No Rules

by Starr Ambrose

  He thought she’d known. “I’m sure he would have been happy to take me out, too,” he said, trying to downplay her importance. Judging by her horrified look, it was too late.

  “He could have killed you, and it’s all because of me. Because he wants to kill me.”

  “Jess, that’s why we won’t let you go out alone. And it’s why you have to wear the abaya.”

  “But the abaya makes me stand out. Everyone looks at me, the pale, American woman dressed like a Muslim, shopping with a bodyguard. What kind of disguise is that?”

  “The kind that gets you respect. The kind that makes any sudden move against you stand out in time for us to stop it.”

  “By intercepting it with your own body?” Pain contorted her features and strangled her voice. “You stepped in front of a knife for me. You could have been killed.”

  “I messed up. I could have prevented the attack and had a prisoner to interrogate if I’d been paying more attention,” he said with disgust. “I let that kid distract me. It won’t happen again, Jess, I promise.”

  Contemplating the possibility of another attack left her speechless. Avery filled in the silence. “You can believe him. He’s really very good at what he does.”

  “At sacrificing himself?” Jess asked. “Gee, I feel so much better.” She stomped off toward the bedrooms.

  Avery smiled. “Aww, she likes you. That’s sweet.”

  Kyle sat in a chair and looked at him thoughtfully. “Is that going to be a problem?”

  That, meaning her liking him. “No.” But it already was a problem and had been even before he’d kissed her. He’d been so amused by the way Jess had deliberately hampered his bargaining with Saja, ensuring he paid more, that he’d nearly missed the attempt on her life. He would have to be more vigilant. “Tell me what you found on the Nile.”

  Avery plopped down, too. “Nothing. Small islands with scrubby growth and bugs, and bigger ones with scrubbier growth and more bugs. The big resort island is out—too many people around. Not a friggin’ beaver in sight.”

  “I thought this was supposed to be easy.” Kyle sounded as worn-out as Avery now that they were rehashing his day. “You guys find the vase, and we find the beaver lodge, or whatever the hell it represents.”

  He’d thought so, too. “We can’t be that far off. There’s only one river. Whatever we’re looking for has to be on the Nile. We’ll go over it again tonight. Maybe Jess will have some new ideas.” It was a slim hope.

  “What about you and Jess?” Avery asked. “Did you figure out what vase Wally was talking about?”

  He hated saying it. “No. Wally sent Hakim a message that he’d found better merchandise at a different shop and was canceling his order. Of course, there was no order, so Hakim assumed it referred to better information. I still think from Wally’s story that the information we need has to do with a vase. I just don’t know where to look.” He gave them a meaningful glance. “But that doesn’t mean we failed. We’ve barely started. We know Wally would have stopped by this house, so maybe someone nearby knows where he spent his time. He comes here every year, and he knows everyone.”

  “But they think he’s just a college professor,” Avery said. “They don’t know anything about his work with Omega.”

  “Someone does,” he reminded them grimly. “They know he discovered the hostages, and they were only one step behind him when he left. And now they know we’re looking for them.

  “How did they know?” Avery asked.

  Good question. He suspected it was because someone inside Omega had told them, but he said, “They must have been watching the airport, knowing someone would come. They followed us, maybe followed others, too. At any rate, they figured out who we were.”

  Avery made a disgusted face. “Great. So how do we find them?”

  “Something gave them away, and if Wally could find it, we have to, too.”

  The unpleasant reminder of Wally’s death hung in the air for several seconds before Kyle asked, “Are we sure the hostages are still alive? Have the kidnappers made any demands yet?”

  “No word from Evan.” Which wasn’t a good sign.

  “Goddammit,” Kyle grumbled. He frowned at his feet stretched out before him, grinding his teeth over a situation that should have been a straightforward hostage rescue. “What’s so fuckin’ special about two archeology students, anyway? Some guys grab them, and then they don’t ask for a ransom and don’t make demands. That’s just weird. That’s not how it works.” His frustration spilled over into actions as he stood, unbuttoning his shirt impatiently, then tossing it aside, revealing an undershirt and the shoulder holster and gun he wore beneath it. “And it’s not supposed to be our job to figure it out. I rescue hostages, damn it. I don’t play hide-and-seek with them.” Taking a vicious kick at a backpack, he watched it bounce off the wall, then stalked to the kitchen. “We got anything besides water in here?”

  Donovan raised an eyebrow at Avery. “You have anything you’d like to add to that?”

  She sighed. “No, I think Kyle said it all. It’s been a long, frustrating day, Tyler.”

  “Tell me about it.” He crinkled his empty water bottle. “Maybe Mitch will have better luck.”

  …

  Jess lay on the simple mattress in the bedroom and stared at the ceiling, mentally dissecting the story of the rabbit and the wolf and the beavers. Anything to keep her mind on the problem that had brought her here. Not the one that had developed since, the one that revolved around finding some private time with Tyler Donovan to explore the possibility that the dangerous wolf might be exactly what the timid rabbit needed.

  Don’t think about it. She punched the mattress and forced herself to think about ancient vases and rivers and beaver lodges, waiting for the sudden insight everyone expected her to have. The lightning bolt of inspiration that would turn her father’s silly story into a metaphor for rescuing two hostages.

  It didn’t happen. The only insight she had was that he’d been right about the rabbit and the wolf being able to get along, because she had a feeling they could do a lot more than that.

  The wolf might even turn out to be better therapy than Dr. Epstein. And wouldn’t that be ironic. After all those years of counseling her on finding a man she felt safe with, who didn’t intimidate her, one with whom she could drop her guard and let herself feel without holding back, to have the kind of sexual experience every other woman got to have…who’d have thought that man would be the most intimidating, dangerous man she’d ever met?

  It seemed impossible. According to Dr. Epstein who had heard all the humiliating details of her sex life, the main reason for her inability to climax with a man was tied to being rejected by her father at the age of puberty. That was why sexual situations raised trust issues for her, he said. Therefore, what she needed was a nonthreatening man, one who would never make her feel powerless. One who would respect her boundaries.

  She couldn’t count the number of ways Donovan violated her boundaries. Dragging her from her father’s house and taking her halfway around the world on a forged passport probably ranked right up there with the worst. But she couldn’t separate that from the best—yanking her into a soul-searing kiss and boldly feeling her up, a liberty no man had ever taken without her permission, but to her utter astonishment, one that had left her hot and damp and closer to an orgasm than she’d ever been without the assistance of a vibrator. Far closer than with one of those polite, nonthreatening men rocking gently inside her.

  How do you explain that, Dr. Epstein?

  Honestly, she didn’t care. All she cared about was that Donovan thrilled her to her core, and that core was promising to burst into The Big O the second he got past her underpants. That objective was at the top of her list of Things To Do.

  That, and figure out Wally’s metaphorical story and save the hostages. One didn’t have to negate the other. As her grandmother used to tell her, life was only as fun as the goals you set.

  Chapte
r Eleven

  Jess joined the others when she heard Mitch come in, and not just to hear the information he might have. He brought food. She smelled it within seconds of him entering the door, and realized how famished she was.

  They spread the dishes on the low table in the living room, a mixture of unfamiliar sights and smells. At her uncertain look, Donovan began pointing and naming each dish. “Chicken, stuffed grape leaves—can’t tell you for sure what’s in them, but it’s good—hummus and pita, and tamiyya—that’s a fried bean patty.”

  Avery ripped paper away from the final dish. “Baklava. Mitch, I love you.”

  She wasn’t an adventurous eater. Picky would be putting it mildly. But she was familiar with hummus and pita, and seconded Avery’s sentiments on baklava, so she figured she could fill up on those.

  “We’re informal,” Donovan told her. “Dig in.” He sat on the floor and patted a large pillow beside him. “Sit.”

  He moved with the same ease as she would, and considering the thirty-four stitches she’d put in him, that didn’t seem possible. “Doesn’t your side hurt?”

  “Kyle got me some pills, something with codeine. I’m feeling fine. Here, start with the grape leaves.”

  He put two on a paper plate and handed it to her, then added a scoop of hummus and a hunk of pita bread. She eyed the plate in her hands. The rolled grape leaves smelled interesting, but foreign, which was generally a reason for Jess to avoid something. Donovan waited expectantly. Questions and cautions crowded her mind—had the meat inside been cooked well? Was it processed in sanitary conditions? Were the animals cage-raised or free-range? Were they fed antibiotics? Growth hormones? She wasn’t sure how people could blithely eat without such common sense information, but knew the questions would cause rolled eyes and disgusted head shakes. Normally she wouldn’t care, but for selfish reasons she didn’t want Donovan to find her obnoxious and picky. She had plans for him.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  Don’t say it. “Uh, where’s the silverware?”

  “Don’t need any. Use your fingers, like this.”

  She watched, took a determined breath, then imitated with a small nibble. Strange flavors and textures rolled through her mouth. She forced herself to chew and swallow. “It’s, um, different. Not bad.” Considering further, she took another nibble. “Kind of good, actually.”

  “It’s goddamned delicious,” Kyle told her. “You can’t get this stuff in Chicago.”

  If that was because it violated health codes, she didn’t want to know. Donovan shook his head but seemed amused by her hesitant acceptance, so she was happy.

  “Fill me in, guys,” Mitch said. “What did we find out?”

  “Not much.” Donovan gave him a quick summary of their visit to Hakim, ending with her stitching job.

  “No shit? Let’s see it.” He made Donovan peel back the bandage so he could admire the stitched cut. “Nasty. And our Jessie did that patch work all by herself? Nice one, Jess.”

  It took her a couple seconds to realize the hand he held up was meant for her. Hastily, she dropped her pita and slapped him five. It felt good, like she was part of the team.

  Mitch popped a piece of chicken in his mouth and licked his fingers. “So what’s the news on the beaver lodge on the Nile?”

  “If it’s there, we can’t find it,” Avery reported. She summarized their day of exploration. “We’re hoping you had better luck.”

  “Then we’ve got a problem, ’cause I got nothing.” He took another bite, then wiped his fingers as he talked. “Like Evan told us, the two students are Jeffery Sidel and Alicia Kirkpatrick. They’re graduate students with a university in Tennessee, working with two other students and a professor and staying in a rental house near the Nile. Our two were doing studies of some tomb paintings in the Valley of the Kings, while the other two and the prof are working at Karnak, so they were going off in opposite directions every day. Apparently Jeff and Alicia always put in long hours and didn’t normally come back to the house until well after dark, so they’d been gone a good twelve hours before anyone knew they hadn’t shown up at the tomb that morning.”

  “Aren’t there tourists all over the place out there?” Avery asked. “Someone must have seen something.”

  “Not necessarily. The tomb is closed to the public right now. Apparently they rotate which ones they open.”

  Jess had grown up on stories of the royal tombs and the pharaohs whose mummies and possessions they’d once housed. She’d devoured her father’s stories the way other children were enraptured by Disney movies and Grimm’s fairy tales. Walter Shikovski had made kings and queens, dead for four thousand years, come alive in her young mind. She’d never imagined being close enough to actually visit their tombs. Her long-buried fascination tingled to life. “Which tomb were they working in?” she asked.

  “King Tut’s.”

  “Oh, cool,” Avery exclaimed. “That one must be awesome to see.”

  “Not really,” Jess told her. At their surprised looks, she added, “I mean, any of them would be, but KV62 is about as unpretentious as they come. It’s thought to have been a private tomb for a commoner that was rushed into service for the nineteen-year-old king when he died unexpectedly. It’s small, and only the burial chamber has murals. Almost any other tomb has more impressive artwork.”

  “She’s right,” Mitch said. “I got a crash course today from the good professor. Too bad you didn’t come with me, Jess, you’d have enjoyed it.”

  Damn, she would have. She hadn’t wanted any part of coming here, but since she had, it seemed a waste not to see the places she’d imagined since childhood.

  “Jess.” Donovan brought her back to reality. “Are you saying there’s something odd about them studying that particular tomb? Maybe even threatening to someone?”

  “Oh, no. There would be plenty to study. I just wouldn’t call the murals awesome. Tutankhamun’s tomb was only extraordinary because it’s the only one discovered so far that hadn’t been completely plundered. But there are plenty of reasons why graduate students might find the paintings worth studying.”

  He looked disappointed. She couldn’t blame him. They were desperate for clues to the two students’ disappearances, and finding out why they were taken would have been a good start.

  “I know Evan checked out the story, but how does the professor know his students didn’t fall off a cliff and die, or run off to get married and ditch the whole grad-student thing?” Kyle asked.

  Mitch dug into the baklava as he answered. “He got a note. Just one, delivered to the house the day after they disappeared. The two Americans are our hostages. You will be contacted when we are ready to negotiate. The prof freaked out, called the administrators back home, and they called Omega. They’ve had no word since. They’re even more concerned because they’re all supposed to go home this week, and none of them were able to get extensions on their study visas.”

  She wasn’t a crime investigator, but it seemed they were leaving out some important steps. “Shouldn’t someone check the students’ research notes and photographs, pull their phone records, anything that might provide a clue to their activities? I mean, just in case they pissed off someone important, or told someone where they were going.”

  “Evan got all that and more when we accepted the assignment,” Donovan told her.

  “Oh.” Of course they would have covered that before sending a rescue team.

  He laid a hand on her leg, a casual gesture of reassurance. “That’s okay, you didn’t know and those are good insights. We want to hear any thoughts you have.”

  She appreciated that, but right now all her thoughts centered around his warm hand on her bare knee where it poked out from beneath her skirt. Who knew the knee was an erogenous zone? It never had been for her in the past, but it certainly seemed to be now, as heat streaked up her thigh and she mentally encouraged his hand to follow.

  As if he’d read her thoughts, Donovan hastily remo
ved his hand. Too late. She reached out for the nearest piece of food to cover her flustered blush and popped a fried fava bean patty into her mouth. To her surprise, it wasn’t bad.

  “So,” Mitch said, “the prof knows nothing and the islands in the Nile don’t look like good hiding places for hostages. What’s our next step?” They all looked at Donovan.

  He rubbed a hand over his forehead and through his hair, clearly frustrated by the lack of information. “The only new info we have is Wally’s message indicating he found better merchandise at a small shop. That leaves us where we started, tracking down a vase.”

  Kyle barked out a laugh. “There’re what, half a million small shops in Luxor? Everyone and his brother has a shop here.”

  “But not a high-end shop,” Jess said.

  Donovan raised his eyebrows. “Better merchandise equals expensive? You could be right.”

  His acknowledgment made up for her embarrassment over her last question, so she hated to add a disappointing corollary. “It also might mean something else that’s going to make it harder to find—in fact, I’m pretty sure it does. Better might mean black market.”

  She had everyone’s attention. “Why do you think so?” Donovan asked.

  “You have to understand the field my father worked in. It’s illegal to buy and sell antiquities, but that doesn’t stop everyone from wanting them. Egypt has lost a ton of antiquities to foreign countries and private collectors. It used to be standard practice for archeologists to ship mummies and statues back home. That’s why you can find the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum and the famous bust of Nefertiti in Berlin. Until recently, the mummy of Ramesses I, the founding pharaoh of a great dynasty, was a curiosity in the Niagara Daredevil Museum and Hall of Fame. Some museums are now voluntarily repatriating mummies and sculptures to Egypt, and others are doing it under duress, but there are some collectors who still feel they have a right to whatever they can buy. Too many collectors. And if there’s a demand, there’s a market. That means the black market is the dread of all legitimate scholars, who would prefer not to have Egypt’s treasures scattered around the world and closeted away in museum basements and private collections. It makes the historical record difficult to reconstruct.”