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“Stay right where you are!” he shouted.
Eyes widening, she charged down the alley after her fleeing companion.
Christian bolted after her. Running as fast as he could the way he’d come, he spilled back out onto the main street, where a shower of bullets very nearly hit him. He ducked, throwing up an arm to deflect the chunks of clay that peppered his face as the building was hit instead. He ran faster.
“Cease fire!” someone shouted, but the spray of bullets still followed his duck-and-dodge all the way to the next alley, where he damn near ran smack into Aliya on her way out.
She yelped, her eyes widening and her face paling. Snapping around on her heel, she tried to run back the other way.
What. The.Fuck?! What the hell was she doing?
Growling, Christian tore up the street after her. She wasn’t a soldier, nor was she a spy, and she sure didn’t spend two hours every morning like he did, working out his guilt and frustration on the machines in Fariq’s private gym to keep in the top physical condition this shitty job demanded of him. She still surprised him with how fast she moved, especially with him right on her heels.
“Stop, goddamn it!”
She dove into another garbage-strewn back alley, racing between the narrow buildings, past two huddling people at the mouth at the far end, and directly into the duck-and-dodge of the market crowd, fleeing from the bazaar. Too late, she tried to find a place to hide, but he was right behind her. Grabbing a basket of roasted nuts, she threw them at him. His arm blocked the basket, sending a shower of nuts bouncing off his back, but he finally snagged the back of her dress.
A single shot rang out just as he yanked her backward, out of the middle of the street and against a hard wall. Had he not lost his balance, he’d have been killed. The bullet meant for his head ricocheted off the building, pelting his hair and the side of her face with sharp chips. Throwing his arm over her, he kicked in the nearest door, and threw her into the cover of the building ahead of him.
As he grabbed the door, for a half-second, he thought he spotted a familiar face staring coolly down at him from the rooftop of the opposite house. Lamar reloaded the rifle he’d just fired, and Christian slammed the door.
Grabbing Aliya before she could pick herself up off the floor where she’d fallen, he pulled her well away from both the door and the windows.
“L-Let go,” she gasped, trying to extricate her arm from his grasp.
“No! Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“Anywhere away from you!”
“The hell you are!”
From farther up the street, shouts signaled the arrival of the local police. They filed into the marketplace like soldiers at war, belatedly returning gunfire at what few snipers still remained, sending Lamar and what few of Fariq’s men still remained into retreat. That the police had no idea who they were looking for was obvious. When Christian cautiously glanced out a sidewindow, he could see uniformed officers yanking people out of the fleeing crowd in random arrests and kicking down doors to search the rooftops on either side of the market.
“You’re hurting my arm,” Aliya tried again, still breathing hard from their run, but her voice wasn’t quite as shaky as it had been a moment ago.
Ignoring her, he dragged her through the house to the back door into the private garden. Grabbing her around the waist and planting a hand on her ass, he all but threw her up and over the wall that separated this line of houses from the row directly behind them.
Jumping to catch the top of the wall, he heaved himself up after her. Dropping into the next garden, he grabbed a fistful of her hair before she had fully picked herself up off the ground.
“Stop!” she gasped, but he was pissed, and they weren’t safe yet.
There were no alleyways here. He broke into the occupied house, standing sentry between him and the next open street. With Aliya clawing at his hand the entire way, he marched her past a startled old woman cooking in the kitchen, two kids playing in the living room, and out the front door.
The street was much calmer but filling fast with refugees from the bombed-out bazaar. Police were everywhere, putting up barricades and stopping anyone they thought looked suspicious.
He checked the rooftops, but nothing moved, and he saw no sign of Fariq’s men. Nor did he recognize the faces of the men hurrying past him to get home or to safety.
The businesses here must have closed when the bomb went off. Dragging Aliya behind him, he crossed the street to where an empty café stood, with half-eaten food still on plates and coffee cups still on the tables. The front door was closed, and the shutters were drawn on all the windows. The patrons had fled incase the trouble from one street over decided to spread itself to this one.
The familiarwhoop-whoop-whoopof helicopter blades caught his ear, and he quickly ducked to see past the fluttering canopy, only just catching sight of a helicopter swiftly retreating out to sea.
It was over.
Try telling that to the rest of his body. Christian’s senses were keyed, every inch of him primed to move as fast as possible, and it didn’t matter what the direction. His grip on Aliya’s arm never loosened, and he barely noticed she’d drawn blood with her clawing attempts to pry his fingers loose.
“Stop!” she gasped, digging in her feet when he would otherwise have hurried her back out into the crowd to get a little more distance between themselves and the police, who were itching to make arrests.
“We have to keep going,” he muttered, but with a last violent yank, she wrenched her arm free.
