by Rachel Grant
His doubts, her anger, the mask had orchestrated both, triggering her storming exit and saving her life. Rhys knew that on a deeper level than he’d ever known anything before.
If they hadn’t argued, if she hadn’t left, she’d be dead.
The alarm cut out. Automatic shutoff, or something sinister? He was still grappling with how close they’d come to Sienna’s death, caught between dimensions where he was trying to figure out what was real and what was—thankfully—an alternate reality.
Unless…whoever had fired the shot had met up with her on the road.
He bolted to his feet, no longer concerned the shooter was still in the building. He had to find Sienna. Now. The bright sun blinded him as he charged through the open front door. He paused by Chuck’s SUV to give his eyes a moment to adjust and scanned the distance. He could see for miles, but there was no sign of her.
If she’d heard the gunshot and come back, the shooter could easily have caught up with her by now.
He studied the buildings and saw a splash of red peeking out from the corner of the gray CrossFit gym. Sienna’s purse? It was at the right height given the way she wore it across her chest.
He pushed off the SUV and ran to the corner, aware he could be leading the shooter right to her. He prayed the shooter was gone. Surely, given what the mask had just done, it would find a way to stop him if he were putting her in danger again.
He was more certain than ever the mask had chosen him, had even put them in bed together, because Sienna was in danger. The artifact had chosen him to protect her, and the method it employed to get him to care about her had been effective.
He rounded the corner, and there she was. Relief swamped him as he pulled her to his chest. He ran his hands up and down her spine, the need to touch her, to prove she was alive and unhurt, overwhelming him. He cradled her damp cheeks between his palms and looked into her amber eyes, which overflowed with tears. Her name came out as a choked rasp, and he kissed her as if she were the only source of oxygen in his universe.
She kissed him back, her response as deep and frantic as his.
He murmured endearments against her lips and stroked her face, her hair, her shoulders, her back.
“I died, Rhys.” She let out a choked sob. “I was dead.”
“I know, love. I know.”
“I felt the bullet. Horrible pain. And then…nothing.”
He’d had the horror of watching, but she’d felt it. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” His words were beyond inadequate.
“Please. Can we go home and do something life affirming?”
The way she called Chuck’s house home triggered a warm ache in his chest. As if any place they were together would be home. “We need to call the police and report the shooting. Then yes. Anything you want, yes.”
She pressed her head against his chest and hugged him tightly. “Okay.”
They stood there, leaning against the building for several minutes. He stroked her back, giving thanks they were in this universe, where she had a future, even as his mind reeled, accepting once again that the mask was some sort of supernatural object.
A patrol car came rolling down the U-shaped gravel driveway. He wasn’t surprised to see Officer Tourney at the wheel. Odds were the officer was responding to the alarm. Rhys tucked his arm around Sienna’s waist and approached the vehicle.
Tourney was more curious as to why Rhys and Sienna were at the storage facility than he was about a shot being fired. When he couldn’t find a bullet hole—because it had flown straight out the open front door—he said they’d merely heard a firework. While it was true the town was full of popping and shooting sounds with the coming Midnight Sun festivities, no one had set any off in the vicinity of the storage facility.
Rhys was a damn explosive ordnance expert. He knew what fireworks sounded like, and he knew guns.
No amount of arguing swayed the man. As for the alarm, Tourney was certain Rhys had failed to properly enter the code, and it had gone off after a thirty-second delay.
“Clearly you’ve both been influenced by Chuck’s paranoia.” The officer rolled his shoulders in a self-important manner. “And are wasting my time.” With that, he left.
One good thing came of Tourney’s crappy investigative instincts—the storage facility hadn’t been declared a crime scene and off-limits. Rhys turned to Sienna, “Do you want to go through the collection now or come back later?”
Her tears and fright had faded as her anger with Tourney grew, and she was composed now, ready to fight, no longer in retreat mode. “Let’s go through it now. If we leave, I don’t know if I could muster the courage to come back. At least now we’re certain we’re the only ones here.”
He dropped a kiss on her lips. “You’re pretty damn amazing.”
“Hardly. I’m scared to death, and I think I might hurl.”
“Yet you’re still on your feet.”
“Only because I hate crawling.” She turned to a table that had artifacts spread out on the surface, both in and next to portable glass display cases. “I take it Chuck was prepping artifacts for a display?”
“Yes. He’d planned to have a booth at the festival, showcasing art and prehistory of Itqaklut. It was when he was gathering items for the booth that he realized pieces were missing.”
“No one from his office took over to finish the display after he got sick?”
“He changed the access code the moment he realized artifacts were missing. No one on his staff could get in to finish the display. He wanted it that way.”
“So right now, you and Chuck are the only two people who know the code? Someone was here earlier, and he—or she—was inside the building, but the alarm wasn’t tripped when they entered.”
“Yeah. I wondered about that too.”
She studied the display boxes. “Do we start with the items we know are missing, or with what’s here?”
“Chuck made a list of the items he couldn’t find. He said it’s on the desk in the back office.”
“Let’s check it out,” she said and took a firm step forward. She faltered when she reached the point in the center aisle where she’d been shot, but this was the second time since the vision—the first being with Officer Tourney—she’d traversed this path, and he was impressed with her ability to power through and move forward.
But then, everything she did impressed the hell out of him.
In the office, she flipped through the papers on the desk. “I don’t see a list here.”
He frowned. “Chuck said it would be here. I guess we know what the gunman took.”
She powered up the desktop computer. Rhys leaned over her to type in the password Chuck had given him. “See if you can find it on the computer.”
He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the hospital, but this time Chuck was sleeping. He tucked the phone away and said, “If you were going to rob a tribe of cultural history artifacts, what would you take?”
She frowned. “Hard to say. As far as I know, some items are more valuable on the black market than others. Tools—arrowheads, knives, adzes, and awls, among other items—in general are pretty easy to come by and therefore aren’t likely to be highly prized. Objects with artistic value and difficult preservation, like basketry and carved wood, are rare and would therefore have higher perceived value.” She was stiff as she spoke, and her words seemed forced.
“You’re uncomfortable,” Rhys said.
“It’s a touchy subject for archaeologists—and museologists—we aren’t very far removed from the days when both professions were no better than looters, and most people still don’t know trafficking in artifacts is no longer part of the profession. In fact, it’s a quick way to get blackballed. As someone who works primarily with NAGPRA issues, I’m especially sensitive. Nowadays, artifacts aren’t valuable because they’re rare or pretty—like, say, a gemstone. They’re valued for the information they tell us about the past. And a sparkly artifact that tells us nothing is worthless.”
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He sat down in the rolling desk chair and pulled her onto his lap. “You needn’t worry I’ll judge you for making guesses as to why artifacts might be valuable. I get it that you don’t see their monetary worth.” He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her face to his.
A scant inch separated their lips when she said, “Shouldn’t we be… working?”
“Maybe. But I need to hold you. Just for a moment. Or five.” He brushed his lips over hers. He wouldn’t pressure her into a deeper kiss. He really just wanted—needed—to touch her. He was still rattled by the vision and knew she was too.
She smiled softly and relaxed against his chest like a cat. He wrapped his arms around her and closed his eyes.
“Seventeen hours,” she murmured.
“Pardon?”
She lifted her head and brushed her lips over his. “How is it that we only met seventeen hours ago?” She left his mouth and nibbled along his jaw, the gentle scrape of her teeth triggering a low growl in the back of his throat.
“I’ve decided to stop questioning it.” He slid his hands under her T-shirt, stroking along her ribs, hardly able to believe it was his first time touching her bare skin in that particular spot. Nothing about this was normal. The chemistry, the heat between them was tangible.
Seventeen hours?
No way. Maybe only seventeen hours in this dimension, but his body, his mind, must have tapped into a dozen others in which they were already friends, lovers, partners.
He slid his hands higher, cupping her breasts. She purred and shifted on his lap so his erection pressed between her thighs. She slid her tongue inside his mouth and made a soft sound in the back of her throat.
“I want to make love with you,” she said against his lips.
He groaned and kissed her deeply, then pulled back. “Not here. We need to finish. Then we can go back to the house.”
She gave him a sexy, saucy smile as she undid the top button of his shirt. “I bought condoms. At the grocery store.”
He nipped at that perfect freckle on her bottom lip. “I know. I saw them in the basket.”
“They’re in my purse.” She tilted her head toward the red bag she’d dropped on the floor by the door.
He chuckled. “No. The first time I make love to you isn’t going to be on a desk in what is essentially a warehouse office.”
“When will you make love to me on a desk in a warehouse office?”
“The eighth time.”
“You’re pretty confident there will be an eighth time.”
He nuzzled her neck, loving the humor in her voice. The way she melted in his arms. “I’m confident there will be a hundred and eighth time.”
Her fingers threaded through his hair as she tilted back her head to give him better access to her neck. He sucked on her earlobe, then trailed kisses down to the hollow of her collarbone. “Are we crazy, Rhys?” Her tone had grown serious.
He lifted his head and met her gaze. Her eyes were dilated with arousal. She wasn’t joking, but she wasn’t upset either. Curious, maybe.
“I don’t think we are,” he said. “But I suppose it’s possible.”
While Rhys called an FBI agent he knew in Seattle, Sienna got to work on the inventory. A few minutes later, he joined her.
“He said he’d review the filed manifests and let me know if Helvig arrived yesterday, before the break-in at Chuck’s house.”
Rhys’s phone buzzed.
“That was fast,” Sienna said.
He glanced at the screen and shook his head. “It’s the hospital.” He answered, and she saw the relief on his face as he spoke to his cousin for the first time since arriving in town last night. She turned back to a printout of the inventory. The file on the computer having been corrupted and inaccessible, she’d been lucky to find a catalogue that had been printed a few months before Jana’s death. Old and possibly out-of-date, but at least it was a starting point.
She studied the list for items that were more likely to be stolen than others. The tribe was small, but they had a proactive CRM. From the number of pages in the printout, they had over twenty thousand cultural items in storage. A large portion were attributed to several archaeological excavations, but valuable items could still be among those collections.
This would take a while. Days, most likely.
She hadn’t found a reference to the mask yet, but figured it was buried somewhere in the catalogue.
Twenty minutes later, call complete, Rhys joined her. “Chuck said the separate file on the mask—which included photos—was missing from the file cabinet and deleted from the computer. But he has backups for those in his office. We can grab them later. He said from my description, it sounds like you’ve brought back the missing mask, and he got choked up. It’s important to the tribe. He says thanks—and he’ll sign whatever the hell receipt you want.”
She smiled. One thing she didn’t have to fear: prison. Nice to cross that one off the list.
“While you were on the phone, I identified a few items that might be considered valuable to collectors. Shall we pull the inventory boxes and see if they’re present and accounted for?”
He nodded, and together they searched the boxes while he gave her a rundown of everything he’d learned from Chuck.
It was late evening—even if the sunlight lied—when Sienna announced she needed to quit for the night. “I have a headache. Climate-controlled spaces and visions of my death do that to me.”
Rhys returned a box to the stacks as she rubbed her lower back. They had identified a dozen missing items so far. “I don’t know how I would have figured all this out without you here.” He rolled his shoulders.
“Who knew my degree would be of use to an assistant US attorney?” She appreciated the way his muscles moved under his shirt, and thought of other ways to be of use to the AUSA.
The heat in his gaze said he had similar thoughts, but his words were all business. “Chuck said we should check in with Archie Wright, the owner of Wright Net—the manufacturers next door. He said in the summer Archie lives on an ancient fishing boat moored on the town pier. According to Chuck, the guy is older than dirt but still sharp and knows where all the bodies are buried. We could check in with him, then hit the Midnight Sun Festival, grab dinner, track down the guys who work for Wright Net, and watch the daylight firework display.”
She glanced at her watch. “Isn’t it late to drop in on an elderly man?”
“Chuck said he’ll be up, but if he’s not on deck, we won’t bother him.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Rhys slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her forehead. “You sure you’re up for it? It’s been a hellishly long day.”
“It’s strange, but I feel like now that I’ve given myself over to doing what the mask wants, it’s being…kinder to me. It was angry back in Washington. More stick than carrot. But since we started working together, it’s been different. You are one hell of a carrot.” She flushed and laughed at the same time. “I can’t believe I just said that. I didn’t mean—”
He chuckled. “I personally prefer being referred to as a zucchini or cucumber…”
She rolled her eyes. “Men.” She huffed out an exaggerated sigh. “As I was saying, so even though I’m tired and maybe just a tiny bit freaked out about what happened earlier, I think the mask wants us to talk to Archie Wright. I have a feeling it won’t let me rest again until we do.”
Chapter Seven
Archie Wright greeted Rhys warmly, his wrinkled, weathered face split with a wide smile, revealing he’d eschewed his dentures for the evening. “Come aboard! I’ve been expecting you after Chuck’s call.” The man squinted at Sienna. “I’m afraid my sight isn’t what it used to be. Who is this with you?”
Rhys pulled himself aboard and gave Sienna a hand as she crossed the sizable gap. It was a wonder the legally blind ninety-year-old lived on the ancient vessel. Chuck had mentioned Archie’s children tried to convince him to move
into assisted living in town, but Archie had refused on the grounds that he knew the boat better than a man knew his wife’s body. He didn’t need good vision to find his way around.
“I’m Sienna Aubrey, Mr. Wright. I’m helping Chuck track down artifacts that are missing from the tribal storage facility.”
The old man nodded. “Chuck mentioned the thefts to me the day he got sick. And please, call me Archie. Have a seat.” His blank gaze turned to Rhys, his face expectant.
Rhys smiled and pressed a small bottle of scotch they’d picked up on the way to the dock into the man’s empty hand. “Only if you’ll share this Glenfiddich with me.”
The man’s grin widened. “Chuck is a good friend. My daughter, bless her heart, has convinced the owner of the liquor store not to sell to me while I live on the boat. She fears I’ll slip and fall into Kotzebue Sound. Damn waste of a retirement if a man can’t have a decent drink.” He sprang up and made a beeline for a cabinet and returned with three tumblers.
Drinks poured, Archie sat back, drink in hand and a grin on his face. As Chuck had said, Archie didn’t actually drink the scotch. He merely held the glass beneath his nose and breathed. Chuck suspected he shared his daughter’s concerns but enjoyed the artificial rebellion.
In the distance, there was a sharp, loud pop. Sienna jolted.
Rhys took her hand in his. “That one really was a firework.”
She nodded. “I know. Still startling.” She stared into her tumbler with a leery eye. “I’m not usually a fan of straight booze, but today I’ll make an exception.” She took a tiny sip, then made a face. “Eh. Maybe not.”
Rhys laughed, filing away her likes and dislikes, amazed at the amount he didn’t know about her when he felt connected to her on so many levels.
“You kids planning on going to the street dance tonight?” Archie asked. “The town spent a fortune flying in some band called Max Midnight to play the festival.”
“Yes,” Rhys said, “but not to see the band. We’re hoping to talk to your employees. I’d like to ask them about suspicious activity at the industrial park.”