Escaping Christian

5: Responsibility

And an hour and a half later, only fifteen minutes from Ismailia, Chelsea decided to finally speak, "I need my necklace back."

He handed it over without a word and she swiftly clipped it back on. She lifted her foot onto the edge of the seat and he watched her unclip a silver anklet. Clever girl.

"You got money for this journey?"

Shaking his head, he grumbled, "Not enough. But we won't need it."

"Because you're going to compel him to forget he ever drove us here, right?" She supplied quietly, glaring at him. "You're despicable, do you know that?"

He rubbed a hand over his bare face – God he hated being without facial hair. "I'll give him something but we'll need the money more later." His voice was barely a whisper. "I only have one hundred and twenty US and four hundred pound."

"Why have you got US?"

"It's worth more here than Canadian."

"I've only got six hundred pounds." She sighed. "I don't agree with us not giving him anything."

"Tough." He grunted. "We need it later not now."

The city came into view and the driver asked where they wanted to be dropped off. "Keep going to El-Qantara."

The driver glared at him through the mirror and Chelsea eyed him suspiciously. "That's further up the coast."

"I said Ismailia in case Feisal heard. We're going to El Qantara and we're making our own way from there."

**

Half hour later, Christian asked the driver to stop near the bridge, compelled the guy to forget and handed over two hundred when Chelsea smacked his arm claiming how unfair it was for him to drive so far with no pay blah, blah, blah.

The heat wasn't unbearable but around four o'clock it would be. They didn't have any time to waste at this point so they had to keep moving. He moved his bag off his shoulder to pull out a baseball cap.

"Now what?"

Stepping in front of her, he placed it on her head and said, "Now we move forward."

Her eyes narrowed. "Kate and Cal..."

"If she saw us, they would be here, waiting for us or at least making their appearance around now, but they haven't. So we have to keep moving."

He saw her tell-tale signs of anger, the tick to the brow, the twitch to her mouth. "No."

"What are you going to do, stay here? Wait for those men to catch up with us? Fine." Tightening the back strap to her head, she narrowed her eyes further. "You can if you want, but I'm heading out. Katherine isn't an idiot and neither is Callum plus they have a car. They're probably ahead of us already. They'll meet my contact before us."

"How?" She demanded pushing his hands away. "She doesn't know where we're going for crying out loud."

"We're going to the city, Arish, a hotel there called the Swiss Inn on the beach. Now she knows. But plans have changed. We were supposed to meet him there tonight, I have to contact him and tell him about them so he knows they'll be getting there first. It'll probably take us three, four days tops to get there without any transportation. We have to find somewhere to stay tonight across the bridge."

And with those words he turned east and headed across the bridge leaving her to gather her backpack and catch up.

It was almost at the hottest point of the day and there wasn't one cloud in the sky. There was no way for them to have any respite from the sun or heat especially when they were about to walk into the desert. He was thankful for the small gusts of wind that would hit them whenever a car would pass. And with the way Chelsea stomped on behind him, he hoped she appreciated it too. He felt like an idiot for forgetting to bring any bottles of water.