Page 33 of Locked and Loaded

She was trapped. Oddly, she realized she wasn't afraid of Dragan. Furious at him, yes. Suspicious, absolutely. Afraid? Not even a little.

Lennox let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. "Fine," she muttered to the empty courtyard. "I'll figure out how to get out in the morning."

She knew where the key was. She'd seen him put it there. And if he thought she wasn't going to try to get it from his pocket, he wasn’t as smart as she gave him credit for being. And he did not look dumb. No, he looked like sex walking. It was awful that she noticed. That every time he was around, her heart rate ticked up a bit. It just pissed her off more.

But that was a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, she needed to know the space she was trapped in. She started with the ground floor.

The courtyard was the heart of the riad, the way courtyards always were. Usually a fountain at its center, this time a small pool. The tilework that lined its floor and walls was the real thing, not the tourist-market imitation. Each piece had been hand-cut, hand-fired, laid by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. The pattern shifted as she walked around it, the colors catching the lantern light differently from every angle.

The arcades that ringed the courtyard were supported by columns of brick and plaster, each one topped with a carved capital in a different pattern. Palmettos. Acanthus leaves. Interlocking stars that echoed the pattern on the front door. Lennox ran her fingers over the plaster as she walked. It was cool and smooth, polished by decades of hands.

Off the courtyard, three rooms on the ground floor. The first was a salon, low divans arranged around a brass table, cushions in cream and rust and deep indigo. A rug covered the tile floor; its geometric pattern faded in the way that meant it was old and good. On one wall, a collection of pottery stood in arched niches, each piece different, each one glowing faintly in the lantern light.

The second room was a library. Or what would have been a library, if it had been used recently. The shelves were cedar, built into the walls, and they held maybe two hundred books in French and Arabic and English. A leather chair sat in one corner with a reading lamp beside it. The air smelled of old paper and dust and the faint, sharp bite of cedar.

The third door was the one Dragan had gone through. She didn't follow him. Not yet. Instead, she climbed the stairs to the upper gallery.

The first floor wrapped around the courtyard on all four sides, a balcony with a carved wooden railing that looked down onto the pool below. Doors led off it at intervals, bedrooms, she guessed, though she didn't open them. She wasn't ready to look at bedrooms. That felt like a different kind of trespass.

From the gallery, she could see the whole riad at once. The courtyard below, the pool at its center, the lanterns along the walls. The palm fronds rose past the railing, close enough to touch. Above, the square of sky was studded with stars, and the air was cool and still and smelled of jasmine.

She stood there for a long moment, her hands on the railing.

It felt like a place out of time. Like a secret. Like something that had been waiting here for a very long time, and she had stumbled into it by accident. He has a key, she reminded herself. This isn't an accident. He brought her here on purpose.

That should have unsettled her. It did unsettle her. But it also, against her will, impressed her. Whoever Dragan was, he had resources. A safe house in the medina. A key he carried like he'd been carrying it for years. The calm of someone who'd done this kind of thing before, many times, and expected to do it again. That made him a formidable enemy, one that she wasn’t sure she could take on and win if she played fair.

Maybe it was time to find a way to level the playing field.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

From somewhere below, Lennox heard sounds. Metal on tile. A cupboard closing. Curiosity got the better of her, and she quietly descended the stairs.

The door Dragan had disappeared through led to a passage, and the passage led to the kitchen. It was smaller than she'd expected, built into the corner of the riad where the walls were thickest. The floor was the same tile, but open shelves were affixed to the walls, instead of plaster. Copper pots hung from hooks in the ceiling. Bundles of dried herbs dangled from a beam over the window. A row of ceramic tagine cooking pots lined a shelf; their conical lids painted with blue and white patterns.

The stove was an old gas range, and Dragan was standing in front of it, his back to her. His shoulders filled the narrow space in a way that made the kitchen feel cramped. He'd rolled the sleeves of his shirt to his forearms, and the domesticity of it should have looked ridiculous on a man like him. Instead, it only made him more distracting.

He was doing something with a pan, his movements efficient and unhurried, and the smell that hit her when she stepped through the doorway made her stomach growl. Lamb. Spices. Something with cinnamon and cumin and ginger that smelled like it had been cooking for hours. But it couldn't have been hours. They hadn’t been here that long.

He must have started it before he left. Before he came to find her. Which meant he'd planned to bring her here all along. He assumed she’d come, and when she hadn’t come willingly, he’d made a plan for that too. That should have annoyed her. She was too hungry to be annoyed.

"Smells good," she said.

Dragan glanced over his shoulder. "There's mint tea on the table. Tagine will be ready in ten minutes."

The traditional table was low to the ground, its surface inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a pattern of vines and leaves. Cushions were arranged around it instead of chairs, thick and comfortable-looking, covered in fabric the color of cinnamon. A brass pot of tea sat on a tray with two small gold-etched glasses. A dish of olives. Flatbread, still warm, wrapped in a cloth. A bowl of almonds dusted with salt and something red, paprika, maybe, or harissa.

Lennox lowered onto a cushion. It was as comfortable as it looked. She poured herself some tea and watched Dragan. There was something deeply unfair about a man who looked like he could dismantle a room full of people with his bare hands calmly stirring dinner.

Dragan brought the tagine to the table a few minutes later, setting it down on a trivet in the center. He took the cushion across from her, folded his long legs under him like it was the most natural thing in the world, and lifted the conical lid.

Steam rose. The smell was incredible. Tender lamb, glossy prunes and apricots. Almonds scattered across the top. The sauce was deep brown and fragrant with spices she couldn't name.

"How long has this been cooking?" she asked.

He gave a small shrug. "A while."

"That's not an answer."