Relentless (Lodestone)

by Cherry Adair

  But they’d all be alive, and he could spend the rest of his life whining about it. Her shoulders slumped. “I want to find Cleo, and I want the bad guys to leave us alone.” She knew she sounded petulant, but it was the truth.

  “It’s good to want things. One’s not going to happen if we continue along the path that’s already set. It’s obvious they—whoever the hell they are—believe you know where the tomb is. Whether they know your father doesn’t remember, or whether they don’t give a flying fuck what he remembers or doesn’t remember, you’re the one in Cairo asking questions. It’s just not clear to me whether they’re trying to kill you, or prevent you from reaching that tomb.”

  “Now you believe there is a tomb?”

  “I believe that whoever these arseholes are, they believe it’s real. That’s good enough for me.”

  “You were the one they attacked in the underpass.”

  “And I suspect that once they killed me they’d help themselves to you, and force you to take them to the tomb.”

  “But I don’t—Kidnap me, you mean?”

  “It’s what I’d do.”

  “And then kill me when I couldn’t do as they wanted.”

  “What I’d do,” he repeated. “We’re going to ditch this vehicle in two-point-seven miles and find something else. Gather your stuff and be prepared to move fast.”

  “All I have to my name is what I’m wearing and my camera.”

  “Then keep your clothes on and your eyes sharp.” His voice was neutral, his fingers on the wheel relaxed. Only his eyes showed heightened awareness, like a circling hawk. Isis rubbed her arms.

  When her phone rang she jumped as if someone had poked her.

  “Are you going to answer that?”

  She shook her head. “After all this? Are you kidding me?”

  “It might be your father calling back because he remembered something.”

  “God—of course.” She scrabbled in her bag for the phone. “Daddy?”

  “Isis, this is Acadia. We have Uncle August, and he’s fine. Is Thorne with you?”

  Isis’s heart went manic at her cousin’s words. “Yes. Let me put you on speaker.” Her fingers were clumsy as she searched for the right button. “What happened?”

  “Cresthaven called us about half an ago when you didn’t answer your phone. An orderly discovered two men in your father’s room. The police have them in custody. Hang on, let the guys talk. Honey—”

  “No! He’s my father.” Fear and anger tangled up inside her, causing Isis’s heart to race and her palms to sweat. “Talk to me!”

  “Two Egyptian nationals broke into the professor’s room,” Zak Stark told them evenly. “Their attempt to inject him was foiled by the armed security man I had stationed outside his door, and a sharp-eyed orderly. August was scared, but unharmed.”

  Isis had dozens of questions, but they raced around in her head like rats in a maze.

  “I thought you were in South America?” Thorne said evenly.

  “We’re en route back to Seattle as we speak. My security people have August at our home in Queen Anne Hill; security has been amped up. No one can access him there.”

  “Why didn’t I know you’d posted people to protect him?” Isis demanded. “Not that I’m not grateful, but how did you know to do that?”

  “Honey,” Zak said gently, “your father was attacked after he made a major discovery. I just thought it prudent to watch his back until Thorne could ascertain the facts.”

  Knowing her father was safe was her top priority, but it had stupidly never occurred to Isis that the people who’d left him for dead in Egypt would travel halfway around the world to finish the job. Bile rose in her throat, and she pressed her palm to her chest. It was hard to draw breath as fear and guilt ate at her. “Thank you. God, Zak, thank you. He’s all I have. If anything—” Her voice broke. “Thank you. I’ll come home, and—”

  “Wise idea. Yes.” Thorne inserted his voice hard and no-nonsense. “I’m taking her back to Cairo as we speak, and will put her on a plane bound stateside. I’ll continue on here as planned.”

  “Excellent idea,” Zak said firmly, the drone of the plane’s engines faint in the background. “Let Thorne deal with the situation, Isis. Your father will be happy to have you with him.”

  “He would,” Isis agreed, torn. “But he’d rather I was here finding Cleo than sitting around holding his hand in Seattle.”

  “We’ve had some activity of our own over here,” Thorne said dryly. “I’ll have London read you in, so you know what’s going on on our end. Right now we have a situation to deal with.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  “Watch your six, and protect the professor. These people aren’t playing nice, and they’re determined.”

  “Yeah. Got that,” Zak said, his tone grim. “I’ll expect that intel in the next fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Curling her numb fingers around the small phone, Isis listened to dead air for a full minute before she disconnected on her end. “I should’ve thought they’d try to get to him. Why didn’t I—”

  “Because you were already running on empty,” he told her, fingers flashing on his own phone as he drove, texted, and talked. Thorne took multitasking to another level. Somehow he even managed to keep an eye on the rearview mirror. Isis was too numb to worry about barely missed bumpers and madly honking horns as he slalomed the Jeep through heavy traffic.

  She automatically turned to look back as well. The blue car was weaving and dodging through traffic, and now only three car lengths behind them.

  “Don’t beat up on yourself. The situation was averted, and the professor is as safe at Stark’s place as he would be in Fort Knox.” He stuck the phone in his pocket, picked up the gun on the seat beside him, and tightened his fingers on the wheel.

  “Brace yourself; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.” He floored the engine and the Jeep leapt forward like a racehorse from the starting gate.

  THORNE FIGURED THAT EVERY damned one of the twenty million people living in Cairo was driving on the main road toward the city. He briefly checked the rearview and saw his tail intact. Returning his attention to the congested highway, he cursed. Every sodding one of them was in his way.

  “For Christ’s sake.” A dark-haired man cruising at about seventy with a car full of unseat-belted children swerved in front of him. No blinker. Thorne eased into the next lane, avoiding the man’s fender by an inch. His military training allowed him to keep a cool head. High speeds and heavy traffic, combined with the sheer ineptitude of the majority of drivers, upped the ante of the harrowing chase.

  He heard Isis’s quick, shallow breaths. At least she was breathing—and it was his job to keep it that way.

  Locals refused to wear down their car batteries by using headlights against the settling dusky skies. Thorne flipped his on, gaining an immediate advantage. He could see who he was about to hit. People wove through the three lanes as if there were no rules. Vehicles competed with street dogs, animals, carts, and pedestrians. Everyone ignored traffic lights as if they weren’t there. People on foot played chicken to cross the road. He who was bigger, or had his nose out front, had the right of way.

  Thorne laid his hand on the horn and kept it there. There were no rules.

  Drivers here broke the law of physics, since it seemed they wanted to occupy the same space at the same time. Thorne crossed three lanes of traffic at right angles and got nothing more than a few honking horns for his trouble. He narrowly missed a donkey cart piled high with cauliflowers, only to clip the edge of the bumper in front of him. The driver yelled obscenities out his open window.

  A glance in the rearview mirror showed the blue Mercedes hard on his heels. Isis braced her white-knuckled hands on the dashboard, her feet applying invisible brakes on the passenger floorboard. “Breathe before you hyperventilate. We have no time to haul your ass back to the hospital. In. Out through your nose. Good girl. N
ow get out the map.”

  Isis dragged in a shuddering breath, then popped the glove compartment. “For someone who doesn’t have a clue where he is,” she said, straightening her smudged glasses with a huff, “you seem to have the city memorized.”

  “I don’t.” The setting sun in his eyes made the mad race that much more dangerous. “Tell m—” A bullet hit the rear window, shattering it. The safety glass didn’t break, but the mass of small opaque bits of glass became impossible to see through.

  “Fuck. Get down!” She didn’t move fast enough. Life or death. Thorne used his gun hand to press down on the crown of her head until she was below the protective seat back.

  Horns blared as the Mercedes slammed into the rear bumper of the Jeep with a teeth-jarring jolt and the crunch of metal. Theirs. The Jeep was of reinforced steel and built like a tank, and while Doug Heustis had assured him the windows were bulletproof, Thorne wasn’t prepared to stop and test the validity of the Mossad operative’s claim.

  Another bullet slammed into the window frame inches from his head. Opening the window to shoot back was a stupid move, so Thorne pressed down on the accelerator, giving the engine the last bit of juice. “Isis! Give me directions to—fuck, anywhere!”

  He twisted the steering wheel hard left, slamming the front wheel into the Mercedes, bulldozing it aside. “In three or four exits.” Keeping up this cat-and-mouse bullshit was dangerous to innocent bystanders. And he didn’t like the way Isis’s cheeks paled. “We have to regroup. Come up with a plan. Having the advantage puts me in control. Us. We get control. Come on, darling, find us an exit.”

  Isis peered over the dash to ascertain where they were, then returned to her safe slouch, using a finger to trace the route despite the speed they were going. “Head toward May 15 Bridge. Keep right at the fork.”

  “I’m going to change lanes at the last possible second to take that exit, so hang on.”

  “When am I not freaking hanging on?” she asked rhetorically, bracing her hands and feet. The dented Mercedes came alongside, the car obviously built with a few extras, just like the Jeep. Thorne’s window spiderwebbed with a dull thud and crack. Isis let out a shocked shriek as she saw the bullet, clearly visible, embedded inches from his head.

  “Bulletproof glass, relax.”

  “This is relaxed,” she muttered dryly, flinching every time they were slammed by the other vehicle.

  Thorne yanked the steering wheel hard left. He grinned with satisfaction, hearing the Mercedes’s fender crumple. He could barely see a thing though the shattered glass, but he managed to use the Jeep like a plow and shove the Mercedes onto the center divide and oncoming traffic. “Where to?”

  IT WAS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to read in a vehicle moving ninety miles an hour. Isis glanced—once—at the speedometer and didn’t look again. In fact, despite the bumping and high speed, she’d rather be trying to read the small print on the map than watching the means of her imminent death.

  The Nile ran on their right. “Stay on Kornish El Nile.” There was a bullet embedded in his side window. Isis inched lower in her seat until she was practically sitting in the small space on the floor. Dear God, this was crazy. Stuff like this didn’t happen to people like her.

  She considered getting out her camera to take a picture of the bullet lodged so close to Thorne’s head, for proof or something, but opted to hang on for dear life instead.

  The Jeep made a right-angle turn. Even though she couldn’t see the cars Thorne cut off, she heard the strident, annoyed horns, the screeching brakes, and imagined she smelled the burning rubber of skidding tires. Bowing her head, she promising herself that she couldn’t die until she’d ticked a few more things off her bucket list.

  “In three blocks, turn left onto the Kornish El Nile—no. Sorry! I mean left on—” She covered the bloodcurdling scream induced by a jarring slam to her side of the car with a hard palm across her mouth. Freaking out wasn’t going to help Connor elude these people.

  “Left on Manzal Kobri,” she managed to say, sweat trickling down her temples and between her breasts.

  “Grab the steering wheel.”

  Her stomach knotted with apprehension. “What? No, I don’t think s—”

  “Get over here and take the wheel. Damn it, move. Now!”

  At his commanding voice, she lunged across the seat until her face was buried in his lap, then curled her fingers around the bottom of the wheel. Her glasses bit into the bridge of her nose.

  “Somehow,” Thorne said dryly, his hard thigh muscles flexing under her cheek, “this isn’t what I pictured for our first time.”

  “Cut the jokes.” Her voice was muffled. “Now not only can’t I see, I can’t breathe! What are you doing?”

  He wrapped his fingers around hers to keep the wheel steady. “Just like that. We’re not likely to end up in the river…”

  Funny man popped open his door. The wind whipped her hair around her head and his hips. The sound of tires against pavement mere feet away terrified her. “Oh, my God, Thorne, what the hell are you—”

  He leaned out, way out—until her nose was smashed against his hip bone. He fired a barrage of shots. Each blast made her flinch and squeeze her eyes more tightly shut.

  He reached back to adjust her stiff fingers. God. He wasn’t holding on to anything!

  “Damn it, Isis! Keep it steady!” His thigh muscle flexed under her cheek as he manipulated the accelerator. Not easing up, but pressing his foot flat to the floor.

  The stink of car exhaust and gas fumes, and the thrum of the tires speeding on the road surrounding them, were nothing compared to the terror she felt holding that steering wheel in a death grip as they raced along blindly.

  For God’s sake. Neither of them was looking at the road!

  He was hanging out of the open door, firing, his head almost on the road racing by beneath them. Protected, she hoped, by the door panel. But she doubted his view of the other car was any better than her view of the road. In other words: nonexistent.

  Metal pinged against metal as his shots were returned.

  She expected the sound of cars crashing behind them, but Isis still flinched and bit her lip at the voracious crash and crunch of the cars smashing into one another a few seconds later. The blast of an explosion rocked their car. The furnace heat of an exploding gas tank warmed the crown of her head and shoulders as a ball of fire exploded far too close by. Red bloomed behind her tightly closed eyes.

  “Slide over,” Thorne said grimly, giving her a little shove. Numbly, Isis slid back across the seat, eyes still squeezed shut. Shaking, she huddled, half on the seat, half in the footwell as his door slammed, shutting out the majority of the cacophony outside, so that the sound of her rapid heartbeat in her ears was deafening.

  The Jeep didn’t stop, or slow down.

  After a few moments, Isis opened her burning eyes and swallowed dryly. “They stopped following us.” That was the best she could manage. Whoever had been in that car, or God help them—those cars—was very dead. No one could have survived that conflagration.

  “No. One car stopped following us. The Audi is closing in, and fast. What’s the next turn?”

  She was half sitting on the open map, and lifted her hip to free it. She straightened her glasses and found her place with a shaking finger. “Turn right onto Abd El Khalik Tharwat.” Calm descended. Probably shock, but she would take it.

  He veered sharply from the left lane across traffic to take the right-hand exit. Isis didn’t even flinch when cars blared their horns and tires screeched to avoid them. Same old, same old.

  She struggled half up onto the seat so she could see where they were. Streetlights flickered on, shop windows brightly lit against the evening shadows. Lots of foot traffic now that they were off the main arteries. She recognized the area. “Continue on to Gohar al-Kaed for about a mile and a half.”

  “Do you have a destination in mind, or are we just driving?” He almost mowed down a donkey cart filled wit
h tomatoes and giggling children, and had to go up on the curb to avoid two old men shuffling across the street in the semidarkness.

  “We’re heading toward Insaid al-Azhar Gardens. Lots of tourists, but better still, only a few blocks from Husani’s apartment. I know the park quite well; we played there as children.”

  He checked the review mirror. “Good enough.”

  “I don’t want these clowns to follow us to Husani’s place, Thorne!”

  “We’ll shake them. Where next?”

  “Sharp left. Stay on Passages Insaid al-Azhar Garden, then keep left at the fork. We’re almost there.”

  IT WAS A WARM evening, with just a hint of a breeze scented with fresh-mown grass and night-blooming flowers. Thorne abandoned the Jeep in a gully running alongside the full parking lot and grabbed Isis’s hand. She pulled him into the green park, beyond which he could see the glow of Cairo’s lights reflecting off a scudding cloud cover.

  A concert in the amphitheater was drawing a large crowd of cheerful, jostling teenagers who inhabited the hilly lawns and winding paths of park like ants at a picnic before the music started.

  “This way,” she said, tugging his hand. “I know a shortcut. I spent several months each year in school near here, and learned all about it. They spent thirty million dollars building this oasis in the middle of the city. It was a garbage dump for five hundred years! Can you imagine that?”

  Thorne didn’t give a flying fuck but let her rattle on about hidden walls and something about the park being expensive as they walked at a fast clip. Hedge-lined plazas, rolling lawns, flowering plants, and tall palms framed spectacular city views. Of greater interest was who, if anyone, might be following them. He kept a sharp eye out as they walked. He wouldn’t bring danger to Husani’s home and was prepared to run like hell if necessary.

  Water features misted the air with their cooling spray as Isis and Thorne mingled with the crowds, blending in as people streamed to the amphitheater. “Keep going; I’ll catch up with you,” he said in a low voice.