It’d gel with how he knew Slade, but I doubt it. My guess is he’s connected to INTERPOL.” A breath of excitement rushed through him. “And if so then we just got our first break, because I have a way of finding out.”
He quickly checked his watch. Too late tonight. But tomorrow was another story. When he popped a fry in his mouth and looked up, Kat was biting her lip and playing with her medal again.
And Pete stopped eating because that look was back in her eyes. The determined one that said she’d made her mind up about something.
“What?” he asked again.
She hesitated, then finally said, “If someone from INTERPOL’s involved in this, they would have been privy to Sawil’s original complaints filed with the SCA.”
“Yeah, I thought of that. Your list of missing relics might not have gotten out on the wire. And if that person was in on it with someone from the SCA, your complaint never would have gone anywhere.”
She stared down at her half-eaten plate. “I went back to the SCA that morning before Sawil and I went into the tomb. They brushed me off.” A visible shudder rushed through her, and she opened her mouth to say more, but then closed it suddenly.
She’d been in the tomb the night Ramirez had been killed. Pete wanted to ask exactly what she’d seen, but he sensed this wasn’t the time or place to do that. He did, however, know she was holding something back.
“Ramirez must have talked to someone else,” he finally said. “Maybe he was the link to the guy at INTERPOL.”
“I doubt that.”
He dipped a fry in ketchup and went back to eating. “Too bad we don’t know who the other person was you said you heard in that tomb.”
Pete looked up at Kat’s silence. “What?”
“I…” She quickly reached for her backpack at his feet and scooted out of the booth. “I have to use the rest-room.”
Frowning at her strange and sudden exit, Pete watched her walk to the bathroom and had a momentary thought that maybe he should check to make sure that was exactly where she was going. The woman looked like she might just bolt.
He froze, fry halfway to his open mouth. And nearly lost his dinner.
She wouldn’t do that to him again, would she?
He lowered the french fry to the plate and wiped his suddenly sweaty hands on a napkin. He kept his eyes glued to the women’s restroom door, mentally ticking off the minutes she’d been gone. When he got to five, he had a sinking suspicion she’d just screwed him again, and not in the way his body wanted.
Holy hell. How stupid did he have to be not to see the signs? She’s been planning to bolt since they’d walked out of that strip club.
Disbelief and a resurging sense of rage he thought he’d clamped down bubbled up in his chest as he gripped the edge of the table and started to slide out of the booth. Just as he was putting his weight on his feet, the women’s restroom door opened and Kat walked out.
Relief plowed into him hard at the sight of her, and he dropped back onto the bench seat on an adrenaline rush.
Idiot. Fucking idiot. He raked a hand through his hair and took a deep breath to settle his blood pressure. No way she’d ditch him again like she’d done in Cairo. Whether she admitted it or not, she wanted his help. Otherwise she’d already be gone.
Gone.
That thought kicked him in the gut as he watched her walk across the restaurant and slide into her seat again, all long legs and lanky build, dark, tousled short hair and even darker, mesmerizing eyes he’d thought he’d never see again. Somehow he had to figure out a way to put the past behind him so they could work together and live through this…whatever it was.
From there…he eyed the silver medal hanging at her chest, followed it to the vee of her T-shirt and the bit of exposed cleavage there without even meaning to, and remembered their last sultry week together. When he’d gone to Cairo with the sole purpose of fixing their tattered relationship. When she’d blown his mind with her hands and mouth and every inch of her body.
When everything between them had imploded in on itself.
She stared down at her food as if she hadn’t seen it before. “I’m really not that hungry anymore.”
Neither was he. Not for cheeseburgers and fries anyway.
He lifted