This was not happening. It couldn’t be real. Cressida was trapped in a nightmare. It wasn’t possible that Todd had appeared in Antalya; Hejan had been murdered; she’d been robbed (twice); possibly abducted (in spite of being foolish enough to want to jump in the sack with the man, she still wasn’t sure); and now black smoke poured from under the front door of the ramshackle hideaway.
Her gaze darted around. The side door to the carport was their best exit. She took a step toward the door, but John caught the back pocket of her jeans, stopping her.
“Not yet,” he said and nudged her backward. He scooped up the small rug she’d been standing on and dropped it against the base of the door, partially stemming the waves of smoke. Next he shoved the couch backward and slammed the heel of his boot into the floor, which gave way under the quick pressure of the blow. He knelt over the hole and tossed splinters of wood aside, then plucked a backpack from the hidden recess.
With the bag slung over his shoulder, he turned and caught her shocked gaze. “Firm believer in the Boy Scout motto,” he said, then strode past her toward the side door. She followed, plucking her gun from the kitchen counter on the way.
He paused by the exit. “We go together.” He nodded toward the gun in her hand. “Can you shoot if you have to?”
She nodded, tightening her grip on the weapon.
“I’ll unlock the car with the remote the moment we open the door. The driver’s door is closer. Dive in and crawl across to the passenger seat. I’ll follow and provide cover fire if need be.”
He did not just use the words “cover fire” in a sentence. She just stared at him, her mind caught on that one phrase and unable to move forward.
He stroked her cheek. “You’ll do fine, Cress. I believe in you.” Then he kissed her, a quick hard kiss that broke her mental paralysis.
She took a deep breath and nodded. “On three?” she asked, because wasn’t that what people said in these situations?
A smile lit his eyes. “On three.” He then whispered the count in her ear.
He shoved the door open, and she sprang forward. In seconds, she was inside the car and crawling across the gearshift, John right behind her. Thankfully there’d been no need for cover fire.
The engine started instantly. She hadn’t even twisted into her seat before they lurched backward down the short driveway, then, with a sharp turn, launched forward down the bumpy, pitted road.
She grappled for the seat belt as her head bounced against the roof. Finally settled in the seat with a fastened belt, she found her voice. “Is anyone following us?”
“No. But if the purpose was to smoke us out, they know we only have two choices once we hit the main road.”
“Which are?”
“Return to Van, or head west. There’s a NATO base in Batman.”
She glanced out the window. The night was pure inky black. No streetlights. No city lights. No car lights ahead or behind. Complete darkness, all around. “Which way are we going?”
“To Batman. You’ll be safe on the base.”
* * *
This time, Cressida didn’t protest and say she needed to gather research for her grant proposal. Being smoked out of the safe house appeared to have woken her to the seriousness of the situation. Or maybe it was learning Hejan had been murdered in her hotel room. Ian didn’t particularly care which had gotten through to her, he was just glad she was cooperating.
“How far is it to Batman?” she finally asked.
“About three hundred kilometers.”
“Can you translate that to hours?”
“Four and a half, maybe five. This time of night, we should get through the checkpoint quickly.”
“How will we get through? I don’t have my passport.”
“Hopefully I can talk our way through. If not, bribery.”
She slid down in her seat and murmured, “I can’t believe I’ve sunk to bribery.”
“You won’t do the bribing, I will. And only if it seems necessary.”
Ian drove in silence as he considered the situation. He’d set up the house near Kurubaş just a few weeks before, when Hejan had told him the microchip was destined for the Van region. Given the number of dwellings abandoned due to the earthquake, it had been an easy task to find a place that would suit his needs. At the time, he’d given himself twenty-to-one odds he’d need it, and fifty-to-one he’d need the apartment he’d outfitted in Siirt.
Because the Kurubaş house wasn’t an official asset, he’d told only one person the location, but thankfully, he’d told no one about the Siirt hideaway.
He just prayed they’d get to Siirt safely so he could stop running and call Stan. Because it appeared CIA rookie Zack Barrow—the only person who knew the location of the house on the outskirts of Kurubaş—was working for the wrong side.