Page 33 of Sweet Betrayal

His eyes narrowed. “When?”

She checked again. “Three p.m.”

He checked his watch. “We’ve got until fifteen hundred to reach the base. After that, visibility will drop, and we’ll be forced to take cover. We won’t be able to move for a while.”

Hannah felt her throat tighten. “That doesn’t leave us much time.”

He folded the paper and tossed it back onto the stack. “No, we’d better up the pace.”

They set off, faster than before, but still not rushing. Still not drawing attention to themselves. Hannah noticed that Tom didn’t even take the most direct route to the southern highway. Instead, they zigzagged through town, merging with other people, acting as normally as possible.

They didn’t talk much. He issued instructions on which way to go and when to stay in the shadows, but apart from that, heremained silent. That suited her. She was still trying to get her head around the fact that she was a walking memory stick of information, vital to ending this war.

They’d just turned into a short road bustling with pedestrians when Tom gripped her arm.

“Watch out!”

A group of men sprinted past, rifles slung across their backs, bandanas tied around their faces. They looked like rebels. A few seconds later, another group followed—grim-faced, underdressed, and armed. The tension in the air thickened.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Protest rally.”

They slowed as they neared a wide, circular square, where two main roads converged in a chaotic knot of foot traffic. The area had once been designed for leisure. There were ornamental palms, benches, contemporary glass façades set beside centuries-old stone buildings. But now it swarmed with people. Angry civilians and armed rebels, their banners waving, fists raised.

It was chaos.

Hannah flinched violently, as a gunshot cracked the sky. Someone else yelled an anti-government slogan, and soon a group of them were chanting it, waving their guns in the air.

Then came the scream behind them.

They both turned in unison.

A woman had fallen. Two large men in dark uniforms stood over her, grabbing her arms to pull her to her feet. Definitely not locals. It was then she noticed the woman was a westerner and had blond hair. Her stomach flipped.

“Oh my God, it’s Abdul Anwar’s men,” she cried.

Tom didn’t even look. “Don’t make eye contact,” he snapped, but it was already too late. One of the men had seen her and raised his hand to an earpiece.

She reached blindly for Tom, clutching his shirt. “What do we do?”

“We’re going in.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her straight into the crowd. “We’ll lose them in the rally.”

Bullets peppered the wall beside them with a sickening rattle, shards of stone and paint exploding around them.

“They’re shooting at us!” She was living a nightmare. The whole thing seemed totally surreal.

But Tom’s grip on her hand was iron. “Keep going. A moving target is harder to hit.”

The crowd swallowed them. He moved with brutal precision, zigzagging through bodies, dodging elbows, leaping over curbs. His focus was absolute. She tried to keep up, her breath burning in her lungs.

The protesters grew thicker by the step until there were hundreds around them, maybe more. Mostly men, packed shoulder to shoulder. Everybody had guns, and the chanting roared in her ears.

“Free Syman!” over and over, rising in intensity.

“We’re safer inside it than outside,” Tom shouted over the din. “They won’t fire into the mob.”

She couldn’t see the two men anymore, there were too many bodies crushing around her, but she felt the danger pressing in from every side.

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