Page 104 of Dangerous

Mia had almost reached the bottom when the men looked over the side.

Precious seconds ticked past as she fumbled with the knot that kept the boat secured. The rope ladder jerked, telling her a man was on his way down. She finally managed to free the boat and shoved away from the ship as hard as she could before grabbing the oars.

A light flared briefly above her and then disappeared. Mia rowed with all the strength she could muster. She almost wept with relief as the small boat shot away from the ship. She pulled and pulled, ignoring the muffled shouts and splashing sounds that told her another boat had been lowered into the water. She pulled on the oars and glanced over her shoulder.

No matter how fast she rowed, the shore seemed to get farther away with every stroke.

* * *

Adam couldn’t have dozed for more than a few minutes before he heard men’s voices. He knew there was no place to hide—he’d seen as much before Jibril left. He felt his way in the darkness along the wall, until he reached the opening that led to the smaller, outside cell.

The voices came closer: Arabic. He held his sword lightly in his left hand, the pistol in the right. He would take at least a few with him.

The footsteps stopped just outside the small outer cell.

“We know you are in there. Give us Jibril and we will let you go.” The French accent was so atrocious it took Adam a minute to translate.

“Come in here and take him if you want him,” he yelled back in the same language.

His words detonated an explosion of Arabic. Adam supposed nobody wanted to be the first to step inside. He waited, straining his ears, in case they decided to come without light. His eyes were probably more acclimated to the darkness, so he’d have a minor edge. How long that would last depended on how many of them there were.

The bickering stopped and a burning torch flew through the doorway. It bounced off the stone floor and sent sparks flying in all directions before rolling to a halt beside the opposite wall, still burning.

So much for the advantage of darkness.

The first man came stumbling in right after the torch, as if somebody had catapulted him.

Adam discharged the pistol and the ball hit his assailant dead center. The impact and surprise knocked him back, right into the man behind him. Their bodies tangled and Adam lunged forward and pierced the second attacker through the left side of his chest. The man tripped over the first man’s body and fell hard onto the sword, dragging Adam down as he went.

Adam barely kept his feet, dropping into a crouch while trying to yank the sword free from the other man’s chest.

Yet another aggressor flew through the door, hurtling over Adam and the two bodies. Adam yanked on the sword and wrenched it free, but not before a trail of fire swept across his back, from shoulder to hip. He rolled to the side just as his opponent swung again, moving his arm in a wildly sweeping arc, his scimitar flashing through the flickering light.

Adam jumped to his feet and raised his blood-slicked blade in time to stop the killing blow but the impact knocked him back against the wall. The man had no particular skill, but he was built like an ox. Adam led him in a dance across the floor, his arm almost numb from repelling the repeated blows from the much heavier sword. He needed to strike now or soon he would not be able.

He ignored the searing pain down his back and launched an attack that would have made Beauleaux proud. His sudden aggression surprised the man, who’d assumed—correctly—that Adam was exhausted, and had drawn back his arm in yet another huge, lazy arc, preparing for the kill. But he’d forgotten about the bodies behind him and stumbled.

Adam’s blade made a squelching noise as it swept across the man’s throat.

The man’s scimitar clattered to the stone floor and he gave a gurgling wail and took yet another step onto the fallen body before crashing to the ground. Adam backed away, his lungs heaving like a bellows as he wiped the blood-slicked pommel of his sword.

He looked around in the dying torchlight. He was the last man standing. Outside, in the smaller cell and hallway, there was the sound of fighting.

An English voice came from the direction of the corridor. “I brought you some help, Stepfather!”

“It’s about bloody time,” Adam called back, sagging against the cool stone wall and listening to the sound of fighting.

Once he’d caught his breath, he inhaled deeply and then picked his way over fallen bodies and inched closer to see what was happening. It looked as though Jibril had brought at least a dozen men with him. The corridor was too crowded for anything other than hacking and slashing and there was no need for Adam to join them as Jibril’s men made short work of the remaining guards.

He massaged his sword arm as he watched. The last guard had hardly hit the floor when the victors began to slap one another on the back in the self-congratulatory manner of very young men. It was a moment before Jibril recalled Adam’s existence and came toward him, swathed in a gray wool djellaba with a red-and-black-checked turban on his head. He carried a large leather bag at his side.

“My men came down the main road from town, with a big group of Assad’s men right behind them. They are fighting as we speak, at the main entrance.”

“Is your half brother with them?” Adam asked, wincing as he pushed off from the wall.

“Are you injured?” The boy looked around at the three corpses and his auburn eyebrows rose. “You fought well, Stepfather.”

“Assad, where is he?” Adam repeated. God forbid the lunatic somehow found the Scythe before Bouchard took Mia to a safe distance.