The Asset: Act II by Mark Dawson

Author:Mark Dawson
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781503938199
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2016-06-21T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Three

Aqil took Isabella to another room in the hotel. Aabidah came with them, and there was no chance for Isabella to try to engage him in conversation. The room was plain and simple, with a desk and a bed. Isabella went over to the window and looked out. They were several floors up, with a view that offered a vista of the city. She saw more buildings that had been flattened, pyres of smoke that issued into the dusky sky and, below her, vehicles running in both directions and the bus that they had arrived in, still parked at the side of the road.

Aabidah spoke to Aqil and left him alone with Isabella. They stood in awkward silence for ten minutes. Isabella took the opportunity to try the window. It was locked. It didn’t matter; even if she had been able to open it, there would have been no way she could have escaped through it.

“Don’t,” Aqil said. His tone was nervous and uncertain.

Isabella turned to him. He was at the door, his body turned a quarter toward it as if his anxiety was split between the prospect of Aabidah’s return to find him talking to Isabella, and of Isabella herself.

“Come on,” she said. “Help me.”

“Please, Daisy. Don’t.”

“You need to get me out of here,” she insisted.

“I can’t,” he said. “What can I do?”

“Give me that”—she pointed at the AK—“and get out of my way.”

He shook his head and laughed nervously at her suggestion. “Don’t be crazy. They’d kill me. And how far would you get? You’re in the middle of the city. Did you look out the window?”

“Come with me, then,” she said. “Help me.”

She saw the confusion on the young man’s face. She could see that her snap impression of him had been accurate: he didn’t want to be here any more than she did. It was the first real reason for optimism that she had found since she had been brought here.

She was about to persevere with him when the door was pushed open and the veiled Aabidah returned.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“I was just about to . . .” Aqil started, the words trailing away as the woman bustled by him and came right up to Isabella.

“Put your niqab back on.”

Aabidah was just inches away from her. The woman was a similar height to Isabella, but that was all that she could say with certainty. What she looked like, her build, most of her body language—they were all hidden by the concealing garments.

Isabella paused, balanced on the fulcrum of a decision: make her move now, or wait for something better. The fact that the woman was so close to Isabella gave her confidence. Her Krav Maga instructor had taught her several techniques that would have served her purpose; the fighting style was driven by the tactic of disabling one’s opponent as quickly as possible, and a straight-fingered jab into her throat or an elbow into her face would have done the job very well. Aqil was craven, and she didn’t expect that he would put up any resistance either.

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