Page 110 of Rescuing You

The night Michael had broken the women out of the compound, he’d heard the cultured voice of an educated man demanding that Nawra be returned. She will be ready tomorrow. As planned.

He’d wondered…ready for what?

Now he knew the answer.

A wedding.

He tried to shake off the fears. God had protected her, and Michael needed to focus on that. And on the information he’d learned.

The staircase was deserted, his footsteps echoing on the concrete walls as he jogged down.

How had Vortex—Qasim—found her to begin with? Michael had been watching the man for months. Had Qasim figured that out?

Had the hunter become the hunted? And if so, had Qasim found Leila because of her relationship with Michael? Had her location been the collateral damage of Michael’s activities?

He didn’t think so. He’d been trained well and was very good at what he did.

So maybe Qasim—or her father or uncle or Waleed—had somehow tracked her to Munich. Was that the reason for the map Leila had seen? Had they been looking for her, using the map in their quest?

That didn’t make sense. If she’d been spotted, they’d know where. If they’d known the hotel where she lived and worked—which they obviously had, considering they’d snatched her outside of it—then there’d be no need for a paper map of the city except maybe to come up with a getaway route.

But their phones had GPS, just like everybody else’s.

And anyway, the map had been laid out on the office desk weeks after she’d been snatched. So, it probably had nothing to do with Leila.

He shoved his way out of the stairwell into the small lobby, and then out into the bright sunshiny afternoon. As long as he was moving, trying to work off his anger—fine, fear—he might as well grab food. He walked to a corner restaurant, where he ordered a family-sized salad, three bowls of soup, an assortment of dolmas—meat and vegetables wrapped in grape leaves—and a köfte dish. He loved the spicy meatballs that were a specialty in Turkey.

By the time the friendly man behind the counter handed over his sacks of food, Michael’s temper had cooled. A little.

As long as he didn’t think about Waleed Shehab.

Leila was gone when he got back. He knocked on the door between the rooms. “I got lunch.”

It opened, and Jasmine stood on the other side in the skinny jeans, graphic T-shirt, and zip-up hoodie he’d bought her, along with the wig cap.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Not very.” She turned to Leila, who was seated on her bed looking like a middle-aged man. “Sister?”

“A little, I guess.”

“I’d like us to eat before we leave so we don’t have to stop until we get to the coast.” He carried the food into their room, where the three of them sat at a small table by the window. The food was good, perfectly spiced. While he ate, he checked the laptop, but Alyssa’s script hadn’t unlocked it yet.

As soon as Jasmine was finished, only a few minutes after she’d begun, he said, “Let me get your makeup on.”

She stepped past him into his room, and he spoke to Leila. “Give us a few minutes.”

He didn’t miss the suspicious look she shot him as he closed the door. He was tempted to lock it, but that would make both sisters nervous.

He got Jasmine settled on the edge of the bed. “Mind if I ask you some questions?”

He’d expected fear, at least hesitation, but she barely reacted. “What do you want to know?”

An open-ended question indeed. He dabbed on paste to camouflage her high cheekbones. There wasn’t a whole lot he planned to do with her face, but he needed to stretch their time out. “Your sister told me about Hasan and Waleed—what she knows about them, anyway. She’s been gone a long time, though. I wondered what you could add about them—or about Qasim.”

“They are evil men.”

She seemed finished, as if she’d said it all.