Page 32 of Locked and Loaded

They moved through the medina in silence. Deeper than she'd ever been. The streets gave way to alleys, the alleys to passages barely wider than her shoulders. The man had to shift sideways for his broad shoulders to pass. But he still didn’t yank on her wrist, which she was grateful for in the narrow space. The walls leaned in, plastered in rose and ochre, and the thin bands of sky visible overhead narrowed until it was just a ribbon of darkness between the rooftops. The hum of the generator she'd heard before was gone. No motorbikes. No voices. Just their footsteps and the chain and the distant, mournful call of a cat somewhere in the dark.

Lennox was paying attention to every turn, every corner, building a map in her head. Left at the dry fountain, right at the arch with the cracked keystone, straight through the passage that smelled of cedar. If she was going to get out of this, she needed to know how to get back.

Not that getting out was the immediate problem. The immediate problem was the man she was chained to, who had produced a pair of handcuffs from his pocket like other people produced breath mints.

Who carries handcuffs? Someone who expected to need them, was the answer. Someone who had needed them before. She didn't know what Dragan had done before tonight, but she was starting to form a picture, and the picture was not reassuring. Wait… Did he have a gun too?

They stopped in front of a door.

It was set into a barren wall; no sign, no number, no indication that it led anywhere at all. The door itself was heavy wood, carved with a pattern of interlocking stars and fitted with iron hinges that looked old enough to have been forged by someone's great-grandfather. Above it, a single lantern hung from a bracket, the flame guttering low.

"You live here?" Lennox asked.

"For now." Dragan reached into his jacket with his free hand and produced a key. Iron, long-barreled, with a handle shaped like a palm tree. He fitted it into the lock, turned it, and the door swung open on silent hinges. Beyond it was blackness, and the cool, still smell of stone.

He didn't give her a chance to walk through on her own. His free hand settled against the small of her back. His hand was warm through the thin fabric of her dress, impossibly gentle for a man who'd handcuffed her in the middle of the street. The contradiction annoyed her almost as much as the fact that her body noticed before her brain did

He guided her through the doorway before dropping his hand. She stumbled at the loss of heat and pressure, but caught herself. Ridiculous that she should notice. The door closed behind them with a heavy, final click. The lock turned. The key scraped home.

Then the handcuff on her right wrist went loose.

She heard the second cuff come off his wrist. He was free. She was free. She rubbed her wrist and turned on him in the dark. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Dragan didn't answer. He walked past her, his footsteps sure on the tile, and a moment later, a click. Sudden light pushed back the darkness, and Lennox saw where she was.

A riad.

The courtyard opened around her, two stories of arched galleries rising on all four sides. The floor was a mosaic of tile, blue and white and green, laid out in a pattern of radiating stars. At the center, not a fountain but a pool, its floor inlaid with more tile in shades of turquoise and gold. Palm fronds hung over the gallery above, and beyond them, the square of open sky was dense with stars.

The walls were terracotta plaster, warm in the light. Carved wooden doors lined the ground floor, each one set into a horseshoe arch, each one slightly different, as if the riad had been built piece by piece over centuries instead of all at once. A staircase climbed one wall to the upper gallery, its stone banister worn smooth by the hands that had touched it.

It was beautiful. Lennox hated how much she noticed that. At any other time, she’d be thrilled to stay here. Now, she had the oddest sense it was her prison.

She rounded on Dragan. "You handcuffed me. In the middle of the street. Like I was some kind of criminal."

"You were running."

"I was leaving. There's a difference. Besides, what business is it of yours where I go?" she demanded.

"It’s my business to keep you alive, and I can’t do that if you keep running away from me." He didn't raise his voice. That was the worst part. He stood there with the soft light across his face, and he looked entirely calm, entirely sure of himself, like he hadn't just spent ten minutes dragging her through the medina in handcuffs. "Someone is trying to kill you. I don't know who, and neither do you. Until we figure that out, you stay where I can see you."

"I don't answer to you."

He sighed. "No. But to keep anyone from unaliving you, you’ll stay right here.” He turned and started toward one of the carved doors on the far side of the courtyard. "You can wander all you want. It's a traditional riad. The walls go straight up, no windows to the street, and the only door is the one behind you. Which is locked. And I have the key."

Lennox put her hands on her hips as she watched him go. “Unaliving? Really?”

He tucked the iron key into the front pocket of his jeans. “Sounds less final than dead,” he commented and then disappeared through a carved door on the right without looking back.

She stood in the courtyard, alone, the light surrounding her. Anger still burned in her chest, but it was losing its shape. It had nowhere to go. He'd walked away. He hadn't argued. He hadn't defended himself. He'd just recited the facts and left her standing there.

That was worse, somehow. If he'd fought with her, she could have fought back. But he'd just... left. Like he knew she'd come to the same conclusions he had. Like he trusted the situation to do his arguing for him.

She hated that he was right. She hated that she didn’t even know who he was and why he was helping her. Was he helping her? She wasn’t even sure about that. Lennox looked at the door they’d entered through. There was no way in hell she was going to be able to break that down, and the lock didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen before, so picking it was out of the question.

“Shit,” she groaned. She didn’t even have her lock picks. They were back with the rest of her stuff at the hotel. How was she going to get that? All she had was the dress she was wearing and the stuff in her bag. At least she had her passport. And the Lock and Key Society file along with her sister’s picture. It was going to cost her to replace the clothing, but more importantly, she needed good running shoes because she was sure she was going to have to do some running in the not too distant future. She swore again.

Lennox stood there as another realization hit her square in the chest. She was safe here. She could feel it in the walls, in the way the courtyard cut off the noise of the city, in the solid weight of the door behind her. She'd been running for days, not sleeping, not eating, looking over her shoulder every thirty seconds. And now she was standing in a place where nobody knew she was and nobody could get in.