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Rowena, her skin slick with sweat that glued her to his chest.

Despite that perfect predicament something felt very wrong.

He wished to hell he could see her, but the candle had burned out. He wished they could spend the night lazing in bed, but something had made him wake up, and he never ignored his instincts.

“Row.” He stroked her arm and murmured in her ear.

“Um.”

She was obviously still asleep, and he wished he could leave her that way.

“Row,” he urged.

She moaned and stretched against him. Christ, he hadn’t been this horny since he’d been a teen, and he felt vaguely ashamed that it was because of someone who was so goddamned young. But something told him playtime was over.

Everything inside him clamored it was time to go.

He eased away and got up, carefully checking outside without moving the drapes.

No one visible in the darkness, but the niggle at the base of his skull told him to get moving.

He lit a candle. It wouldn’t be enough to be seen from outside but would give him enough light to do what he needed.

He sat at the end of the bed and dressed.

Rowena sat up, groggy. Sank her hand into her hair that had come loose from its braid. “What is it?”

“We need to get going.”

“What time is it?”

“Early.”

“Can I grab a shower?”

Her words brought back the image of them engaged in shower sex, and he wished with all his heart they were normal people on vacation with only an age difference for him to worry about.

“No. We have to move now.”

“Okay.”

No argument or pouting. She headed to the bathroom, wearing only the pieces of red string that made up those ridiculous, sexy panties, and he started going through the bags, taking only what they would absolutely need.

He placed clothes for her to wear on the bed. Put another pair of clean underwear and socks in his rucksack. He pulled out some of his clothes, jettisoning anything that wasn’t essential. He had plenty of clothes back home.

They’d need to carry water and food.

The red lace number went with the bag of things he planned to ditch before leaving the hotel, which was a damned shame.

Red was also the color of blood and a good reminder of the stakes.

Rowena came back into the room minus the panties, and he tried not to be affected by her nakedness.

A bit like asking a starving man not to look at the buffet table.

Silently, she pulled on the underwear, jeans, T-shirt, and a fleece similar to his. He handed her the black ball cap. He’d packed the woolen hats should they need them later. He stuffed her raincoat inside his pack and pulled it onto his back.

“Ready?” he whispered, uncertain as to why he was suddenly so on edge.

She grabbed her big purse and nodded. Her eyes looked anxious. Mouth drawn tight.

He didn’t mean to worry her, but if he was right, they were in deep shit. They needed to keep moving. If he was wrong, he’d look like a nervous jackass, and he was fine with that.

He gathered all the bags they were leaving behind and went to the door.

He checked the peephole, and all was clear.

Everything seemed quiet and appeared normal.

It didn’t matter. He went instead to the French doors, eased through the drapes, and unlocked the doors, opening one quietly because noise traveled at night.

He wished he had a firearm. He felt naked without one.

He stepped outside and paused for a moment, absorbing the quality of the night. Frogs sang their chorus. He couldn’t hear anything unusual.

Rowena joined him, and he gently eased the door closed.

This was not the time to make foolish mistakes.

He touched her lips with his finger so she knew to be quiet. She nodded, and he took her hand as they began making their way around the front of the resort and up to the main road.

He headed back to the garage and spotted their vehicle outside the doors, new tire already fitted.

He saved his anger—the mechanic had either unexpectedly found time to fix it last night or had wanted to boost the number of guests staying at the resort because his wife’s livelihood depended on it.

Kurt ignored the frustration that they could have already been in Mozambique by now. No point wasting energy. They’d needed the rest anyway. And if they hadn’t stopped here, he may never have gotten to make love with Rowena .

But that wasn’t worth the risk of her being detained.

He dropped the bags of things they didn’t need any more into a dumpster at the side of the garage.

He found the car unlocked, key in the ignition. He put the rucksack on the back seat. Pulled out a little so Rowena had enough space to climb in.

He rolled down the window and thought he heard a car engine in the distance. She twisted in the seat. She heard it too. He drove off slowly up the road, past the entrance to the resort and then off the main road into something that looked like a fish hatchery.

He turned off the lights and ducked down as headlights from two vehicles swept into the driveway of the hotel behind them.

Two big, black SUVs.

Shit.

He started the engine again, and they set off, leaving the headlights off for as long as he could. But the sun hadn’t risen, and he couldn’t risk crashing or hitting another giant pothole in the pitch black.

What he wouldn’t do for a pair of NVGs and his trusty SIG Sauer.

“Those vehicles look like the one I saw at Anders’ place yesterday morning.” Rowena’s voice was soft in the darkness.

He nodded, unsurprised.

“They might not be looking for us.” She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself.

“In which case, no one will care that we left already.”

“But you think they are after us, don’t you?” Her voice was sharper now, all traces of sleepiness gone.

He gave her a curt nod.

“How did you know?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t.”

“I would have still been sleeping. What woke you?”

He wasn’t about to suggest he had a sixth sense about these things, but it wasn’t wise to ignore instincts that had been honed over decades.

“I put myself in their shoes. Assuming they’re after me and not you, assuming they were monitoring my cell, it would niggle at them—where did that last ping come from?

They’d see I’m headed east—or at least my cell signal was.

Then, perhaps at first, they think it’s a glitch, and then someone checks some of the surveillance cameras around the airport, as they are bound to do after a plane crash, and sees someone who looks very much like me hopping over a security fence.

“Hello, ready-made terrorist suspect when and if the authorities declare it a bomb rather than an accident.”

“Or they picked up my uncle’s vehicle outside the murder scene and used street cameras to follow me through the city and determined which road I left on.”

He nodded, but he didn’t think the cops would be as motivated to solve Bjorn’s murder as whoever was capable of bringing down a plane full of people just to stop him getting back to the States.

“From there they start working gas stations, hotels, and rest stops.”

“Halfway House,” she murmured. “That was my fault. Sorry.”

“No. Not your fault. I didn’t realize at that point how high this thing might go. What the implications were.” He glanced through the night sky and wondered how many of Gilder’s satellites were watching them right now.

Would the FBI believe he was dead? Why not? Unless he could contact the authorities, they’d never know he’d survived the crash. Hopefully, once the letters arrived the truth would come out for sure, but that could be months away.

He ached for his fellow FBI agents and most especially for his daughter. They’d all been through too much already.

The FBI would send a team to help investigate the crash, but how much access would they really have, and how much of the crash scene would be staged to look like whatever the bad guys wanted it to look like?

This assumed the government, or at least someone powerful within the government, was complicit in the crash.

But Leo Spartan was the ambassador to the UN with plenty of friends in high places.

What did those four men—Nolan Gilder, Leo Spartan, Darmawan Hurek, and Dougie Cavanagh—have in common? What secrets were they trying to hide?

Had Cavanagh been murdered to keep him quiet?

Had Rowena’s mother?

What had Bjorn known, and why hadn’t he told him? Why give him Cavanagh’s name unless Kurt had managed to rattle him?

Thinking back on that press conference about the new factory, which would be a lifeline for many struggling Zimbabweans, chances were the government would protect the billionaire before they’d protect their relationship with the US.

It was the perfect bribe from one of the richest people on the planet.

However, it was one thing for government officials to look the other way and ignore the fact someone had tried to murder a serving FBI agent.

It was quite another to actively help kill an FBI agent.

That could be considered an act of war, and the US was not someone you fucked around without finding out payback was a bitch.

“Hang on.” He pressed his foot to the accelerator as fast as he dared under these conditions. He was risking another flat, but the people behind them had muscular SUVs that would eat up these roads, and they were probably armed.

“Get the map book out of my pack and find a road that gets us as close to the Gairezi River as possible. We need to get off this highway ASAP.”

Rowena fumbled for the map book and had to turn on the light to see .

He called out markers until she found where they were on the page. They passed a business center. A primary school.

“Here. Take this right.”

“Hold on.”

She grabbed the handle above her head as he took the turn and immediately hit a dirt road. He slowed down. He had to.