do everything I always did. Like last night, for instance.”
“Yes, last night was amazing,” she told him, then without skipping a beat or changing inflection, pointed out, “You were limping more this morning than you were yesterday. Is the pain debilitating and you’re just being manly, or is it something an ice pack and some muscle relaxants will help?”
“I won’t take drugs, and an ice pack would probably help,” he said honestly. “But since we’re in the middle of the desert, both will have to wait.”
“Who’s this Boris guy? Why did he shoot you and your people?”
About to say it was on a need-to-know basis, Thorne then continued that mental conversation and decided he might as well cut to the chase, because since she’d been shot at, possibly by Boris or his men, because of him, she had a right to know. “We were tracking a man we knew was trafficking black market artifacts from the Middle East and North Africa.”
Her eyes widened. “Black market artifacts?” she demanded, pushing away from the door. “As in Egyptian black market artifacts?”
He nodded. “Many of them, yes.”
“And you didn’t think this was relevant? My God, Connor. Clearly it is relevant! Those men shooting at us are after you!”
“It’s possible, but not likely. Very few people know I’m back.” He flicked his gaze to the rearview mirror just to make sure that was true. No traffic had passed them in the last hour but back on the horizon there was still a smudge of dark keeping its distance. Was it a vehicle or merely the sand blowing across the road?
Isis’s fingers rubbed her temple in slow circles and her chest rose and fell as she took shallow, annoyed breaths. “Are you freaking insane? How many people know you’re back? Half a dozen at least! Maybe more.”
He kept his tone level. “None of them are involved or even know about Yermalof.”
She swallowed several times, and he wondered if she was going to be sick. He handed her his bottle with an inch of water left in it.
Unscrewing the top, Isis demanded, “Were you here? In Egypt with this man?” She drank the water and pulled a face because it was warm.
A long pause stretched out before them. The invisible weight on his shoulders increased as the truth pressed in. “We followed him into Israel.”
“Oh, my God, Connor! That’s a hop, skip, and a damned jump away from where we are right now!”
No shit. “We worked closely with the Israeli Mossad. They’re the ones who supplied us with this vehicle, as well as the one we banged up yesterday. He’d stolen artifacts there as well. He had the world hot on his arse.”
“Lovely.” She twisted her unruly, sexy-as-hell hair up off her neck and held it on top of her head as she adjusted the air vents to her new position and fanned herself with her other hand. “Are they just lending us cars, or are they looking for your friend Boris?”
“As far as I know, just doing me a favor.” In the spy business it was good to dispense and accept favors. The Jerusalem op had turned to shit, but it was Mossad agents who’d hauled his bleeding butt out of the barn where Yermalof and his men had introduced them to Hell. Only the fact that he was bleeding out and unconscious had gotten him out of there without trying to save Maciej and Ayers.
“Well, I think we need to pause and rewind and see what they know that they haven’t told us. Because we should at least know who it is that’s after us, don’t you think?”
“This whole trip has been a cock-up.” Thorne hadn’t realized how pissed off he was until he heard the anger in his own voice. Most of that anger was directed at himself. “It’s high time I took you to the airport and put you on a plane back to Seattle.”
“You should have thought of that yesterday when those men tried to shoot our car!”
No shit. It might be late in the game, but he prayed it wasn’t too late in the game to get her gone. “You’re right. I should have. You’ll be wheels up in three hours.”
“And you think I’ll leave and let Dylan stake a claim to Cleopatra? After all this?” she scoffed. “Think again.”
“I have a gimp leg. I’m a piss-poor bodyguard for you. Whoever’s gunning for us is going to pick us off like fish in a barrel.”
“You’re an excellent bodyguard. But just