Relentless (Lodestone)

by Cherry Adair

  No. He had to show her what she needed to see, then he’d use all his negotiating skills to make her see things his way. The trip there and back would take the better part of the day. But he’d still have time to get her on an evening flight.

  Thorne headed west as Isis talked to someone at the MSA, then handed him his phone. Since he’d overheard the conversation there was no need to recap. Brengard had all the correct permissions filed.

  “If he really has found Cleo,” Isis said tightly, “I’m going to have to do him serious bodily harm. Son of a bitch did steal my father’s maps. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he was involved in the attack—our attacks, plural—and also responsible for putting Beniti al-Atrash in the hospital. And if he’s glomming on to my father’s dig with an Egyptian fly’s tenacity, then perhaps he had a part in my father’s attack three months ago as well.”

  Oh, Thorne didn’t doubt that one for a minute.

  She massaged her forehead, then took off her glasses to rub her eyes. “It seems surreal, but someone’s responsible for everything that’s happened, and he sure fits the bill.”

  He kept a firm grip on the steering wheel, weaving in and out of traffic. There was less time than she thought. “We know where he wasn’t during those few days—in any hospital. So his whereabouts are unaccounted for. So, yes, I’d put my money on him being neck deep in all this.”

  A mixture of betrayal and fierce anger flitted across her features. “My father trusted him. Hell, I trusted him. Dad shared everything with Dylan, past, present, and future—”

  “He didn’t tell him about the carpet tassel clue.”

  She leaned her elbow on the window and cupped her forehead in her hand. “You know that sounds ridiculous, right?” she said with a return to her pithy self. “That we know of,” she answered his rhetorical question.

  “Do you still feel as strongly that her tomb is about to reside at the bottom of a lake, and not thirty miles from Alexandria as Brengard claims?”

  “That’s what my gut feeling is. But honestly? That’s not based on anything tangible.”

  “My reading on your amulet is about the only solid clue we have, and that says, unequivocally, that it was found in the Valley of the Scorpions.”

  She patted her back pocket. “Yes, but it doesn’t say Queen Cleopatra’s tomb.” She curled her leg beneath her and faced him with a heavy sigh. “Dylan is a braggart and an opportunist. But if he’s lying, he’ll soon be found out. He won’t be able to keep a find like this quiet for long. Even with everything that’s been going on with my father these last few months, I would’ve heard something from someone.

  “Everyone in the universe knows how badly my father wanted to find Cleo’s last resting place. Someone would’ve taken great pleasure in rubbing his nose in the fact that somebody else did what he’s spent a lifetime trying to do. But I haven’t heard a scintilla of a hint of a whisper. All of which means that somehow, some way, Dylan has greased palms or kissed butts. He would have had to name the find in his paperwork—and considering he was connected to my father and the number of times he claimed to have found Cleopatra’s tomb, the news would have spread faster through the archaeological community than fleas on market rats.”

  Thorne frowned. He needed specifics if he was going to plan out their next move. “How long before he makes a public announcement?”

  “Excavating a tomb won’t be quick. Even he’s not stupid enough to make a false claim until he’s absolutely sure of what he’s found. It would have to be something big and definitive—her sarcophagus would do it. We can go there tomorrow, see what he’s doing—”

  “What we don’t have time for is to wait to see what’s on the valley floor before it becomes a lake next week.”

  “But if there’s a chance, even a small chance, that my father was in the Valley of the Scorpions three months ago, or a year ago, and this amulet was taken from there… then the lake project will be forced to wait. Right?”

  He shrugged. “It took four years to move the Temple of Abu Simbel to higher ground.”

  “But it was moved.”

  He suspected that if necessary, Isis would supervise the move personally if the tomb were found. But he also suspected that in six days the valley would be a pleasant recreational lake beneath the cofferdam, and all this supposition would be moot. “Do you want to visit Dr. Najid at his office?”

  She shook her head. “I’d like to go out to the site first. Just to… see.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “GOD. WE WON’T BE able to stop this, will we?” Despite her dark glasses, Isis shaded her eyes against the intensely bright sunlight reflecting off the pale sand. The heat seeped through her shoes and burned her legs beneath thin cotton pants. Very few people were stupid enough to be outside when it was this hot, and the shiny new settlement was a ghost town of pristine, empty buildings and emptier streets.

  Perspiration and the humidity caused her hair to puff up and curl around her neck and shoulders. She scooped the mass up in one hand to shove under her hat.

  Thorne, too, shaded his eyes as he looked across to the other side of the deep valley, where mirror images of the buildings and green strips of grass and trees waited for tourists and locals alike to enjoy. Docks strategically placed along the edge of the ravine looked oddly surreal jutting several hundred feet over sand, marking where the level of the lake would reach in a week. “It won’t be easy,” he admitted.

  He’d pointed out where he “saw” the GPS location of her amulet’s original resting place: across the deep valley and snugged into the hillside, in a skinny ridge that snaked along the eastern wall and looked from here like piles of rocks. To see anything she’d need powerful binoculars. Everything was the same sand-colored sand.

  There was no frantic activity with large machinery, or the thousands of people who’d been involved with the preparation for the flooding of the valley. Their work was done. On the hilly rim circling the mile-long Valley of the Scorpions were the new hotels, restaurants, and shops, the paved streets, parks, the recreational buildings for boat rentals and ski equipment—empty now, but all with a future ringside seat to the second-largest man-made lake in Egypt.

  They’d passed the hydroelectric plant several miles back, and the faint throb could be heard even here. The graceful, multiple arches of the cement buttress cofferdam wall held the water in the upper dam. Leaking moisture quickly evaporated in the stifling heat, leaving a sweat stain on the gray surface.

  Behind them the blank eyes of hotel and shop windows looked out over the valley of sand and rock, but in a week a hundred million acre-feet of sparkling blue water would fill the valley. Feluccas would unfurl white sails, speedboats and skiers would cut through the water, and swimmers would lounge on the man-made beaches, already curved, groomed, and ready, hundreds of feet above the floor of the valley.

  Isis put a hand on his arm. “Let’s go back to Husani and get the men and supplies and come back first thing in the morning when it’s cooler. We’ll go down to reconnoiter, see what we can see, and go from there.” She bit her lip when Thorne made no comment. “You’re right. We should stop by and see Dr. Najid first. At least we can get the stopping process in motion.”

  “He won’t be predisposed to stop a multibillion-dollar project without concrete proof. I suggest we take a breath and regroup. If you’re up to it, we’ll go down since I know exactly where we need to be. We can drive most of the way, I don’t think it would be much of a walk to reach the place. You take plenty of pictures, and then we’ll go and see him. Good enough?”

  Isis took off her hat to swipe at the sweat running down her temple, using the large red and blue cotton scarf tucked in her belt. “Good idea. She’s down there. Waiting.” Plopping the hat back on her head, she squeezed his muscled forearm and grinned up at him. “I can feel it.”

  TWELVE

  If the lakeside businesses had been open, Thorne would’ve checked into one of the hotels, grabbed
a cold shower, and fallen into bed wrapped around a hot Isis. After the heavy workout the day before, his leg was stiffening up. All the hours behind the wheel today had made it throb like a son of a bitch. He should probably get in some of the exercises prescribed by his London physiotherapist. Running through the streets and hand-to-hand altercations weren’t part of her suggested therapies. Neither was a marathon bout of sex. On a sagging sofa, on the floor, against the wall, and finally in the shower… no, once more on the sagging furniture before they succumbed to exhaustion.

  In fact, if he bothered to recall several conversations between himself, the therapist, and his surgeon, running and getting shot at were right there at the top of the Do Not Do list if he wanted to fully recover the use of his leg. They’d made no mention of sex.

  He didn’t relish clambering around the rocks and sand in the valley searching for a tomb he didn’t give a rat’s ass about. But since it needed to be done, he wanted an early start, Husani’s well-armed, able-bodied men, and the correct supplies and equipment.

  Tomorrow.

  For today he’d take Isis where she wanted to go. Show her whatever, then get her on that plane.

  The intense heat made a mirage shimmer on the road ahead, and he cranked up the air to blast musty-smelling, relatively cooler air into the interior of the vehicle. He smelled Isis: a turn-on combo of clean perspiration and sexy cinnamon.

  The road from the dam project back into Cairo was deserted. A couple of vehicles—an electrician’s van, a flatbed truck with plastic irrigation piping, and several black, tinted-window sedans—had passed them, heading the way they’d come. But those had passed half an hour before. No one behind them. Thorne was driving an easy hundred miles per hour, which out here on the vast, undulating sands of desert felt like standing still. Nothing but dunes as far as the eye could see. Sand, pale sky, black-tarred road. Midafternoon and the dunes on either side of the road were bleached blindingly white by the sun glaring from the pale blue bowl of the sky. The air shimmered in undulating waves with both heat and moisture.

  Isis rubbed her plastic bottle across her flushed cheek before chugging down the rest of the water. “Is there anything I can do for your leg?”

  Thorne realized his fingers were clamped tightly around his upper thigh, and he withdrew his hand from the daggerlike pain. “I’m fine.”

  “Then why are you massaging it? I can do that—”

  He grabbed her wrist as she reached out to touch him. “I just need to stretch. We’ll be in the city in a couple of hours; it can wait.” She settled back in her seat.

  “We passed a small village,” she said after a brief silence. “We can stop there. I’d be happy to walk around a bit, too. This heat is making me a little sick to my stomach. I’ll grab some cold water at the same time if they have it, and see if perhaps they have a cane or close facsimile.”

  He didn’t like using a cane, he wasn’t incapacitated by the injury and didn’t want a bloody crutch, but he didn’t argue.

  Although the oasis and small village were about ten miles ahead, near their turnoff to descend to the valley floor, he had no intention of stopping. The area was too isolated and he had an itch on the back of his neck. He scanned the surroundings. Sand. Road. Sun.

  Several miles went by in silence. But Thorne bet Isis wouldn’t maintain the blessed quiet for long—the very air seemed to vibrate with her thoughts. He could feel the questions coming. Things he didn’t want to remember, let alone discuss.

  “Will you tell me now what happened?”

  “I fell down the stairs.”

  She made a rude noise of disbelief. “No, you didn’t. If you tell me, will you have to kill me or something?”

  He slid her a suggestive glance. “Or something.”

  She smiled, shoving her glasses on top of her head and curling her legs under her, clearly settling in for a heart-to-heart. “No, really, what happened?”

  Damn. She was more tenacious than he’d anticipated. But then, it was something that, under normal circumstances, he appreciated in her. She kept going no matter what the obstacles. And for that she deserved the truth. At least a sanitized version of it.

  “A year ago, a very unpleasant man killed my two partners and had a crack at me.” Blood splatter, bits of body parts, and agonized screams superimposed themselves on the view of the road and the sound of the tires on the gritty pavement. “I’m in the extremely auspicious position of having rods and pins in my leg. My partners weren’t as fortunate.”

  “It’s not fortunate that you got shot.” Isis’s clear brown eyes narrowed. Her skin looked silky soft and fine-grained in the sunlight streaming in the window, dewy with perspiration. Her soft mouth looked lush and inviting, and he wanted to pull over and kiss her into stopping the questions he not only didn’t want to answer, but didn’t want to think about, either.

  Cradling the empty bottle in her lap, she twisted even more in her seat, so that her back was to the passenger door. He glanced over at the door locks to make sure they were engaged.

  “What’s the prognosis, and what are your limitations?”

  Pissed that she even had to ask if he had any bloody limitations, he cast a mocking glance her way. “Do you have a medical degree now, Dr. Magee?”

  “No, Thorne,” she said with some asperity. “I don’t. However, someone is doing their damnedest to kill us, stop us, or… whatever us. We don’t know who, and we don’t know why. I can shoot them with my camera, but you are the man with the big gun and the bullets. You can shoot them more efficiently. And, as said gunman, you are all that stands between me and them. I need to know what your constraints are, realistically, without you minimizing them, so that I can make informed choices as we go on.” She paused. “You have no constraints in the lovemaking department, in case you’re asking.”

  Foiled by logic. Damn. “I’ve kept you safe.” He glanced automatically in the rearview mirror. There was a vehicle of some sort in the distance behind them, but the shimmer on the road made identification impossible. He monitored the other car’s progress.

  “For which I’m grateful. Spill.”

  “The name of the man who captured and killed the members of my team was Boris Yermalof.”

  “And what’s his claim to fame?”

  “He shot me,” he said wryly. The surgery had taken eighteen hours, and he’d died on the table. There’d been shitloads of pain afterward, and they’d told him he’d probably never walk again, and just to be thankful he was alive. What they hadn’t told him was that numbers would be scrolling through his head. At first he’d thought he was hallucinating from the pain meds they dripped into his veins. But then Stark had told him about his own strange ability, and when they’d let him go from the hospital, he’d been drafted into service for Lodestone. What he felt now was a reminder that he’d almost died twice, and he was lucky to be alive. He had no bloody complaints.

  “I have a rod in my leg that will set off airport metal detectors for the rest of my life, and assorted other hardware that enables me to do everything I always did. Like last night, for instance.”

  “Yes, last night was amazing,” she told him, then without skipping a beat or changing inflection, pointed out, “You were limping more this morning than you were yesterday. Is the pain debilitating and you’re just being manly, or is it something an ice pack and some muscle relaxants will help?”

  “I won’t take drugs, and an ice pack would probably help,” he said honestly. “But since we’re in the middle of the desert, both will have to wait.”

  “Who’s this Boris guy? Why did he shoot you and your people?”

  About to say it was on a need-to-know basis, Thorne then continued that mental conversation and decided he might as well cut to the chase, because since she’d been shot at, possibly by Boris or his men, because of him, she had a right to know. “We were tracking a man we knew was trafficking black market artifacts from the Middle East and North Africa.”

  Her eyes widened. �
��Black market artifacts?” she demanded, pushing away from the door. “As in Egyptian black market artifacts?”

  He nodded. “Many of them, yes.”

  “And you didn’t think this was relevant? My God, Connor. Clearly it is relevant! Those men shooting at us are after you!”

  “It’s possible, but not likely. Very few people know I’m back.” He flicked his gaze to the rearview mirror just to make sure that was true. No traffic had passed them in the last hour but back on the horizon there was still a smudge of dark keeping its distance. Was it a vehicle or merely the sand blowing across the road?

  Isis’s fingers rubbed her temple in slow circles and her chest rose and fell as she took shallow, annoyed breaths. “Are you freaking insane? How many people know you’re back? Half a dozen at least! Maybe more.”

  He kept his tone level. “None of them are involved or even know about Yermalof.”

  She swallowed several times, and he wondered if she was going to be sick. He handed her his bottle with an inch of water left in it.

  Unscrewing the top, Isis demanded, “Were you here? In Egypt with this man?” She drank the water and pulled a face because it was warm.

  A long pause stretched out before them. The invisible weight on his shoulders increased as the truth pressed in. “We followed him into Israel.”

  “Oh, my God, Connor! That’s a hop, skip, and a damned jump away from where we are right now!”

  No shit. “We worked closely with the Israeli Mossad. They’re the ones who supplied us with this vehicle, as well as the one we banged up yesterday. He’d stolen artifacts there as well. He had the world hot on his arse.”

  “Lovely.” She twisted her unruly, sexy-as-hell hair up off her neck and held it on top of her head as she adjusted the air vents to her new position and fanned herself with her other hand. “Are they just lending us cars, or are they looking for your friend Boris?”

  “As far as I know, just doing me a favor.” In the spy business it was good to dispense and accept favors. The Jerusalem op had turned to shit, but it was Mossad agents who’d hauled his bleeding butt out of the barn where Yermalof and his men had introduced them to Hell. Only the fact that he was bleeding out and unconscious had gotten him out of there without trying to save Maciej and Ayers.