by Cherry Adair
She was scared enough as it was.
No. He’d make up some bullshit story, put her on a plane bound stateside, and hunt down Yermalof like the demented bastard that he was.
He used both hands to remove her glasses by the earpieces, then she waited, a smile curving her lips, for him to clean them on the hem of her shirt. Lifting the soft cotton exposed a smile of pale skin and her belly button. Thorne wanted to kiss her right there. Hell’s bells, he wanted to kiss her all over. He handed her back the clean glasses, drunk on cinnamon.
“If you stop touching them,” he admonished with more annoyance than the act warranted, “you wouldn’t have fingerprints blurring your vision.”
“Thanks.” Sliding them back on, she managed to leave a thumbprint right in her field of vision. “I’ll make a note of that. Although that wasn’t an answer.”
Last night over a late-night dinner he’d answered the questions he wanted to and evaded the rest. Isis was determined.
He was motivated to keep the truth to himself. Isis’s concern gave him a convenient excuse to hire a driver/guard. While she was busy confessing to a nonexistent crime, he had to protect them both from Yermalof.
Thorne was good, damned good at what he did, but even he wouldn’t be able to fend off a half-dozen professional assassins if that’s who they decided to send next. Not with his leg, not with Isis with him. Taking on a gang of cutthroats worked in movies, but real life didn’t have a director to yell cut, or a stunt double to take the bullet. If the attack had been instigated by Yermalof, screw Thorne’s ego. He’d take all the backup required to protect Isis until he saw her safely on a plane.
He had feelers out to see if Yermalof was anywhere near Cairo. Yermalof or one of his unsavory friends. If such was the case, he’d lead the son of a bitch as far away from Egypt and Isis’s business as possible.
“How do you feel about marriage?”
That came out of left field. He was pretty sure she wasn’t proposing marriage on such short acquaintance. “I have no feelings for it one way or another. In the short term, it’s a fine institution. For some.”
She twisted in her seat to face him, causing the seat belt to divide her breasts, which drew Thorne’s attention somewhere he didn’t want to look. “Not for you?”
He thought of his father, an emotionally cold, granite statue determined to master his universe, and his mother, calm and blank when medicated either by booze or pills. Certainly he was destined to bow to the same genetic coding. Few marriages, if any, could survive that. He changed his depth perception so she was slightly out of focus. “No.”
She cocked her head. “What if you meet the perfect woman for you?”
There was a snort from the front seat.
“My dear,” Thorne told her coolly, “there are hundreds of women perfect for me. If I married them all I’d be a polygamist. I have yet to see a marriage that endures. It’s an antiquated institution that leaves financial ruin in its wake, or two very unhappy people who ‘stay together for the children.’ I don’t like failing at anything, and I’m not stupid enough to go into something where there’s a disproportionate chance that I’ll fail.”
“That’s because you’re a salesman.”
He blinked her back into focus. “A sales—why on earth would you say that?”
“Because you aren’t the type of man who’d come home from work every night. You’d be off on some perceived adventure, and forget you even had a wife.”
“Probably. All the more reason not to get something I’d be so careless with. I suppose you hanker for marriage, a white picket fence, kids, and a minivan?”
“I do want to get married. Sooner rather than later. I like the idea of a sweet little house somewhere in the burbs, and a husband who comes home to me every night. Call me sentimental and old-fashioned, but that’s what I want. I enjoy my job as a photographer. Quite a lot, actually. But it isn’t a career, and I can’t make money taking pictures of cloud formations or sunlight on a snapdragon petal. I get my creative yaya, but those images don’t pay the rent.”
“So you want to marry for financial security, then?”
“I want a man who considers motherhood a full-time job, which it is. I’d work until the children came along, then I want to be a stay-at-home mom. I spent most of my life traveling between my aunt and my father, living in a cramped apartment or a tent. I want roots. Stability. To spend the rest of my life with someone I love, someone who loves me. I’d like to have three children—two boys and a girl, or the other way around. I’m dying to make school lunches and belong to the PTA. I can’t wait to drive my daughter to soccer practice and my sons to dance classes, or vice versa.”
His lips twitched, because she’d barely taken a breath in that litany of wants. It was good to want things. Better not to expect them. “If you’re so gung ho about marriage, then why are you still single?”
“Because I’ve had two lovers, and I sincerely believed each to be the one. But it turned out that both were the ones before the one.”
“What’s the point? The next can just as easily be yet another one before the one.”
“Maybe. I might not have a great track record, but I’m willing to keep trying.”
“I’m not opposed to you trying with me until you find that elusive one.”
“That’s very kind of you, but I’ll pass,” she told him cheerfully, eliciting a muffled cough from their driver. “My future husband is out there. We just have to find each other.”
“I hope for your sake you stumble across this paragon, and he gives you everything you think you want.” Oddly, the thought annoyed the hell out of him, although Thorne couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. She was a free agent. None of his business beyond him doing the job he was hired to do. She could trot off and marry whomever she bloody well pleased, and good luck to her.
“So do I,” she told him, sounding like she meant it.
And probably regret it after the honeymoon period was over, he thought sourly, grateful to see that they’d arrived at the parking lot behind the mosque.
“Park over there; we’ll walk it.” Thorne ignored the ache in his leg, as well as his client’s chirpy confession about true love, puppy dogs, and fucking rainbows somewhere over a suburban soccer field. He was grateful all around for the reminders to be cautious.
Heustis parked the black sedan under a tree and popped the doors.
Thorne slid out after Isis, so she was sandwiched between the two men. The driver fell back a few feet. Isis moved closer to Thorne as they entered the underpass. It looked different during the day—not better, just different. At night he’d only smelled the filth; now he could see it.
Once again she was wearing her camera bag bandolier-style, slung across her body, the strap bisecting her breasts. The brown leather saddlebag, about the size of a small loaf of bread, bounced on her hip.
“Want me to carry that for you?”
“No, I’m good, thanks. I never let this baby out of my sight. And thank God I don’t, because after yesterday’s drama, I’d be out three grand, with no recourse.” She nudged his arm with her shoulder. “Why’s the driver following us?” she stage-whispered, taking a double step to match Thorne’s stride, then slipping her hand into the crook of his arm as if she had every right to do so. At least his gun hand was free.
“He wants to buy an area rug for his kitchen.”
Isis laughed and squeezed his arm against the soft swell of her breast. Honest to God, the woman was a menace.
“Now you owe me eighteen answers,” she told him cheerfully. “You can’t avoid paying up forever, you know.”
Avoidance was his middle name. Thorne merely gave her a dour look, which she answered with a smile. God, she had a pretty smile. And God help him, he liked the taste of it, too. The woman was tying him in knots with apparently little effort.
He faced forward and concentrated on not limping. He was man enough to know he needed to buy another cane.
> The only sign of what had transpired the night before was a large stain on the cement, which could be anything from chocolate ice cream to someone’s spilled brains. He guided Isis around the dried blood and hastened their steps. “Tell me about Beniti al-Atrash.”
“My father’s known him for more than thirty years,” she told him, willing to be distracted from her interrogation at least for a little while. “He has a stall and also a small shop, which back against one another: one high-end, the other touristy trash. He sells carpets and small antiquities.” She sent him a sideways laughing glance. “Some genuine, most imitation knockoffs pretending to be genuine. He’s been at the same intersection for as long as I can remember. His son Husani and I had a thing one summer many years ago.” Her smile was sweetly wistful. “He’s married now with two sons.”
“A thing?”
“Oh, a hot romance. He was an older man—fifteen to my thirteen. It was a magical time. Husani taught me the fine art of kissing.”
Thorne didn’t want to hear about a “magical time,” even if she’d been a kid. The kissing part he appreciated. “Remind me to thank him if I see him.”
“He works for his father, so you’ll probably meet him. God, I love this place.” She spread her arms, inhaling deeply. “I smell citrus, and hundreds of spices, and leather. Do you like the smell of leather?”
“Only if it’s used in bondage.” He shot her a glance and smiled when her cheeks flushed. “No? Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.” Inhaling, he picked up a noseful of body odor, piss, and strong Egyptian cigarettes. She lifted the camera from around her neck and paused to take a series of shots of a cat sprawled on a blanket in a fruit stall. Totally unhygienic.
He wanted to take her to meet her friend, see if they could find a clue to Cleopatra’s damned tomb, then take her to the airport. He’d assure her he’d stay behind to look. Look for the Russian. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, and her father didn’t know what he’d had for breakfast that morning, so he wouldn’t be affected by her not finding the tomb one way or another.
She passed to cast him a curious look. “What’s the matter?”
“We don’t have time to take pictures.”
“Go ahead, I’ll catch up with you.” She made some minute adjustment to the expensive camera.
Thorne kept his eyes moving, looking at faces in the milling crowd, watching body language, when he’d much rather be watching her. “We’ll wait. Make it snappy.”
She grinned, the camera to her face. “Punny.” Looking through the viewfinder, she twisted the lens. “God—the sun’s wrapping his whiskers perfectly…” Holding her breath, she squeezed off a series of shots, then moved a few feet to the left. “Just look at the colors.” She deftly manipulated the camera to get what she wanted. “The oranges and the ginger cat are beautiful. Look how relaxed he is exposing his fat belly to the sun and how his coat and the fruit bring out the rich purple of the blanket.”
He looked at it again. Cat. Oranges. Blanket. He still didn’t get it. “You’re an artist.” Thorne watched her frame the next shot. How odd, he thought, watching the harsh sunlight tangle in her dark hair and bathe her pale skin with warmth. Listening to her, one could assume she worked with her father and had no other life. They’d spent every moment of the past several days in each other’s company, they’d kissed, and yet he had no idea that her photography was a job as well as a passion. He realized he had no idea what she did when she wasn’t hunting clues to a nonexistent tomb and taking photographs of products for ad campaigns.
“I didn’t have the stomach for premed to become a proctologist,” she said with a grin, showing her crooked eyeteeth and dancing lights in her big brown eyes as she secured her camera in the small bag on her hip. “There’s Beniti’s stall; come on.” Grabbing his hand, she pulled him along. Thorne had never met a woman so touchy-feely. Isis Magee was vibrant and full of life. She woke his dulled senses when he was fairly certain he liked them just the way they were.
A tall man, wearing loose-fitting dark pants and an olive drab T-shirt, stood with his back to them. Isis went up behind him and wrapped her arms around the man’s waist. “Sabah el-kheir, Uncle.”
The man turned swiftly, anger written all over his face. The guy was barely a few inches over her five four, and to Thorne’s eye, supremely unattractive, with a pronounced nose and black eyes. He couldn’t be more than thirty. The moment he saw who’d grabbed him, his expression lightened, but he took Isis firmly by her upper arm and hissed. “Isis, little bird, what are you doing here?”
“I came to see your—”
“Come with me.” He propelled her in front of him and Thorne’s pulse jumped a notch.
She turned to look over her shoulder. “I’m with a friend—”
The man’s black eyes sized up Thorne as he asked Isis, “You trust this man?”
“Trust him—of course.”
“Then come. Both of you. Quickly.”
Thorne indicated to Heustis to wait outside and stay alert. The warning was unnecessary.
The guy, clearly not the older man he’d expected, was holding Isis’s arm in a death grip, and she practically had to run to keep up with him. Thorne followed hard on her heels, right behind her through the densely crowded shop filled with small carpets and a hundred statues of cats, pyramids, and sphinxes.
They reached a dimly lit back room. No sunlight reached this far inside, and the small space was hung with carpets and bolts of cloth. The oppressive heat wasn’t helped by the brass brazier with a pot of shay bi na’na in the middle of the room. The strong smell of the mint tea permeated the humid air.
“Husani al-Atrash, this is Connor Thorne. He’s helping m—”
“Today is a day for visitors from the past.” The urgency left Husani’s voice as he gave Isis an inquiring look. Thorne read tension in the guy’s body language and rested his hand on the Glock in the small of his back under his black T-shirt.
“What can I do for you, little bird?”
“I actually came to see your father.”
While wondering who the other visitor had been, Thorne looked for exits. There were several. Possible weapons were all over the place, not to mention Isis’s being in too close proximity to the man who’d taught her to kiss like a favorite royal concubine. Six feet. Casually he stepped between them as he looked around. For all he knew the guy was going for a fucking weapon.
“He was attacked in his home early this morning.” Husani started moving small closed baskets from a large pile in the far corner. He turned to glance from Isis to Thorne, then went back to his housekeeping. “He is now in the hospital.”
Isis blanched. “Oh no! Is he all right?”
“Like the professor, my father, too, has a hard head.” He turned with a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Concussion, scrapes, and bruises. They’re keeping him for observation.”
“Which hospital? I’ll go and see him.”
“Kasr El Aini, in Garden City—I am sorry to tell you that we believe the attack had something to do with Professor Magee.”
Isis leaned against a waist-high pile of carpets, then took a deep breath as she met Thorne’s eyes. See? her eyes telegraphed. It was about my father. She looked back at her friend. “Why do you say that?”
“Two men came yesterday asking for a papyrus for Cleopatra’s tomb.”
“There was a papyrus?” Isis’s brows lifted. If there really was such a thing it would be all that was needed to prove her father’s claim.
“Not that I know of. But we have not heard this name since the professor’s accident in the spring. Then my father’s attack in his home. Two men asked when last my father had communications with the professor. It has been months since your father was here last.”
“He’s in a… He has Alzheimer’s. He doesn’t remember what happened that night at the tomb.”
Husani frowned, stroking his bearded chin. “Your arrival has apparently set off an unfortunate ch
ain of events, little sister. Cairo is not safe for you.”
“We were attacked last night when I came here to see your father. Husani, do you know where the Queen’s tomb is?”
He shook his head and started moving the baskets with more gusto. “I do not. But then you know how much your father favored puzzles. Especially since the community didn’t believe his wild claims.”
“Do you believe he found her tomb?”
He paused and glanced at Isis over his shoulder. “I believe that my father, a man who has never lied to me, believes this is so.”
“Do you know where it is?” she asked again.
“I do not, nor does my father. But you must leave Cairo, Isis. These men are dangerous.”
Thorne opened the camera bag and took out the small black notebook. “Does this look familiar?” He held it for the other man to see.
“Yes. We sell them here at my stall. The professor purchased many to jot down notes. Is this one of his?”
“Not sure,” Thorne prevaricated. He didn’t trust anyone.
The Egyptian met his eyes and merely gave a small nod before turning to Isis.
“Your father left two items with my father for safekeeping. Here.”
“Thank God.” Isis breathed deeply, then held out her hand. “We were hoping he’d left a clue of some kind. What’s this?” she asked as the other man laid a length of wood across her palm.
“It’s a broken piece of a walking stick. Don’t ask me the significance, for I do not know.”
“Seriously?” Isis took the carved stick and handed it to Thorne. “Not only is it broken, but a walking stick like this is mass-produced and sold at a hundred stalls here alone.” Frustration laced her words.
Thorne took it, hoping she wasn’t about to burst into tears. “The stick and carvings are machine made, probably in China. Nothing special about it that I can see.”
She looked hopeful. “Maybe it’s hollow and he’s written me a nice letter explaining everything.”
