Page 49 of Rescuing You

“Fine, Leila. What happened when you got to Heba and Mustafa’s house?”

She sat back, looked away. “Yasamin was throwing up again.”

He listened to the rest of her tale—how she’d overheard her friends talking about calling her father.

Her father.

Her captor.

Information she perhaps hadn’t meant to share. This was why he’d wanted to question her tonight, when she was tired and her guard was down. Before she had time to consider her words or make up a story.

He could picture it—Leila and her sister, her ill sister—climbing out a window, jumping from a roof, and running.

Finding a place to hole up—an empty house that might not have remained that way. A place where they could easily have been discovered as they’d slept. But they hadn’t been. They’d survived.

They’d left the abandoned village at nightfall and reached Baghdad.

“But there were soldiers, a roadblock,” she said. “We were afraid they were looking for us.”

Michael hoped his expression didn’t give him away. But the fact that they believed their father had enough pull to get soldiers involved in the search said a lot.

Who was he?

An itchy feeling crawled up Michael’s spine.

How many enemies were out there?

Nobody would be able to find them. Right?

Michael had disabled the guard on the street, but not until after the man had spotted the sisters. Meaning, Leila’s father’s guards knew the area where they were hiding.

Michael had already known that.

What he hadn’t known was that the entire Iraqi army might join the search.

“We turned around before we reached the soldiers,” Leila said, “and left the motorcycle on the side of the road in a residential area. We walked in.”

“How far?”

She shrugged. “A few miles. We’d been walking a couple of hours when you found us.” She tilted her head to the side. “How did you find us?”

“The phone. I was tracking it. It didn’t show your location until you were almost here.”

“Probably when I opened the map to look for Victory Square.” She started to stand. “I’ll give the phone back to you.”

“Keep it. It’s fine.” It was a burner. His real phones were powered down and stashed in an air vent.

After she settled back in her spot, he asked, “Did you know you were spotted?”

She sat straighter. “What do you mean?”

“A man was watching you. He started to follow.”

Her gaze darted around the apartment as if the guy might materialize out of the walls.

“I took care of it,” Michael said.

“But they know where we are.”