Page 61 of Locked and Loaded

He needed to be gone before that happened.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

He pulled a stray orange peel out of her hair. "No idea."

"That's not comforting."

"Wasn't meant to be."

She looked at his arm. The blood had soaked through his sleeve now and was starting to drip onto the oranges. She frowned. "We need to stop that bleeding."

"In a minute." He checked his pockets, then swore. “Damn! We need a cell phone.”

She opened her bag and pulled out his cell. “You left it on the counter in the bathroom when you pulled on your clothes. I grabbed it.”

The screen had been cracked with the impact, but it still worked. He leaned over and gave her a quick hard kiss. “Thanks.” He typed out a message to a number he hadn't used in three years. Coordinates. A time. Two words. Come alone.

"Who are you texting?" she asked.

"Someone who owes me a favor." He pocketed the phone and looked at her. "You did good back there."

"I jumped off a roof onto a truck full of oranges. I'd say that's better than good."

"It is." He reached over and brushed a piece of crate wood off her blouse. "You can keep the key, by the way."

Her hand flew to her pocket. The iron key was still there, the palm-tree handle pressing against the denim. She'd held onto it through the entire chase. Through the run and the jumps and the fall. She'd never let go.

"I forgot I had it," she said.

"No you didn't."

She looked at him. In the dim light of the truck bed, with oranges rolling around her and his blood on her blouse and the medina sliding past as the truck continued on, she looked at him the way she'd looked at him in the bathroom. Like he was a problem she hadn't solved yet. Like she wanted to.

"Seriously, where are we going?" she asked again.

He leaned back against the crate behind him and closed his eyes. The adrenaline was fading, and his arm was starting to burn. "Right now? South. After that, we're going to get your sister back."

The truck rumbled on, and the medina fell away behind them, and the men on the rooftop had disappeared into the dark, regrouping, reporting in, doing exactly what professionals did when a target slipped through their fingers. They'd be back. Men like that always came back.

But not tonight. Tonight, Dragan had a woman covered in orange juice and a bullet wound on his arm and a name in his phone he hadn't spoken to in three years. It wasn't much. But it was enough.

For now, it was enough.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The truck finally rolled to a stop behind a row of aging warehouses on the outskirts of the city. The engine idled for a moment before the driver shut it off, plunging them into a silence that seemed impossibly loud after the chaos of the rooftops.

Lennox climbed carefully over the broken crates and scattered oranges before dropping to the pavement. The soles of her bare feet protested immediately about the rough asphalt, but she ignored it. There were more pressing concerns than sore feet.

Dragan landed beside her with considerably less grace than usual. He tried to hide the wince that crossed his face when his boots hit the ground, but she caught it anyway.

The sleeve of his shirt was soaked almost to the elbow now. He went around and paid the driver of the truck for the lift and the oranges as per the deal they’d made when the driver stopped and discovered them in the back of his truck. Dragan came back to stand beside Lennox.

A light flicked on inside the warehouse. The large sliding door opened just enough for a man to step through. He was somewhere in his mid-forties, lean and weathered, with dark hair threaded heavily with gray and the permanent tan of someone who spent more time outdoors than in. He wore faded jeans, work boots, and a linen shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His eyes lingered on Dragan's bloody arm before drifting to Lennox.

He sighed.

"You know," he said in lightly accented English, "most people bring wine when they visit."