by Cherry Adair
Cairo was, to Thorne, the seventh level of Hell.
He’d never encountered such brazen flies. They were everywhere, and no amount of encouragement dispersed them from clothes or skin. They just stuck around for the free ride.
“I haven’t been here since last year.” Isis held her hair at her nape to lean out the window. Thorne grabbed her arm and drew her into the relative safety of the interior of the taxi. She wore a pink T-shirt, and his fingers clamped on bare skin. Silky soft, satin smooth, lightly tanned, bare skin.
Releasing her arm, he shifted as far to his corner as was possible without riding outside the vehicle. No touching, he decided.
He imagined he could smell cinnamon. Nonsense. The windows were open, blowing muggy Cairo-stinking air around them. He was delusional because he didn’t want to be here. Here reminded him of eighteen hours in surgery, a month in traction, more months of physical therapy. Here reminded Thorne of Boris Yermalof. A sharp boning knife, high-velocity bullets, bone fragments, and metal rods. Plates and pins and the possibility of fucking-well hobbling for the rest of his life.
Here was exactly where Thorne did not want to be.
He didn’t like heat. Or sand. Now he could add cinnamon to the list.
There were no working streetlights in the city, making it a free-for-all, with every man for himself as they slalomed through the busy thoroughfares without the benefit of the horn. Most people didn’t bother with headlights, either, so cars came out of the darkness at breakneck speeds. The only good thing Thorne could say about the taxi was that the brakes worked. Worked loudly, but functioned. Which was imperative since the driver used them often, with no warning, and accompanied by a litany of yelling, screaming, and arm waving.
Thorne didn’t care for the pungent stink of the streets, or the dust clogging his nose, or the lunatics sharing the road, but Isis was wide-eyed and happy as hell to be risking whiplash. One step closer to her goal. He’d forgotten that he’d promised himself to send her on her merry way once he found a jumping-off point for her in Cairo.
He’d leave her tomorrow, head back to Seattle.
“I’d like to go straight to the location,” she told him, looking around eagerly. With the temps in the seventies, it was downright tropical compared to a London summer, which compared favorably to a Seattle summer: chilly.
Warm, dry wind from the western desert blew in through windowless openings, sending Isis’s cinnamon-scented hair across his face. She’d changed into a breast-hugging pink T-shirt tucked into her jeans before they’d left the London hotel. Her strappy sandals revealed the fluorescent pink polish on her toenails. If Thorne didn’t have a shitload of things to worry about right then, he could become quite fixated on her pretty feet. As it was, he had more pressing concerns.
Since leaving London earlier that evening, he’d had a fucking itch on the back of his neck. The kind of itch that warned him he was in someone’s crosshairs.
Returning to London before the Boris Yermalof investigation was resolved had been a mistake of monumental proportions. And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned.
“We won’t find anything at this time of night in the dark,” he told her, keeping an eye on the driver’s fly-speckled rearview mirror to watch the traffic behind them.
The driver seemed oblivious to the swinging ornamentation hanging in the middle of the cracked windshield, which was adorned with a Christmas tree air freshener so old it curled at the edges, and a dozen dangling hamsa, palm-shaped five-fingered protection amulets. One would think his view impaired. Or maybe that was why he slammed on his brakes every few hundred yards whether he needed to avoid the car in front of him, a pedestrian, or animal, or nothing at all.
Twenty people could be following them, and Thorne wouldn’t know it, as the headlights behind them zigged and zagged between other vehicles like Indianapolis 500 racers gunning for the checkered flag.
“We’ll find the place first thing in the morning,” he assured her, watching as a closed-panel white van crept up on their left.
He rested his hand on the weapon in the small of his back. Thanks to MI5, he’d discreetly brought the weapon with him from Seattle.
“At least let’s drive by and see what we’re dealing with,” Isis pressed. “My father left clues in some odd places. We don’t know what it is, but can see where this one is, and perhaps plan a strategy for tomorrow.”
She might’ve let him know about her father’s proclivity to leave clues. But even though Thorne had the notebook, he had still run his hands over every artifact in every fucking drawer for eight hours.
The notebook was all he had to show for an extremely long day. Thorne was not in the best of moods.
It took twenty-five hair-raising minutes to get to the souk Khan el-Khalili, where his mental GPS indicated the book had originated. The souk was of course empty, the stalls closed for the night, but the fragrance of cooked meat and spices still perfumed the air, coupled with the stink of urine and wet dog.
“Satisfied?” he demanded, not masking his irritation as he ordered the driver to continue on to the hotel.
“It was worth a shot. I’m not surprised my father left a clue in the Khan. That shop is owned by an old and trusted friend, Beniti al-Atrash. He sells carpets and small replica—” She stopped yammering to shoot him a sympathetic glance. “Oh, God. It’s your leg. Here, let me do that for you.”
Thorne didn’t realize that he was massaging the tortured muscles with one hand until Isis pushed his gripping fingers aside and laid both slender hands over his spasming muscle. “Oh, Thorne…”
Her hands were small, but strong, and she seemed to know what she was doing as she massaged the muscles firmly. “My aunt used to get excruciating muscle spasms in her butt,” Isis told him, her attention totally focused on his leg as her hands kneaded the hard muscles with determination. She glanced up. “That’s not too hard, is it?”
The massage felt far from therapeutic. He grabbed her wrist. “Move up a few inches and tell me yourself.” He resisted the temptation to move her hand over his dick, which had come to life the second she touched him. Or, more likely, it had been semi-erect since he’d met her back in Seattle. “Don’t look so shocked, darling. You’re the one with her hand on my crotch. Do you want to screw in the back of a taxi?” His voice was intentionally harsh. “You certainly give every indication it’s what you want to do. If so, I’ll be happy to oblige you. But you might want to wait for a clean bed at the hotel.”
Her fingers curled against his thigh like lotus petals closing at night as she gave him an assessing look. “Were you this mean before your accident?”
“I was this mean from the day my mother stuck a silver spoon up my arse. This is who I am, Isis. Don’t dick around with my dick. I’m a man, not a boy. Give me a scintilla of encouragement and I’ll have you naked with your legs spread before you can say ‘You’re not ready’ in that sweet, reasonable tone. Do I make myself cl—”
The crunch of metal erupted—front and back, simultaneously—as they were rammed from behind and shoved into the car in front of them. The rear-end collision flung them violently into the front seats. Isis screamed. Thorne’s arms shot out—one to brace her, the other to prevent himself from being jettisoned into the front of the cab.
Horns honked, people yelled, metal crumpled, and glass shattered.
“Out! Get out!” Thorne yelled, grabbing her by the wrist and dragging her out of his side of the crippled vehicle. Five cars, including the white van, hemmed them in. The van had shoved a black Honda into them, collapsing the small car like a concertina. The Honda driver, a young man in overalls, was climbing out of the passenger-side window with the help of several bystanders who’d raced to the scene. There didn’t appear to be anyone in the white van, which was slewed across the road, blocking traffic in both ways—much to the ire of the drivers and passengers of a dozen vehicles backed up in each direction.
Their cabdriver, arms waving, demanded restitution
from anyone who’d listen.
“Are you hurt anywhere?” Thorne demanded, tightening his grip on her wrist and dragging her away from the scene. Adrenaline surged through him as he saw the back door of the van slam open. A man jumped out, spun around, looked for—
Skin pale in the lights from a nearby fruit vendor’s stall, Isis straightened her angled glasses on her nose and shifted her camera bag strap, which had twisted around her neck. She blinked, trying to absorb what had just happened. “Wait, we can’t leave—”
A bullet whizzed over their heads.
“Go! Go! Go!” Thorne hoped to hell she didn’t have whiplash as he jerked her into a low, flat-out run.
THORNE’S FINGERS CLAMPED LIKE steel bands around Isis’s wrist as he dragged her through the labyrinth of small streets and dark side alleys of the souk at a full-out run. A few startled people jumped out of the way to eye them curiously as they ran by.
Isis had no idea if anyone was actually chasing them, and looking over her shoulder wasn’t an option. It took three of her strides to match one of his, and that was with his bad leg.
It required all her concentration to keep one foot in front of the other as she blindly followed his lead, her camera bag bouncing against her hip. Thank God she’d worn it across her body. Everything of value was in it. She figured anything left in the taxi would be long gone by the time—or if—they returned to the scene.
Intermittent pools of dirty yellow light helped illuminate the cobbled streets, but the winding alleys stayed black as the night. Thorne must have eyes like a cat, she thought as they passed a pile of discarded baskets, to avoid all the shadowed obstacles in their path.
“Why are we running?” She tried to pull back, to slow down, but he gave no quarter and just kept moving, almost pulling her arm from its socket in the process. Her chest heaved; her heart galloped painfully behind her ribs. Black spots danced in her vision and sweat caused her glasses to slide down her nose.
Her lungs were on fire by the time Thorne jerked her into a dark, narrow doorway. “Stay put.” He gave her the once-over, shoving her against the wall before her knees buckled. “I’m going back to see who’s following us.”
“No! Wai—” He melted into the shadows, something solid and dark in his hand. His cane? Her breath lurched. A gun? No… why would a Lodestone agent have a weapon? Where had it come from? And how in God’s name had he gotten it through customs?
Questions burned and she clutched the side of the doorway with trembling fingers. Guns upped the ante. Weapons meant serious business.
Did the accident have anything to do with her father’s find? “Oh. My. God.” Isis fell back against the wall. “No. That’s insane. It can’t be…” Rubbing her upper arms where sudden goose bumps of apprehension pebbled her skin, she took a shaky breath. Someone had been willing to kill her father’s entire crew, leaving him for dead. They wouldn’t stop there. But it seemed too far-fetched to think the traffic accident had anything to do with what had happened to her father more than three months ago.
The two couldn’t be related—could they? Wrapping her arms around her middle, she stayed in the shadows and told herself not to let her imagination run wild. It was highly unlikely the people who’d almost killed her father had somehow ascertained that she’d show up in Cairo months later.
She wished she hadn’t insisted on going to the souk in the middle of the night rather than the hotel. The accident had been just an accident. Fender benders were a dime a dozen in this part of the world. That hadn’t been a shot she’d heard, it was a car backfiring, and Thorne hadn’t had a gun, it was the light shining on his cane.
That all made more sense than her silly overactive imagination. Taking a shuddering breath, she released the death grip she had around her waist and breathed in and out slowly. Crazy sauce. Thorne’s crude observation in the taxi, the reaction she had to him physically, and her overactive imagination had taken her on a crazy detour. She needed rest. And protein. And chocolate.
Isis took the opportunity to catch her breath, her eyes trained into the darkness, alert to a danger she couldn’t identify and wasn’t sure even existed. Whatever—or whoever—was after them, her body was still in flight-or-fight mode despite her pep talk. Her rapid heartbeat pulsed behind her eyes, and sweat trickled down her temples and between her breasts. Her jeans and cotton shirt clung to her damp skin like a shroud. Plucking the shirt away from her chest with one hand, she pressed the fingers of the other into the stitch in her side, and leaned forward to ease the pain.
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she could make out the bulky shapes of closed stalls across the alley. She saw a large rat skitter by her hiding place, its eye glinting briefly in the light. Isis grimaced. Give her a spider any day, but beady eyes, twitching whiskers, and evil, scritchy little pink feet grossed her out.
She pressed back against the door just as the rat swung its beady red eyes in her direction. If that thing ran into the doorway near her practically bare feet, she was going to lose it. “Get lost!” she said, more mouthing than making a sound. “Go on. Shoo!”
The sound of someone approaching, breathing hard, shut her up fast. The scrape of a shoe coming from the direction Thorne had disappeared in made her sag with relief. Good, he was back. She almost stepped out of the doorway, but thank God something held her back. She froze as two shadows ran by. This time there was no mistaking the fact that both men were armed. She pressed against the door at her back and tried to become invisible.
Minutes later, Thorne called her name softly as he approached out of the darkness. Despite his limp, his steps were a lot quieter than those of the two men who’d run past. His fingers unerringly manacled her wrist and he gave a little tug to get her feet moving. “Let’s go.”
“Two men, armed, ran that way.” She indicated south, knowing his cat eyes would see the gesture.
“I doubled back to follow them. Now we’re behind them. At least until they figure it out. Ready?”
Apparently he didn’t have a “slow-start” button. He went from zero to sixty, hugging the walls as they ran. The sounds from the main thoroughfare beyond the souk were muted, and only a handful of people witnessed their passing as they clung to the shadows.
“You don’t have to hold on to me like a bag of laundry. I’m running as fast as—”
“Quiet.”
Really? Isis was tempted to say “Fuck you!” and take her chances. This was getting ridiculous. She had no idea where they were, who those men were, or why they were running. But maybe they could stop and ask some questions? Or maybe Mr. Macho-Take-Charge could take half a second to explain what was happening and why, without issuing terse orders and dragging her around by the arm, willing or no.
“You know—”
“I don’t care. Shut up and keep moving.”
“Go to hell!” Isis muttered as she kept moving.
Thorne used her wrist as a fulcrum to keep her slightly ahead of him. The deeper they went into the market, the fewer people they encountered, until they seemed to be alone on the planet, and still he moved quickly through the oppressive darkness.
He yanked her into another deep, dark, smelly doorway. Slamming his muscled forearm across her chest, he pinned her to the studded metal door as if she’d break free and sprint off on her own at any minute. It took several minutes to catch her breath and be capable of speech. At least it seemed as if this time, he wasn’t going to leave her and run off alone.
“Who’s chasing us. And why? Thorne, we have to find the authorities and—” She gasped, trying to keep her voice to a whisper, but her breath was so labored it was hard to even speak. Things were pretty lawless in Egypt, but she and Thorne weren’t locals, and they could be put in jail on a whim. The thought wasn’t comforting.
His chest rose and fell against her breast. He wasn’t out of breath, but she wondered how he’d run so effortlessly with his leg, which had been painful before he’d run a marathon. “This is insane. Why do you ha
ve a gun? Why do they? Who are these people?!”
“I’d rather err on the side of caution,” he told her cryptically, his voice soft and very close. Insanely, the smell of his clean sweat made her insides contract, which under the circumstances made Isis aware of how loudly his pheromones were shouting to her pheromones.
They appeared to be on the same frequency, which had never happened to her before in her life. It was fascinating. And as soon as she could suck in a breath that didn’t burn like fire, as soon as her manic heartbeat settled down, she’d sit down and examine the feelings. But right now, all she wanted to do was survive the evening.
“How on earth can you find your way around a strange place, and in the dark, no less?” She hated the wheeze in her voice. Yoga? She needed Pilates.
“Memorized the map.” His breath ruffled her hair, and Isis resisted the urge to lean against him for a minute or two or twenty. “I think we’re clear, but keep an eye out for strangers.”
Despite the obvious severity of the situation, she smiled in the darkness. “Seriously? We’re in a foreign country. Everyone is a stranger. What—”
“We’ll find a taxi five blocks over. Move fast, and stay close. Ready?”
Like I have a choice. “Sure.”
They slowed to a brisk walk, but that didn’t feel like much of a break to her rubbery legs. Her breaths were finally controlled as she spied the minarets of al-Azhar Mosque above the rooftops of the souk.
By the time they emerged from the narrow street and approached the pedestrian underpass, Isis saw that he was carrying a weapon. “Hey,” she said, bringing her eyes up from the gun to Thorne’s grim face. His expression scared her a hell of a lot more than the big black gun in his hand. “W—“
“Bloody hell.” He pulled her up short in the deep shadow of an old gnarled sycamore tree on the grassy verge. The warm breeze brought with it the pungent smell of urine, causing Isis to wrinkle her nose.
“The lights in the underpass should be on. Stay here for a minute. I’ll go—”