by Cherry Adair
“Is this the stuff that was wrapped around the basket with the tassel in it?” Thorne took it from her and laid it across his lap. “Where did it come from?”
“I had the ribbon in here.” She tapped her camera bag on her hip. “Seeing this cane, I suddenly remembered the ribbon. It had a design on it that I never gave a second thought to. But then I vaguely remembered reading something years ago—and my brain put two and two together and came up with five. Quick! Turn it so it’s vertical.”
Thorne shifted his feet so he could angle the wrapped stick on the floor. For a moment he simply stared at the writing that spiraled neatly down the stick. The filthy ribbon with the abstract design had become a perfectly legible cypher when wrapped around the article with the exact correct dimensions. The walking stick was the clue. “Bloody hell. This is a scytale! Your father left us a usable clue after all.”
“We did need the cane he left.” Isis leaned both elbows over his seat back so that her still-damp, fragrant hair brushed his cheek. “But this is the same, since they’re mass-produced. I’m sorry, Connor. Are you shocked?”
“Shocked?” Heustis asked, pulling into an abandoned parking lot behind a small warehouse and cutting the engine. “What does it tell you?”
No one made any move to exit the vehicle.
“The principal players. From the bottom.” Thorne started evenly reading off the names. “Brengard. Boris Yermalof. Dr. Khalifa Najid—and the Earl of Kilgetty.”
“Who?” the Mossad operative asked, puzzled.
“The head of the black market ring we’ve been trying to apprehend for the past five fucking years is my father.”
THORNE WAS GRIM-FACED AS they entered the warehouse through a side door. Both men were armed. He’d handed Isis his cane when they got out of the car. Even though she was pretty sure he’d done so because he didn’t want anyone inside to see he was less than fighting fit, she considered the gesture tacit permission to use it on Dylan should the opportunity present itself.
Never prone to violence, she decided she could make an exception for the slimy-snake-turncoat-turd and was eager for that opportunity to present itself.
Thorne had already cautioned her to stay behind them, but he put his arm out, slowing her steps just as a reminder. They passed from blinding sunlight to shadowy interior.
Inside, the huge metal warehouse was as hot and unpleasant as being inside an oven. In the far corner, a bright light was trained on a man tied to a metal chair; the rest of the space was almost midnight-dark. Isis saw that the high windows had all been painted black, blocking natural light once the door was closed behind them.
Her hand rested on her camera bag. The place was atmospheric, threatening, and scary as hell. She could shoot some amazing images here.
Maybe later.
A man cradling an Uzi in his arms like a baby stepped out of the shadows. “Your Lordship,” he said with faint British mockery, and with what Isis presumed was a smile curving his lips for a second.
Lordship?
“Cloud,” Thorne greeted him briskly as Heustis melted into the darkness. “Who’s up first?” He jerked his chin in the general direction of the distant lights.
“Starting on the help and working our way up. The others are being held over there.” Cloud used the nose of his big-ass gun to point in the opposite direction, where Isis could just make out small groups of people but couldn’t identify who was who.
“We have seven of them here,” the other man added, all business. “Just got word a sec ago that Yermalof was caught with his”—the man’s eyes flicked to Isis—“in flagrante delicto. He’ll be joining us soon.”
Thorne’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Who’s in charge?”
“Ran Beck. Want to have a word?”
“I do. Let me read him in on a new development first.”
“Right. He’s over there sitting on Najid.”
“Come along,” he told her. As if she’d wander off on her own.
“Your Lordship?”
“I don’t use my titles.”
Isis grabbed his arm to slow him down a little. “Titles, plural?”
“This is neither the time nor the place.”
“We had this conversation in the right time and place and you told me you—”
“Here’s Brengard.” They approached the first cluster of four men, who were gathered around Dylan. He was trussed up attractively like a turkey, lying on his side on the floor, legs curled up behind him, ankles tied neatly to his wrists. Even in the dim lighting she saw his face was red with anger. And sweaty, she hoped, with fear.
Thorne clearly knew the men, and after a brief greeting he introduced them to Isis. “She’d like a private word.”
“Ten feet do it?” a short, wiry guy asked. Thorne nodded.
Taking her chin in his hand, his face in deep shadow, he looked down at her and said evenly, “Leave enough of him to answer questions when you’re done.”
Dear God, he trusted her to control her anger around the man who’d tried to kill her father? And steal his legacy? Thorne knew her better than she knew herself, because seeing Dylan made her feel homicidal.
Dylan writhed on the floor. “Wait a damn minute! I demand my rights! I’m an American citizen—you can’t—”
For a moment she contemplated kicking him in the balls, but then he wouldn’t do much but whimper and groan and that wasn’t going to get her any answers. She walked around his thrashing legs to crouch near his head. She planted the heavy cane vertically beside her. “Thorne wouldn’t let me bring a gun in here, even though I sort of promised not to shoot you in the balls before I asked questions.”
“You crazy bitch!”
Anger vibrated from her head to her toes, and she curled her fingers into tight fists at her side. “Why did you betray my father? No, not why. Why was because of the fame and money. Maybe how is a better question. You worked for my father for more than five years. Built up a trust. He thought of you as the son he never had.”
Dylan made a rude noise that bumped her anger up another notch. “Thorne said leave enough to interrogate. Perhaps you don’t need your teeth all that badly.”
“The professor is a doddering old fool. He found Cleo’s fucking tomb a year ago, Isis! Forgot, and came back! We’d already packed and shipped half the artifacts for sale, and placed the rest in a warehouse near Abusir so everything could be unpacked and artfully displayed when I found Cleo’s tomb in a couple of weeks. We couldn’t take the risk he’d suddenly remembered. Yermalof took out the team, moved everyone. Stupid fuck was supposed to die with the others.”
Dylan hadn’t just wanted her father’s fame and fortune. He’d wanted her father dead. “Sorry he inconvenienced you. You’ll be discredited, of course. Humiliated. Your bank accounts seized—”
Dylan laughed. “Humiliated? Maybe. But I have more money than they’ll ever find, and all I’ll get here is a slap on the wrist, and I’ll give my promise to be a good boy in the future. Whatever way they cut it, I’ll be credited with discovery of that tomb, and Professor Magee will still be a laughingstock.”
“But you’re tied up here,” Isis reminded him, her fingers tightening on the walking stick. His eyes flickered whitely to her hand, and back to her face. “Anyone know where you are right now, Dylan?” She summoned the coldly cruel delivery of some long-forgotten movie bad guy.
“They can’t hold me here forever. Legally, they can’t do this.”
She laughed, because he was ridiculous lying there, arms behind his back, feet bound together, talking about his legal rights. “Do you know who all these men are?” Channeling the icky tones of a movie villain was very satisfying. Especially since, even in the poor lighting, she saw the sweat begin to trickle down his temples and shine slickly on his upper lip.
She waved her free hand around the warehouse. “British and Israeli intelligence operatives. And you know why they’re called intelligence? Because they’re not stupid enough to hand you over
to the Egyptian authorities. You’ll be tried and convicted…” She waited several ominous seconds before finishing. “. . . elsewhere.”
“That’s illegal!”
Isis shrugged. “Or questioned and killed here,” she added sweetly. “I’m told they’re so good, they leave hardly a mark on your body—I have no idea how they do that. Special spy skills, I guess.” She let her voice trail off admiringly, and heard a snort nearby as one of the men muffled his opinion of her interrogation techniques. Isis got to her feet. Dylan flinched as the movement brought her dangerously close to his private parts. “Goodbye, Dylan. You were a weak coward when I met you, and you’re a sniveling creep now. The world will be better off without you.” Turning to go, she said to the guy closest to her, “He’s all yours now.”
“Isis! Wait! Isis!”
“DID YOU ENJOY THAT?” Thorne asked, exiting to find Isis leaning against the building, hands on her knees.
She straightened when she heard him. “I did while I was talking to him. Now I feel a little sick.”
“He’s feeling a lot sicker in anticipation of what’s to come, I imagine.” Thorne wrapped his arms around her, and she put her head on his chest, sliding her arms tightly around his waist.
Her shaky laugh was muffled against his shirt. “You know what’s funny? I was channeling some movie villain when I was talking to Dylan, and feeling quite proud of myself. I only just realized who I was channeling. Cruella de Vil.”
He bit back a smile as he stroked her back and buried his face in her fragrant hair. “They’re taking all of them to another location.”
“Are we going, too?”
His hands tightened around her at the “too.” “I’m going to take a later flight and meet them there.” He’d take her to her gate and kiss her goodbye. Make promises both knew would never be kept. They’d call her flight, and after she turned to board, he’d stand there waiting until the last possible second to watch her go.
“They have Yermalof in custody, and they should be”—he angled his wrist to check the time, then remembered they’d taken his watch off him when they’d been kidnapped—“arresting the Earl at his London residence within the hour. I imagine it’ll be on the six o’clock news.”
Isis lifted her head. “How do you feel about him being involved in this?”
Plucking her glasses from her nose, he reconsidered and removed them by the earpiece. “He wasn’t merely ‘involved’—he started by hiring Yermalof a decade ago,” Thorne said coolly, cleaning the lenses on his shirt hem for the last time. He’d miss the silly little ritual. He’d developed a thing for cheeky girls wearing glasses. “Yermalof told him of your father’s obsession with Queen Cleopatra, and the Earl cultivated that relationship slowly and insidiously over the years. Yermalof put together the Earl and the minister for a trio that was a match made in hell. The minister found Brengard—it’ll take a while to get through all the layers. There are a dozen ministers who were involved in small ways, people bribed to look the other way. There’s a long food chain.”
“I mean do you care emotionally that your father will be imprisoned for his part in this? I just care about how it’ll impact you.”
He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. Soft, warm skin, vibrant and alive. His chest ached. “Not at all.” His father meant nothing to him. Isis… Isis meant everything.
“Then can we go and watch his arrest on TV?” she suggested with relish.
Thorne laughed as he held up the key Heustis had given him on his way out. “Let’s. The Four Seasons is only a few minutes away.” Another couple of hours with her was a windfall, no, a reprieve he wasn’t going to pass up.
“DO YOU WANT TO see this?” Isis asked. “They just announced Scandalous Breaking News!” She sat cross-legged at the head of a king-sized bed in the Palace Suite at the Four Seasons Hotel, a room service tray in front of her, a glass of soda in one hand and a strawberry in the other. She looked over to where he was standing, using the cell phone lent to him by Husani.
Thorne had booked them in, ordered room service, made arrangements with the boutique for clothing for both of them, hit the jewelry store for a watch, and was currently in contact with his associates to ensure Yermalof was locked and loaded on board a flight to Tel Aviv, and that the prisoners from the warehouse were en route to join him shortly. All in less than thirty minutes. Perhaps if the return to MI5 didn’t work out he could be a concierge, he mused, watching Isis nibble on a plump red strawberry.
“Do you want popcorn, too?” he asked, amused as she wiggled her behind to get more comfortable as he sat beside her. It had been his nefarious plan to place the tray on the bed. Exactly where he wanted her.
“Are you kid—” She slanted him a glance. “Yes, you are. There’s more food here than we can eat in a week.”
Not if they holed up in the room for several days, Thorne thought, bringing her hand to his mouth and biting her strawberry in half. She leaned sideways to press her lips to his. “Yum,” she murmured, straightening, her eyes glued to the television.
The kiss, so casual, so natural, was so Isis.
“Sound,” she directed, hands full. And so was her desire to be the boss.
The remote lay between them. With a small smile Thorne picked it up and turned on the volume as he swung his feet up on the mattress, then stuffed a pillow behind him.
The attractive blond news reader was replaced with live footage of his father standing at the top of the stairs outside the house, flanked by two plainclothes detectives. “. . . Earl of Kilgetty, seen here exiting his London residence moments ago, has just been arrested by police in connection with allegations of trafficking Egyptian antiquities.”
“He doesn’t seem particularly worried,” Isis observed, moving the tray and stretching out her legs beside his, then draping one leg over his good knee as she avidly watched the Earl being escorted down to the street where reporters clustered, shouting questions.
“It’s a British thing. Stiff upper lip. Never let them see you sweat.”
“He’s sweating. Who’s that, do you think? His lawyer? Bet he was on speed dial.”
Thorne turned around to comb his fingers through the hair at her temples, then took her mouth in a kiss hot enough to melt the mattress. There was only so much a man could take. Instantly her lips softened and her tongue darted out to meet his. She tasted of cola and strawberries and, Thorne knew unequivocally, she tasted of home.
Somehow, without taking his hands—or lips—off Isis for a second, he found the control without looking, and turned the TV off.
After several breathless moments, he ripped his mouth from hers. Her lips were swollen and damp, her eyes hazed with desire. Her fingers tightened in his hair to bring his mouth back where she wanted it.
Tracing the sweet curve of her cheek with his finger, Thorne said thickly, “A woman like you should marry a nice guy who’s an accountant, or a lawyer. Some well-established, secure man with a comfortable income, who comes home every night. A guy sans bullet holes or debilitating knife wounds. You deserve to have a whole man, not a fucking torn-apart cripple with commitment issues.”
Her eyes glittered and she made a small moue as if to say, I’m not saying anything.
“You should have that pretty house on a quiet cul-de-sac in suburbia so you can watch your children playing on the front lawn.”
“I agree,” she whispered. “I should.”
Was it possible for a heart to wrench? She was here, but he felt her slipping away. “You deserve that man,” he said a little desperately. “You deserve him, but you need me.”
“What exactly would you do with the leather and baby oil?”
He paused at the non sequitur.
“You said ‘leather and baby oil and a kip.’ ”
“I don’t need to rub you in baby oil to make you hot, do I?”
“No. But I’d like to try it and find out. Order some from room—”
His smile felt a little less str
ained. “Done.”
“The leather, I presume, is to be used as restraints? I must admit, I would like to tie you up and have my wicked way with you.”
“Would you now? What about if I tied you up instead?”
“Okay.” She thought about it for a second. “We’ll take turns.”
“I love you, Isis Magee.”
“I know.”
“That’s it? You know?”
“I know that I’m absolutely the perfect woman for you. I was just waiting for you to cut to the chase.”
He laughed, rolling her on top of him. “You were, were you? And do you know that I love the way you touch me? Or the way you always seem to get fingerprints all over these?” He removed her glasses and placed them on the bedside table.
“Dirty glasses are quite endearing. It was my master plan to snare you.”
“It worked.
“We’ll balance each other out,” she told him softly. “We’ll love each other till we’re old and gray and sitting in our rocking chairs in the old-age home. You’ll do your best to keep your promise to me that you won’t get hurt again in your job for MI5, and I’ll pretend that your job doesn’t scare the crap out of me. We’ll buy a pretty house wherever we want to live, and I’ll get pregnant right away. This is forever love, Connor James Thorne. We’ll fight and make up, and love and laugh and raise our family, and grow old together…”
“You haven’t said you love me.”
“I say I love you every time I touch you, every time I look at you. You fill me up, Connor. You fill me up with love and light and unspeakable joy.” She tugged his T-shirt over his head. “Grab that oil,” she whispered thickly. “Make love with me. Let’s make our first baby right here.”
“Your every wish, my bossy darling, is my command.”
EPILOGUE
Egypt Cleopatra Thorne was born in London nine months from the day she was conceived in the Four Seasons Hotel Cairo.