. I’m going to search him and finish searching Rajab, then we’re out of here.” He pressed the gun back into her hands, hating that he had to do it while she was falling apart, but they needed to work together to get out of here in one piece, and he was counting on the inner strength he’d witnessed repeatedly to hold her together.
She sucked in a deep breath, then gave him a short nod. “Okay.” She raised the gun, pointing it outward, into the surrounding darkness, and said, “Search him.”
Damn, she was amazing.
Not surprisingly, Sabal had nothing in his pockets. Ian was painfully tempted to return to Rajab’s house and search all three crooked floors. But his gut said they didn’t have time.
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.”
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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.
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, the
n 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.”