Page 62 of Strangers in Love

“Scarf.”

It took me a moment to realize what he was saying. I’d put on a headscarf before I’d left the room to find a phone, but it’d come off during the struggle. I hadn’t taken the time to fix it when Eoin and I had gone back to grab our things.

With shaky fingers, I adjusted the material so that it covered my hair and part of my face. I couldn’t hide the fact that I was white, but I could at least disguise some of my features to make them not so glaringly obvious.

Eoin nodded, apparently satisfied, and then shifted his stance into something more casual. If I hadn’t been the focus of his intensity before, I might’ve missed that it was still there, humming below the surface. Perhaps boiling was a better word. Simmering. I could feel it radiating out as I fell in step next to him.

Well, not exactlynextto him. I was a couple steps behind him, just enough so that we didn’t stand out one way or the other. If he hadn’t been so tall or so good-looking, we might not have stood out at all. As it was, we didn’t have much in the way of options to disguise him. We just had to hope that we’d gotten enough of a lead to stay ahead of everyone who was after us.

Maintaining an unhurried walk and bland expression was more stressful than escaping from the hotel, though I wasn’t quite as stressed as I had been last night. Now, I knew who Eoin was, where we were going, and that I could rely on him to keep me safe…even if he could be a jerk at times.

I didn’t realize that we weren’t going to the same part of the airport where I’d arrived until I saw the plane in front of me. It wasn’t even close to as large as the massive airliner I was accustomed to taking, but it wasn’t a small by-plane either. This was a private jet.

I held my question until I saw a lot of the tension drain out of Eoin. I assumed he wouldn’t relax even a bit if we weren’t at least mostly safe.

“Where did Freedom find this?”

He glanced at me as he did a visual sweep behind us. “She didn’t. It belongs to my family.”

I blinked, surprised enough to miss a step. I hadn’t seen that coming.

The whole ‘rich playboy’ cover might not have been quite as much fiction as I’d originally thought. I felt safe in assuming that he’d given his real first name to the desk clerk since he’d used the same one with me, and Eoin wasn’t exactly the sort of name someone used for an inconspicuous alias. I racked my brains, trying to recall what he’d given as his last name so I could determine if it was also real.

Before I could come up with the answer, however, the plane door opened, and Eoin immediately went into soldier-mode, a gun in his hand in the blink of an eye. I moved behind him without him saying a word. No matter how annoying I found him, he was relentless in his task to keep me safe.

“All clear!” a male voice I didn’t know called out, and Eoin relaxed as easily as he’d tensed.

“Everyone else on board?” Eoin asked as he took a half-step to the side.

“Ready to go.”

I could see the speaker this time. Buzzed hair that was too short to indicate whether it was light brown or blond. Not as tall as Eoin, but still tall, and the stranger’s shoulders were a bit broader, his build a little more muscular.

If the rest of the team was as impressive as these two, I could see why they’d needed a lie to get into the country and move about freely. No way would anyone see them and not be intimidated. Including a financial element into their cover would cause most people to focus on that particular detail rather than their physical attributes. Smart.

Well, for the most part, anyway. I didn’t see anyone not giving these men a second look.

I’d gone halfway up the stairs before I realized that they intended to leave as soon as I was on the plane. I froze and used my iciest teacher voice. “I’m not going without the others.”

Eoin made an annoyed sound but directed his statement to the man above. “She’s riled up because we didn’t get other hostages out. I told her I’d go back to get them once she was safe, but she doesn’t seem to trust me to keep my word.”

I hadn’t realized my determination to keep my promise would come across as a slight on his honor. A hint of guilt crept into my aggravation.

“It’s not that.” I turned to face him. “I just don’t like the fact that I’m about to get on a private jet to fly home in comfort while there are others whose lives grow more at risk with each passing moment.”

“Before this goes any further,” the other man interrupted, “you should know that help for them is already on the way.”

The surprise on Eoin’s face told me this was news to him as well, but I wasn’t going to let it go so easily. “What, exactly, does that mean?”

“I have a sat phone, so once we were hunkered down for the night, I made a couple calls to some military contracts,” the man said. “They’re aware that American citizens – and probably people from other countries too – are being held by this group at that site.”

I should have been happy that he’d informed the military, but his statements led me to a question I couldn’t let go unanswered. “You saw there were other people being held against their will, and you didn’t try to get them out?”

“I didn’t see them,” he said. “But two of my guys saw a room full of a bunch of shit like watches and jewelry and electronics, and I didn’t think they’d gotten it from robbing tourists.”

A shiver went down my spine. If the kidnappers had a room like that, then they’d been doing it a lot longer than I’d thought. They weren’t some ragged band of terrorists acting on selfish impulse. They were organized.

“My friends are still in danger.” I lifted my chin, refusing to drop the subject so easily. “Who knows what will happen to them in the time it takes the military to get permission or whatever they need to go after them.”

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