She managed a grim smile. “If I’d known you were here, I’d have knocked.”
Michael gave a snort of disbelief. “And if I’d known you were coming, I’d have poured the wine.” He motioned with his gun. “Now, step away from the safe and take a seat while I decide what to do with you.”
Veronica stepped out of the vault and back into the half-lit room. “It’s not as if I was stealing something that belonged to you.”
Michael chuckled and walked closer, stopping at a small table next to the couch. With the hall lights behind him, she could make out his features—his chiseled chin and thick, dark blond hair. He wore silk boxers and nothing else.
With his lean, muscled body and all-American good looks, he could be a model.
Too bad he had no conscience. In her eyes, that made him less than human and as attractive as a cockroach.
She waited for him to pick up the phone or shout for his guards.
He did neither. Instead, his face softened, and for a moment, he resembled the man she once thought she knew. “Why did you come here, Veronica? Why couldn’t you leave it alone?”
There was a familiar tenderness in his voice that caught her off guard. She knew they were no longer talking about the urn, and it tugged at the buried place in her heart that had once been his. “Why did you take it?” she asked, her whisper carrying through the dark.
“I had no choice.”
“There is always a choice.”
“A client…” He hesitated, and now the darkness almost pulsed with unspoken words. “I wanted to see you. Talk to you. Explain.”
He had never been shy about revealing his feelings for her, but why did he even have them? They were at odds now. Enemies. “Michael, why can’t you just let it go? Let me go?”
His eyes glittered. “You are my first love, Veronica. The only woman who ever touched me. Understood me. Even when we were kids…” His shoulders slumped as if carrying a great weight. “No matter what I did, you were there. No accusations. Just understanding. Remember that time we stole the camel?”
Her lips curved upwards in spite of her precarious situation. She had been sixteen and both her and Michael’s parents were in Turkey on the same dig. Bored, she and Michael had stolen the camel and gone riding under the moonlight. They hadn’t thought anyone would notice but when they came back, the camel’s owner had noticed and was anything but pleased.
They’d pulled water duty—carrying water from the oasis to the diggers—for the next week.
But it had been worth it. He’d kissed her under the moonlight, and for Michael, she’d have done anything. “I remember, but we were kids. It was a camel. This is different. This is real life. This is illegal.”
“We’re meant to be together, Veronica. We belong to each other. We pledged it, remember? How can you just forget that?”
Belonged to each other? That’s what this was about? She chewed her lower lip. He’d always been obsessive about his things and what they represented to him. Once, she’d borrowed his archaeological toolkit without asking and he’d been furious for days.
It was just a toolkit, but it hadn’t mattered to him. It was his, he’d raged. She’d had no right and if she’d respected him, she’d have known that.
It seemed she was reduced to being his metaphorical toolkit. “I remember, but I don’t belong to anyone, Michael. Least of all, you.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to understand. I thought maybe, if you saw me again, if you just listened, that you would see the truth.”
“I do understand,” she countered. “I understand that you’ve deceived me twice. Stolen from me. Used me. I understand that when it came down to helping me or meeting your client so you could sell an artifact on the black market, the client won.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
She didn’t miss the tension and restrained anger in his voice, and she wondered if he had always been like that. How had she missed it?
“There was nothing I could do to help you until the next morning, so I went ahead and met my contacts. It seemed like a reasonable plan.” The tension in his voice ratcheted upward. “They wouldn’t let me leave. They practically held me hostage, for Christ’s sake.”
None of it mattered. In his own sad, twisted way, he loved her, but love wasn’t a word and it was more than an emotion.
It was an action.
And his actions had spoken volumes. “I understand all that,” she replied, remembering how he’d begged her to stay with him. That he never meant to leave her behind. That he did it all for her. To buy her things. To create a life for them.
What he didn’t understand was that she’d been happy.
Until Brazil and the awful truth.
No—he might tell himself that he did it for her, for them, but he did it for himself.
“If you hadn’t lied to me in Brazil, put me in that situation, I would never have been thrown in jail.”
She raked a hand over her hair, thrusting a wayward piece behind her ear. “And you broke the biggest rule. You’re an archaeologist, and you stole an artifact for personal gain. You sold it to the highest bidder. That goes against everything our parents taught us.”
“Is that so different from what you do?” he replied. “Private collector or museum. We’re both stealing from the past. Mine just pays better.” He waved his free hand to indicate the opulent room that surrounded them. “A lot better.”
She hesitated. On some level, he was right. In fact, on more than one occasion, a native from wherever she happened to be excavating said the same thing. Last year, she’d been excavating a site on the outskirts of Ankara, Turkey, trying to beat the highway construction team that would be going through the middle of the site in less than a month.
She’d hoped the locals would assist her team, but instead, they accused her people of stealing their Turkish heritage. Far from helping, they’d gone as far as sabotaging the site—filling in the excavation pits to slow her down.
Reexcavation cost time and only half of the site was recovered before the bulldozers arrived and destroyed what was left. Artifacts were picked out of the backfill, but precious information was destroyed when they were moved and their location in relation to each other was lost.
The loss made her want to cry. And it was concern for preservation and heritage details that made her different from Michael—not simply concern about where the artifacts ended up.
She raised her chin, glaring at Michael. “I am nothing like you.” She spat the words, angered at the comparison. “I do this for knowledge. So we can learn from history. Teach the knowledge to others. Not for profit.”
He stiffened, and she knew she was losing him, but she didn’t stop. Didn’t care. She’d wanted to say this before but had faltered. Now, in the dead of the night with her heartache behind her, there was no hesitation. Not any longer. “Not for a mansion. Not for a fancy car. Certainly not so I can betray those whom I love.”
He strode toward her, his expression dark, his hand tightening around the gun pointed toward the floor, and for a moment, she thought he might shoot her. “It wasn’t my fault,” he said through gritted teeth.
Whether he meant Brazil, the burial urn or even their failed relationship, his excuses were just that—excuses. She steadied her nerves. “I. Don’t. Care.”
They stood there, facing each other. Staring. Silent.
Finally, Michael took a step backward and raised the handgun level with her face.
The moment of honesty was over, and they were back to the status quo of hating each other.
It was a tangible relief.
“I take it that you’re not going to let me take back my urn?”
“Not likely.”
Veronica worried her lower lip but had to try again, even as she knew it wouldn’t work. “It’s a valuable part of history. It belongs to the people, not stuck in some private collection.”
“If it’s so important, why didn’t you put it in the museum’
s vault right away? Why keep it in your apartment where anyone could take it?”
The worst part about having an ex-lover as an enemy was that they knew all the soft, vulnerable places in which to strike. Her cheeks burned in embarrassment at the dig. She’d been careless. She’d recovered the artifact last week, and after gaining clearance from the Turkish government, she’d flown with it back to the United States, planning to take it to the museum in the morning.
She should have called the museum Director of Archaeology and Ancient Cultures of the Smithsonian and asked him to secure it, but she hadn’t, and someone on her crew had obviously contacted Michael and told him of her find.
Her jaw tightened as another course of anger rushed through her. She shook it off. She’d find the loose-lipped grunt later. Now she needed to escape, somehow, with the urn.
She sighed. “Mike—”
“Michael,” he corrected.
“Mike. Where’s the satisfaction in stealing ashes? Give them back and I promise not to call the police.”
“If you were going to call the police, you’d have already done it.” Michael grinned in satisfaction. “You’re so predictable, Veronica. Want to save your parents the pain of your inep-titude? Of knowing their daughter mishandled a sacred artifact?”
He thought he knew her so well. And he did. Once.
That was no longer the case.
“Parental approval? That’s what you think makes me tick? Our parents are friends. Good friends. If they knew about you. About how you paid for this monstrosity of a mansion, it would break apart a thirty-year alliance. My parents would hate you and your parents would be compelled to defend you. How can you jeopardize them for the sake of a burial urn?”
“As you said, my dear, money. And the power and luxury that come with it.” He picked up the phone. “You didn’t want to call the police, but I will. I believe that breaking and entering a home, with a gun, is a felony.”
Rage burned through Veronica’s veins. He wouldn’t win. Not again. “Go ahead. Call them. I’ll tell them about the urn.” She leaned toward him. “My excavation of it is well documented, so when this is all sorted out, you’ll be in jail for theft.”
Unless they believed him about her breaking and entering and he had the sense to hide the urn.
“I know what you’re trying to do.” He hesitated, the phone receiver in his hand and the number undialed.
Veronica held her ground, keeping her focus on Michael’s face and not at the gun that was still pointed at her. “What?”
“Give you the urn. Let you go. Get a little payback for me dumping you.”
“Dumping me? Is that what you call it? Is that how you live with the knowledge of what you did?” The memory of his betrayal rolled through Veronica in a red wave.
He shrugged, and she shook the anger off. Now was not the time to lose her temper. He was baiting her, and going over the Brazil incident was like flogging a dead pony. She was tired and the pony was past caring. Besides, she wasn’t here to debate right and wrong with a person who refused to see the difference.
She took one last stab at reason, no matter how pointless. “Let me leave with the urn and we’ll call it even. No one has to know about this.”
Michael gestured at her shotgun, his dark blue eyes unforgiving and unrelenting in their determination to have his way. “Hand over Lily.”
Damn. He knew her much too well.
“Now.”
Slowly, Veronica drew the Remington 870 police issue shotgun from her back holster. He would pay for this.
Michael leveled his gun. “Careful.”
She held her weapon out, butt first.
Sorry, Lily.
She dropped her.
The moment of distraction was all Veronica needed. Using all her strength, she stomped on Michael’s instep as hard as she could. He yelled and automatically reached towards his foot, the gun still in hand.
Veronica grabbed for the weapon and they wrestled for control, Veronica fueled by anger and fear and Michael fueled by pain. “Let go or I’ll shoot,” Michael growled in her ear.
“Bite me,” Veronica retorted, trying to bend his hand backward. He didn’t give an inch, and she knew that while she might match him strength-to-strength for a few more seconds, he was stronger than she was, and in a battle of brawn, she’d ultimately be the loser.
Quickly, she tried to stomp on his already sore foot and he instinctively pulled away.
Dropping to the ground, Veronica grabbed Lily and swung her upwards, knocking the pistol from Michael’s hand with Lily’s barrel. His weapon skittered across the floor. Pointing the shotgun at Michael as he lunged to recover his weapon, she forced the shells into the double barrel even as she leapt to her feet.
The familiar krch-krch sound of the pump action caught Michael’s attention. He stopped, resting his weight on his good foot.
A surge of adrenaline rushed through Veronica. It was moments like these—the look of shock in Michael’s eyes—that made all the pain she’d tolerated worth it.
Michael’s eyes narrowed and he took a tentative step toward his gun. “You wouldn’t do it.”
She ignored the taunt, realizing he wouldn’t fire on her even if he were armed. Not when pushed. He was a coward. The kind of man who paid others to do his dirty work, then left them to hang. He didn’t have what it took.
She did.
She leveled her shotgun. “God help me, I would.”
The truth behind the statement surprised her. She loathed that single, brutal piece of her soul, but there was no denying it. Their families and their past be damned, she could put up with Michael and his lies no longer.
Michael hesitated and dropped his gun.
Veronica kicked it away. She pointed to a wing chair. “Sit.”
Michael crossed the room. “Don’t do this, Veronica. You don’t want to get on my bad side.”
“You should be more concerned with getting on mine.” Veronica tightened her grip on Lily. “Now sit!” She shouted the command.
He sat.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside the room. Damn. Another dose of adrenaline shot through Veronica. Keeping Lily trained on Michael, she sprinted to the door, slammed it and turned the deadbolt.
Seconds later on the opposite side, someone pounded on the wood with a solid thud.
With Lily still trained on Michael, Veronica grabbed her pack with the urn, threw it over one shoulder and edged back toward the balcony. Beyond the expensive French door, the night was silent.
Someone pounded on the door to the study.
So much for silence, Veronica thought.
“You know I’ll steal it back.”
She couldn’t see him, but she heard the sureness in his voice and it unnerved her. She squared her shoulders to hide the uneasiness, then looked back and gave a nonchalant wave as if his words meant nothing to her. “I’ll let the curator know you said that.”
He smiled from under hooded eyes. “You do that.”
Her eyes narrowed and she steadied Lily. “If you steal it, anyway, I’ll remember what you did to me and take measures to make sure you never bother any one ever again. I’m tired of you, Michael. The games. The lies. If you come near me or mine again, I swear you’ll end up with something more serious than a bruised foot.”
The pounding on the door grew louder. Another minute and Michael’s guards would break through. Her heart beat harder. Veronica stepped onto the balcony and hurried to the edge. Sheathing Lily in her holster, she stepped over the railing.
Looking back into the room, she watched as Michael rose from the chair and sprinted toward her with murder in his eyes. Veronica grabbed the rope, sliding down and dropping the last few feet to the damp grass.
Shouts from above reached her ears. In seconds, she was running to the bushes, then through them. The dense branches scraped the bare skin on her cheek and tugged at her clothes.
In another few seconds, she was on her bike. The Kawasaki Vul
can Classic roared to life between her thighs, and she sped into the night.
Her feet dragging, Veronica entered the small outer office of Discovery Incorporated, her archaeological firm that contracted to excavate sites, and set her leather backpack on the floor. It had been a long night with no rest. She’d arrived at her apartment exhausted from the adrenaline crash but unable to sleep for fear of Michael making good on his word to try to steal the urn back. She’d managed a shower and a change of clothes, but even those were done with both Lily and the urn resting on the floor beside the tub.
She’d ridden into the city as soon as the world woke up and delivered the urn to the Museum of Ancient History, reiterating its value to the curator. She’d watched as he locked it in the vault until further studies could be done on it.
Now she needed sleep. About eight hours of it. But first, paperwork, pay some bills that were late, and then she could go home and collapse into bed.
She sniffed, and the full-bodied scent of a Sumatra-bean coffee tickled her nose. “Thank God.”
Taking off her jacket, she unstrapped her custom holster, slid it off her shoulders and placed it, and her shotgun, on the floor next to the backpack. Generally, she didn’t carry Lily to the office, but after last night’s fiasco, she wasn’t taking any chances with Michael.
Rebecca came around the corner and stopped midstep, her periwinkle-colored, semi-sheer dress swirling round her ankles, giving her an ethereal quality. “Hi, boss. What happened to you? You look like something the cat dragged in.”
“A bright good morning to you, too.” Wearing her favorite Levi’s jeans, sneakers and a clean cotton shirt, Veronica eased herself into the wing chair across from Rebecca’s desk with a sigh. “Michael was home.”
Rebecca’s wide blue eyes narrowed, and she went from ethereal assistant to obsessed computer whiz in the time it took her to sit behind her desk and turn to her computer. Veronica fought the urge to roll her eyes. Rebecca’s ability to find information—no matter how well protected—bordered on the supernatural.
The Midas Trap Page 2
