She swallowed and watched as his eyes followed the line of her throat, lower to the skin revealed by her open collar, lower still to the St. Jude medal that fell just above her breasts.
Her pulse pounded under that sultry gaze. And she made a choice she never would have even considered before, right on the spot. “Do you want to come up? I think Shannon was hanging out with some friends tonight. She won’t be back until morning.”
Those smoldering eyes ran up to hover on her lips, higher still until his gaze locked on hers and it felt like he was looking all the way into her soul.
“I’d like to,” he said softly. “But I can’t. I’m flying to Rome tonight.”
Her stomach fell like a stone weight. “Rome?”
He nodded slowly.
“When will you be back?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Oh.”
She looked down at her hands, noticed they were shaking and clasped them together. Maybe she’d read him wrong. Was she really that stupid?
His hand closed over both of hers before she saw him move. “Thank you for the nicest dinner I’ve had in longer than I can remember. I’m glad I met you, Katherine Meyer.”
A slight tremble ran through his touch, one she tried not to misread but couldn’t ignore. She chanced a look up. And knew she hadn’t been completely wrong. Regret and disappointment reflected deeply in his eyes.
And odd as it was considering she wanted him more than she could remember wanting anything else in her life, a strange sense of relief pulsed along her nerve endings.
Something she couldn’t define was pushing her toward him. Something deeper than a sexual connection and a thousand times hotter. He was the most dangerous kind of man because he was the first who made her feel with her heart rather than think with her mind.
Lucky for her, something was holding him back. Something she didn’t understand but knew instinctively had just saved her from major heartbreak.
“I’m glad I met you too, Pete.” Her throat grew thick. “I wish we’d had longer.”
She forced herself to let go and step back before he said something that would make her stop. Without a doubt, the secrets in his smoky eyes would stay with her long after he was gone. “Good luck in Rome.”
She turned, hustled up the stairs and with a click of her key left him standing alone on the street.
Present day
Northeastern Pennsylvania
“Forecast shows snow slowing in the next hour or so.”
Aten Minyawi looked up from the handheld GPS he was studying and gave a brief nod toward his counterpart, Hanif Busir, who was seated at the small table in the motel they’d scrounged up, studying the weather on his computer. Minyawi refocused on the picture in front of him. The GPS dot hadn’t budged in the last three to four hours. Katherine Meyer was hunkered down, feeling safe and smug.
She wouldn’t be smug for long. It was only a matter of time before he caught up with her. And finished what she’d started six years ago.
“That’s good,” Busir mumbled with a scowl that said he was talking to himself.
Minyawi ignored him. Thoughts of Kat’s large brown eyes slid into his mind. Of the way she’d looked at him back then. Of the way she’d been so trusting. So naïve. He’d pegged her wrong from the start, though. He wouldn’t do so again.
He ran a finger down the scar on his left cheek. No, she wasn’t naïve. She’d taken away the only thing he’d ever truly cared about. Made him the killer he was today.
He shut out the memories and emotions he no longer felt. His training had hardened him into nothing more than a machine. And it had saved him.
He stood. “We go now.”
Busir glanced up. “But the weather—”
“We go now,” he said again. They’d been sitting on their asses too long as it was, holed up in a motel in the middle of bum-fuck America, and he was sick of it. Sick of waiting, of watching. Of planning. “Take care of the clerk while I contact Usted and Wyatt. They’ll go in from the north side. We’ll take the south.”
Their partners on this excursion were hired American thugs, but Minyawi didn’t care. He’d been at the auction house looking for Kat when she’d gotten the jump on Busir and Wyatt. Morons that they were, they’d let her slip through their fingers. But Minyawi still needed them. At least a little longer.
“Aten—”
He turned hardened eyes on Busir. The man quickly closed his mouth.
Indecision brewed in Busir’s eyes. He was debating whether to ask a question or bite his tongue.
Minyawi relaxed his jaw. Though he ran the show, he liked that this unlikely brother-in-arms had a brain and knew how to use it. It could be an asset in the future.
Busir closed the laptop and slowly rose from the metal chair. “We’re two hours from her location. With the snow yet, it’ll take us twice that. Usted and Wyatt are an hour behind us. She’s not going anywhere. If we wait—”
Of course, there was using a brain, and then there was overkill.
“If we wait,” Minyawi said through clenched teeth, his accent punctuating each word, “she could decide to leave. We’ll secure the perimeter and hold for the others. Now do as I say.”
Busir’s lips thinned, but he didn’t press the issue. With a frown he pulled the semiautomatic from the holster at the small of his back and screwed on the silencer. His footsteps echoed across the tile floor, followed by the muffled sob of the night clerk bound hand-to-foot in the back room.
Minyawi glanced at the GPS one last time before pocketing the instrument. He wouldn’t let her get away. Not this time.
A muffled pop echoed from the back room. Then…silence.
Loose ends.
In the military when he’d been nothing more than a boy, he’d learned to consider all his options. Prepare for the unexpected, never underestimate your enemy. He’d overlooked Katherine Meyer the first time he’d met her.
He wouldn’t again.
He now knew her weakness. A weakness he no longer had. She had no family left, no friends. Nothing. But she was loyal.
And that loyalty, luckily, was going to lead him right to her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Present day
Northern Pennsylvania
Kat straightened from the doorjamb where she’d been leaning. Okay, Pete had been gone for thirty minutes. Enough was enough. She was going out to look for him.
In a closet off the kitchen she found several parkas, gloves and a flashlight. The exterior garage door opened just as she reached it.
Pete shivered as he stumbled through the opening. Snow covered his body. Ice crystals stuck to the shadowy beard on his jaw. As she took in his nearly white skin, she couldn’t help but think he looked like a well-dressed popsicle.
Relief and irritation warred inside her as she grabbed him and helped him inside. “Smart move, Indiana.”
“F…f…freezing out there,” he chattered as he stomped snow off his feet.
“No kidding. It’s called a blizzard. What were you thinking? You could have been killed.”
“Looking for…h…house.”
She used one arm to close and lock the outer door, made sure to flip off the exterior light and then led him into the apartment. After easing him into a chair in front of the register, she took his frozen jacket, wrapped one of the heated blankets around his shivering shoulders and rubbed his arms to stimulate circulation.
And felt a twinge of sympathy for him.
Okay, being a bitch just because that kiss had thrown her for a loop wasn’t going to accomplish much. They were stuck in here together until the storm passed. Might as well make the best of it.
“There isn’t one,” she said as she shrugged out of her coat. “It burned to the ground about three years ago. The nearest house is at least a mile away.”
His teeth continued to knock together as she rubbed his arms, then his legs and finally his feet after she removed his shoes and socks. He was soaked to the
skin. She’d seen extra clothing in the closet and knew she’d have to get him out of his wet tuxedo before long.
She glanced at his sodden slacks, the ruined dress shoes on the floor. Armani. She didn’t live in a hole in the ground; she knew when she saw money. And he had it. More than he’d had when they’d been together. Judging from how well all those stolen artifacts had done at his auction tonight, a whole lot more.
Don’t go there.
“Wh…where are we?”
Before she could answer, the kettle whistled. Relieved at the distraction, she rose, went to the kitchen where she poured a mug of tea and brought it back to him.
“Northern Pennsylvania,” she said as she handed him the steaming mug. He took it with two hands, pressed it against his right cheek and closed his eyes.
His color was slowly returning, but he still looked like death warmed over—which was ironically how she felt. Dry clothes could wait a few minutes. He looked like he needed a moment to catch his bearings.
So did she for that matter.
He kept the cup against his cheek, took slow and rhythmic breaths. He hadn’t looked at her once since he’d come back into the room. Though he’d accepted her help, hadn’t pushed her away when she’d guided him into the apartment, she sensed he was struggling to keep his emotions in check.
She had a brief flash of his enraged face in that alley tonight, and a shiver ran down her back. No, she really didn’t know this man, not the parts that mattered. Considering what she knew he was now capable of, she thanked her lucky stars he was in such control.
On a deep breath, she sat on the couch across from him and bit the inside of her lip. This was going to be a long night.
“Warming up?” she asked to cut the silence.
There was no response save a slight shift in his breathing. His eyes were still closed, the cup still pressed against his cheek. For a minute she wondered if he’d fallen asleep, but then decided he couldn’t have, not sitting upright like that.
“You weren’t on the guest list,” he said in a raspy, deep voice void of any kind of emotion.
“No,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t.”
Silence.
“What were you doing at my auction?”
How much could she tell him without putting both of their lives in more jeopardy? How much of the truth could she really trust him with?
Not much, her conscience screamed.
“I guess you could say I was curious. I…bypassed security.”
A humorless sound came out of him. A cross between a huff and a laugh. “Fitting, I guess,” he mumbled. “Karma’s got a badass sense of humor.”
Kat frowned. Oh yeah, good ol’ karma. When you considered the fact he was the criminal and she’d been the one doing the breaking and entering, it was more than just a little ironic.
“Answer me one question,” he said. “Why a bomb? I mean, if you’d wanted to hide from me, you could have easily done it without the theatrics.”
Hide from him? Was that what he thought? She’d been in hiding because of him.
“I didn’t really have a choice.”
The look he shot her screamed yeah right. “You mentioned that before. Everyone has choices, Kat.”
Not her. Hers had dried up the day she’d met Peter Kauffman.
She looked away. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“I’ve got nothing but time, thanks to you.” He sipped his tea as if all was well, but the bite in his voice told her to watch her back. “And I think I have a right to know. You owe me that much at least.”
Her resistance wavered. She didn’t owe him a thing, not as far as she could see, but some small part of her knew he wouldn’t let up until he had at least a smattering of the truth. She decided giving him the basics wouldn’t hurt.
“I’m sure you remember Dr. Sawil Ramirez.”
He thought for a moment, took a sip from the mug. “Dark-haired guy. Brazilian, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” He’d lived in the apartment above her and Shannon, and Pete had met him several times. “I talked to him about the relics I suspected were taken from the tomb. He was surprised I’d kept such a close eye on it all. But in the end he was thankful.”
Tension seeped back into the room with just those few sentences. His hand tightened around the mug.
Kat crossed her arms over her chest. She would not feel guilty about this again. If he didn’t want to hear the truth then he shouldn’t have asked.
“One night while you were away on one of your ‘business trips,’ Sawil showed up at my apartment. He said he had the proof I needed and that I wouldn’t believe who was involved.”
Pete’s jaw clenched and unclenched. Kat knew what he was thinking, but he wasn’t denying it, so she went on.
“He’d taken what I’d told him to the Supreme Council of Antiquities himself. Filed his own report. The man he’d filed the report with, Amon Bakhum, was conveniently killed in a car accident the following day.”
The Supreme Council of Antiquities was the government body that oversaw all archaeological excavation in Egypt. They were supposed to keep Egypt’s treasures safe. In this case, they’d let the ball drop. Big-time.
She paused, thought back to Sawil’s wary eyes the night he’d come pounding on her door. He’d been a quiet man, and his crush on Shannon had endeared him to Kat. Repeatedly he’d tried to talk her into leaving things alone, told her it was none of her business. But when she hadn’t, when she’d persisted in looking for answers, he’d tried to warn her. He’d seen her coming and going with Pete, and he’d been worried their association would eventually cost her her life.
It had, but not in the way Sawil had predicted.
She bit her lip, debated how much else to say, then figured, what the hell? Pete already knew most of this. He’d been privy to it from the other side.
“One of the men I saw at the auction tonight ran stolen artifacts on the black market in Egypt.”
“Let me guess,” Pete said calmly. Too calmly. “Ramirez told you I knew the guy.”
A knot formed in her stomach as she remembered back. At the time, she hadn’t wanted to believe what Sawil had told her. The man she’d fallen in love with couldn’t possibly be involved in an artifact-smuggling operation. She’d told Sawil that much.
But that was before she’d seen the proof herself.
The betrayal that cut through her now was as sharp as the day she’d realized she’d been duped. Played, from the very start.
“He didn’t need to tell me,” she snapped.
Pete’s gaze shifted her way, not a flicker of emotion anywhere on his face. No, that wasn’t true. There was boredom in his flat eyes. Boredom and indifference.
And it cut her. Just as much as his reaction had that day.
“Move on,” he said. “What happened next?”
She drew a deep breath. “Sawil had an idea. A way we could get the last bit of evidence we needed, and I, well…I was curious. He asked me to go back to the tomb with him that night.” Her stomach pitched as memories of that night flooded her mind.
“Kat?”
She flinched at Pete’s voice. His brows lowered as he watched her. Was that concern in his eyes? Concern or just mere curiosity at her silence?
She didn’t know. But ultimately, she’d been in that tomb that night because she’d wanted some kind of proof Sawil was wrong and Pete was innocent. She hadn’t found it.
“We didn’t know they were still there. We surprised them.”
“Who?”
“Two men. One was at the auction tonight. The other—I never saw his face. Sawil, he…” She swallowed around the lump that formed in her throat. “He didn’t make it out.”
Pete’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t say anything, and it was impossible to read his expression.
“Somehow I made it back into Cairo,” she went on, refusing to think about the details or what she’d heard from the shadows of the tomb. “I was afraid to go home. I didn’t k
now what to do. I tried to call Shannon, to warn her not to go back to our apartment. I got worried so I…” She took a breath. “I called Marty.”
Pete’s cup paused halfway to his mouth. It was no secret he hadn’t liked her ex, Martin Slade, who worked for the CIA. Of course, she hadn’t put two and two together as to why until after everything had gone down and she’d realized what Pete had really been into.
It was obvious Pete liked Marty less now than he had back then. That should make all this easier considering the circumstances, right? Only for some insane reason, it didn’t.
“Marty…he told me they would have her picked up. That they’d protect her. But they couldn’t.”
Kat glanced toward the radiator and focused on the tarnished metal. To this day, she still couldn’t let herself think of the horrible things those two men had done to her roommate.
“Whoever they worked for was so important,” she said, “they were willing to kill anyone who got in their way. That SCA agent. Sawil. Shannon. Me. They used Shannon to get to me.”
“So why the bomb?”
“Because I was in over my head. I was the last one to see Sawil alive. I didn’t have an alibi for being gone that night, and people at the tomb had heard me arguing with him earlier in the day.” They’d been arguing about Pete and his possible involvement, though she didn’t say that now. “Several of the missing artifacts were found in my apartment, along with Shannon’s body. Shannon and Sawil were practically a couple by that point. And they both died on the same night. According to Marty, I was already under watch because of my job and my association with you.”
He glanced away, but she stiffened her spine and went on. “And then I heard from them. They knew everything about me—about my mother, where I lived, where I worked, what route I drove to the university when I was home. They threatened…my family, and after everything…I knew they’d make good on it.”
When he looked at her with blank eyes, she knew he didn’t believe her, and that treacherous heart of hers dropped. Did she expect his sympathy? She really was more pathetic than she realized.