by Addison Fox
“I can’t explain it any better than this, but I feel like we’re all players on a chessboard, being dragged around at the whim of someone else.”
“To what end?”
“That’s what I can’t define. But seriously, don’t you sense something else is going on? What’s this completely idiotic nonsense about a curse? It feels like a distraction.”
“And you think someone’s deliberately manipulating the distractions?”
“Yes, I do.”
He heard the skepticism in her tone fade ever so slightly. “While I don’t want to dismiss the power of intuition, we’ve both been on projects where the adrenaline runs hotter than others. It doesn’t mean there’s anything to worry about.”
“I haven’t had this feeling many times in my life, but I’ve got it now.”
“Well, what happened the last time you had this strange woo-woo feeling?”
“I got shot.”
Chapter 8
Rowan’s initial urge to scoff at Finn’s strange and sudden attack of nerves vanished at his words. Instead, all she could picture was his body, twisted at an unnatural angle and bleeding over the Warringtons’ back porch, where she stared down from the roof.
“You want to run that by me again?”
“You heard me.”
“That’s the only other time you’ve had a bad feeling on a job?”
“Deep-in-the-gut bad? Yes.”
And what in the hell was she supposed to do with that?
“The British Museum is spearheading this. One of the most respected entities in the world. You really think they’re going to pull a fast one?”
“I think there are players involved we can’t begin to understand. But even if I’m wrong about all that, can you honestly sit there and tell me you don’t feel anything at all strange about what we know so far?”
“You’re really bugged about the curse?”
“Not a curse in and of itself, but the fact that someone’s using it as a distraction.”
Rowan knew Finn had a point. What had been effective in the early days of archaeology—or in endless adventure movies—was in reality fairly impractical. Because of the sheer number of people involved in the dig, from crew to press to a sizable security staff, generating creepy, curselike environs would be nearly impossible. Further, since each week’s discovered artifacts would be airlifted out of there and into labs, it made it harder to use one specific artifact to generate problems.
The transparency of technology made subterfuge a much more subtle game in this day and age—her brother Campbell understood that better than most—and preying on people’s fears of the unknown was a difficult proposition.
“So we prepare with that in mind. From the very first meeting, you told me this trip wasn’t without its challenges or its dangers. And I accepted that.”
“And if the dangers aren’t what we thought they were?”
“Then we make sure our escape plan is airtight.”
He hesitated and she thought he was about to argue, but instead, he lifted a hand to her face. She felt the warmth of his palm where it cupped her cheek. The lightly callused tips of his fingers where he brushed a thumb over her lips.
A rush of heat and something very much like yearning flooded her body at his intimate touch.
“Does anything frighten you?”
“Of course not.” She swallowed hard on the lie before reconsidering her words. “Yes, of course, I’m frightened. By a lot of things. But that fear can’t stop me from doing what needs to be done. From doing the things that are hard.”
“Is this some sort of youngest-child thing?”
She smiled, the exquisite torture of his touch on her lower lip only exacerbated when the movement of her lips dragged the pad of his thumb over the sensitized flesh. “According to my family, it’s a Rowan thing, plain and simple.”
He ran his thumb once more over her flesh, and she nearly gave in to the urge to move closer and press her lips to his, ending the madness. And then his gaze shifted and grew thoughtful before he dropped his hand.
“I’m sorry. For not telling you who I was from the beginning. And for letting you think I’d died that night.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Or find a way to tell me?”
After she’d gotten over the initial shock of knowing he was alive, the fact he’d remained quiet for so many years was the real question left behind. Why hadn’t he found her? Or given her some sense—even anonymously—that he’d survived.
“I couldn’t put you in danger like that. Those weren’t ordinary thieves that night.”
“Who do you think they were?”
“Best I’ve been able to discover, they’re part of a bigger ring of criminals. Something was going on in the Warrington house that night, and you and I happened into the middle of it.”
“How’d you come to be there?”
It wasn’t something she’d understood that night, but in the years that followed, when she’d dissected each and every moment of that evening, Rowan had come to wonder about his presence in her friend’s house.
“My father was a less-than-respectable businessman.”
“He’s how you got into theft?”
“Yep. And I went on to exceed every expectation he had for me.” Finn turned to stare out over the expanse of the park, memories stamped on his face like a mask.
She was more fascinated to hear his tale than she thought possible, but waited until he was ready to continue his explanation of his past.
“My father was never a rich man, but after my mother died, we moved from Dublin to London. He had a cousin here who suggested he could get better work than he’d had back home.”
“How old were you?”
“Five or six.”
She wanted to ask how he’d handled the loss of a parent but sensed it was a big step for him to share the story of his father. Pushing too hard might have the opposite effect of getting him to open up, so she offered up a light tease instead. “Hence the more British-than-Irish accent you put to such good use.”
The tease had her desired effect when a smile crossed his face before he continued, “Something like that.”
He took a deep breath before returning to the story of his father. “Patrick Gallagher wasn’t a bad man. Still isn’t. But he’s never been known for his smart choices. And the move to London only put more choices in his path.”
“You lived with the cousin?”
“Off and on, depending on how well the old man was running. Turns out his cousin did some thug work for a local dealer. Small jobs, running numbers and picking up payoffs from local businesses. My father started there but when he demonstrated his quick fingers, he was put into service doing other things.”
“He took the work, even though you were so young?”
She didn’t think the question held judgment, but saw the way Finn’s mouth tightened all the same. “It paid better than anything else he could have gotten, so yeah, he took the job.”
“And you?”
“I was the anomaly of the neighborhood.” He must have seen the question on her face because he added, “I loved school and I developed an ability to get in and out of a surprising number of scrapes.”
“Because you’re just that good?”
The smile was back, but it was what she saw reflected in the depths of his eyes that really grabbed her. A wisdom beyond his years. “Because I’m good and I listen. It’s a powerful combination. You’d be amazed how many people forget just how important that second part is.”
Rowan understood Finn’s comment, her own experiences only reinforcing his point. People were so focused on their end goal they frequently stopped listening and paying attention to the clues that were often littered around them. From casual co
mments to the increasing electronic footprint individuals left in social media, clues were everywhere. She knew better than most that keeping a sense of the world around you could pay dividends.
And it had for her several times over.
Human beings gave away an inordinate amount of information about themselves day in and day out, so long as you were willing to listen.
“When did you do your first job for your father?”
“I’d been running a few cons on my own. Small things. Funny how no one expects the school’s honor student to be the same one nicking stuff from lockers or sneaking into the school cafeteria’s coffers.”
“And then it got bigger?”
“More independent. I saw the people my old man was in with and I had no interest in following suit. I like being my own boss.”
Rowan knew his choices, misguided as they were, were an indicator of the man who sat before her. “Did it bother you? The morality of it?”
“Sometimes, yes. More often than not, I’m sad to say, it was no. You?”
“All the time.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
The urge to shrink away from the scrutiny was strong, but Rowan refused to hide from it. “I couldn’t not do it.”
* * *
I couldn’t not do it.
Her words echoed in the warm, breezy air between them, and despite the vivid blue skies above, Finn felt a chill settle in his bones. “Why?”
“It was a whim at first. About six weeks after my parents died. A Friday afternoon near the end of the school day. I was new and didn’t know many people. I was standing at my locker packing to go home. The girl next to me had hers open but she was paying no attention because she was flirting with the boy she liked. And there was a fresh pack of gum on the small shelf where she stored her books.”
“And you took it?”
“I took it. And for the first time since my grandmother woke me up out of a sound sleep to let me know my parents were killed, I felt something. It wasn’t much. A momentary triumph that had nearly faded by the time I got home, but it was something.”
“How’d they die?”
“A car accident on their twentieth-anniversary trip. They’d gone to spend the week in the Welsh countryside. It’s why we were at my grandparents’ here in London.”
His gut twisted at the thought of her loss. It was hard to lose anyone, but for it to be so sudden...
So absolute...
How did you recover from that? And as he imagined the small pack of gum, he realized that you didn’t recover from that. You simply marched on, day after day, finding solace where you could.
“And after the gum?”
“I graduated to a variety of items at school. A pair of gloves. A new wallet in an open purse. Even a beaker from chemistry class. It was more opportunistic than planned.”
“How’d you go from nicking odds and ends to breaking and entering?”
“How does anyone feed an addiction? They escalate their behavior, growing more and more reckless in search of the high to be gained.”
Although he’d never equated the two, Finn had to admit Rowan’s description of her slide into theft had a surprising correlation to addiction. The increasingly poor choices coupled with increasing risk. “Without the risk, there is no reward.”
“Pretty much. And then one day I was visiting my friend Bethany and I saw my shot at a big score. She showed off the Victoria bracelet and I was enamored. If I could only have it. Possess it. A score like that would fill the empty places. It had to.”
“Is that why you didn’t turn back after getting shot at from the street?”
“Yep. I was all set to leave. I was hiding on the roof next to the chimney and I was simply waiting it out until I could crawl down again. And then, as the night grew quiet once more, I thought better of it. The good old ‘Why not? I can stop tomorrow’ that every addict tells themselves with fierce commitment to the idea.”
The events of that night had never been far from his thoughts, but her story brought them crashing back in vivid clarity. The moment when he realized someone had beaten him to the score. The even bigger moment when he realized the other thief was just a child.
He hadn’t been far out of the schoolroom himself, but the sight of a teenager with her hand in the safe in the Warringtons’ bedroom closet had thrown him for a loop.
Even now, twelve years later, he could smell the light scent of her as they stood hidden behind the curtains. He could also taste the raw fear that coated his tongue with iron as the thugs casing the house had entered the room.
Could he keep her safe?
And would they get out of the house undetected?
With the exception of that night, every job he’d ever worked he worked alone.
“Why were you there that night?”
Rowan’s questions pulled him from his thoughts. “At the house?”
“Yes. That’s the one thing I’ve never fully understood. There were a hell of a lot of us after the same thing that night. How’d it come to be?”
“The Victoria bracelet was a hot topic of conversation after it came on the market. Warrington purchased it from a less-than-reputable dealer, and I just kept tabs on the house and knew when they were going away. And you?”
“It really was all Bethany. I’d never have known about it if it weren’t for her showing it to me. Girls do love to talk about pretty things, and Bethany was no exception.”
“There were no girls in the circles I ran in, and plenty of men talked about that pretty thing, too.”
“What about the others? The other thugs who set upon us that night?”
Finn shrugged, even as a small spark of electricity lit up the back of his neck. “I always assumed they found out same as I did.”
“What if you assumed wrong?”
* * *
Finn paced his study, the view of London from his window awe-inspiring. When he’d made the decision to move his business into the Shard, he’d purchased an apartment in the building, as well. Aside from the practicality of being so close to the office, the views were unparalleled.
Rare.
And the purview of a privileged few.
He’d come a long way and he never wanted to forget it. He had wealth and power and he had both because he’d worked his tail off. What he’d done before—acts that he’d felt minimal remorse for at the time—had become a mental albatross around his neck as he worked to change his decisions and make a better life for himself.
The scar that ran just under his rib cage and the occasional twinge of that flesh were a constant reminder of what he almost lost to youthful vanity and reckless immorality.
Thankfully, he’d long since retired the vanity.
Despite the inevitable consequences of growing up, he’d never been able to give up the spoils of that evening. Youthful folly or something to remember the evening by, he didn’t know, and after a while it no longer mattered. He unlocked the safe in his study and pulled out the Victoria bracelet to once again look upon its beauty. The light caught the gold, and the rubies that ran the length of the thick cuff winked in the fading light that streamed into the room.
Why had he kept it?
At first, it had been a matter of self-preservation. Putting the piece out on the black market would lead the thugs he’d run from straight to his door. But over time and with his connections...
He could have moved the piece years ago, yet he’d hung on to it.
The piece changed his life—literally and figuratively.
A man wanted to hang on to that. To remember the effect of something so profound. He could divide his life, before and after the possession of the Victoria bracelet.
Before and after Rowan.
Why did it keep coming
back to that? Over and over again, it came back to her. A slip of a girl who’d changed his life.
His phone vibrated in his pocket and he dug it out, surprised to see his father’s number on the screen. “Dad.”
“Boyo. How are you?”
“Doing fine.”
“Hear you’ve got a big gig coming up.”
The notes of Patrick Gallagher’s Irish roots coated his words in a thick brogue, and even after more than a quarter century in London, Finn knew nothing would change that. “Word travels fast.”
“For a man who likes to stay in the know.”
While his father’s ready knowledge of his business unnerved him ever so slightly, he couldn’t hide the very real fact that his father also presented him with an opportunity to dig into who might be talking. “You know how much I love Egypt. And this is a big one.”
“The whole world’s watching, son. Can’t pick up a paper without reading some bit of news or another about the find.”
“As one of my subcontractors put it, everyone loves Egypt. There’s even rumor of a curse floating around.”
“Horseshit, I’d say.”
“I agree, but if it sells more papers, the press certainly isn’t going to argue.”
His father laughed, deep and hearty, and Finn couldn’t deny the small streak of sadness in how long it had been since they’d seen each other. He’d set his father up well, ensuring the man would never have to work again if he chose, but responsibility wasn’t the same as availability and he knew that.
So why did he always find a reason to stay away?
Patrick Gallagher had long since given up running numbers, far more content to spend his evenings talking with his cronies at the pub or squiring a widow he’d been seeing for a few years now around town. His father had gone respectable, and he was glad for it.
Yet he still kept his distance.
“So what else are you hearing?”
“That’s just it, son. I’m hearing a lot. No substance but a hell of a lot of chatter.”
That same streak of unease that had dogged him after leaving Will’s office flared high once more. “What sort of chatter?”
