Night Of No Return
Deep inside, something tugged at her, a feeling sharp and insistent, clearer than memory but less easy to name. Enough, already, she told herself. She’d known the man for no more than an hour—oh, it was ridiculous even to say she’d known him. She’d found him, that was all, and she’d done what she could to keep him alive. She didn’t even know his name. If she still felt somehow connected to a man she didn’t know, that wasn’t surprising, was it? Under the circumstances…?
She remembered the shock of his eyes opening and meeting hers, the sense that the world had just tilted, sending her life spinning off in an unplanned direction. Romantic foolishness, but not surprising, really. Under the circumstances.
When Tim sighed she glanced back at him, ready to be distracted. “Wishing for that horde, are you?”
“With hordes, come funding. Another generator would be nice. We could get a new air conditioner. Hey, isn’t the path thataway?”
“This way is shorter.” The path Tim had indicated was a fairly easy track that went around the rocky hill. Nora preferred a more direct route, up the hill and through a narrow notch between thrusting boulders. “You’ve been in Egypt long enough for your blue blood to have adjusted to the heat. We already have an air conditioner.”
“No, we don’t. We have a noisemaker you turn on for a few hours that occasionally coughs up a little cool air.”
“It’s better than nothing.” Which summed up most of their equipment. Theirs was a shoestring operation, and with all the small disasters that had beset them lately, those strings were getting frayed. “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said, addressing herself as much as Tim as she eased out of the vee-shaped cleft and back onto more nearly horizontal ground. “Even if this fellow gives Ibrahim a good report, we’re not going to get any substantial increase in funding. Not unless we make a major find.” She started up the hill.
Tim followed slowly. “We’d have a much better chance of that if we had the people and equipment to do the job right.”
Didn’t she know it. “I could have sworn I gave you my speech about ‘paying our dues’ when you signed on, but if you need to hear it again—”
“I know, I know. This is my opportunity to get out of my ivory tower and learn the basics of fieldwork. The problem is, I like my ivory tower. It’s air-conditioned, and there are no bugs.”
He slipped, grabbing awkwardly at the rock, swore, and finally managed to clamber out and stand beside her. “And there aren’t a lot of mountains to cross to get to my office at the museum, either. Look at this.” He held out his hand, displaying a scraped palm. “I’m damned if I know why you have to play mountain goat just so you can find a place to run. Don’t you get enough exercise on the dig?”
A smile tugged at her mouth as she turned back to head down the hill. Camp lay below them. “You like air-conditioning. I like to run.”
“Well, aside from being a blasted nuisance and hard on my epidermis, your runs aren’t safe. Especially with everything that’s been happening lately.”
“A few petty thefts don’t make it unsafe here—as safe as you can be in the desert, anyway.”
“If we stay in camp. But you keep wandering off by yourself.”
Out of consideration for Tim’s scraped hand, she chose the easiest way down, circling around a large sandstone outcropping that wind and weather had sculpted into a shape she could only call phallic. “There’s a lot of poverty among the tribes. Not that I mean to accuse the Bedouin, but they’re the only people out here other than us.”
“Just them, us, and the occasional terrorist.”
“Are you still harping on that theory? Terrorists blow up things. They don’t steal a couple of cases of canned food for the glory of the cause.”
“What about our first generator?”
“We don’t know that it was tampered with.”
“The mechanic said—”
“I know what he said. I wish he’d kept his dire mutterings to himself, since you seem to have taken them so much to heart. He also said it could have been damaged in transport.”
“Mahmoud’s gas tank didn’t get sugar in it by accident.”
“Mahmoud isn’t exactly Mr. Congeniality. The man collects enemies the way dogs collect fleas. Look, Tim, there are times when I appreciate your stubbornness—”
“You ought to. You could teach a camel the meaning of the word. Hey!” he said as they rounded the outcropping. “Looks like our timing is right on the money.”
They had come out on a rise just above the camp, which was located in one of the larger wadis—a much wider channel than the one where she liked to run. A cloud of dust was moving slowly along the dry watercourse, nearly obscuring the truck that caused it.
“If we hurry, we can get there about the same time as Mahmoud,” she said, picking up the pace.
“About your morning run—”
“Tim,” she said warningly.
“Nora, even if terrorists aren’t lurking nearby, it isn’t safe for you to go running alone. You could turn an ankle or get bitten by something nasty.”
“That’s why I always run in the same place. If I’m late getting back, you’ll know where to come looking for me.”
“I don’t want to have to come looking for you. Why can’t you exercise in camp?”
“Aside from the fact that I enjoy running?”
“Yeah, aside from that.”
She shrugged. Her reasons were too private to speak aloud. Wildness calls to wildness, she thought. When she was running along a twisting wadi, away from everyone, she could allow herself to dream. Weren’t dreams as important to life as safety? Yet maybe…maybe she’d been dreaming too much lately. Dreaming about one thing, the same thing, over and over. The man. The one she would never see again.
The truck pulled up in a cloud of dust just as Nora reached level ground, and every member of her small crew descended upon it. The small crowd wasn’t enough to block her view, but the truck itself kept her from seeing who climbed out of the passenger side. She lengthened her stride, as curious as the others were about their visitor.
Mahmoud headed straight for the cookstove in front of the main tent, where a pot of coffee was perfuming the air. Nora greeted him briefly.
Their guest was speaking to Gamal in fluent Arabic, his back to her, when she rounded the front of the truck. He’s Egyptian, then, she thought. Not surprising, if he came from the museum. His clothing, however, spoke of the West—khaki shorts much like her own, a plain pullover shirt and Nikes. A lot of Egyptians did wear western clothing, though the more devout would have disapproved of his shorts.
He wore no hat, which made her frown, but she would hold off on the lecture until she saw if he was foolish enough to do that in the heat of the day. His short hair was as black as her own, and his body told her he was younger than she’d expected—young and attractive, with a lean, muscular body.
The sight of those masculine shoulders, slim hips and strong legs made her hormones kick in with a pleasant little rush, but Nora didn’t doubt her ability to keep any tickle of desire under control. She’d been doing it for years.
DeLaney, however, was another story. The youthful college student might start mooning after their guest instead of Tim.
Of course, Tim would probably be relieved if she did. Nora was smiling when she spoke. “Welcome to the dig. I’m Dr. Nora Lowe.”
“Yes,” he said, in a low, pleasant voice as he turned to face her. “I know.”
His eyes met hers. Amber eyes. Clear as sunlight trapped in time, smiling down at her.
Chapter 2
Alex looked at the astonished face of the woman he’d crossed an ocean to deceive, and his mind emptied of all but scattered impressions. Smooth skin, tanned to honey. Unpainted lips. Eyes the color of the dawn sky overhead, startling pale in that tanned face…soft blue eyes that looked as dazed as he felt.
A single thought appeared from nowhere: It couldn’t really happen like this, could it?
Immediately, he was irritated, and the irritation cleared his mind. What kind of question was that? What couldn’t happen? Because the question made no sense, he shoved it away.
Long habit had him smoothing his features into an amused grin. “We weren’t properly introduced the last time we met, were we? I’m Alex Bok.” He held out his hand.
The dazed look hadn’t cleared from her eyes. “Alex.” She took his hand and he felt a second shock, but this one was purely sensual. Understandable, and distinctly pleasant. “Alex Bok?” Her gaze sharpened, and he knew she’d recognized the name. “Any relation to Franklin and Elizabeth Bok?”
He smiled crookedly. “You could say that. They’re my parents.”
She laughed. “Good heavens, you’re an archaeologist! If you knew what all I had imagined…”
He hadn’t released her hand after shaking it. Nora Lowe had narrow palms, with the callouses of a woman who works with her hands. She wore no rings. Her skin was warm…and she smelled of lilacs. “Why, what did you think I was?”
“Oh, all sorts of things—a smuggler, a reporter, a pilgrim. Archaeologist never made the list.” She tilted her head. “I think we have a friend in common. Myrna Lancaster.”
It took him a moment to place the name. “Myrna. Of course. We got to know each other on a dig in the Eastern Desert two years ago.” He’d been on the trail of a particularly bloody assassin, and Myrna had provided welcome relief from the grim hunt. A delightfully energetic young woman, he recalled, and no more interested in permanent entanglements than he had been.
A short, curvy young woman with glasses that wouldn’t stay up on her dot of a nose tugged at Nora’s sleeve to get her attention. “So who is he?”
“The son of the couple who wrote the book on Old Kingdom pottery. Literally.” That came from the man Alex had seen returning to camp with Nora when he arrived. “You must have studied it in one of your classes.” He didn’t sound excited. More like suspicious.
Or jealous?
“He’s also the man I found in the Negev,” Nora said. Then, apparently realizing Alex still held her hand, she flushed and pulled it away.
“The one who was stabbed?” The young woman’s eyes widened behind her glasses in delicious horror. “By bandits? The one you stumbled over when you were visiting your old professor?”
Nora glanced at Alex apologetically. “The story was too good not to share.”
He’d counted on it. “That was inevitable, I suppose.” He reached back inside the truck, taking out an olive-colored duffel bag, and bent to pull an envelope from its side pocket. “This is from Dr. Ibrahim. I gather it introduces me and explains why he sent me.”
She took the letter, but didn’t open it. “Let me introduce you more formally—now that I know your name.” A quick, shy grin lit her face. “This is DeLaney Brown, our resident cheerleader.”
The young woman with the slippery glasses made a face. “Just think of me as part of the cheap labor.”
“Glad to meet you, DeLaney.” He already knew who she was, of course. Jonah had supplied him with backgrounds for the Americans and the single Englishman at the dig. DeLaney Brown was a twenty-three-year-old graduate student at the university where Nora Lowe taught. Her father was a successful surgeon; her mother was deeply involved in charity work. No siblings. She was bright, impulsive, and prone to throw herself at political causes of all sorts, though there were no known ties to any of the Arabic fringe groups. He held out his hand.
DeLaney’s palm was sweaty. She gave his hand a single quick squeeze before pulling her hand back so she could push her glasses up again. “What on earth did you do to make someone stab you, anyway?”
“Good God, DeLaney, you have the manners of a small child sometimes. I’m Lisa.” The third woman present held out a broad, blunt-nailed hand. “More cheap labor.”
Lisa was also a graduate student, Alex knew, but she was more than twenty years older than DeLaney, having returned to college after a messy divorce. She had dark skin, grizzled dark hair cut very short, three earrings in each ear, and an ex-husband with gambling debts. Her handshake was firm.
“Welcome to the dig,” she said. “I can’t place your accent. You American?”
“Yes, but I grew up in this part of the world.”
“That would explain it. You sound almost like Tim.”
“Speaking of whom,” Nora said, “this is Timothy Gaines, my assistant—Dr. Gaines, actually—but we don’t bother much with titles out here. But maybe the two of you have met? Tim is with the British Museum, but he’s currently attached to the Cairo Museum.”
Alex held out his hand again. “I’m not on staff at either museum, so I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Technically, I’m not on staff in Cairo, either, but they do give me office space. Good to have you here, Bok.” At twenty-eight, Timothy Gaines had the bony, stretched-out frame of Abraham Lincoln, a basketball player’s hands, and the suspicious manner of a dog whose territory has been invaded. Gaines didn’t play any childish games with the handshake, though, keeping it brief and businesslike.
“Dr. Ibrahim sends his regards.” Alex hadn’t actually spoken to the museum’s director, but it seemed a safe thing to say.
“Tactful bloke, aren’t you? I can just imagine what he really said. Ibrahim tends to forget I’m around, and when he does remember, he doesn’t like me above half.”
Nora gave Tim a puzzled glance, as if she sensed his hostility but didn’t understand it, and then went on to introduce the last two members of her crew. Alex knew less about Gamal and Ahmed than he knew about the westerners. He needed to learn more, fast. He was hoping one of these people was connected to the terrorist group that called themselves El Hawy. It would make finding the boss a lot simpler. Not easier, necessarily, but simpler. The Egyptians were the likeliest plants.
Ahmed was in his twenties, a quiet young man with a formal manner. Educated, judging by his accent, which made Alex wonder what he was doing here, rather than in one of the cities. Gamal was older and more talkative, with a wide, gap-toothed grin.
And then, of course, there was Nora Lowe, the woman who had saved his life. He’d been too out of it to retain a clear image of her face, but her voice—that had stayed with him. Her voice, her scent, the feel of her hair, her warmth. Most of all, he remembered the warmth of her. He’d been so very cold, when she’d found him.
Alex tried to look at her objectively, as she laughed at something DeLaney said. He knew quite a bit about Nora Lowe. He hadn’t been able to fit the dry facts in the report to his memory of soft hands, warmth, and clouds of dark hair. He was having trouble now, fitting either facts or memory to reality.
According to the report, Dr. Lowe was thirty, unmarried and brilliant. Also determined. She came from poverty, yet had put herself through college and graduate school with the help of scholarships, loans and grants. Her mother was dead, her father unknown; she had two sisters, both older than her. One of her sisters had been married twice, the first time while still in high school. The other sister had earned her GED from a jail cell, where she’d served time for passing hot checks.
The woman standing in front of him had a quick smile and a sexy mouth, wide and fluid. Her nose was slightly crooked, and her face was too narrow for real beauty. The clouds of midnight-dark hair that he remembered were pulled back today in a braid that hung halfway down her back.
Her pale-blue eyes, fringed in black, were nothing short of stunning.
“I imagine you’re tired,” she was saying. “The drive from Feiron Oasis isn’t that long, but the last stretch is pretty rough, and Mahmoud’s insistence on driving at night means you haven’t had much sleep. What would you rather have first—breakfast, a nap or a look at the dig?”
You. “All of the above, except for the nap. I don’t need much sleep. But first, maybe you could show me where to put my things until I can get my tent up?”
“Sure.” That mobile mouth turned up in a smile. “I’m glad you brought your own tent. We’re a bit crowded.”
“I’ll be glad to show him around,” DeLaney said eagerly.
“Nope. You need to help unload. Okay, everyone—” Nora waved her hands in a shooing motion “—make like good little worker ants. The faster we get the supplies unloaded and stored, the faster we can get some real work done. Alex, I’ll show you where to set up.”
With a measure of good-natured grumbling, the others headed for the back of the truck. Except for Tim. “So, are you really here on Ibrahim’s behalf,” he asked, “or did your parents send you?”
“Tim!” Nora sounded half-amused, half-appalled. “What’s with you this morning? Have you been eating your own cooking or something?”
“Am I being rude? Sorry. I haven’t had my coffee yet.” He spoke to Nora, but he watched Alex.
“For heaven’s sake, then, grab a cup. You can drink it while you help unload.”
“All right, all right. I can take a hint.” The younger man tossed her a salute and moved off to join the rest.
Nora’s clear blue eyes looked puzzled when they met his. “I am sorry about that. It isn’t like Tim to take pot shots at someone else’s professional background. He’s usually so laid-back it’s hard to be sure he’s awake.”
“I’m used to it. With my parents being who they are, I’ve had opportunities that others haven’t.” Not all of those opportunities were part of his public record, of course.
“But it isn’t up to him to question your credentials, is it? This is my dig.” Her faint emphasis on the possessive pronoun suggested she thought there might be some doubt in his mind about that.
“Of course.” Alex had no intention of challenging her authority. “Dr. Ibrahim didn’t send me here to look over your shoulder. I’m here to work, not just to watch.”
She nodded thoughtfully, as if she were considering taking him at his word but hadn’t made up her mind. “We can go into all that later, maybe over breakfast. Right now, why don’t we take care of your things?”
Alex noticed the way Tim kept track of them when Nora showed him where to put up his tent. Definitely jealous, he decided. Was there something going on between Nora and her long, tall assistant?
He didn’t like the quick snap of temper that idea brought.
“This is the guys’ side of camp,” she was saying. “The latrine is on this side, too, about fifteen feet further down the wadi. We’ve got a shower, too. It’s on the other side of the main tent.”
“So the men get the latrine on our side of camp, while you ladies get the shower?”
Her eyes brightened with humor. “It wasn’t intentional. Honest. We situated the shower as close to the well as possible.”
“You have a well, then?”
“It was here before we were, and needed only a pump to be useful. The water is too brackish too drink, but it washes the dust off. That tent is Tim’s,” she said, nodding at the nearest one. “You can probably guess that the goat hair tent belongs to Gamal. He shares with Ahmed.”
“I noticed a small green tent on the other side of the big one.”
“That one’s mine. Lisa and DeLaney bunk in the main tent. They used to have their own, but…” She shrugged. “Someone has decided we’re here to increase their standard of living.”
“It was stolen?”
“I’m afraid so.” A small, worried vee appeared between her brows. “We’ve had a problem with theft.”
Their problem was a lot more serious than she realized, but he couldn’t tell her that. Alex put his folded tent down in the space she’d indicated. “I can put this up later. Why don’t I help unload?” It was best if the others thought of him as one of them, part of the close community that usually formed on a dig. He was aware of a tug of impatience, though. He wanted to get Nora Lowe alone.
“We don’t put our guests to work right away,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like some breakfast first? I can even offer fresh eggs. I saw Lisa carrying some in.”
“Think of me as an extra pair of hands, not as a guest.”
“I do usually throw a crust or two of bread at my workers before I hustle them out to the dig.”
“As appealing as that sounds, I ate before I left Feiron. I’m not hungry yet. How about taking a couple of cups of coffee out to the site? I’d like to get a look at the cave.”
“I wouldn’t mind a cup myself. I usually have some after my run.”
“Is that where you were? I, ah, saw you and Gaines coming into camp about the same time I did.”
“I run most mornings.” She started toward the main tent, where the cookstove was set up. “Partly to stay fit. Partly because I just like to. Tim came to get me this morning when Mahmoud radioed that he was bringing a visitor to camp.”
“Me.”
“Yes.” Her gaze flicked to his and a smile touched those full, unpainted lips. “Though I didn’t know it.”
He wanted to taste that smile. The urge was strong and troubling—and it was shared, he could tell. Their gazes held for another second before she turned away to kneel beside a large plastic box that sat near the stove.
It was the memories, he knew. He’d gotten her tangled up in his mind with nearly dying. After all, Nora Lowe had been the one to find him, to save him. He could sort out his reaction to her objectively, but he couldn’t seem to stop reacting. He wondered how much of a problem that was going to be. When pretense and reality blurred, it was easy to make a misstep. And when a man in his line of work made a misstep, people died.
“You take anything in your coffee? It’s strong,” she warned, taking two mugs out of the box and snapping the lid back on. “Not quite as stiff as the stuff the Bedouin make, but stronger than most Americans are used to.”
“I like it strong. And hot.”
“Good,” she said briskly, standing. “Getting things hot is no problem around here.” If she noticed any innuendo in his words or her own, she didn’t show it.
“Does Gaines run with you?” Or did they go just far enough away from camp to be alone?
“Are you kidding?” She chuckled and handed him his mug. “Tim’s idea of morning exercise is getting out of bed. He thinks I’m crazy.” Again that slightly shy smile flickered. “But that’s how I found you, you know. I was visiting a former professor of mine at a dig near Kibbutz Nir Am, and I’d gone out for my morning run.”
He knew that—now. At the time, he’d thought her appearance a miracle. “Funny. I like to run myself, but I never realized quite how important it was to my health before.”
She laughed.
A loud yelp hit the air a second before an even louder crash. Alex spun around, and saw Timothy Gaines lying flat on the ground near one of the tent ropes. Plastic bottles of Gatorade had spilled from the box he’d been carrying, and were rolling merrily around on the dusty ground.
Alex grinned. He suspected Tim had been trying so hard to keep an eye on him and Nora that he’d tripped.
His grin slipped away after a second, though. Everything was falling into place perfectly. Tim was jealous…and Nora was fascinated. Everyone was going to think exactly what he wanted them to think.
Pity it made him feel like such a heel.
Alex took a mug of coffee with him as he and Nora walked along the dry wadi toward the quarry. Nora had brought a mug along, too, as well as a thick slice of the grainy native bread smeared with the soft cheese the Bedouin made from goat’s milk. Alex enjoyed the strongly flavored cheese himself, having eaten it innumerable times as a child, but most westerners considered it, at best, an acquired taste.
There was a clarity about the desert that appealed to Alex, the raw virtue of extremes. The land was badly broken, the earth’s cracked bones thrusting up through its thin skin, their nakedness dusted in places with sand and spotted with the tough, bleached vegetation of the desert. Overhead, the sky was vast and cloudless. The dry air stirred against his cheeks in a baby breeze. Alex looked over the rugged landscape, and thought about death.
It wasn’t his own death that preyed on his mind this time. It was the death that others—one man in particular—wanted to carry across the ocean to the U.S. The many deaths he was here to prevent, and the traitor he needed to catch, a man they knew only as Simon—a man determined to bring down Jonah and the entire SPEAR agency.