by Leslie North
Sliding on her sunglasses, she took several deep breaths to steady her nerves before grabbing her messenger bag and shoving her maps inside it. As she worked, she could feel something growing inside her. Excitement. Worry.
Today was going to be the day. She just knew it.
The morning sun was already blazing hot, and she pulled her hair back as she stepped out of the tent. Masoud walked by and handed her some breakfast before giving her a wink and entering the tent. A few minutes later, he walked out looking like a million dollars. It almost wasn’t fair.
“Security will break down the tents,” he said as she finished her breakfast. “We can go ahead and get started if you’re ready.”
She nodded eagerly and scanned the group of men. Her heart sank when she didn’t see Bruce. “Do you know where my stepbrother went?”
“I believe he went to relieve himself. Did you need to tell him that we’re leaving?” he asked almost mockingly.
Fleur gave him a weak smile and followed him into the cave dwellings. She hoped Bruce wasn’t collaborating with Anton. This whole thing was going to be a nightmare.
“I thought you’d be more excited to go on an adventure,” Masoud said idly as he found a smooth path through the dwellings. She followed in his footsteps with arms outstretched. She was much more used to the terrain, and her footing was more stable, but she still stepped cautiously as she admonished herself for not bringing her hiking boots.
“Why would you say that?”
“Most people don’t get that kind of passion from being behind a desk.”
Fleur smiled. “My parents were adventurers. They wanted so badly to prove the existence of mythic ancient civilizations. As a kid, I thought it was romantic. But as an adult, I’m still struggling to get out from under their shadow. Every time someone reads my name, they think of my parents. They were the laughingstock of the academic community. I’ve tried to be as respectable as possible. There is real weight behind the idea of Solomon’s Mines, but of course, everyone associated me chasing it with my parents chasing their crazy theories. I’m excited to be close to something tangible, but this adventure is not what is considered ideal in my field. I’m supposed to be discovering the truth on paper, not out chasing diamonds like Indiana Jones.”
He stopped for a moment and looked back. “Why can’t you do both?”
“It appears that I am doing both.”
“Hmm,” he grunted. “And how does Bruce fit in the picture?”
“My parents divorced. Amicably, actually. I know people thought they were arguing over their ideas at the time, but the truth was that I think they only fell in love because of their ideas, and because they went on a dig together. Something as flimsy as a shared experience is hardly grounds for a lifelong love. They made it work for a while, but it was mostly because they were both busy. When they had a minute to look around, they realized they just weren’t in love. A few years later, my father married Bruce’s mother, and Bruce became family.”
“He doesn’t look at you like family,” Masoud muttered. “I don’t trust him.”
Desperate to change the subject, Fleur tried to shrug his comment off. “What about your family? You’d think there’d be more information about the woman who raised three sons.”
Masoud didn’t speak at first. Fleur was concerned that she had stepped over the line, but he finally answered her. “My mother, Nabila, has dementia. She still lives in the palace, but she doesn’t remember anyone anymore.”
Her heart broke. “Masoud, I’m so sorry. That has to be so hard on you and your father.”
“It was hard in the beginning, but my mother acts like a little girl now, and she’s often quite gleeful. Her marriage to my father was arranged. As a child, I thought they were in love, and I suppose that’s what was best for me at the time.”
“Just because they didn’t start out in love doesn’t mean they didn’t fall in love,” she said gently.
“And just because he’s your stepbrother doesn’t mean that I have to trust him,” he snarled back.
Clearly, she’d hit a nerve. Keeping her mouth shut, she focused instead on finding the diamond.
Once they were past the areas marked on her maps, Fleur took a deep breath and closed her eyes. For a moment, she wondered if the legend of the diamond was true. If she were meant to find it, maybe she would feel a pull of power.
“Meditating?”
Scowling, she opened her eyes and pushed past Masoud. “Just listening for water.” Ducking into the first cave, she reached into her bag and pulled out her flashlight. The cave was shallow and empty. She played her light over the scratches in the wall before checking out the second cave. It was the same.
In fact, all the caves she entered were shallow and empty, but she began to see a pattern. As she closed her eyes, she could see the scratches on the wall. “Masoud,” she said softly. Her heart beat wildly in her chest.
“Yes, my dear?”
Her lights played over the wall. “What do you see?”
“Stone,” he said dryly. “And sand.”
“On the stone. What do you see on the stone?”
With a heavy sigh, he leaned over and peered into the light. “You mean these scratch marks?”
Fleur nodded. “They’ve been in all the caves, and they’re too ordered to be random. This isn’t some animal scratching at the wall.”
“They’re not letters or pictures though,” he said with a shrug. “Just some kids playing.”
She shook her head. “Not recently. It would take a great deal of work to put the etchings into the wall of each cave. I think they’re directions.”
He blinked and stared at her. “Excuse me?”
A large smiled played on her face as she reached over and ran her fingers along the wall. “Oh, if only there was a key. Okay, imagine that each line represented a cave.” She closed her eyes and thought back. “The first three caves all had straight up and down lines as the first mark, but this mark leans to the left. So what if that means that we’re supposed to go straight past the first three caves, but take a left after this one?”
“What do the other scratch marks mean?” he asked as he pointed to the others.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure, but they’ve all been the same up until this point. The last three are the same as well. Slash left, slash left, horizontal, slash right. Come on, let’s see what’s left of this cave.”
Bubbling with excitement, she pushed herself off the wall and ran out of the cave. Before she could sprint around it, his hand wrapped around her waist.
“Easy there, Indiana,” Masoud said in her ear. “I know you’re excited, but you still need to be cautious.”
She slowed and nodded. Masoud was right. Not only were there natural dangers out here, but Anton could also be hiding anywhere. With her heart in her throat, she moved more cautiously and peered around the cave.
There was another room within the cave. Shining her light, she walked in and realized this one wasn’t nearly as shallow, and it had two different tunnels. One to the left and one to the right. “Slash left,” she muttered as she turned left. “Come on.”
She didn’t even realize she was reaching out until Masoud grabbed her hand. “Maybe let me go first,” he said grimly as he took the flashlight from her. She nodded, and he pulled her slowly into the first tunnel. It was so narrow that he barely fit, but it opened toward the end and they found themselves in another room.
Two more tunnels.
Closing her eyes, Fleur pictured the marks on the wall. “Slash left,” she said again. He pulled her through the tunnel on the left, and once again, it opened up into a small room.
“Do you hear that?” he asked in a low voice.
She held her breath and listened. “Oh my God. Trickling water,” she whispered.
“Which one do I take next?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure. It was horizontal. Does that mean that you could take both? Maybe they loop around?”
She bit her bottom lip. If up and down meant straight ahead then horizontal would probably mean the opposite. But that would mean backward, and that didn’t make sense. She turned back to stare at the opening they came through and gasped. “Light. Light,” she said urgently.
Masoud swung the light around, and they saw the huge scratch mark on the wall. It looked like….
“It’s an arrow pointing to the rocks.” She scrambled over and pushed at a few of them. They were heavy, but they did move away. Masoud jumped in to help, and after about twenty minutes of work, they had uncovered a hole. “We’re going to have to crawl.”
“Great,” he said darkly. “I’m still going first.” She watched amused as he dropped to his knees and began moving through the tunnel. Praying that it would be big enough to hold them, she crawled in after him. If she was right, there would be one more room.
They moved slowly, and it seemed to take forever for them to get out of the tunnel. When they finally stepped into another room, Fleur took a huge breath. She didn’t hate small spaces, but she didn’t particularly love crawling through the unknown.
“Which way?” Masoud asked tightly. He clearly didn’t love it either.
Wordlessly, she reached over and clicked off the flashlight. They stared at the light that continued to seep through the tunnel on the left. She wanted to run through it, but Masoud held her back and inched along slowly. The sound of running water grew louder and louder, and when they stepped through, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
“An oasis,” she gasped as she looked around. Sunlight poured through small holes in the top of the cave, and the space was crawling with vegetation. Leafy green plants grew along the pool of running water below, which rushed through the small caves and opened up in tiny waterfalls in the holes on the side. “My God. It hasn’t been seen in thousands of years. It hasn’t been touched in thousands years.”
“If we’re right, it’s been seen and touched by one person,” Masoud said grimly.
“Yasin.” Fleur remembered why they were there and clamped her mouth shut. “You think he found the oasis and put the diamond back. Do you have any idea how much money he could have made on this find?”
“He may have been motivated by money when he took the diamond, but it was fear and superstition that made him put it back. Any idea where it might be?”
“I didn’t even think we’d get this far,” she admitted. “The diamond was supposed to shine like fire, but that doesn’t help. Even if it caught the sunlight from above, the sun’s position in the sky could put it in multiple places. Plus, the thing isn’t exactly huge.”
She stripped off her bag and dropped it by the rocks. ”I guess we get to explore. Watch what you touch. I don’t know much about these plants. They might be poisonous.”
“Poisonous?” Masoud remarked with a chuckle. “Really?”
“The only other garden touched by God held an apple that doomed all of humanity. Let’s not speculate what might be in this one,” she said wryly.
“You believe that?” he asked her suddenly. Faith was hard to come by these days, and while he had issues believing in the power of a diamond, he wanted to believe that there was a God.
“I believe that we’re standing in a secret oasis in a cave in the middle of the desert,” she pointed out. “I’m not going to touch anything.” She flashed him a smile and began roaming the oasis. Even though she was excited to be close to finding the diamond, finding the oasis was a remarkable moment for her. If she were lucky, something in here would lead her to the true location of Solomon’s Mines.
Slowly, she ran her hands over the walls of the cave. If Masoud’s great uncle really did believe in the legend, he would have put the diamond back in the same spot that it had been found. But how could he have gotten such information?
The thought made her frown. In all likelihood, Yasin could have put the diamond anywhere, but he had enough information to find the oasis. He went through all that trouble recreating the first find. “Masoud, was your great-uncle an academic?”
Masoud snorted. “He was a party animal. Women, money, and booze.”
A sinner on the path of redemption. “You said he disappeared for two years, but you found his body in Paris. How did he die?”
“Probably alcohol poisoning,” Masoud said with a shrug.
A sinner on the path of redemption who failed to find mercy. “How did his apartment look when you found it? Where there any notable scrolls or letters around him? The Bible perhaps?”
“Fleur, I wasn’t there. If my father found anything notable, he would have put it in the library. And if it were rare, he would have put it on display. Why?”
“Your great-uncle wasn’t an academic, but he found the oasis. If he truly believes that only those worthy to rule would find the diamond, he would have hidden it in the same spot. But how could he have gotten that information? How could he have gotten any of this information?” She chewed on her bottom lip as she tried to work it out.
“Obviously, someone told him.”
“This place wouldn’t be a secret if people knew about it.” Fleur shook her head. “There’s more. There has to be more. What am I missing?” Her eyes rounded. “The diamond. After he stole the diamond, something must have happened to make him believe in the legend. To make him want to believe that he was worthy to keep it, but when he failed to change, he realized he couldn’t keep holding on to it. So he went through extraordinary lengths to hide it.”
“Fleur, you’re supposed to be looking for the diamond. Quit worrying about Yasin.”
“An epiphany from a sinner,” she said softly. “A grand gesture to lead to another grand gesture.” Whipping her head around, she looked for the highest place to stand within the cave. Spying some notches in the wall, she gripped the rock and began to climb.
“Damn it, woman, what are you doing? You’re going to fall and kill yourself,” Masoud hissed as he hurried to stand under her. She continued until she reached a thin ledge high on the wall. Balancing herself carefully, she turned and gasped.
As the sun hit the rock on the opposite side of the cave, a brilliant light burst outward. “My God, there it is.” She pointed to the wall.
Masoud turned. “I don’t see anything.”
“You have to elevate yourself,” she whispered to herself. “Pull yourself up, even at the risk of falling, to be close to God.” Excitement bubbled up inside her. “What are you waiting for? Go get it!”
“Not until you’re safely on the ground!” Masoud muttered. Laughing, Fleur started climbing down before she felt his strong hands grasp her waist and lift her the rest of the way down. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she whirled around and navigated the uneven terrain as quickly as possible. As soon as she reached the opposite wall, she grabbed the notches and climbed a few feet up until she was standing on the plateau. Reaching up, she felt with her fingers along the edge until they scraped against what felt like a hard pebble.
“Oh my God,” she muttered as she pulled it down. “Oh my God. Masoud. We did it. We found it!”
“Hand it here,” he commanded. She bent down and dropped the diamond in his open palm. Part of her yearned to study it more, but this wasn’t the time or place. He pulled out a leather pouch from his pocket. Reaching in, he grabbed a long silver chain with a pendant hanging from it. She watched in awe as he popped open the cage in the middle of the pendent. The diamond fit perfectly inside.
“You weren’t kidding,” she breathed. “It did belong to you.”
Wrapping the chain around his wrist, he lifted his arms. She put her hands on his shoulders and let him ease her off the ledge. Her body slid against his, and by the time her feet hit the ground, she was consumed by desire. Maybe it was the excitement from finding the diamond, or maybe it was the pent-up lust she’d felt for him from the beginning, but she looked into his eyes and knew she was about to be his.
“You could wear it,” he said huskily. “It supposedly has great power to bless al
l who come in contact with it.”
“And yet the last person who wore it was found dead in his apartment,” she said softly.
His hands moved down her waist until he could cup her bottom and pull her even closer against him. There was no mistaking his hardness.
Her heart beat faster as his head bent down, and when his lips finally touched hers, she melted against him. With just a single kiss, he left her senses reeling. Opening to him, she demanded everything, and he held nothing back. The past few days of teasing and flirting was nothing compared to the flame that kindled inside her. His kiss was hot and urgent, and it sent chills down her spine as she pulled at his shirt. She didn’t want anything between them.
“My little redheaded ball of flame,” he gasped as he finally broke away. “I had no idea that you could burn so hot.”
“Don’t stop,” she muttered as she reached down and pulled off her shirt and tank top. He took a step back and stared at her.
“I have absolutely no intention of stopping,” he said thickly. The lust in his eyes was enough to make her shiver. Reaching out, he traced a finger around the edge of her bra before he slowly rubbed over her erect nipple. Even a touch through the fabric was enough to make her muscles tighten.
She moaned and reached back to unsnap the barrier. As her bra fell away, she stood half-naked as the sun poured over her. Holding her breath, she waited as he stared at her. His eyes darkened with lust, and he reached for her. “Absolute perfection,” he muttered. A thrill raced down her spine. As his mouth covered hers again, she went to work on the buttons of his shirt. It was slow and frustrating, and as she finally spread her hands over his warm skin, it did nothing to ease the ache within her.
Masoud lowered her to the floor of the cave and balled up his shirt to place under her head. It wasn’t the most comfortable position, but she didn’t care. Her body was on fire, and she needed him inside her.
Unsnapping her pants, he pulled them down before tracing a finger up her inner thigh. Wiggling her hips, she pushed herself up on her elbows and looked at him. “I promise that I need very little foreplay here,” she muttered.