More than aware. “It’s a long shot, but it’s the only shot we have.” And given all that rubbish about assaults from mystery figures and murder, the quicker this was over, the better.
Even if a small part of him did settle into the instinct of years of training. In, out, put the bad guys down.
If there were even any bad guys.
“You won’t have to touch everything,” she countered, with what seemed like mild amusement in the dim light. “It’s thirty years’ worth of work. I can sort and eliminate things by obviously wrong locations and unlikely dates. That’ll cut down the time, won’t it?”
“Sure.” From ten years to five. Finding the right matching location, while not knowing what type of artifact would hold the GPS location, was akin to searching for a thief in a prison.
“I’m glad I can help you help me. I hate sitting around waiting, don’t you?”
Yeah. One of the things at the top of his list. He shifted in his seat so he could straighten his legs, and she moved her feet to give him more room. “You can stretch out some more if you like.”
“I’m good.” As good as it was going to get, anyway. He’d let the flight attendant take his suit jacket and cane, and had rolled up his sleeves in deference to the stuffiness on board, despite the air blowing down on him. It wasn’t cooling his unwelcome attraction to Miss Magee any.
She looked up at him, eyes earnest behind her black-framed glasses. Her breath smelled sweet from the Diet Coke she was drinking. Thorne didn’t drink sodas, but he wondered absently what it would taste like on her tongue if he kissed her. Which, of course, he was absolutely not going to do.
Curling her legs up under her on the wide leather seat, she pitched her body closer to his. Her closeness, and the subdued lighting in the cabin, made the situation far too intimate and made Thorne want to bury himself in her heat and cinnamon scent. She licked her unpainted mouth as if she were reading his thoughts. “Were you in an accident?”
“Yeah.” I accidently walked into Boris Yermalof’s boning knife. He watched the attractive flight attendant bringing around coffee. It was natural to think of the Russian when he was on his way to London and talking about Egypt. The bloody Russian was the reason Thorne had been banished to Seattle in the first place. The chase through Egypt eight months ago had ended in Israel, where his two partners had been brutally butchered, and when Thorne had avoided being gutted like a fish, it was more by accident than design. Everyone considered his survival a miracle.
He resented being put in a holding pattern when all he wanted to do was track Yermalof down and do unto him as the Russian had done unto Thorne’s partners. Twiddling his thumbs wasn’t Thorne’s thing. Babysitting a deluded big-eyed cutie while he served out his sentence was proving more challenging than he had time for. The fact that he was supposed to be recuperating didn’t make it less of a problem.
Isis predictably asked, “Was it a c—”
Without turning to look at her, he said unambiguously, “I don’t talk about it.”
“If there’s anything I can do…?”
“No.”
The flight attendant smiled and flashed her cleavage over the small tray holding china cups. The rich scent of Sumatra eradicated—for the moment—the smell of Isis’s skin. Thorne turned to glance at her.
“Do you want coffee?” He wasn’t a man who chatted. He didn’t want to be her friend, and he didn’t want to fucking bond. London. Hopefully he’d find something that would satisfy her. He’d go back to Seattle, where the weather suited his mood, and she could go… wherever the hell she wanted to go. None of his business.
“No thanks. I probably shouldn’t have drunk those two Diet Cokes.” She reached up and turned off her overhead light, then pulled the thin blanket across her lap, up over her chest. “I want to sleep so I’m fresh when we arrive.”
She was plenty fresh. He took a coffee, ignoring the woman lingering at his side until she pushed off. “Good idea,” he told Isis. The coffee was hot and black. Not French press, but drinkable. He drank it in two gulps, then placed the cup and saucer on the wide space between their seats. It wasn’t a wall, but it marked his space from hers.