Page 289 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

“Yes,” she agreed. “I liked it.”

“You deserve better,” he argued. “You deserved a comfortable bed and a gentle introduction to lovemaking. Every inch of your body should have been adored. I should have been soft with you.”

“I was raised in a convent,” she quipped. “But even I know it doesn’t work well unless it’s hard.”

“Not funny.” He almost swatted her but pointed at her instead. “I’m going to get us a cab. You stay here until I come back for you.” He should go but couldn’t help touching her one last time, cupping her bottom in his hands, feeling the heat blazing from her well-spanked flesh through her clothes and into his palms. “Make no mistake,thatyou deserved, but the other…”

“Was I that bad?” she asked softly, disappointment creeping into her eyes. “Didn’t you get any pleasure?”

He couldn’t help himself. He slanted his mouth over hers, his tongue sweeping through her mouth, enticing hers to dance with his. Nibbling on her lower lip, he kissed her until she softened against him.

“More pleasure than I ever thought possible. I’ll take care of this, Aliya. Are you all right?”

She nodded, and with one last gentle kiss, he left the back room and made his way through the café out onto the street. This changed things. It shouldn’t, maybe for some men it wouldn’t, but it changed things for him. Whether he had all the evidence they needed or not, it was time for him to get away from Fariq, and he was taking Aliya with him.

He hailed a cab, then quickly jogged back through the café to fetch Aliya… only to find the back room was empty. The back door was standing open, swaying ever so slightly, and when he ran to it, he was just in time to see Aliya at the opposite end of a long, cluttered alley. She was alone, pulling her shawl back over her dark hair, which immediately killed the spark of panic he’d felt at his first thought—kidnapped—finding her gone.

He opened his mouth to shout after her, but a booming explosion rocked the market half a block behind him, sending a shower of broken bricks and chunks of clay raining down everywhere. The shock wave knocked him down, the entire backof him stinging as if he’d been physically slapped. Whether it truly was as silent as it seemed to be directly following that explosion or if it was the ringing in his ears masking all sound, he didn’t know, but for a few startled heartbeats, the whole world fell absurdly still. When he looked up, instead of being huddled on the ground with her arms thrown up over her head at the far mouth of the alley, Aliya was gone.

The rapid fire of automatic rifles discharging on the other side of the café killed the silence. Then came the screaming.

Scrambling to his feet, Christian ran down the back alley, but when he rounded the far corner, Aliya wasn’t huddled on the ground there, either. Instead, the alley opened back up onto the main market street, now flooded with fleeing, panicking people. Somewhere out there, amid the bullets and the shoppers, was Aliya.

“Fuck. Fuck!” A bullet zinged past his ear as he bolted out of the relative safety of the alley into the running crowd. He ducked and dodged through the stalls, leaping over spilled wares just in time for the person running alongside him to get shot. Bullets peppered the corner of the alleyway he threw himself into for cover. Where the hell was she?

Spotting two discarded shoes halfway down the alley, he broke into a run, but the alley dead-ended in someone’s private garden, shrouded on all sides by clay walls, half-again as high as he could reach by jumping.

He ran up one of the two household steps that shared the garden area, but the door at the top was locked. So was the other door at the top of that set of steps, but the door rattled loosely when he shook it. When he heard the sharp firecracker report of rifle fire coming from inside, he drew his gun and kicked in the door.

Two men in black flak gear hunkered at the window, firing randomly into the crowd, short, sharp bursts meant tohit above the ducking heads of the fleeing, screaming people, deliberately, methodically scattering them. One snapped around when Christian kicked in the door. Had he not recognized the man as one of Fariq’s, he’d have shot him.

The other man recognized him, too, never fully bringing his rifle up high enough to shoot.

“What the fuck!” Christian snapped, anger exploding through him every bit as violently as the bomb had done.

The second guy jerked around, although the first grabbed his gun, averting it before the man could aim it. Christian would have shot him. The only thing that kept him from firing was seeing how openly startled they both were.

“Where is she?” he snarled, only just keeping his temper under control.

“Who?” the first guy asked.

“Mona fucking Lisa,” he snapped. “Who do you think I’m talking about!” Ripping the headset from one of their heads, he yelled into the microphone, “Cease fire, goddamn it. Aliya’s in the market!”

Someone swore through the earpiece before the ceasefire was repeated, and the order to withdraw abruptly given.

“You lost her?” the second guy asked incredulously.

“Youshotat her?” he returned. His own gut was too tight for him to truly enjoy the rapid paling on both their faces.

“We were following orders!” the first protested, but he wasn’t listening.

The sound of gunfire was completely gone by the time Christian raced back out the back door. Where was she?

From the porch, it was a short leap onto the top of the high wall. He scanned the sea of small, crooked gardens that made up a neighborhood block worth of private backyards. The echoes of people screaming and running on the front side of the house athis back ricocheted off the earth buildings, along with the distant wail of emergency sirens.

Frustrated, he looked back the other way, and it was only by sheer happenchance the wind caught a hanging laundry sheet, lifting it just enough for him to catch sight of Aliya three private gardens away, huddled against a wall. She wasn’t alone. A dark-skinned man dressed in Islamic white shoved something into her hand, forcing her fingers closed around it before he bolted out of the garden and down another side alley.

She looked at her hand, then as if suddenly feeling eyes on her, she looked up. Their eyes met.

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