What was it about his name that niggled at her? She set her handbag and tablet case on the conveyer. Something about Doug. Max... Max Rivera. Her breath caught. Yes! She had heard his name before.
She spun on him.
“What is it? You see that guy again?” He gripped her arm.
She jerked away. “No, not that. I recognize your name.”
His eyebrows shot upward.
“You’re the man who cheated my brother.”
Chapter Two
Shit. The sweat trickling down Max’s back had nothing to do with the security check. She knew about Istanbul? Figured her sleazy brother’d put his own spin on what happened.
Kate glared at him. “Well?”
People behind them were piling up, pushing their bins forward. The elderly woman ahead of Kate eyed them with suspicion over her reading glasses.
Max dumped his boots in a bin and bent close to Kate’s ear. “Not here.”
Color flared on her high cheekbones. “Yes, here,” she said through clenched teeth. “I need an operative I can trust. Apparently that’s not you.”
Fuck, this was no time for true confessions. Or hasty fabrications. For more than one reason, the mission required her trust. He couldn’t blow this. “What happened with Doug was a misunderstanding. Look, the plane boards in thirty minutes. And how long before that earthquake anniversary?”
“Twenty-one days, as you very well know.” She shook her head as the short time frame seemed to snap her back to the situation. Tears welled up in her pretty eyes. “But my brother...”
Aw, dammit. Tears. “Kate, you can trust me. We can talk on the plane. Devlin’ll verify.”
The impatient clamor grew louder. The X-ray machine was sucking Kate’s bags into its maw. The TSA dude ushering people through the imaging machine gave them a hard look.
Her brow furrowed. She was weighing his words, but before she could speak, TSA hurried her forward.
Max blew out a breath. He passed through the checkpoint and collected his belongings. While Kate was occupied with stowing her tablet in her carryon, he texted Thomas Devlin. Now, if she phoned, he’d covered his butt.
When they continued on to the gate, Kate took out her phone. A look over her shoulder at the screen had him sweating again. Devlin’s private number. A moment later she huffed in frustration and stowed the device in her bag. The call had gone to voice mail. Either Devlin read Max’s message first or he turned off the phone while he drove. Bullet fucking dodged.
Neither of them spoke until they settled into their seats on the British Airways flight to Heathrow. Because Kate had sprung for business class tickets, Max could stretch out his legs. The cushy seats sure as hell beat the coffin fit on his last flight. Thank y’all, darlin’.
When the attendant offered flutes of champagne, he passed. His mouth tasted like Texas road kill, so he went for a Coke. Kate ordered mineral water. She wasn’t looking at him but the displeasure pursing her full lips made her look even more buttoned-up. When she removed her jacket, he caught a scent both sweet and spicy. The impression of lace peeked through an off-white silk blouse smoothed over breasts as classy as she was.
Whoa, hoss. This was the client, and not one of his good-time good-bye girls.
When their drinks arrived and the attendant had left them alone, she turned to him. “You promised to explain.” The crisp edge to her soft voice said she’d waited long enough.
He downed a swallow of soda and rubbed his gritty eyes.
Hard to tell what exactly ol’ Dougie told her. All Max had was the truth, minus a few details. “Like I said, what happened in Istanbul was a misunderstanding. I met Doug in the Starbucks near the Sultanahmet Hotel. We recognized each other as Americans and started talking. I’d just finished a delivery to the archeological museum so I was free. He hired me as protection on his buying trip to a dangerous part of the city.”
“And you accepted employment from a stranger, just like that?”
“If you’re thinking I set him up, no way. I knew the name as a guy who traded in antiquities. The son of the famous archeologist.”
She gawped. The attendants launched into their pre-flight explanations, and she leaned closer, giving Max another whiff of her scent. “You’ve heard of my father?”
“While Douglas Fontaine was alive, nearly every American Journal of Archeology issue had an article about one of his finds.” He poured more Coke into his glass.
“Esoteric reading.” Her tone and hiked-up eyebrow said she was impressed.
“Guatemalan guy I worked with when I was in school got me interested.” He’d followed up on the ancient lore Nestor shared. “Took a few courses in archeology and ancient history. Fascinating stuff. Comes in handy in my work.” Like helping him spot pilfered shit.
“Of course.” She sipped her mineral water. “Doug bought three items that trip, I think.”
“A wrought-gold bottle, a copper vase, and a bronze snake head,” he said. “The guy selling them didn’t mention the snake head came from the excavations for the new railway tunnel under the Bosporus. When I recognized the piece, I insisted on handing it over to the authorities. Doug was out the snake head and the money. But it was the seller who cheated him.”
“Not you.” She studied him, seeming to look for dissembling.
He held her gaze. Shit. She still didn’t trust him. And probably wouldn’t. “Not me. A misunderstanding, like I said.”
On a muffled roar, the jet took off into the skies over D.C. Both of them leaned back until the G-force evened out.
Kate gave a little sigh of resignation. “We’ll see how it goes in England. I still plan to phone Thomas Devlin.”
“No problem.” Change the subject before she quizzed him further about Doug’s aborted deal. He liked her voice, smooth as cream when she wasn’t on the attack. “An awful lot of people are hot for Kizin. Theft, I get, but attempted murder and kidnapping? Damned extreme.”
After a sip of mineral water, she slid a photo from the tablet case at her feet and handed the eight-by-ten glossy to him. “This is the photo from the auction catalog. Carved figures like these aren’t idols.”
“They were created as offerings to the gods and later smashed to bits. An intact one is fu— very rare.”
“Unique, in fact.”
He heard the smile in her voice but was looking at the picture.
Kizin, Maya underworld god of earthquakes. Devlin’s report hadn’t contained a picture, only a brief description. Other versions Max had seen were stone. He couldn’t take his eyes off the image. Carved of polished jade, it gleamed. Offset lighting flashed on gold inlay in the shape of a skeleton. The rough-cut emerald eyes, disproportionately large, seemed to stare with malevolence. And he couldn’t stop staring back. No fucking wonder thieves went for this guy.
“Emerald eyes. How valuable are ones that size anyway?”
“The best emeralds are worth more than the best diamonds. That large a stone, cut and polished, could bring more than a hundred thousand. Maybe twice that amount.”
“Whoa, that much. Unusual and valuable.” He tore his gaze from the picture and handed it back. “But there must be more to the story.” He knew some of it, but he liked hearing her explain in that sexy voice.
Her index finger traced the moisture on her glass. “Yes, the legends surrounding the artifact and its history make the statue the most storied prize for Meso-American collectors. Sixty years ago, when archeologists were beginning to restore the ancient Maya city of K’eq Xlapak, a thief stole Kizin from the temple pyramid.” She leaned closer as she warmed to her story. Was her skin as soft as it looked?
“Before the international agreements about not removing antiquities from their countries of origin,” he said.
She tilted her head. “Yes, exactly right. One of the guards at the site stole the statue and other artifacts. One day later an earthquake partially destroyed the temple and leveled the nearby native village. The chief archeologist was kill
ed by a falling palm tree. Professor Gregory Douglas Fontaine, my great-grandfather.”
Hoo boy. “So that’s why you and your brother wanted it.”
“Definitely. Completing that restoration would’ve capped Gregory’s career. They’d barely begun when he was killed. Dead, he couldn’t recover the statue. The local people said he died because Kizin cursed him and caused the earthquake.” Her voice was liquid with emotion.
“Coincidence.” Max set aside his empty glass. “But enough to start the quake curse legend.”
“Twenty years after the theft, a fault rupture caused a massive quake across Costa Verde and Guatemala. Seven point nine on the Richter scale. More than twenty-two thousand deaths and a million people homeless.”
“Always a threat along fault lines. Significant because?”
“The date of the quake was the anniversary of Kizin’s theft. Curse Day, they call it. El Día Mal... something.”
“El Día Maldito.” He searched her gaze. “I reckon that wasn’t the last earthquake.”
“Another less devastating quake hit the region twenty years later.” She wrapped her hands around her glass. Her knuckles were white. “And twenty-one days from now is the next twenty-year anniversary. Seismologists detect increasing pressure along the fault lines, and the tremors are growing in strength.”
“Scientists can’t accurately predict quakes, but the data are damned scary. No wonder the locals believe in a curse. And Kizin?”
“A series of collectors owned it, even a museum or two. The statue disappeared about twenty years ago. Dad set aside his book royalties, hoping to purchase it.” Her breath hitched and she looked down at the photo in her lap. “Then I took over.”
Max gave a low whistle. “And last month the statue showed up at that Paris auction.”
“I couldn’t get away and the auction house didn’t take internet or phone bids. Doug went instead, but arrived late. Alistair Sedgwick had already bought it.”
Judging from her tight expression, it wasn’t the first time her brother’d been late. “And then Doug paid big bucks to buy the statue from Sedgwick.”
“Yes. Doug had just purchased it the day before it was stolen.”
And then somebody wanted the artifact as ransom. Too many players. “My notes don’t say much about your call to the kidnappers. Could y’all spell that out for me, darlin’?”
Her eyes flashed electric blue. “I’m not your darlin’.”
“A harmless Texas expression.” Slip of the tongue, but riling her had its rewards. Her flare of temper was a hell of a turn-on. “What about the voice?”
“Male, I think, but muffled somehow.”
“Electronically altered?”
“I don’t think so, just indistinct. He said to go ahead with the trek through the jungle to K’eq Xlapak. He recited a new number to call when I have a satellite phone number. Then he’ll call me after I arrive in Costa Verde. I don’t think he knows the statue was stolen or about my trip to London to search for it. He seemed to assume Doug had left it with me for safekeeping.”
Yeah, that had been in Devlin’s report. But what did it mean if the kidnapper was really unaware of the statue’s theft? “He speak with a drawl like yours truly or a foreign accent, anything distinctive?”
She looked down, frowned at her glass. “A Spanish accent, maybe. His English seemed limited. He made his demand like he’d rehearsed it or he was reading the words. I did tell Thomas all this.”
“Sure ’nuff. He put people on it. They’ll locate your brother.” Tracking Kizin, buying it from Sedgwick, losing it again—all that so she could return it to its temple after her brother’s rescue. “Tell me you don’t believe returning a jade statue can stop an earthquake.”
“What I believe doesn’t matter” She shook her head as if shaking off the curse. “The Maya believe. Returning Kizin is my responsibility as a Fontaine. The Maya value faithfulness, honesty, integrity.”
He couldn’t argue with that. The same Maya ideals old Nestor impressed on him. Since then, he’d known allegiance like that only with his Special Forces team and DSF. But here he was deceiving her. No choice.
Her voice and gaze held loyalty and desperation. And fear. Oh yeah, she believed.
A hell of a lot in this mess didn’t add up. And not just thieves and kidnappers. Returning Kizin to its temple ran a close second to saving her brother’s life. Why? For Max, family ties had only unraveled, leaving him shredded. But for Kate, maybe not. Or else something more drove her.
“I’m sorry about your brother.” He gave her hand a pat. Skin as soft as he’d imagined. Softer. Shit. “I’ll do everything I can to get the statue back. And I’d like to see that jungle temple myself.”
She smiled as if she believed him. “Thank you.”
He yawned. “Now I need some shuteye. My boss met me at baggage claim just before this flight. I haven’t slept or showered in forty-eight hours. Hell, maybe longer.”
She looked him up and down, apparently only now making sense of his attire. “You just returned from a trip.”
“Egypt. Had to retrieve tomb artifacts hijacked as they were being returned to the government.”
Avid interest shone in her eyes. She ate up this ancient shit like he did. “I hope you were successful.”
“Always.” He reclined his seat and closed his eyes. If he didn’t cut this off, she’d make him relive breathing all that sand. And he’d be sucked in by eyes the color of Texas bluebonnets.
***
Shafeton Manor, Hampshire, England
Art and artifacts filled the walls and tables everywhere Kate looked. The cavernous room, which a century ago might have been a banquet hall, smelled of the must and dust of ages past. Locked, security-wired display cases of pottery, carvings, and jewelry alternated with tapestries along the carved-panel walls. Larger pieces—masks, urns, a feathered headdress—from indigenous cultures in the Americas topped pedestals.
She and Max had arrived at Sedgwick’s estate half an hour ago. His sprawling conglomeration of stone and mortar was more castle than house. A servant had opened the massive door and led them down a wide marble corridor, up a set of stairs and down another long corridor to the owner’s private museum.
“Sedgwick actually lives here?” Max ended his circuit of the exhibits on the museum’s other side. “This entire pile of stones is a damn museum.”
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Kate said, amused his reaction was the same as hers. “I think he has a flat in London and divides his time.”
She halted her tour before the brick fireplace and held her hands toward the flames. This whole situation had a chilling effect. She had to persuade Sedgwick to share ideas on who might’ve attacked Doug and stolen the Kizin statue.
She sucked in a breath against the tightness in her chest. Goosebumps rose on her flesh. She rubbed her arms.
“Cold, Kate?”
Definitely. The fireplace sent more heat up the chimney than into the room. A better source of heat prowled the other side of the room. “I’m fine.”
Mostly Max’s default expression was stony detachment. At the moment, one side of his mouth twitched. Flirting? Ill at ease in Sedgwick’s opulent mansion? Maybe, but doubtful.
His hard-case demeanor struck her as a deliberate barrier, a ploy to keep people at a distance. If the scowl didn’t work, his blunt features would. She’d done a double take at breakfast, then tried not to check out how broad his shoulders looked in the tobacco-colored suede jacket. Or how his jeans hugged his taut butt. Or how the cleft in his smooth-shaven chin seemed to lure her touch.
No touching. Distance worked for her too. Max was a security expert and an investigator, a professional, and she had to rely on him. Thomas Devlin had vouched for his version of what happened in Istanbul. When this was over, she’d ask Doug about that misadventure. Yes, this would end with Doug’s rescue, dammit.
Max peered through the glass doors of an oak display case that rose at least eight f
eet from the polished oak floor.
“Something special?” She stayed put, preferring to warm herself by the fire.
“Dozens of clay, stone, and jade figures. The pantheon of Maya gods.” He snapped a photo with his cell phone. “With one notable gap.”
She frowned. “And yet he sold it to Doug.”
Max murmured something she couldn’t catch. He was opening drawers in the lower half of the case. He aimed his phone at something in a drawer. What on earth was he doing?
“Max.” She started toward him. “You shouldn’t be—”
He shut the drawer and put a finger to his lips. Shaking his head, he crossed to her.
She heard the scrape of shoe leather in the corridor two seconds before the museum door opened. Alistair Sedgwick strode into the room. The energy and sharpness in his gaze made him look like a man who’d drive a hard bargain. With Doug, he’d demanded—and got—twice what he paid for Kizin.
Sedgwick introduced himself. “My apologies for the delay. I thought you might enjoy my collections while you waited.”
Kate shook his extended hand and introduced Max. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“I’m delighted you came, Ms. Fontaine.” A thin smile split his long face. His eyes gleamed from beneath amber eyebrows that matched his thick hair. Pink cheeks completed his very English good looks. “I had the honor of meeting your distinguished father a number of years ago when he lectured at the British Museum. He was responsible for great contributions to the field of archeology. You must miss him terribly.”
Her breath hitched. Miss him? Only every day for the last three years. Even now whenever someone offered condolences, her chest felt constricted, as if a great boulder got in the way of her lungs. “Yes, I do. Thank you.”
“And I was so sorry to learn of your brother’s tragic accident. I hope he’s recovering.”
“Exactly why I came to see you, Mr. Sedgwick. I’ll try not to take too much of your time.”
On Deadly Ground (Devlin Security Force Book 1) Page 2
