Page 29 of Locked and Loaded

“I wasn't questioning your ability to walk.

“Could've fooled me,” Lennox snarled.

Against all common sense, the corner of his mouth twitched. The woman was seconds away from being shot, and she still had enough fight left to argue. He should have found it infuriating. Instead, he found it oddly attractive.

They went single file. Dragan first, his shoes silent on the tile. The musician was six feet ahead, then four, then two, and Dragan could see the man's fingers moving across the strings in the split second before his foot came down beside the chair.

The musician's eyes flew open. He jerked backward, the oud bucking against his chest, and his hand raked across the strings in a sharp, dissonant crash that cut through the courtyard like a shout.

Every head in the restaurant turned.

Dragan stepped over the musician’s legs and kept moving. The man was scrambling to his feet, shouting something in Arabic that Dragan didn't catch and didn't need to. Behind him, he heard Lennox murmur an apology. Her fingertips landed against the middle of his back for barely a second as she slipped past the shocked musician, yet somehow, he felt the imprint long after she'd dropped her hand. It was ridiculous. He'd been shot, stabbed, and blown up. A fleeting touch from a stubborn woman shouldn't register at all.

The gallery arcade swallowed them. Brick columns flashed past on either side, and then they were through, into a corridor lit by a single iron lantern. The walls were terracotta, the floor a mosaic of shattered patterns reassembled into something new.

Ahead, the corridor split.

"Left," Lennox said.

"You don't know where left goes," Dragan argued.

"I know where right goes. It goes back to the main courtyard."

She was already moving. Dragan had no choice but to follow if he was going to keep her safe. The corridor turned, then turned again, and suddenly they were in another riad, this one smaller, darker, with a dry fountain at its center and a staircase climbing one wall. Palm fronds hung over the gallery above, charcoal gray against the deeper black of the sky.

The scent of this courtyard was different. Wax and dust and something sharp, like cleaning fluid. A service entrance, maybe.

Dragan crossed to the far side and found a door set into the wall, carved wood with iron hinges. He tried the handle. It opened. Beyond it, a narrow passage led to a second door, this one heavier, reinforced.

He pushed through into a narrow alley, and the night air hit him, warm, dry, smelling of cooking oil and jasmine and the faint animal musk of the city. Old stone walls rose on both sides, plastered in the same warm rose color as the rest of the kasbah.

Lennox came through behind him and pulled the door shut. “How did they find me?”

“Same way I did,” Dragan offered. “You’re good at tradecraft, but you’re not at their level. Or mine.”

"And just how do you know that?” she snarled.

"I pay attention." Dragan moved toward the mouth of the alley. The street beyond was quiet, a slightly wider lane between stone walls, empty except for a cat watching them from a doorstep. "We need to disappear. Now. This part of the city is a maze. Use it."

At the entrance to the alley, a motorbike buzzed past, close enough that Dragan felt the vibration in his chest. On the far side, shopkeepers were pulling down metal shutters, the sound like distant thunder. An old man with a cart of oranges watched them pass with the mild interest of someone who'd seen stranger things before breakfast.

Lennox caught his arm and immediately let go again, as if irritated by the awareness that she’d touched him. A stranger maybe too solid for her peace of mind. She motioned to him to go sideways, into a covered passage between two buildings. It was barely wide enough for one person. The walls were rough plaster, cool to the touch.

"Where are you taking us?" Dragan asked. He asked out of mild interest. He was happy to let her lead as long as she was headed in the direction he wanted. He was curious where she thought they were going.

"You said disappear. I'm disappearing." She didn't look back. "The medina gets tighter the deeper you go. If they don't know these streets, they'll lose us in five minutes."

She wasn't wrong. Dragan had counted on the same thing. He thought it could work, since he didn’t think the two thugs trailing there were locals. Fortunately, he had a plan and a place for them to go.

The passage opened into a small square with a silent fountain at its center. Three streets branched off it, each one darker than the last. Without hesitation, Lennox chose the one that sloped downhill.

Dragan watched her disappear through the narrow streets, her decisions quick, instinctive, and almost always correct. She wasn't simply running. She was reading the city, using shadows, blind corners, and changing sightlines with an ease that surprised him. Whoever had taught her tradecraft had done an exceptional job. He found himself smiling despite the circumstances. She was unlike the woman he'd expected to find in Morocco. She was also beautiful, which was spectacularly inconvenient.

He'd known her for maybe an hour, and he could already tell she was the kind of person who'd been taking care of herself for a long time. However, the dark circles under her eyes and the worry lines around her mouth said she was very, very tired of doing it.

They moved through the streets in silence for a while. The noise of the medina faded behind them. He didn’t detect any footsteps chasing after them, but stayed alert, nonetheless. Ahead, the lanes grew narrower, more twisted, the buildings leaning toward each other until only a thin strip of stars showed overhead. Somewhere a generator hummed. Nearby, a dog barked twice then stopped.

Lennox slowed, then paused, turning to face him under a stone arch. Her face was half in shadow.