Lilah waited a moment, letting his words not only sink into her mind but to plant roots and develop. It was something her uncle had taught her as a young child. Her temperament was naturally reactive, and Sheikh Desi had taught her that a considered response always succeeded better than a rash reaction.
When she spoke, her voice was level. “You’re saying that Abdim is a member of the UAC?”
“Yes.” He pressed onto the accelerator and took the car inside the tunnel with relief.
“No.” It was Lilah’s turn to laugh now. “That’s madness. He’s a decent man. I have spoken to him at length. There’s no way …”
“Believe me, he is what I say.”
“Oh, because you are some kind of expert in such matters?”
He didn’t respond at first. Images flashed before him as if they were taking place in that moment. The explosion. The captives. The questioning. The threats. The hiding. The feeling that he was on the run and would be forever. “Yes.”
“Why?” She muttered, her voice thick with rich sarcasm. “What do you know of our people and our wars? What do you know of the threats that we face?”
“Enough.” He overtook a cement truck and then weaved back into his lane. “You were in danger. You’re not now.”
“That is a matter of perspective,” she chipped arrogantly, crossing her legs and arms in a gesture of complete discomfort.
He noted it with a wry smile on her face. His jawline was so chiseled it was almost square. “Your brother agrees with me.”
“And that is the only reason I’m here.”
The car emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel and Lilah let out a breath she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding. “So why do you suspect this then?”
“I don’t suspect it. I know it. Are you always this curious?” He flicked the indicator on, keeping the car in the centre of a busy main road.
“Me, curious?” She retorted, shooting him a look of surprise. “You don’t think I have a right to be? You’re the one who had me leaping off a building because of some ridiculous, half-baked, fantastical theory.”
“If I were a wagering man, I would bet you all that I own that you’re friend Abdim is a soldier of the UAC.”
“He is not my friend. He is my servant.”
Will hid his laugh behind a cough. “Of course, your highness.”
She wanted to ask him why he was so scathing but she didn’t. It mattered far more to Lilah to ascertain just why he’d affected such a dramatic escape from the building. “Tell me your facts. Tell me how you know.”
His hands gripped the steering wheel and he pretended for a moment that he hadn’t driven these roads a thousand times. He squinted at the overhead signs to ward off the bubble of panic that was making it difficult to breathe evenly. “He had a tattoo on his wrist,” he said finally. “I recognised it.”
“A tattoo?” She frowned. “I’ve never …”
“It was faded. He’d had it lasered, I guess.”
She nodded, but her mind was shuddering to a worrying conclusion. “You kidnapped me and worried my brother all because some good, law-abiding man got a tattoo that he lat
er regretted and tried to remove?”
“One does not simply …” He shook his head with frustration. “I saw the tattoo and acted on instinct. Believe me, I’m starting to wish I’d kept my mouth shut.”
“That makes two of us,” she agreed, clamping her mouth shut and glaring straight ahead. A fulminating silence filled the vehicle. He drove fast but he drove well.
“Where are you taking me?” She asked after almost twenty minutes of sullen quiet.
“I told you, somewhere safe.”
“Yes,” she feigned patience. “But where?”
Will couldn’t tell her. This woman had grown up in the same luxurious manner Ki had. If she knew he was planning to take her to a tiny cabin in the middle of the woods with flickering electricity and patchy running water he had no doubt she’d leap from the moving vehicle.