FOUR
Isis adored her father. But Holy Mother of God, the man loved writing notes. Copious, rather dry notes, hundreds and hundreds of pages of them, many of them accompanied by extraordinarily bad sketches. She read until her eyes crossed, then persuaded Thorne to take her to lunch in the cafeteria, since they weren’t allowed to eat in the storage rooms.
He’d been taciturn while they ate, then hurried her back downstairs. “I really appreciate how dedicated you are to helping me; it’s very sweet of you,” she told him as they walked downstairs. His slight limp and the use of the cane didn’t impede his speed, and she suspected that without his injury he’d take the stairs three at a time and leave her in the dust.
He paused midstep to raise a brow. A muscle jerked in his jaw. “Sweet?”
She smiled at his clear distaste at being called that. “Kind of you.”
“I’m neither sweet nor kind. You paid for my services, I’ll do my best to ensure you get your money’s worth.”
“Does your leg hurt?” She knew it hurt—she wanted to know to what degree. Isis was pretty sure he wouldn’t be so bad-tempered and surly if he weren’t in pain.
He glanced at her as they reached the landing. A group of teachers and a gaggle of schoolkids clattered past them, and they stepped aside to let the herd pass. “No,” he told her succinctly when they resumed their descent.
She was worried about him standing for hours, but the only way she could get him to sit down had been to insist she was hungry so they could go upstairs to the cafeteria.
They unlocked the door and turned on the lights. “Why is your injury such a big secret?”
“It’s not a secret. It’s none of your business.”
“Apparently,” she said, unoffended. Her father was grumpy a lot of the time because he was distracted, or hungry, or too hot. “Too personal?”
Thorne took a fresh pair of cotton gloves from the box by the door. “Is anything too personal in your book?” he asked, pulling on a glove while giving her a less than friendly look.
He had nice hands. Big and strong-looking. The bright overhead lights shone on several scars across the back of his right hand before he pulled on the other glove. Part of the same accident?
“How did your brother die?”
“Jesus—”
“I just wondered if your injury and your brother’s death were linked, that’s all.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw, and his eyes looked black. “Garrett was swept overboard m—the family yacht. There was a squall, he… died.”
“That’s terrible.” Her heart ached for him. What a tragedy. She stopped what she was doing to look at him. He continued working as if she weren’t there.
“We were alone on the Breeze.”
“God. That’s even worse. You must’ve fought so hard to save him.”
“I did. Other people didn’t see it that way. He was the heir, and I was glad for it. He liked everything that entailed. It worked out well for everyone.”
“And then he died, and now you’re the heir.” Neither Thorne nor his father appeared to be very happy about it.
“I have absolutely no interest in being a wealthy dilettante. I have a job. I pay my own freight. If you’re going to chitchat and waste my time, you can go back to the cafeteria and read a guidebook while I work.”
Isis turned an imaginary key against her lips. “Just Thorne” was not amused. He went straight back to the drawer of artifacts he’d been touching before they left for lunch and before she’d started asking questions.
She too pulled on a pair of gloves. Being an only child, she couldn’t fathom what it was like to lose a sibling. Hideous, she imagined. “How much older was Garrett?”
He was quiet for so long, Isis thought he wasn’t going to answer. “If I tell you will you shut the hell up?”
“How do you get to know someone if you don’t ask questions?”
“One ruddy question. Choose wisely—it’ll be the only one you get.”
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-one when he died. And bonus answer? He was seven minutes older than I.”
“Dear God. You were twins.” The distance between Thorne and his parents now became a little clearer to her. They blamed Thorne for his brother’s death.
“Are you going to dog my footsteps for the rest of the day?” he demanded with a scowl as he rested his hand briefly on each item in a wide drawer, multitasking by giving her an irritable look as he did his work.
The question had been rhetorical, and since she could almost smell brimstone in the room, she backed off. “I like watching you work,” she told him easily. She liked looking at him. His shirt still looked crisp and fresh; he looked like a man on a mission, with those sleeves rolled up his muscular forearms. He had a nice straight nose, almost Roman, and his ears lay flat and neat against his head. Very sexy.
The planes of his face were hard, but she liked the soft look of his military-short haircut, and the no-nonsense, almost fluid way he moved. Even though he was a large man, and even with the limp, his movements were almost graceful. He was aware of the space he took up and filled it to capacity. Isis found it very sexy. He intrigued her.
Wanting to reach out to feel if the dark hair on his muscular forearms was crisp or soft, she instead folded her arms around her waist and said, “You have a very delicate touch for a man with such big hands.” She leaned her butt against the cabinet next to where he worked. “Are the scars on the back of your hands from the same accident?”
He didn’t look up as he touched a gold and glass scarab bracelet she vaguely remembered her father letting her wear when she was about five or six. It had been way too big, and heavy on her wrist, but she’d loved the colors of the glass beads. Thorne moved his hand to a solid gold pendant studded with lapis lazuli. “What about ‘I don’t talk about it’ do you not understand?”
“Now, see, you never actually said that. Implied, perhaps, but not stated.”
He turned a steely look on her. “I have two things to say to you. Both are statements. One: I do not now, nor will I ever, discuss my injuries with anyone, and you in particular. Two: if you want this done, then you have to leave me the f*ck alone to do it. Is that clear enough for you?”
Lord, the man was cranky. But it was hard to be pissed off at a guy with a bad limp wearing white cotton gloves. “I could sit over there and read my father’s diaries. Would that help you concentrate?”
“As long as you don’t talk, or breathe, or hum.”
“I’ll breathe just enough to keep me conscious in case you find something,” she told him cheerfully, backing up with both hands raised as he gave her the evil eye.
It was companionable working silently among her father’s things. Thorne was pretty fast as he opened a drawer, ran his hand slowly over each item, and moved on to the next. Starting to get sleepy from the inactivity, Isis took out her camera and framed some shots of him as he worked. Without looking over at her, he snapped. “Three: no pictures of me.”
Unoffended, Isis put her camera back in the camera bag and picked up one of her father’s ubiquitous small black notebooks, flicking through what were mostly rough sketches. It took her a moment to recognize what she was looking at.
“Oh, my God! Of course. Damn it, why didn’t I think of this before?” She jumped to her feet, not waiting for his response. “My father was always paranoid that someone would steal his notes and trump him on his discoveries. When he wanted to keep things close to his chest he’d draw a tyet, the hieroglyph knot of Isis, somewhere on the page. He always left himself cryptic clues to jog his memory.”
“Let me see that.” Thorne held out his hand. He’d taken the cotton gloves off, and Isis had a moment to admire how strong-looking his hand was, before she gave him the book. Normally she wasn’t that fond of people telling her what to do. She’d pretty much raised herself, running wild in whatever camp her father was digging in during the summers, and living with her aunt in Seattle during the school year.
She could either choose to be thoroughly annoyed by his crappy bad humor or else be sympathetic and give his overbearing personality a pass while he was helping her. Besides, honey was more attractive than vinegar. Isis considered his crankiness almost part of his charm, because he did it with such grim deliberation. The more he pushed, the more curious she became, so if he thought that by being rude, she’d be turned off, he was sadly mistaken.
His eyes ran over one page, then another as he flicked through the book. “This doesn’t tell us any—” He stopped talking so abruptly, Isis took a small step toward him, putting a hand on his wrist with concern. His skin was hot to the touch. “What is it?”
“Cairo. Not just a general direction. I know specifically where he had this diary last.”
SIX HOURS LATER THEY landed in Cairo. The city was hot, muggy, and filthy for most of June through August. Even the locals fled the fly-ridden city for cooler climes, not that anyone could tell from the insane traffic, a mixture of vehicles with engines, vehicles that were animal powered, vehicles that were being pushed, and pedestrians who considered they had right-of-way—everywhere. Driving in Cairo was a contact sport and no one was chicken.
It was in the mid-seventies at ten at night, but the daytime temperatures would rise to the nineties, and the thick, odoriferous air still held high humidity due to the city’s location in the Nile delta valley.
After Isis flatly refused to hire one of the more reputable—and high-priced—taxis, he’d agreed to a local cab company and negotiated the fare from sixty pounds to fifteen.
“Brace yourself,” he warned as they lurched out of the taxi line and did a wheelie out of the terminal at breakneck speed—miraculous considering the vintage of the vehicle.
In passable Arabic, Thorne gave the driver directions to the Zamalek region, where he’d booked them into the Marriott hotel while waiting for their flight from Heathrow. Isis would protest the cost, but he didn’t give a shit. He wanted a clean bed and a decent night’s sleep. His leg hurt as if fire ants were crawling in and out of his thigh. He’d been crouching and standing on a hard cement floor at the museum for hours, followed by a six-hour flight in coach. He’d pay for the rooms himself, which would please his pinchpenny client.
The ubiquitous black, white, and rusty taxi had no springs—either on the chassis, or beneath the blanket—and probably flea-covered seats. They were lucky there were bloody seats at all. They passed through the security checkpoint, where Thorne signed their names in the book, showed his fare receipt, and proceeded without incident.
They passed a burning car, and the thick, oily smoke filled the vehicle, making Isis cough. Thorne silently handed her his handkerchief and she pressed it to her nose.
She was way too bloody perky. Too cheerful, too… fresh and appealing in an annoying, girl-next-door way that made his teeth ache. None of that had any kind of adverse effect on his dick, which liked her a great deal. Of course, he hadn’t had sex in almost a year, which would account for his irrational attraction to a woman he wouldn’t have given the time of day to a year ago.
He had a preference for tall, bosomy blondes who disliked commitment as much as he did. This woman was all up in his face as if, by paying Lodestone’s fee, she had a goddamned right to ask him questions that were none of her bloody business. She smelled wholesome, not sexy at all. Like something one should eat, he thought with irritation. Well, yes, there was that, Thorne thought wryly.
Out of sorts, and anticipating staying that way for the duration, Thorne braced one hand and his good leg on the seat back as they screamed around a corner, narrowly missing a pack of ragged kids darting across the busy street. The kids scattered like buckshot.
Isis shouted, “Thanks.” And Thorne realized too late that he’d slammed his forearm across her chest to prevent her from being thrown through the windshield. He removed his arm, but not before he felt the imprint of her soft breasts as a tingle on his skin. Bloody hell. He glared out his window.
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 f*cking-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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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 “F*ck 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 have 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—”
This time it was she who did the wrist grabbing. “No thanks. I’ll go with you. I feel too exposed out here, and if anything happens to you, I’ll be stuck here alone.”
After several heartbeats, he agreed quietly, not sounding particularly happy. “All right. Hold on to my belt so we stay together, but my hands are free. If we encounter anyone, fall to the ground and keep your head covered until I give the all-clear. Got it?” His eyes glinted. “And if we should run into any action, don’t bloody well help me.”
“God, no. I’ll run like hell and leave you in the dust.” Chauvinistic ass. He managed to make her blood boil in so many ways, and not all of them were good. “Let’s get this over with.”
She didn’t need to hold on to him going down the steep stairs, but once at the bottom, she slid her hand into the back of his jeans to grip his belt. The heat of his skin through the damp fabric of his shirt gave Isis a crystal-clear image of them rubbing their naked bodies together. The picture was so clear, so visceral that her nipples peaked, and she pressed closer to his back, as turned on as if he’d touched her.
She enjoyed the sensation, if not her lousy timing. The nerve-racking darkness and the eye-watering stench got rid of the image pretty fast. Eyes moving from side to side as she strained to see any threats in the gloom, Isis kept pace and acknowledged the duality of her responses to the man. As annoying as he tried to be, she was still turned on by everything about him. Go figure.
They entered the dark mouth of the tunnel. She’d only been inside once, many years before, and tried to picture it in her mind’s eye as they walked. A curved ceiling, lots of cracked, dirty white tile, cement floor, a jog at the end…
There was enough light from the entrance to illuminate partway inside—but from there the rest of the tunnel disappeared into thick darkness. The close confines smelled strongly of body fluids and greasy french fries. There were American-style fast-food places everywhere in Cairo, and people the world over littered.
Their shoes echoed alarmingly as they crunched on the gritty floor. The air was still and close, and did nothing for her sweat-dampened skin, or her recurring jitters.
“Down!” Thorne yelled, reaching back one-handed to rip her fingers free from his belt. A shot ricocheted through the space, causing Isis to flinch. Then another. She dropped flat on her stomach on the filthy floor, then rolled out of the way as booted feet converged and the sound of flesh meeting bone mingled with men’s grunts and guttural curses. She rolled into as small a ball as possible and covered her head with her arms—which was insane, because her forearms weren’t fricking bulletproof.