She loved her father, but he wasn’t smart enough to be a crook and get away with it. She’d been terrified he’d be caught and jailed. He’d promised he’d never do it again—but she couldn’t swear he hadn’t.
“How the hell does your father expect you to follow such vague clues?”
“The clues weren’t left for me to follow; he had them to jog his own memory.” Isis sighed, exasperated. “Maybe he knew his mind was going…”
Thorne tapped the steering wheel. “This is it.” He turned off the palm-tree-lined street onto a narrower road lined with tall oleander trees covered with white flowers, underplanted with bright red and deep purple petunias behind strips of meticulously maintained emerald-green grass. It wasn’t until they came to the tall, black wrought-iron gates of a villa that Isis realized they were on a private road.
Sunlight glinted on the gate’s gold embellishments and the high fences she could glimpse behind thick shrubbery. But it wasn’t all the gilding Isis took note of; it was the red eyes of all the cameras trained overtly on their vehicle as they drove slowly through the entrance. She bet there were plenty more surveillance cameras she couldn’t see.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she murmured. “How are we going to gain entry? We don’t know who lives here, or how they might be connected. Dad hated to be out of his element, so I can’t picture him coming to a place like this.” Or ripping a tassel off some multigazillionaire’s prized carpet undetected.
“He had a lot of quirks for a guy needing investor backing.”
“I know.” She let a small laugh escape. “You should’ve seen him, though, once they showed up at the dig. He’d stand with his feet planted, wearing that ridiculous hat, and insist they feel the grains of sand fall through their fingers as he painted a picture of life here thousands of years ago.”
“A salesman.”
“Be it a hole in the ground, or a tomb, he has—he had—a way with painting a picture that investors loved.” At least at first. Then they’d pretty much gotten sick and tired of his bullshit, and the money had dried up.
“That tassel came from this location. So either your father visited here, or someone from here gave it to him. Either way, this is the clue we’re following because it’s the only lead we have.” Thorne opened the window and put his arm out to press the buzzer. Four cameras situated along the fence narrowed their lens apertures, zooming in on them.
“What is your business with Dr. Najid?” The polite male voice sounded as though the guy was sitting in the backseat. Isis glanced over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t. She had no idea, since the sun shone through the windows, why she felt as though a cloud had just passed overhead. A glance at Thorne showed he was oblivious.
He answered smoothly, “Tell him Professor Magee’s daughter, Isis, would like a few moments of his time.”
There was an infinitesimal pause before the man responded unctuously. “I will inquire. Please wait.”
“Ever heard of him?” he asked quietly.
Isis shook her head. “I did most of my father’s paperwork for years. If he was an investor, I’d have heard of him.”
Thorne, looking perfectly at ease, rested his elbow on the open window. Isis noticed that he had the gearshift in reverse, ready to back up at the first sign of trouble. She rubbed both damp palms on her thighs and wondered whose life she was suddenly living.
EIGHT
Najid kept them waiting for fifteen minutes outside the gates, and another thirty-seven minutes once they were inside his house, which suited Thorne just fine. He used the time to contact his people in London, gathering intel on this clearly well-heeled Najid guy.
He received a response in less than two minutes. Dr. Khalifa Najid was the Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, had been for thirty-plus years. He was well respected in the community, married young to a wealthy Egyptian heiress, no children. He was positioned to open one of Egypt’s largest dam projects since Aswan in a few weeks. Thorne glanced at several photographs of the man and his immediate family, and collected the data, but didn’t see any obvious correlation between Najid and Professor Magee.
Didn’t see it, but his gut said it was there.
Although he felt naked without his weapon, Thorne had wisely left it secreted in a special compartment in the Jeep.
The metal detectors and body scanner were subtle, but not hidden, as they were led down the