He’d brought her people to Turkey in exchange for his freedom. He’d held up his end of the bargain.
It was time for Layah to honor hers.
Chapter 12
Layah drifted in and out of sleep, plagued by strange dreams.
Some were a pleasant rehash of her encounter with Hudson. One involved the peacock ceremony, but they were alone together. She knelt in front of the statue while he painted her naked body with a feather.
Others were nightmares involving the Da’esh. They were chasing her around the ruins, threatening to chop off her head. She ran to the edge of a cliff and jumped, plummeting to the raging river below. Then she was inside the crevasse again, trapped underneath the glacier. Frozen in ice.
She woke with a gasp, her hand over her heart. Ashur slept peacefully beside her. Daylight filtered into the tent.
She emerged from the space and found her cousins sitting with Hudson. She flushed at the sight of him, but he didn’t seem fazed in the least. Perhaps he exchanged intimate acts with women as casually as he paid for a cup of coffee.
Yusef and Aram were arguing about who had misplaced the tea, ignoring her. She breathed a sigh of relief as she joined them for breakfast. Her cousins hadn’t overheard anything last night. They’d both been too busy with their own wives to worry about what Layah was doing with Hudson.
William.
She banished his Christian name from her thoughts. She couldn’t call him that in front of the others. The two of them might never have another opportunity to be alone together. They might never share a bed like husband and wife.
She didn’t blame him for rejecting the sheikh’s offer. She would have done the same. She wasn’t so desperate that she needed to trap a man into marriage. She’d been happy with Khalil. She knew how it felt to be truly loved. She would not sully her husband’s memory with a sham wedding to a reluctant partner.
Hudson desired her, obviously. He did not love her. He would return to America, and she would carry on in Armenia.
She felt a pang of sorrow at the thought. She had to start over. She could never go home again, and she could never go back to the way things were. Sharing a piece of herself with Hudson had altered her course forever. It would be him she pined for now, instead of Khalil.
They shared a breakfast of almonds and raisins as the sun climbed over the horizon. Layah changed out of her Yazidi skirt, donning still-damp underwear and pants. Then they packed up and headed away from Halana. Layah glanced over her shoulder at the ruins before they disappeared. She was glad to have visited the site, even though it had sustained damage. She’d always wanted to see the ancient dwellings of her ancestors. Maybe she could return someday for a real vacation.
They walked down into a valley and continued their descent. The river, on their right, flowed into a deep gorge. Danger awaited on both sides, but she didn’t want to cross it until they had no other choice. They needed to find a shallow section, because she wasn’t a strong swimmer. Oshana and Nina couldn’t swim at all.
Around noon, they reached the top of a plateau. The river was thirty or forty meters below, at the base of a sheer cliff. It was even warmer than she’d predicted. The sun beat down on her head and sweat trickled between her breasts. She wished for a shady tree to rest under.
“Stop,” Hudson said.
She froze beside him, searching the horizon. There were dark shapes kicking up a cloud of dust in the distance.
“Those are men on horseback,” Yusef said.
She translated for Hudson.
“What kind of men? Da’esh invaders?”
“I don’t know. They could also be Turkish military or Kurdish rebels.”
Hudson studied their surroundings, his brow furrowed. The cliff side was too steep to navigate without ropes. A cluster of boulders nearby would shield them from view, but only for a few moments. On the wide plateau, there were no hiding places. “Do you want to climb down or surrender?”
“Climb,” she said, without hesitation. She didn’t have to ask Ashur or her cousins. They were already scrambling for the equipment in their packs. They’d left the harnesses behind, but they still had rope and some other random gear. Hudson placed an anchor in the underside of a boulder and threaded the rope through it. Then he doubled the rope into two lines. That was the extent of the safety protection.
“Is the rope long enough?” she asked.
“It’s long enough. Hold both ropes and don’t let go.”
“I understand.”
“We’ll climb three at a time. You and Ashur come after me. Then Yusef and the girls. Aram will go last.”
She translated for everyone. Aram nodded his agreement. He grabbed the rifle and got down on his belly behind the boulder, guarding their escape. The horsemen were getting closer, but they hadn’t picked up speed.
“They haven’t seen us,” Layah said.
“With any luck, they never will,” Hudson replied. Then he went over the side of the cliff. She studied his technique, which was similar to the fixed-rope climb. He braced his boots on the rock face and descended in confident motions.
No problem, she told herself. Just don’t let go. And don’t look down.
She took a deep breath and followed him over the edge. It was terrifying, but doable. She focused on holding both ropes in a tight grip and working her way down, hand over hand. About halfway down the cliff, Ashur caught up to her. She tried to climb faster, aware that their time was limited. Her upper body didn’t have the strength for the task. Her biceps quivered from exertion and
