out of curiosity, if I went home, where would you be?”
“Here. Getting to the bottom of things. When the dust settles I’ll bring you back. Bring your father. Have a fucking party.” His palms tightened around the steering wheel and his damn leg ached like fucking hell, making it hard to keep a steady pressure on the gas pedal.
A glance at Isis showed she was pale despite the bright heat splotches on her cheeks. He wasn’t feeling so hot, either, now that he thought about it. It wasn’t uncommon for local shops to sell tap water in commercial water bottles. All he needed right now was Montezuma’s revenge from the drinking water. Bloody hell.
“No one shot at us, or even tried to run us off the road today. Maybe they lost interest.”
Big fucking deal. “The day is young yet. And I doubt if these people have ‘lost interest.’ More likely they’re scouring the streets looking for us.”
Isis’s eyes narrowed. “How will they find us? We have a different car today, and you said no one saw us leave the bazaar. You said the Israelis were helping us out.”
“Let me put it this way,” Thorne observed dryly. “What we don’t know can, and probably will, hurt us. If these people are determined, they’ll eventually be hot on our tails again. When that happens I’d like there not to be an us. There will only be me. This isn’t personal. Got it?”
Turning to look straight ahead at the long ribbon of road where the first car they’d seen in forty miles approached at breakneck speed, Thorne edged the car over. Isis chewed her lip. “I don’t want to leave. Finding Cleo is so close, I can feel it…”
“Are you willing to die for someone else’s dream? Certainly he’s your father. But the reality is, he doesn’t care anymore because he doesn’t remember.”
She glared at him. “That’s a lousy thing to say.”
God, he didn’t want to do this. But he had to. The sooner he got her out of here, the less danger she’d be in. He should have manned up from the beginning and told Stark to go to hell. He wasn’t taking any woman on any op anywhere at any time, no matter what Lodestone paid. He drew a breath in through his nose, laced with the scent of her, and pushed the words out, making them as cold and brutal as he could. “It’s the truth, though, isn’t it? You’d die here, and he won’t even remember he had a daughter.”
The air stilled. A sheen of unshed tears glistened in her eyes. Isis turned away from him and faced out toward the road in front. “You really are a bastard, aren’t you?” Her voice was thick with emotion.
“Unfortunately for me, my parental units claim otherwise.” He should have packed her off yesterday, and he cursed himself for being a sentimental fool. “We don’t know how far these people will go. If they’re Cleopatra people who don’t want you back because they think you might know something they don’t—will they kill you for information? Are they trying to scare you off? We have no idea what the answer is, do we? How far are you willing to go to prove your father’s point? With bugger-all to go on but a tassel from a carpet and a gold amulet?”
She fisted her hands in her lap. “You said the amulet was from the Valley of the Scorpions—”
“Yes. But that doesn’t mean it had anything to do with Cleopatra. It could’ve been from one of the gift shops nearby. All I get is the location, love, not the provenance.” It wasn’t from any of the gift shops. His sixth sense, as odd as it was, was pinpoint accurate to the last foot. The amulet had once been deep inside the valley. Sure, someone could’ve been at the location and dropped it there, but his gut said that wasn’t the case. No coincidences in his line of work.
Thorne knew exactly where he was going to look. As soon as he escorted her to her gate and watched her plane take off.
He shot a look at her. Her jaw was tight, her hands fisted in her lap. She had the look of a woman about to argue. She wasn’t staying and he wasn’t willing or interested in hearing her rebuttals. It wasn’t safe here, and until he made sure that some arsehole wasn’t trying to kill her, she’d be safer in Seattle, where he’d have his