Chapter 14 #2
He moved rapidly down the corridor, his shoes making no sound on the tiled floor, and slapped his hand over her mouth, pulling her towards him before she had a chance to react. She struggled and he murmured, “It’s Darius. Hold still.”
Her body relaxed and he pulled her into the nearest bedroom. Two beds, and two children sitting upright, but silent. Keeping his voice low, he said, “I know the man with Hamza. He will kill at the slightest provocation. You need to listen to me.”
Dalia nodded and Heath removed his hand.
“What are you doing here?”
He shook his head. “Later. You need to get the children out of here. Stay away from the front door. Hide in the garden.” He opened the window, thankful it was of a style that would allow them to climb out.
“Nasir,” Dalia whispered her son’s name and pointed to the left.
“I’ll get him.” Heath glanced towards the door. Hamza wouldn’t take long to get ready.
The girls were already climbing out of the window. Heath opened the door and heard Hamza asking where in Iran the witch wanted to go.
One glance down the corridor revealed that a teenaged boy was almost at the entrance to the kitchen.
Heath swore under his breath and checked Dalia had left with the girls. There was no way of warning Nasir in time, not without making a noise that would alert the witch.
He had to try.
Heath ran towards the boy, just as Nasir stepped into the kitchen. “I’ll go.”
Heath ducked next to the door out of sight as Nasir moved further into the room.
“Nasir, no,” Hamza said, pain in his voice.
“Who do we have here?” the witch asked.
“Go back to bed,” Hamza said.
Heath needed eyes on the room to see where everyone was. He had a knife to the witch’s gun, and the man would shoot first.
“Can you fly a plane?” The witch sounded curious.
“Yes,” Nasir replied. “I’ve been flying for a year.”
“Interesting. I felt like your father was delaying me. You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“No, sir.” A tremble in the boy’s voice, as if he’d suddenly realised how dangerous the witch was.
“I’m ready,” Hamza said, his voice getting closer. “Let’s go.”
A shot. Nasir’s cry. Something large crashing to the floor.
Heath gritted his teeth and stayed where he was.
“Move!” the witch snarled.
Nasir stumbled out of the kitchen, face pale, tears streaming down his face. He didn’t notice Heath as he moved down the corridor.
Then the witch stepped out, gun still raised and pointing at the boy.
Heath dove at him, grabbing the hand with the gun and pointing it away as he quickly disarmed the man.
He kept his fury at bay as he hit him twice, knocking him unconscious. Nasir yelled in fright.
Heath followed the witch to the ground, pulling his arms behind his back. “Nasir, get me some rope, or something to tie him up with,” Heath said.
The boy stared at him.
“Now!” Heath barked.
Nasir jumped and ran into a nearby room. Heath used the charging cord from his mobile on the witch’s hands and then the cord Nasir brought him on the witch’s feet.
“Who are you?”
“A friend. Your mother and sisters are outside.” Heath dragged the man back into the kitchen so he could keep an eye on him. Hamza lay on the floor, blood pooling out of his shoulder. His eyes flickered.
Still alive.
Heath squatted next to him and applied pressure to the wound. “Get me towels or bandages and call an ambulance.”
Nasir squatted next to him. “He’s alive?” Hope and tears in his tone.
“Just. He needs help fast.”
Nasir blinked and ran across the room to where a phone was charging on the bench. He threw a couple of tea towels at Heath while he called the emergency services.
“Darius?” Hamza croaked.
“Save your breath,” Heath said. “You can ask your questions later.” There was a lot of blood, but the actual bullet hole was near his shoulder, and hopefully missed anything vital.
“You’re lucky.” Perhaps he’d dived out of the way at the last minute, and the witch was in too much of a hurry to finish him off.
“Ambulance and police are on their way,” Nasir reported as he handed Heath a first aid kit.
Heath couldn’t be here when the police arrived. There’d be more delays and the witch might have friends in powerful places. “Call your mother inside.”
He found a bandage and helped Hamza to a seated position. Nearby the witch stirred.
Quickly Heath cut Hamza’s shirt off him and bandaged the wound. Dalia gasped as she brought her daughters into the room.
“He’s going to be all right,” Heath assured her. He moved over to the witch to ensure he had no other weapons on him and stared down at him.
No sense of satisfaction now he’d finally caught the man. He was numb. He’d stopped the witch from hurting another family, but how many people had he hurt over the decades?
Would he even remember Heath’s family in a long line of his horrific actions?
It didn’t matter. He needed to get back to Zoe and make sure she was safe.
“You’re making a mistake,” the witch said.
Heath glanced at him, his expression hard. “My only mistake was not tracking you down sooner. It’s time you paid for all those you’ve killed and raped.”
The man’s eyes widened, but he said nothing else.
Heath checked the man’s restraints. “This man blew up the airport,” he told Dalia. “Make sure you tell the police.”
“What are you doing here?” Dalia asked.
He chuckled. “Same thing as this guy. I need a flight out of the country. They were trying to pin the bombings on me.”
“He’s lying,” the witch said. “He did bomb the airport.”
Dalia kicked him. “We know this man. He would never do such a thing.”
Heath drew the family away from the witch and lowered his voice. “The authorities will want to take me in for questioning, but I have someone I need to protect, someone who needs to get home.”
“I will take you wherever you want to go,” Hamza said.
Heath shook his head. “You need to have your wound seen to,” he said. “I need to get across the border.”
Hamza beamed at him. “Nasir will fly you, my friend.”
***
Heath disappeared over the wall like it was a waist-high fence, not a bigger than he was brick structure, and for the first time in hours Zoe was alone.
In the dark.
In a completely foreign country, in a town she knew nothing about.
If something happened to Heath…
She shoved away her worry for herself and for him. Heath was amazing at his job. He would be fine.
Still she strained to hear any sounds of what was going on, but the night was still. She shifted out of her crouch and sat, hugging her knees to her chest and her back close as she could to the shrubby tree. At least it gave her cover if someone came along.
Zoe scanned what she could see of the street, but there was no movement.
What if Heath’s contact wasn’t a friend, and double-crossed Heath?
She slapped down her panic and yawned, placing her hand over her mouth to muffle the noise. The brief nap she’d had in the car only made her yearn for a bed even more.
How long had Heath been gone? It felt like an eternity. Heath might be outnumbered. He might not be able to get free.
How long should she wait before she tried to rescue him?
A faint bang in the night’s air, which Zoe would have missed if she hadn’t been listening so carefully. She stiffened, leaning forward to hear more, and kept her gaze on the wall Heath had gone over.
What was going on?
She looked around in case Heath was returning from another direction, but the street was still empty.
Not long after she heard the faint sound of sirens in the distance, but they were coming closer.
Had Heath been caught?
Or worse, injured?
She wasn’t familiar with the sirens they used for emergency services here, and it almost sounded like there were two, intermingled.
Where was Heath?
Worry intensified, prickling her skin, and she got to her feet as a figure appeared at the top of the wall. She shrank back against the tree.
Definitely not Heath. This figure was scrambling as if they’d never climbed a wall before. They dangled from the top before dropping the short distance to the ground with a grunt.
Too slim to be Heath and the way the person moved made her think they were young.
Another figure appeared, this one almost springing over the wall.
She let out a sigh of relief.
Heath.
He clapped the first figure on the back and then jogged over to the tree. Zoe stepped out and hugged him. “Are you OK? How did it go? What are the sirens for?”
He chuckled. “Yes, fine, the reason we need to get moving.” He took her hand and moved them towards the car. “This is Nasir. He’s going to fly us out of here.”
She glanced at the other figure but couldn’t make out his features. It wasn’t until they got into the car, and the light switched on, that she saw Nasir was a teenager.
He was going to fly them? Was he old enough to even have a pilot’s licence?
Nasir got into the back seat, and Heath drove away from the house and the incoming sirens.
“Will my dad really be all right?” Nasir asked, his concern clear.
“Yeah. The bleeding stopped when I applied pressure.”
“What happened?” Zoe asked in Arabic.
“The witch turned up looking for a flight.”
She gasped.
“Nasir’s father was shot, but he’s all right. The witch is tied up.”
“He was shot because of me,” Nasir said.
Heath shook his head. “The man would have killed your father when they arrived in Iran.”
Nasir glanced at him. “But why?”
Zoe’s heart went out to him. He was losing his innocence as well.
“Because he doesn’t like to leave witnesses,” Heath told him. “Why did you go in there?”
“I wanted to help.” The words were slightly defiant.
Zoe was missing part of the story, but she’d ask Heath about it later. Right now she wanted to keep Nasir on their side. “How long have you been flying?”
“Dad started training me not long after we met Darius. He wanted to turn the business into a legitimate family business, and I love to fly.” He shifted in his seat and pointed. “Turn down there.”
Heath followed his directions as they turned into a street near the airport. “Are people going to question why you’re flying out at this time of night? I don’t want to get you into trouble.”
“We’ve got a flight today,” Nasir answered. “I’ll just tell them I want to arrive early so I can do some shopping for the family.” He pointed to a gate. “Park there.”
It would be pretty early for shopping, but Zoe had no idea where they would be landing. Perhaps it was somewhere with early morning markets.
Heath switched the internal lights off, and they got out. Nasir took them through a locked gate and over to a very small plane. Zoe’s pulse hitched, and she pressed her lips together to stop herself from questioning it. Heath knew what he was doing.
“There’s only one spare seat, so someone is going to need to sit in the back,” Nasir said.
“I will. Zoe can be in the front.”
Nasir nodded. “Both of you get in the back for now. I need to get the plane ready and file the paperwork. I’ll be about half an hour.”
Zoe climbed into the back of the small plane.
The two doors opened outwards and left a large space for freight.
Heath joined her and Nasir shut the door again, and then went around the plane, untying it, removing chocks and running through all sorts of manual checks she didn’t understand.
At least he seemed to know what he was doing.
She turned her attention to Heath. “Why do we need to fly out if the witch has been caught?”
“The officials could delay us for weeks while they investigate,” Heath said.
“We don’t know what contacts the witch has here.
He may get away with it, though the team is pulling on all their contacts to send the government the information we have on the witch.
At a minimum, he should see some gaol time for shooting Hamza. ”
“So we need to keep moving in case they want to arrest us?”
Heath nodded. “We’re heading to Pakistan from here. I’ve got contacts there who will leave a car at the airport for us.”
“Can this plane actually fly that far?”
Heath nodded. “It’s a twin engine, so it doesn’t have to hug the coastline and Nasir will be able to fill up with fuel because there’s not much weight going out. He’ll refuel in Pakistan.”
Zoe didn’t know anything about flying. She scootched closer to Heath, needing to be nearer to him. He slipped his arm around her shoulders.
“How are you holding up?”
She shook her head. “This is all going to seem like a crazy dream when we get home.”
“I hope not all of it is bad.”
“Not all of it.” Zoe smiled as she glanced at him. “I’m glad I met you.”
“Likewise. You’re incredible, Zoe. Most people would have fallen apart by now.”
Zoe chuckled. “I’m not going to lie, I’ll probably sleep for a week when we finally get somewhere safe.”
He nodded. “See if you can sleep on the journey to Pakistan. I need to check flights home from there, but we’ll probably have to drive to Karachi to get an international flight.”
“How long will that take?”
“Eight or nine hours.”
Her whole body slumped. It would be another day before she could truly stop looking over her shoulder or waiting for someone to stop and arrest them. “Are you going to be OK to drive? You haven’t slept at all.”
“I’ll get a couple of hours now as well. That’s all I need.”
She shook her head. “You’re the incredible one. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Practice and training.” He kissed the side of her head. “You’ll be safe soon.”
She snuggled closer. The casual affection from him seemed normal, almost as if they’d been a couple for years rather than strangers who’d just met.
She didn’t question it.
She felt safe now.