Leila joined him where he stood with a section of fence curled upward. He shrugged off the backpack and shoved it through the hole with his foot. She grabbed the links and held them up enough for Xander to crawl through.
“Hurry, I see lights heading this way,” he said, waving to her from the other side.
Not again. Heart pounding, she slipped underneath. The links whipped at her back as they fell, scratching her through her sweater. The fabric pulled, ripping as she tugged against it.
“Come on,” Xander rasped. He knelt beside her and yanked at the torn fabric. It didn’t budge. “Just take it off. Hurry!”
The glow of approaching lights grew from behind the hill. Leila squirmed out of her sweater, then turned and ripped it off the fence. Clutching it in one hand, she ran, matching Xander’s pounding strides.
“Get down, get down!” he cried, grabbed her arm, and yanked her into a shallow ditch. There was no time to even think about finding a hiding spot as a pair of headlights cut through the night.
They both held their breaths, lying against each other as a truck rattled past. Once the red taillights disappeared over the incline, they sat up.
“Let’s get a mile or so away from the border,” Xander suggested, pushing himself to his feet. “Then we’ll turn back south toward Eilat.”
Leila nodded, too overwhelmed to talk or even ask what would come next. Her heart and her feet were heavy, but all she cared about now was putting distance between her and that fence as quickly as possible.
Even if it meant they were truly leaving Drake behind. Even if it meant that each step took her closer to their final goodbye.
CHAPTER 21
Somewhere on the outskirts of Eilat, Xander gave up. It was zero-three-hundred, and the exhaustion caught up to him. They came across an outcrop and figured it was as good as anything else for shelter, then curled up and slept for a few hours until the morning rays woke them. After a breakfast of MREs, they wordlessly sat next to each other under the shade of the rock.
Heat simmered in his chest. In the last three days, he’d turned on his country, ran from the SIS, got shot at, put all his trust in a criminal, and had a gun shoved against his head.
But seeing Drake shot dead had shaken him. It could easily have been Leila. And it was Faris’s fault any of this was happening. He’d driven them down this path, forcing them to blindly dive into one danger after the other. And for what?
Xander was ready to pack up and keep moving. He was ready to find Soliman. He was ready to kill Faris.
His gaze wandered over to Leila, who sat at the edge of the cave, her arms wrapped around her knees. He studied her face—the gentle curve of her nose, the angle of her eyebrows, the dip on her cheek where her lips ended. Features he’d burned into his memory. She stared into the desert, and he knew her thoughts, like his, were still in the smuggler’s tunnel.
I can’t let her go alone.
He resisted the urge to scoot over and sit next to her. To wrap his arms around her. To tell her everything would be okay. But he wasn’t going to lie anymore. He wouldn’t make any more promises he wasn’t sure he could keep. Besides, she didn’t really seem to want to talk.
Her attention was focused on a small wooden box in her hands. Covered in hieroglyphics, the paint faded, it looked old. Very old.
That little fox… she nicked it from the archive.
“You okay?” he ventured to ask. It was time to get going. As much as he’d like to, they couldn’t sit there all day if they were going to get a ride to Athens any time this week. They might already be too late and would end up stuck here, waiting for the next opportunity.
Leila nodded, her eyes downcast. She turned the box around. “She and Soliman were… you know, a thing.”
Drake? And Soliman? He knitted his eyebrows together. “You joking?”
“No.”
Xander frowned. That was weird. Drake was probably a couple decades younger than the professor. No wonder Soliman never said anything about being in a relationship. But now it made sense why Drake had been so determined to find him.
Xander remembered the feeling all too well when he thought he’d lost Leila. He did everything he could to find her, nearly getting himself thrown into prison for getting in the detective’s way.
As if it were yesterday, he remembered the crippling fear that she was dead. That she’d be killed. And the promise he made to himself to never let anything like that happen again. And he wouldn’t. Not if he could help it.
He crumpled his granola bar wrapper and shoved it into his pocket. “Ready?”
“For what?”
“We need to reach Eilat before it gets too late. We have a long way to Greece from there.”
She mouthed his words and a look of disbelief spread over her face. “You mean… you’re coming with me?”
He stood and held out a hand to her. “Yeah.”
Slowly, she took his hand, and he pulled her to her feet.
“You’re not going to Sri Lanka?”
“Sri Lanka can wait. First, we need to save your mum, your brother, and Soliman… and London.”
A smile tugged at the corners of her lips.
On instinct, he leaned in toward her. Before their lips could touch, he stopped and hovered just inches away. If he kissed her right now, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to stop. It would be a terrible idea.
“So,” he whispered instead, “are you ready?”
“Yeah,” she breathed.
He stepped away and picked up the backpack, holding it open while Leila put the box into an empty freezer bag she’d found in the backpack. As she slipped the bag into one of the inside pockets, he caught a glimpse of her confused expression—which vanished as soon as she zipped up the backpack. They both rolled up the blankets, strapped them onto the outside of the pack, and started on their way.
