The Ides of July // Loki - Book 1 ✓

Chapter 3: Exposed

LESS THAN twenty minutes later, Anna steps out of the cab and hands the driver twenty lira. She waves away the change and turns to look up at the restaurant.

She's meeting with a Syrian refugee going by the name Rifat after connecting with him via Twitter following the escalation of the Syrian conflict over the last few months. Rifat was a general in the Syrian army, and he is one of 85 who soldiers who defected to Turkey at the beginning of the month. Bashaar al-Assad's forces downed a Turkish military fighter jet in the previous weeks, and her contact claimed to have intelligence on the state of al-Assad's regime.

Entering the restaurant, Anna climbs the stairs to the upper terrace and spots a middle-aged man nodding her over.

"Rifat?"

He nods again, gesturing for her to sit. A waiter quickly follows, and Rifat orders two Turkish coffees for them. The waiter hurries away, only to return quickly with two tiny cups of the rich black liquid and a dish of sugar cubes, which Rifat offers her.

"Az şekerli," she tells him, meaning 'little sugar', and he drops a single sugar cube in her coffee for her. She smiles, letting the sugar dissolve.

"Thank you for meeting with me," Rifat tells her in accented English. His voice is deep and rough, and the discerning look in his weathered eyes tells her that he is incredibly intelligent. After all, he was a well-respected general in the Syrian army before he defected due to his opposition to al-Assad's regime. She had to give him credit for risking his life for the chance to disassociate himself from the horrors occurring there.

"Of course," Anna says reassuringly. "I hope you don't mind if I record our conversation, for my notes only."

He nods, so she slides her phone out of her pocket and opens the voice recording app before placing it flat on the table. Rifat watches her every move like a hawk, so she gives him another smile before using her index finger to hit "record."

In that instant, she notices a shining glare outside the window like a mixture of heat haze and the sun reflecting of a metal surface. Her body reacts before her mind follows, grabbing Rifat across the table and pulling him to the floor as the sound of bullets cracks into their now-empty seats.

She stares blankly at the white chair she occupied seconds earlier, unable to process the fact that the cotton cover is now riddled with bullet holes. Rifat, however, is already moving across the floor toward the stairs away from the edge of the terrace while screams erupt around them. Reaching up to grab her phone off the table, she turns to see him rushing down the stairs.

A mechanical whirring fills her ears behind her, and Anna looks over her shoulder to see a man in a red metal suit hovering in the air beyond the balcony scanning the cowering and panicked restaurant patrons. Anna glances back at her seat then meets the metal man's gaze as he sees her. Adrenaline courses through her veins as she throws her body onto her feet and breaks for the stairs, leaping down half the flight in a single bound before bursting through the door and onto the street. Glancing up at the man in the sky, she whips her head the opposite direction down the street to see Rifat's huddled figure pushing through the chaos only to crumple with a single shot to the back of his head.

"No!" Anna cries out as strong arms wrap around her and pull her back toward the door of the restaurant.

She takes one final look at the man in the sky before crashing through the restaurant. A man in a black leather jacket has his hand tightly grasped to her forearm, dragging her away from the street and through the mess of tables toward the kitchen. Nearly colliding with a member of the staff and knocking over a table of half-eaten food, Anna struggles to keep up with him as they burst through the kitchen and past the startled workers.

"Hurry," the man shouts, glancing back at her.

Any second, she's expecting to fall to the ground with a bullet in her head like Rifat, but she uses her sheer terror as fuel to push her legs to move even faster. The two of them slam into the back door of the restaurant and out into the back street, and Anna follows the man as he leads her around the corner to a black motorcycle parked there.

"Get on," he tells her, tossing her the slick black helmet with a solid black visor, as he swings a leg over the bike.

She can still hear shouting on the streets, madness and fear permeating the air, and her heart is slamming against her chest as she glances over her shoulder at the restaurant. The motorcycle roars to life in front of her, and she whirls around to face the man who probably just saved her life before jerking the helmet over her head and climbing onto the motorcycle behind him.

"Go!"

Now playing: "Seven Devils" by Florence + The Machine.