Relentless - By Cherry Adair Page 0,43
the counter as she got older, and stolen her first kiss as a teen. “Move!”
They emerged through a narrow side alley crowded with tourists. The noise was jarring. How would they know who was after them in the crush of humanity? In the teeming mass of people someone could come right up and shoot them, knife them—whatever them—without being observed until it was too late.
Sweat beaded her brow, and her heart raced erratically with the adrenaline surging through her. She stayed close to Thorne, slipping her hand into his, grateful when his strong fingers tightened around hers as they pushed through the shoppers and tourists.
As they walked, Isis scanned the faces of the people surging around them like waves around a rock. Suddenly, instead of a million bits of color and potential photographic vignettes, she saw a thousand different threats. Everyone was suspect. Everyone looked potentially dangerous. One-handed she adjusted her camera around her neck, making sure it was safe if she had to run again, glad that this time she wore tennis shoes instead of strappy sandals.
“Back to the car?” She raised her voice to be heard over the noise of people haggling, shouting over loud music, normal conversation at higher than normal volume. This circus atmosphere, the colors and smells, the sounds of Egypt—all the things she loved now presented a threat. Thorne’s fingers tightened over hers, and he gave a little tug. “Turn left.”
Isis pointed right. “But the car’s that way.” Or not. She had her father’s crappy sense of direction. She’d played in the labyrinth of the souk for years, but getting lost then had been an adventure that always led to pleasant discoveries and surprises—and a safe return to Beniti al-Atrash’s shop, escorted by other shopkeepers who knew her and her father.
“We have another vehicle parked on the other side. Yes,” he said to the driver, clearly in answer to something she hadn’t heard. The guy melted into the crowds surging around them. Thorne kept her moving, although it wasn’t a simple task to navigate the onslaught of shoppers and laughing, playing children filling the narrow streets.
Only someone intimately familiar with the souk could navigate the congested labyrinth with his certainty. If he’d studied a map of the area as he claimed, he must have a photographic memory, because his steps never faltered, and they were never obstructed by a dead end.
He walked quickly down what looked like a blind alley, but pushed through T-shirts hanging in wild disarray from the ceiling of a small stall. They emerged into one of the narrow car-lined side streets running alongside the bazaar. The vehicle, a filthy Jeep with tinted windows, was parked nose out. He activated the door lock from half a block away and popped the door, almost shoving her inside before rounding the front and getting in himself.
The car started with a deep throaty roar and they were off. He didn’t drive crazily, although doing so probably wouldn’t attract any more notice than did the rest of the drivers on the congested roads. He eased into traffic with aggressive confidence while she dug in her bag for a wad of tissue. Sweat ran down her temples and collected between her breasts.
“Want a tissue?” She glanced over at him. He hadn’t even broken a sweat, and there was no sign of the gun. Unfazed and completely alert. She caught her breath. “I have some sanitizing towelettes as well if you—”
“Tell me about this fiancé.”
She wasn’t that vain, but she was damned if she’d wipe off her last vestiges of makeup if she didn’t have to. She blotted her forehead with a tissue, then opened the camera bag and pulled everything out to get to the small pack of hand wipes in the bottom. She meticulously repacked everything neatly before opening the package. The astringent smell of antiseptic filled the car. “Dylan isn’t, and never was, my fiancé.” She wiped her hands, then the back of her neck, enough to cool her for a few minutes until the air-conditioning kicked in.
The skin around his eyes warped into a network of fine lines as his eyes narrowed. “That’s not what your friend Husani seemed to think.”
She adjusted the vent to blow directly on her face. “He wasn’t even a boyfriend. He was my father’s assistant, and we dated off and on, and more because we were the only game in town than anything else.”
“And yet here he is, right where you happened to be.”
His tone, underlain with suspicion,