“No!” Veronica and Simon shouted in unison
Deacon yelled in triumph as he held up the Midas Stone like a primal hunter after a kill. Veronica swore Deacon’s eyes looked like they were glowing. She and Simon took a step back.
“I’ll be damned,” Simon whispered, pointing his flashlight at Deacon. Veronica corrected her earlier assessment. Deacon didn’t seem to glow. He was glowing. His hands, to be specific. They had an aura about them like a halo from an eclipse. His right hand was clenched around the Stone. In his left, he held a solid gold flashlight.
“Thank you, Veronica,” Deacon said, his smile almost splitting his face. “I would never have found this if it wasn’t for you.”
What had she done? She knew he couldn’t be allowed to keep it. She’d started this, and now she’d finish it. “Put it down, Deacon,” she said, aiming the gun at him.
“You want this, don’t you?” Deacon held up the Stone. “Your entire career depends on it,” he said cruelly. Without warning, he dropped to the ground and placed his hands on the floor of the Temple. “You can have it!”
Around Deacon, the floor turned to gold in a circular wave that rippled toward them. My God, he meant to kill them by turning them into gold….
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SHARRON McCLELLAN
THE MIDAS TRAP
SHARRON MCCLELLAN
began writing short stories in high school but became sidetracked from her calling when she moved to Alaska to study archaeology. For years she traveled across the United States as a field archaeologist specializing in burials and human physiology. Between archaeological contracts, she decided to take up the pen again. She completed her first manuscript two years later, and it was, she says, “A disaster. I knew as much about the craft of writing as Indiana Jones would know about applying makeup.” It was then that she discovered Romance Writers of America and began serious study of her trade. Three years later, in 2002, she sold her first novel, a fantasy romance. Sharron now blends her archaeological experience with her love of fiction as a writer for the Silhouette Bombshell line. To learn more, visit her at www.sharronmcclellan.com. She loves to hear from her readers.
To Robert Hobart—
For all the advice on weaponry and creative suggestions on how to commit various illegal acts, for being the voice in my head telling me to “suck it up” when I whine, but mostly, for reminding me about what’s important.
To Julie Barrett and Richard Curtis for believing in me at the same time…and as they say, timing is everything.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Prologue
Greece
88 B.C.
She had put off death long enough.
Standing in the tiny boat, Thalassa watched Menophaneses, a general for Mithradates VI, race his ship toward her across the Aegean Sea. In the bright, clean light of the full moon, all was as visible as if it were day.
She curved her fingers around the leather-wrapped hilt of her knife and drew it toward her breast. She could not let him take her.
Her hands shook with fear. The heat and shame of tears burned her cheeks. She gazed up at the moon and prayed to Artemis for courage.
A star fell from the heavens, and her breath caught in her throat as she followed its path to the horizon. A sign? She glanced across the sea. Another ship. Roman. Its bank of oars sounded like thunder across the waves. She lowered the short blade. Thank you, my Goddess.
Menophaneses changed course and raced to close in on the Roman ship.
There would be a battle now. If the Romans won, she was saved. If not, there was the blade in her hand.
Menophaneses matched the Roman ship and slowed. The Romans drew alongside the large enemy craft.
Thalassa watched as Romans boarded the ship from Pontus, Mithrades VI’s empire that sprawled along the southeast coast of the Black Sea. Voices carried across the waters. But there was no shouting. No battle cries. No screams of mercy.
The reality of the events washed over her, and Thalassa’s heart skipped a beat.
The Romans were not here to save her, as was their duty. Quite the opposite, they were joined with Menophaneses.
Her stomach roiled at the betrayal.
The blade burned in her palm, and once again, she raised it to her breast.
She hesitated, but the memories of her sisters raped and beaten—their very lives taken—steadied her hand.
She would not give these men the wealth and power they craved. They would not see the gold.
Her resolve set, she waited for the ship to grow closer. Let these men see her defiance. Let them watch her death.
Let them taste failure.
For she was the last of her temple. The one sent to hide the Stone. The chosen one of Artemis.
The ship slowed to a halt. Thalassa waited until it drew alongside her small craft. Menophaneses peered over the wooden railing at her, his lips curled in a smirk. Thinking he’d won.
Thalassa lifted her chin and spat in defiance.
Then she turned her eyes upward. She had waited long enough.
Thalassa smiled at the moon even as she plunged the knife into her heart.
And she knew the Midas Stone was safe from the hands of men. Forever.
Chapter 1
Present day New York City
“Quiet night, Dave.”
“For a change. Let’s hope it stays that way.”
Guards. Veronica Bright, crouched among the bushes and hidden by the deep shadows of the moonless night, held still and waited for the two men to walk past her. The taller one stopped and with a flick of his lighter, lit a cigarette. He inhaled, the bright ember illuminating his face.
The acrid smell of burnt tobacco wafted toward Veronica, tickling he
r nose. She wrinkled it, trying to squelch the need to sneeze. It didn’t help. Panic reared its unwelcome head. In a moment, she would sneeze and they would find her.
Move! Silently, she willed the pair to continue their rounds.
“You know Mr. Grey doesn’t permit smoking.” The shorter guard crossed his arms.
“Yeah, inside. Which is why I am smoking outside.” He inhaled again, then moved off with the other guard following.
Careful not to rustle the foliage, Veronica reached up, rubbed her nose, then pinched it closed. The men turned the corner toward the lower garden and out of her line of sight.
She couldn’t hold back anymore and sneezed into her shirt-sleeve, muffling the sound as best as she could.
She hesitated, waiting for the guards to come running back and yank her from her hiding place.
Only blissful silence reached her ears. With a quiet sigh, she laid her palm against her sternum.
Her heart pounded in her chest.
She took a deep breath and willed it to slow.
This wasn’t the first time she’d been compelled to enter a place that was considered off-limits, but those had been tombs sealed by men and time and guarded with the occasional booby trap—not Glock-toting bodyguards.
The dead were much safer.
That didn’t matter. Michael had stolen from her, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with taking what didn’t belong to him. Not again.
Her jaw tightened as the last of the fear flowed away, leaving a burning anger and the need for revenge in its wake. Time to go.
Dressed in black jeans and a long-sleeved black cotton shirt, and carrying her backpack, Veronica skirted the side of the hedge just a few feet from the outer rim of the lit yard. She glanced back at the path the men had walked down, but it remained empty.
Quickly, she made her way to the left side of the mansion until she was underneath one of the main balconies.
Pulling a rope and grapple from the main pocket of her backpack, she swung the climbing gear up and over the second-floor marble railing.
The grapple broke the night’s silence, clinking, then scraping across the tiles before catching against the railing’s edge. Again, Veronica hesitated, but no shouts of discovery sounded.
Muscles straining, she climbed hand-over-hand up the rappelling rope. Gripping the top of the cool marble railing, she slipped over the edge and onto the balcony, not giving herself time to contemplate her actions.
Crawling on her elbows, she snaked over to the French doors that led into Michael’s private study.
She rose to her knees, and taking the glass cutter from the pouch at her waist, she suctioned it to the windowpane and drew a circle next to the door handle.
Veronica pulled the glass disk free, set it down on the tiles and took a deep breath. Now came the hard part. She took the small electronic code-breaker from the pouch.
She glared at her assistant’s newest invention. Veronica hated depending on electronic devices, preferring the physical weight of the shotgun resting between her shoulder blades and a direct confrontation to subterfuge.
Reaching through the small, round hole, she turned the handle and opened the doors.
No alarm sounded, but she knew the lack of noise meant nothing. The alarm was on a thirty-second delay to give Michael time to turn it off, and in thirty-one seconds, all hell was going to break loose.
Leaving the balcony doors ajar, she ran to the room’s main entrance.
Four seconds.
The keypad was to the left of the door—just as she remembered.
She put the small flashlight between her teeth and pulled the cover off the plastic alarm box. Red wire. Red wire.
She found it and used her pocketknife to strip away the plastic surrounding the copper threads.
Ten seconds.
Clamping the code-breaker’s alligator clip on the wire’s bare spot, she hit Enter and prayed the tiny machine would do its work. If it didn’t find the alarm code within the next twenty seconds, she’d have to depend on her wits.
She glanced at the red number screen of the code-breaker. It found three numbers. Three more to go.
Twenty seconds.
The numbers flashed as it searched for the rest.
Four numbers. Twenty-three seconds.
It flashed faster now.
Five numbers. Twenty-seven seconds.
Her heart beat faster. “Come on. Come on.” The code-breaker beeped, its work done.
Twenty-nine seconds.
Veronica let go the breath she’d been holding.
Unhooking the device, she shoved it back into her pack.
She headed over to Michael’s desk. She’d seen him open his walk-in safe while sitting in the oversize leather chair and knew there was a button in the desk itself. Using her knife, she pried open the middle drawer. She ran her gloved hands over the inside of the desk and touched a small bump on the back right corner. She pressed it, and a door-size section of wall slid open.
She smiled, relieved.
Time to get her prize and go.
Flashlight in hand, she rummaged through the walk-in safe, tempted to take all the artifacts. An Incan mask. A Greco-Roman sword. Even pottery.
She picked up a glazed vase and ran her hands over its simple, elegant lines.
Tempting, but she didn’t steal from others. She wasn’t like Michael. She only took back what was hers.
A small, cloth-covered object at the back of the safe caught her eyes. She flipped open the material. A clay jar, incised with line art and painted with red ochre, shone dully in the light. The protohistoric Turkish burial urn.
She picked it up, and her skin prickled as the familiar excitement coursed through her. Recovering the artifact from a safe wasn’t the same as excavating it from an overgrown burial mound in the Turkish countryside, but no matter, it still felt like Christmas, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July all rolled into one to touch something that no one had seen for more than two thousand years. She ran a fingertip along a painted lightning bolt. “Beautiful.” And if she were right, it was the burial urn of a holy woman. Perhaps one of the first.
She shrugged the pack off her back, unzipped it and pulled out the padded cloth. She wrapped the urn, then stuffed it inside.
“Put it down, Veronica.”
Michael.
He continued, his deep voice resonating in the dark. “I’d hate to shoot you. After all, I know how perfect your body is.”
She bit her lip at the comment, drawing blood.
Worse than the intimate remark was the click of a gun being cocked.
“Damn.” She didn’t need the lights on to know there was a gun pointed at her head, and she started to tremble. She blinked hard, forcing back panic.
Rebecca had said Michael was gone for the evening. Playing rich benefactor at some charity event with his girlfriend du jour. If she got out of here without being killed or thrown into jail, her assistant was going to have to do some explaining.
But now was not the time to give in to fear. Taking a deep, calming breath, Veronica set her backpack on the floor of the massive vault.
“Thank you. Now, turn around, hands in the air.”
Shadowed in dark, Veronica faced her captor. He stood in the doorway, a familiar image.
Once, they were friends and even lovers. Both raised in archaeological families, they’d spent summers together while their parents worked at whatever site they happened to be excavating.
As a child, she’d had a crush on him. Loved him with all the love a thirteen-year-old girl could muster for a sixteen-year-old boy.
Later, when she’d graduated with her doctorate, they’d become lovers, and she’d thought her life complete. Their parents were thrilled with their relationship.
Hell, she was beside herself with joy at the thought of spending her life with Michael Grey.
She’d shared his bed. Shared her body. Shared her soul.
And he’d betrayed her.
<
br /> It had been worse than simply using her, then leaving her like a plaything. Instead, he’d done the unthinkable—stolen an artifact and abandoned her in a Brazilian jail cell to meet the consequences of his actions.
She shuddered at the memory.
She had helped Michael break into a private estate after he told her the owner had stolen a Mayan fertility statue from Michael’s employer. Michael had been so passionate, so righteous, in his need to “save” the stolen property that she hadn’t hesitated to help him.
Standing in the darkened mansion, Michael had taken the statue, kissed her in the dark and gone out a side window while she’d run to the back door to make her escape.
That was when the police jumped her. Not knowing who they were, she’d fought and ended up being beaten for her effort. It wasn’t until her opponents cuffed her and she saw their cars marked with the word policía that she realized what had happened.
Michael had lied. They weren’t saving the statue. They were stealing it.
Shoved into the police car, she was taken straight to jail—do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. There wasn’t a hearing. No judge. No jury. The statue was gone and she was caught.
Once at the jail, the interrogation began. It wasn’t like the movies. There wasn’t good cop, bad cop.
There was just bad cops.
They’d slapped her. Punched her. Ripped her shirt off and humiliated her. They wanted the name of her accomplice, but even then, she wouldn’t give it. Instead, she held on to the hope that she was wrong. That Michael would return the statue. Save her. Do something.
But he didn’t come, and she finally realized he never would. He’d taken her innocence, crushed it under his heel and left her to the wolves.
And for what? Money.
Humiliation washed over her as she remembered her naiveté in delivering Michael the statue and actually protecting him. Stealing the urn and catching her was simply adding insult to her already bruised ego. She glared at Michael, amazed that she once loved the man standing before her. Now she felt nothing but contempt for him and an anger so hot it scorched her from inside out. No panic. No fear. Just rage.
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