you?”
“I’ve heard the name in the news,” he said warily. “What’s that got to do with this?”
Hailey blew out a long breath. “Aten Minyawi is a known hit man for the ELA. They’re thought to be an offshoot of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Al-Jihad, the EIJ, the Jihad-group, the Jihad-organization. Call it what you will, anyway you say it, it adds up to really bad news.”
“Christ,” Pete muttered, rubbing a hand over his hair.
“Yeah, well, you might want to think about saying your prayers, Pete. Because it looks like your girl there is the only witness to what could possibly be a major international fiasco.”
Kat reached up to play with the medallion at her chest as she watched Pete on the phone. He was looking at her, but the way he’d gone on alert as soon as he’d answered told her whatever he’d just learned couldn’t be good.
He motioned for her to keep walking as he continued his conversation. “Yeah, I got it. What else?”
They walked another block, then approached a major thoroughfare. As if luck were on their side, a cab approached. Kat waved it down, and they slid inside.
Pete eased the phone away from his mouth and gave the driver directions, then went back to whoever was on the other end of the line.
Kat tuned out his conversation and stared out the dark window and the blur of lights rushing by. Her heart was still pumping a mile a minute.
The cab pulled into what looked like a small municipal airport. Without a word to her, he paid the driver, popped the door and gestured for her to join him, all the while talking into his phone. “Yeah, I’m sure, Hailey. See what you can find out about his contacts. And see if you can get a photo. This cheap phone I got can accept photos, just can’t send them.”
Kat had to pick up her pace to keep up with him. They moved across the parking lot, into the small terminal and out through another set of double doors onto the tarmac. A thousand questions fired off in her brain, but she didn’t have the strength to ask them. Was simply thankful they’d lost whoever was taking potshots at them through the trees.
Pete pointed toward a streamlined jet, lights flashing, engines running, and tipped the mouthpiece of his phone away from his lips. “Climb aboard,” he said to her. “I’ll be right there.”
Kat stared from him to the shiny Bombardier Challenger 850 and back again. He pushed her forward when she would have kept standing there gaping and went back to his conversation.
Alone, Kat climbed the steps of the plane. Creamcolored leather chairs, a long couch, teak woods and wide windows greeted her eyes.
She dropped her pack on a seat and bent over to look out the window. Pete was still talking on his cell. His hair was a mess, and his shirt was covered in grime. He’d lost the jacket somewhere along the way, and scrapes ran across his face from where he’d hit the pavement, but he wasn’t seriously hurt. And he was alive.
This time. No thanks to her.
That thought churned in her stomach as she walked down the small aisle, past a set of four chairs with low tables between them. At the end of the corridor was a door. She eased it open. To the left sat the galley, complete with any kind of liquor a person could want and an assortment of snack foods. To the right, the lavatory. Ahead there was another door.
Her jaw nearly hit the floor when she looked inside. What could have been extra seating was in fact an elaborate bedroom suite, complete with overstuffed mattress and pillows, two dark teak side tables and a large beveled mirror hanging on the back wall.
The entire plane was bigger than the house she’d grown up in with her mother in Washington. This one room probably cost more than her apartment back in upstate New York. Definitely more opulent, way more comfortable. And very, very enticing. Her mouth went dry as she thought about the next few hours trapped on this plane, alone, with Pete.
“We’re about to take off,” he said at her back.
Startled, Kat whipped around. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
He looked from her to the bed, then headed back to the main cabin. “You need to take your seat so we can get out of here.”
For a moment she stood there. Wondered what he’d thought when he’d looked at that