Uncover Me

by Linda Barlow

  I saw something ferocious flash in Nick's eyes. Elizabeth. That was the name of the girl who'd written the inscription in the poetry book.

  "Ancient history. I'm sure Ellie isn't interested."

  I was, actually. But I didn't say so. There was something deeply unpleasant beating between these two men. I didn't want to provide an atmosphere in which their animosity could grow.

  I moved closer to Nick and slid my fingers through his.

  "Is he a kind master?" Nigel was still addressing me, but I could now feel nasty vibes underneath the courtesy. It was creepy. It made me want to step back. Get far away from him. Hide.

  "You do your best to please him, I trust? It would be unfortunate if he should be forced to sell you to one of his sex trafficking friends."

  Because I was pressed against him, I felt Nick suck in his breath. He probably felt the catch in mine, too. Points to Nigel. Nick had led me to believe it was Nigel who was interested in human trafficking, not him.

  Nick slipped one arm around me and brought me tight against his hip. "She needn't worry about something that's never going to happen. Stop looking for weaknesses. Ellie is devoted to me."

  "No outsiders—we agreed on that, remember?" Nigel's voice was neither charming nor indulgent now.

  "You can think of her as an extension of me." He pressed hard on my shoulders, and I understood what he wanted me to do. Although my spirit rose in rebellion, I checked it sharply. Dropping to my knees in front of him, I lowered my head in submission. His fingers caressed the back of my neck, not gently.

  He moved slightly, so my face was against his groin. As if he expected me to pull out his dick and suck him off right here and now. For a frozen moment, I wondered if that's what he did expect. That would certainly demonstrate submission.

  I was half-tempted to do it. That would probably shock the hell out of him.

  "We have an arrangement," he went on, stroking my hair. "She attends to all my various needs, and I allow her to live."

  The silence was fraught. Although I couldn't see either of their faces, I could sense Nigel's surprise. I could also feel Nick's cock rising underneath my cheek.

  Nigel switched to Turkish. "Are you crazy bringing her here? Does she speak Turkish?"

  Nick answered in the same language. "Of course not. She has no clue about what's really going on here."

  "I don't trust you. After years of walking the straight and narrow, suddenly you're engaged in human trafficking and keeping slaves?"

  "You know nothing about my life. I got sick of watching you lord about with all your wealth and all your women while I scraped in the dirt for a living. Art trafficking might pay nicely, but the business I'm in now pays even better."

  "How about I take your little friend away from you and give her to my lads?

  "Do that and you'll lower her value."

  "Are you claiming she's special merchandise?"

  "Exactly."

  They were speaking rapidly and using slang, so I was a little behind on my internal translation. Shit. Had I misheard? I didn't think so. He had used the word for merchandise—a product, goods for sale.

  My heart was pounding. Was he serious? I could feel Nigel's interest in me sharpen. "Please don't try to tell me she's a virgin. She looks young, but not that young."

  "Of course not. Except for her anal virginity, which has its own value."

  Thank god I was staring at the floor because I could feel my face turning red. How the hell did he know anything about my fucking anal virginity? Was that what he wanted to do to me? I couldn't believe they were discussing such a thing. I wanted to melt into the floor and disappear.

  "Do you have any idea," Nick went on, "the price I can command for a young white female? American too, which many potential buyers will enjoy because of the rarity and humiliation factor?"

  "How well-trained is she?"

  "I'm working on it."

  "Would you like some help on that? Or perhaps I should buy her myself? I'd expect a family discount, of course."

  "Stay the fuck away from her. She doesn't know what I'm planning. I intend to sell her as minimally trained. That commands a high price these days among those who are into the harsher training protocols."

  What the fuck?

  "I must admit I'm surprised," Nigel drawled. "When I first heard about this trafficking venture you were involved in, I was skeptical. I didn't think you were so enterprising. Or so hard-assed, for that matter."

  "It's been a long time since we've socialized, Nigel."

  "True." Nigel sounded speculative.

  "Wasn't it you who always claimed I wasn't indulging my true inclinations? Maybe you were right. Besides, the money involved is huge."

  "If you think I'm going to trust you because of this one girl you're mistaken."

  "I don't give a damn how you feel about me. Just stay out of my way."

  The malevolence between them was even more palpable now. "I'm surprised that you would bring a woman into a situation fraught with danger."

  Nick's hand in my hair tightened. "Is that a threat?"

  "A warning."

  "Lay one finger on her and I'll kill you," said Nick. His cool, casual tone seemed to make a mockery of his words.

  "Do you really think you could? You, the precise and orderly excavator? You, the good boy from our youth?"

  "Yes, I think I could."

  So did I. I couldn't credit it, but Nigel seemed unimpressed by the deadly sense of purpose I could feel emanating from Nick. Didn't he know what Nick was capable of with those lethal hands of his?

  Apparently not. "Sure, coz," he said, and, humming cheerfully to himself, strolled to the door. "Anytime you want to take me on, do let me know. Oh, and by the way," Nigel switched back to English. I guess he wanted to make sure I understood him. "The old man's waiting to see you. It seems he's finally found his precious treasures of Troy."

  "What do you mean, he's finally found them?"

  "He didn't tell you? I guess he doesn't trust your little slave here. For the past couple of days, he's talked of little else. See you at dinner, pet," he added with markedly less courtesy than he had displayed at first. "Do forgive Nick and me our squabbles. Just a little cousinly conflict."

  He left, banging the door behind him.

  I was trying not to panic. The trafficking thing freaked me out. Nick was planning to sell me? I don't speak Turkish, I don't fucking speak Turkish. Dammit, I almost wished I didn't.

  I hoped this was all part of my captor's psyching out of his cousin, but he was so hard to read. I'd always thought I was good at reading people. But I'd made mistakes before.

  "You okay?" he asked. I had been kneeling the whole time. He now raised me to my feet.

  Was I okay? Not really. I was trying to figure out how I'd be expected to react to the part of the conversation that had been in English. "I don't know what you were saying to each other, but it sounded hostile," I managed.

  "We can't stand each other."

  "Your cousin has a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on, doesn't he?"

  Nick raised his eyebrows quizzically.

  "He was very polite initially, but that changed. Even though I couldn't understand what he was saying, his whole manner shifted when he was speaking to you. It was chilling."

  "Kudos to you for seeing through him. Most people don't."

  This didn't make me feel better, since Nick had just revealed something equally chilling about himself.

  He fondled my hair with the palm of his hand. Don't touch me, I wanted to scream, but I bit it back.

  "Stay here while I go check in with my grandfather. I'll be back soon."

  Don't hurry back on my account. "You don't think he's really found any treasures from Troy, do you?"

  Nick ran a hand through his hair and frowned. "Highly unlikely," he muttered as he followed Nigel out of the room.

  Alone in the small room, I paced back and forth and brooded. The encounter with Nigel had freaked m
e out, and not just because of the leashed violence seething between the two cousins. I kept going over everything that Nick had told me about his own involvement in this madness. If he hated his cousin so much, why was he working with him? Why was he sailing around the Aegean instead of being on site at the dig? Was he involved in human trafficking? And—I had trouble even formulating this thought—did he really intend to sell me into some horrible human trafficking network?

  I knew that my chance of surviving for long in such a situation was low. From what I'd heard about the lives of modern sex slaves, I'd rather be dead.

  I had another attack of "this can't be happening to me." How had I ended up with such a threat hanging over me? I was realizing what an easy, sheltered life I'd led so far. My mom and I had never been wealthy, but we hadn't lived in poverty or misery, either. I'd been parked with relatives a lot while Mom was on digs, but I'd also traveled with her to many exotic locations. I'd watched her work. I'd met her friends. My first ever crush had been on a wicked handsome Egyptian boy who had earned a little extra cash by running errands for archaeologists working in an unexplored corner near the Valley of the Kings.

  I remembered that golden moment on the shore when I'd conjured up Nick's sailboat like a sorceress bringing forth something from an imagined world. Somehow I'd entered that world, stepping, like Alice through the looking glass, into my own fantasy.

  Nick was real, though. He had held me in his arms; I felt his hands explore me, his tongue caress me. I'd known the sweet, erotic pull of his mouth against my breasts. The flash of memory softened my flesh and liquefied my bones. Oh, Nick. Fallen angel, devil, cold stone god. I know you're dangerous. I know you're cruel. I know you're bad for me. Why do you fascinate me so?

  Gazing out the square windows at the stark landscape, all rocks and scrub and harsh lines and angles against a cold blue sea, I thought about the twenty-three years that had somehow brought me to this strange point in space and time. My job at the photography studio in Boston, my apartment, Mark...they all seemed so far behind me now.

  You wanted adventure, I reminded myself wryly. The gods have answered your prayers, with their usual irony.

  Chapter 14

  NICK

  I had sworn to stay cool around Nigel, but that was impossible.

  I wanted to get my hands on his throat. Squeeze the life out the bastard. Carve him up with my knife. Shoot the brains out of his fucking skull.

  So much for distracting him with the temptation of joining a human trafficking cabal that traded merchandise like the lovely Ellie. I was ready to murder him just for the crime of imagining how it would be to have her.

  Cool it, Gabriel. Don't fuck this up by starting to have emotions.

  The plan was in its final stages, the trap was nearly in place. Tension leached into me like a heavy morning fog. One week. That's all the time I had left. By the fifteenth of the month, one week from today, I had to turn Nigel over to the professional agents who were breathing down my neck. If I failed, my aging, crippled grandfather would go to prison for the rest of his life. No matter what the old fool had done, I couldn't let that happen.

  "Well, Nick?" said my grandfather when I joined him in his command center. I'd brought him the object that had resulted in Ellie's capture. A Roman statue of a woman, circa second century, C.E., not particularly well-executed but in relatively good condition. If I'd known the trouble the thing would cause, I'd never have sought it out.

  "Well, what?"

  "You've been gone for over a fortnight. Is this all you have to show for it?"

  I ignored this. "What have you found? Nigel thinks it's important."

  Granddad leaned forward in his chair. "Are you mad to bring that girl here? I've never known you to do anything so reckless before."

  "I know what I'm doing."

  "She might be a spy. Or a cop. Someone here to destroy us."

  I laughed dryly to cover my guilt. "The only thing she's destroying is my sleep cycle."

  "Never before have you allowed your amorous adventures to interfere with our plans. I don't like it."

  "She's a superb photographer. She could be useful to us."

  "How so?"

  "The photographs we've taken so far are terrible." I handed over my camera. I'm good at many things, but photography isn't one of them. "See for yourself. They're poorly lighted. We're not going to make any sales from these."

  Granddad flipped through the pictures, which included shots of a number of coins, busts and frescoes. "There are dark shadows on everything."

  "I don't know how to light the exhibits. We need a professional to figure out things like that, and now that Mehmet's gone..." Mehmet had been our previous photographer. Unfortunately, he'd also been a drunk, and Nigel had gotten rid of him. I wasn't sure what had happened to the guy, but knowing Nigel, Mehmet was probably deep underwater someplace.

  "It's true we could probably get more for the artifacts if we had better photographs," Granddad admitted. "Have you mentioned this to the girl?"

  "I wanted to check it out with you first."

  "Are you sure she can be trusted?"

  "Yes. I've given her reason to fear me. She'll stay in line."

  "Is the rumor I'm hearing about her true? She's some sort of sex worker?"

  The fuck? "Of course not. Who told you that? My charming cousin?"

  "He said you had acquired her as a result of some unsavory dealings you're involved in. I must say, Nick, I never expected such a thing from you."

  I felt an absurd desire to defend Ellie's reputation. I suppressed it. "She's my girl. Let's just leave it at that."

  "Nigel says—"

  I cut him off. "Fuck Nigel."

  "He doesn't trust you."

  "He hates me. You know that. But because it distorts your old-fashioned ideas about blood being thicker than water, you don't want to admit it."

  My grandfather sighed. He did that a lot around me. I'd been exasperating him for years. "I've never understood what happened between you. You were inseparable as boys. It wasn't until you were teenagers that things began to go wrong."

  True enough. I had a flash of a happier time, back when I'd looked up to my older cousin. I'd loved him blindly, young fool that I was. Idolized him and tried to copy him. I don't remember exactly when I realized that Nigel was a bully. I'd learned at a young age never to show fear of him, but he specialized in terrorizing other kids. He was subtle about it, though. He liked to win people's trust and admiration before he screwed them to the wall. It amused him, I guess.

  When I grew old enough to develop some values of my own, I began to realize my cousin was corrupt. He lied, he stole, he cheated his way through school, doing it all with such charming, open-faced hypocrisy that he never got caught. He wreaked havoc on some of my geekier friends. With each attack or deception, Nigel grew more arrogant. He loved the power he had over people. By the time we were teenagers, I knew he was one sick fuck.

  In high school, he raped the girlfriend of my best friend Max, and did it in such a way that Max got all the blame. In college he targeted my girlfriend Elizabeth, lured her away from me and abused her. She never recovered from what he did to her.

  "Nigel chose one path, I chose another," I said to my grandfather.

  "And yet here you are with a girl you're calling a slave in tow. I guess you've both ended up in the same place, haven't you?"

  Well, that pissed me off.

  On the other hand, maybe he was right.

  I forced myself to focus on Granddad. He looked weary. And old. He was seventy-eight and up to his neck in intrigue. The man had no fucking sense at all. Hadn't it occurred to him that his participation in Nigel's scheme could ruin him? Nigel must have charmed him into believing that together they were invincible. He was good at that kind of shit.

  "Tell me what's been happening at the dig. Have you found anything or not?"

  The gleam in Granddad's eyes grew brighter. "Look." He rolled his wheelchair over to a met
al cabinet and unlocked the door. Carefully he removed a well-wrapped packet and began unfolding the plastic that encased it. Inside was a gold looped earring of ancient design and workmanship.

  I must have muttered something under my breath.

  "Does it look familiar to you?" Granddad asked.

  "It's similar to the stuff Schliemann pulled out of the ruins of Troy."

  "Exactly. It's evidence. Strong evidence. Even I didn't expect to find anything as provocative as this."

  "Where was it?"

  "In the south quadrant of the excavations. At a depth of about fourteen feet. We haven't found anything else there yet, not even potsherds, but we're concentrating all our energy on that spot. I expect we'll turn up something more soon."

  Holy shit. If he was right, we could be on the verge of a major find. Dammit. A week from now the island was going to be overrun with Turkish federal agents.

  "How soon? I want you out of here."

  Granddad noticed my tension. "Why? Have you heard something?"

  "No, but I have a bad feeling about this place. Every day we prolong our stay increases the chances of detection. If the Turkish government had any idea what we were up to, they'd be down on us like vultures. Do you still intend to leave before the middle of the month?"

  "I hope so. If we're going to find anything more, we should find it soon. The excavations are already quite extensive. If not—well, I don't want to jeopardize our security here on the island." He grimaced. "If nothing else turns up I suppose we'll have to wait until fall and try again. The Aegean is far too busy with tourists wandering about on their yachts now that spring has arrived."

  "And Nigel? How much longer will he be staying on?"

  "A week to ten days. You and he will have to work together to seal the place up. Is it possible for the two of you to cooperate, or would that be asking too much?"

  "I'm sure we'll muddle through somehow."

  "Unless you go at each other's throats over the beautiful Ellie."

  Fuck that. "I wouldn't worry."

  "No? Seems to me it's happened in the past."

  He meant Elizabeth.

  "Not since university," I said coldly. "And it's damn well never going to happen again."