FIVE
Thorne was ready for them—in fact, he f*cking well welcomed them. He’d had enough of this bullshit of running around in the dark with his head up his arse. His lips curled back in a snarl as he got off a shot at the guy on his left, which was answered by a hoarse shout, followed by a bullet coming from his right. Close enough to feel the heat and hear the buzz as the shot whizzed by his ear, then ricocheted farther down the curved walls. The sound echoed in the close confines of the tunnel, mingling with the explosion of shattered tile and cement behind him.
He spared a quick glance to assure himself Isis was out of the line of fire. She was down on the ground, pressed tightly against the wall, head buried in her arms.
He counted four men but suspected there might be more. Thorne spun to face the closest gun, parried the first blow with his forearm, and used his weapon hand to slam into an eye socket. The man howled, grabbing him by the wrist, and wrenched his arm back. Thorne followed the momentum of the twist, extricating himself, kneed the guy in the balls, and followed through with a right cross.
It would be nice to get some questions answered, but these guys were clearly the brawn so he saved his breath. Feeling a rush of displaced air, he spun around as someone ran up behind him. Parrying the thrust of a knife with a chop of his arm, he felt the thin, white-hot line cut in his skin. F*ck, he hated knives. The man topped Thorne by a good six inches and was at least fifty pounds heavier, all of it fat, but he moved fast. Only a quick, fast-shoe shuffle had Thorne dancing inches out of reach before the man grabbed him around the throat. He spun and fired a shot almost point-blank into the man’s chest. The warm scatter of blood hit his face before the guy dropped.
“Who sent you?” Thorne demanded, shooting out his fist as a third guy, robes flapping, came at him with some sort of cudgel.
Someone else grabbed his arm, trying to wrench it out of its socket. Pain radiated up into Thorne’s neck as he leaned into the wrench. His fingers went numb, and the Glock he was using fell uselessly to the ground. F*cking hell! There was too much action to even consider dropping down to look for it. Thorne spun, rammed his elbow into someone’s jaw, and heard the snap of breaking bone and a grunt of pain. He danced back to avoid another knife, slipped on a pool of blood, and righted himself with a flip in midair before he went down.
Another attacker seized upon his disadvantage and with a wild cry leapt at him. Thorne grabbed his wrist, wrenched the knife from his fingers, and did a roundhouse kick with his bad leg to the guy’s head. Boot met cranium with a sound like an exploding watermelon. The guy dropped.
So his leg was good for something. Good to know.
Fatty was back and sucker-punched him in that nanosecond’s distraction. Thorne’s breath went out in an agonized rush of air. But he’d been hit worse, and he repelled Fatty’s buddy, Robes, by slamming his palm into the bridge of the guy’s nose where there was bone, not soft cartilage. The crunch was satisfying, but he didn’t have time to admire his handiwork. They kept coming, more and more of them, like thugs out of a clown car. One down, two more entered the fray.
F*ck. It was like fighting a goddamned mythical hydra. Cut off one bloody head and two more took its place. A second gut punch elicited a harsh exhale as Thorne staggered backward. Broken ribs, he was sure. No time to feel it. Striking out cobra-fast, he sliced the side of his palm into Fatty’s windpipe. With a gurgle, the man tottered, clutching his throat as he dropped to his knees.
Robes came at him again. Thorne’s philosophy was, if an opponent wasn’t standing, he wasn’t fighting. As Robes got close enough, Thorne grabbed the front of his loose garment, pulled him in, and at the same time stuck out his leg. The guy ran right into the obstacle, went down with a girly shriek, and lay on his belly panting.
Thorne let a short guy get close enough that he could smell the cigarette stink of his breath, Thorne’s eyes watering at the man’s powerful body odor. Jesus. He should kill the guy just for stinking. He hauled back and delivered a lower-rib shot, using the guy’s own forward momentum to make the blow memorable. The man’s gun went one way, the guy the other, but he managed to stagger back upright like a Weeble, then came back in, head lowered like a bull fixated on a red cape.
Thorne let him come, keeping the others in his peripheral vision. Stinky was in their way, so he had at least a couple of seconds to maneuver while their shots were blocked.
Stinky was breathing hard and ragged. Couldn’t get his lungs filled. Thorne compounded his problem by pummeling his rib cage, specifically his vulnerable short ribs, until the man’s breathing became even more labored.
Having sustained a similar beating from his friend Yermalof, Thorne knew how bad the guy hurt, and just how badly the guy’s chest must be screaming for mercy every time he tried to drag in a breath. Grabbing a fistful of Stinky’s thick, wiry hair, Thorne brought the guy’s nose down sharply and his own knee up hard. The sound of crushed cartilage and bone was extremely satisfying.
Flinging him aside, he ground his foot down on the guy’s wrist. A kick jettisoned the knife aside as it fell uselessly from the man’s numb fingers. For good measure Thorne gave the man a little tap on the side of the head with the toe of his boot.
He heard the man behind him seconds before he felt the breeze of a blunt instrument skimming his ear. The blow struck hard to his shoulder, hard enough to drop him to one knee.
He was up fast, but in the intervening few seconds, there was a wild cry, and Isis launched herself out of the darkness to attach herself like a spider monkey to the guy’s back. Arms and legs wrapped around the man’s torso, she hung on for dear life as the man tried to unseat her.
Jesus. If it hadn’t scared the crap out of him, Thorne would’ve laughed.
The man cursed colorfully in Arabic, whirling like a dervish with a determined woman clinging on his back, scoring her nails into the flesh of his face. She was trying to pull him off center with her weight. The man staggered and cursed, trying to pry her legs from around his waist, but she was determined and her ankles were dangerously locked together over his dick.
The diaphragm was a prime target, and Thorne made sure when he hit the guy there, he hit hard enough for every bit of air to leave the man’s lungs. It had little impact.
“Off!” Thorne yelled at Isis. He saw her eyes glinting in the darkness, then she lifted one foot and slammed her heel down with unerring accuracy directly into the man’s groin.
The injured man gave a bloodcurdling scream and doubled over to clutch his balls. Thorne’s balls contracted with him. Isis was on her feet and several steps out of range when the man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he was down.
“Good job. Let’s get the hell out of here while the going’s g—”
He shouldn’t have been so goddamned self-satisfied, because he felt a rush of air. There was someone he hadn’t seen. The man rushed him, knife gripped as an extension of his arm.
“Grab my gun on the ground behind you!” he yelled to Isis. “Hell. Any f*cking gun! Move!”
He and New Guy danced around in a circle, stepping over sprawled bodies as the knife wielder slashed. Thorne kept his distance while also maintaining his balance. He spun to block another attack on his flank, saw just in time Isis’s wide eyes, and grabbed his weapon from her proffered hand. In one smooth continuous move, he turned the weapon on his attacker and fired.
The sound reverberated and echoed down the length of the tunnel. And then there was nothing left but pulsing silence.
Boom. Done. Only the adrenaline remained.
“You all right?” he demanded, crouching to feel for Stinky’s and Robes’s pulses at the same time. Both out, and unfortunately alive, as Isis walked around each man doing God only knew what, bending to pick things up off the floor.
“To say I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life is an understatement,” Isis snapped, voice shaking. Thorne heard the shimmer of anger there, too. She was holding it together, but he suspected that wasn’t going to last.
“Here, do something with these.”
These were three guns and a heavy wooden object meant to splatter his brains on the walls. Thorne took the weapons and stuck them in his belt.
“Let’s not stick around to ask questions.”
“Or call an ambulance?”
“Or call an ambulance,” he repeated dryly. The underpass had stunk before—now with various new body fluids leaking all over the place it was no wonder Isis had her palm over her face. Thorne slid his arm around her waist and propelled her from the tunnel at a trot.
They emerged into the street, where there were lights and people. Still, he kept his eyes peeled for more trouble as they sprinted toward the mosque, where he knew they’d find a taxi, even at this time of night. “How you holding up?” Adrenaline was leaking out of him, and he was aware of the agonizing pain in his thigh, the sharp sting of the deep cut on his arm, and the bruising ache of broken ribs.
“Oh, I’ve never been better,” she assured him, sarcasm thick in her voice. Her eyes looked dark and huge in her pale face. Snapping open her camera case, she removed her glasses and shoved them with some force onto her face. She was filthy, but he didn’t see any blood on her. Her respiration was erratic, and a pulse throbbed hard at the base of her throat. She turned her head to give him a hard look. “We’ll be arrested when people see you covered in blood like this.”
“Trust me, no one will even blink.” He kept to the shadows of a stand of trees looking for a cab. Looking for more trouble. He’d look for answers later.
“Hang on…” She rummaged in her bag, which somehow hadn’t been dislodged from her shoulder despite her recent activities. Isis handed him a wad of tissues and a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer, shoving them into his chest. “Here. Do the best you can. I can’t afford to bail either of us out of jail right now.”
Thorne cleaned up as best he could, the alcohol in the sanitizer providing a bracing sting in his cuts and abrasions as he scanned the vehicles passing and weighed their options.
How had Yermalof found him?
More important, did Yermalof know about Isis? Or had his men just been instructed to take him out? Were they even Yermalof’s men, or had they been followed from the airport by opportunistic thieves?
He spotted a cab and stepped out of the shadows to wave it down. After stuffing Isis inside, he got in, too, slamming the door and giving the driver the name of their hotel.
Thorne kept watch in the rearview mirror as the cab pulled into the street. He considered if the attack had really been ordered by Yermalof.
“What…”
He shook his head. Not in the cab, and not until he had some definitive answers. She nodded a silent agreement. Smart girl. A chill cooled the sweat on his skin.
This hadn’t been a random group effort. He’d been followed from the airport. Followed from London? Boris Yermalof had friends in low places all over the world. Especially here in Cairo.
Thorne knew going to London might reactivate Yermalof’s directive. Now he knew. F*cking hell.
What the hell was he going to do with Isis?
“We landed less than an hour before the accident. Since I’m not stupid enough to believe that everything we’ve just gone through could be random, who could possibly know we’re here?” Apparently she could only hold her silence for thirty seconds.
He slid the glass partition shut between the driver and themselves and lowered his voice. “The van that hit us followed us from the airport. They knew we were coming in on the flight.” His tone was grim, and his eyes constantly flickered from the rearview mirror to the side mirror and back again.
Something struck him as off. Yermalof was nothing if not chillingly efficient. Sending that many men to rough him up wasn’t the sort of message Thorne expected his archenemy to deliver. Good old Boris was a direct man and liked to inflict maximum pain. Personally. He’d waited eight months to come out of the shadows? He held one hell of a grudge, and the truth of the matter was, the Russian had won the last round.
Those guys, while fairly adept, hadn’t been as skilled as Yermalof’s usual men. Thorne would either be dead or back in the Russian’s clutches if that were the case. The thought brought bile to his throat.
“How long till we get to the hotel?” Isis demanded tightly, eyes glittering. She looked a little green and swallowed convulsively. The adrenaline was definitely wearing off.
“Ten minutes. Are you going to puke?”
“Probably,” she said in a small voice. “Don’t worry, I’ll try and wait until I get to my room.”
She didn’t make it.
WRAPPED IN A HOTEL robe, Isis opened the door on the second knock. “Sorry about that,” she said immediately on seeing Thorne standing there. He’d obviously showered, too, and he was wearing clean clothes. The black T-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders and skimmed his flat abs. Black jeans, and even new shoes.
He’d been busy shopping while she’d huddled naked on the edge of the bathtub, fingers shaking so bad she couldn’t turn the faucet. Residual tremors still shook her frame. Nauseous and in shock, she’d forced herself to stand under the jets until her stomach settled and she could hold on to the soap.
Clean, but naked beneath the robe, she eyed her ruined clothing heaped on the floor beside the bed, and her camera bag on top of the comforter. The only not-sucky thing to come from the evening was that her three-thousand-dollar camera had survived the running and mayhem unscathed. That she could not afford to replace. It was a miracle her camera made it through, which mattered more than a pair of jeans and a shirt. She pressed her hand to her belly.
There was always a first time for her iron stomach to let her down. Violence and death apparently was her sticking point.
Thorne filled the door frame, solid. She felt like a wet noodle. “How are you feeling?” she asked, studying his stoic face for clues.
“Fine.” He finger-combed his damp hair back off his forehead. Just another day in the life of Connor James Thorne.
She tightened the belt around her waist, conscious of the rasp of the terry cloth against her naked breasts. “Nice clothes.”
“I brought some for you.” He lifted the shopping bag at his side. Just when she thought he was an insensitive male, he redeemed himself and then some.
“Thanks. I couldn’t put those on.” She indicated the general direction of the mound on the floor behind her and stood back, allowing him room to enter. Tempted to fall into his arms and borrow his strength, Isis curled her bare toes into the short nap of the carpet instead. “I’ve never been up close and personal to that kind of violence before. It’s different on TV.” She was sure she’d hear fists against bone and see pools of blood in dark alleys in her nightmares for the rest of her natural life.
He paused, as if he wanted to say something but then changed his mind. “You look better,” he observed, his gaze inspecting her from her wet hair to her toenails. “Color in your cheeks.”
“Sorry if I embarrassed you.” She wasn’t really, but thought it was a polite way to open the conversation. She had so many questions, her mind was going a mile a minute. Luckily, when she’d been violently sick on the floor of the cab, she’d missed him, but only by a hair. The cabdriver had been vocally furious, but she’d been too sick to be embarrassed. Too terrified to care.
“You didn’t,” he told her shortly, his limp more pronounced as he moved a few steps inside and closed the door behind him. Isis was acutely aware of his sex appeal and of the bed taking up most of the room behind her. He lobbed the shopping bag onto the foot of the bed from where he stood, without even looking. “As for the driver—a hundred American could buy him a new car. Don’t worry about it.”
Since he wasn’t moving farther into the room, she didn’t, either, but the narrow opening between the bathroom door and mirrored closet was forcing her to stand closer to him than she felt comfortable with and gave her a fantastic view of his backside. Isis was confused and disgusted with herself. Men had died. How could she be even remotely aware of Thorne’s body, his very alive body, when things could’ve fallen apart so easily? He could have died. She could have died. And what the hell was going to happen when the authorities discovered the bodies in the underpass?
“First thing in the morning, we have to report both the accident and the men who attacked us, and see if anyone retrieved our luggage from the cab.”
Not that she was looking forward to reliving their experience, nor going to the local authorities, who could just as easily accuse them of both crimes. They hadn’t shown any concern for her father when they’d found him wandering the desert alone and injured. In fact, at first they’d accused him of murdering his crew himself. Isis shuddered and rubbed her upper arms, more for comfort than warmth.
“Already done.”
How long had she been in the shower? She locked gazes with him. “You should’ve told me. I would’ve gone with you.” And hated every second of it, but she should’ve been with him. She at least owed him the courtesy of standing beside him since he’d gotten her through the incident alive. “What time do we have to go in for questioning?”
“We don’t. It’s all squared away.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed look. Moves like that took bribes. Expensive bribes. “Thorne, I can’t afford baksheesh. I told you, I’m doing this on a shoestring—”
“You didn’t mention that, actually,” he pointed out dryly. “But don’t worry about it. I assure you, it’s taken care of. I know people.”
Isis bit back a sharp reply. He’d saved her life tonight, and his leg must be killing him. Maybe his royal lineage got him places she couldn’t go, like the museum. She blew out a breath, determined to be fair. “Your networking skills are impressive. Remember that I hired you, and that I’m responsible for expenses, okay?”
Heavy bribes—baksheesh—were the cost of doing business here. Everyone expected them, especially the authorities. They weren’t in her budget.
“I told you not to worry.” He stared at her as if that was all that needed to be said.
She lifted her chin in defiance. Okay, three times was enough. She needed to reestablish the ground rules. “Seriously? You work for me. I think we’d better establish who’s the boss, and who signs your paycheck.” Isis dropped the finger she’d pointed at him and stuck her hand in her pocket. Anger was good. Healthy. Much better than finding his arrogance sexy.
“Zak Stark signs my paycheck, and while we’re here, I’m the boss. If you don’t like it, feel free to hie your pert arse back to Seattle and wait for my report.” His British accent became more clipped and pronounced and she got the feeling he’d prefer it if she left.
“You can be such an ass.” She said it without rancor. He was who he was. And it was clear he wasn’t going to change his tune just because… what? She was Isis Magee? A paying client? Her lips almost twitched as she realized she was giving herself a pep talk. Right?!
“So I’ve been told.” He stuck his fingertips in his front pockets. Loose, but controlled. “We have no idea who those men were, or if they’ll come after us again.”
“The ones you left alive and still able to walk, you mean?” she demanded, matching his sarcasm. She refused to believe the police had let him get away with murder. Even if it had been warranted. There was more to Connor Thorne than met the eye. She had to stop letting his appeal distract her.
“Yes, those. And whatever friends and relatives they want to cut in on the deal.”
Reality check, Isis Cleopatra. She fell back against the bathroom doorjamb with a thump. “You don’t think it was random, do you?” Oh, God. She’d been hoping her suspicions were wrong. It was hard to maintain her anger at him, even when he deserved it, when she had withheld what might be relevant information. Now who was the ass?
“Thorne—I—Those men—The accident. The ambush. I think they might be the same men who attacked my father. I’m sorry. I had no idea I’d be bringing you into danger. Not that you weren’t amazing at defending us. But now that you’re in danger I think you should go back to London, or Seattle. I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”
He raised a dark brow that spoke volumes.
Her cheeks heated. She didn’t want him to go. But she had no right to ask him to stay. He could’ve been killed tonight. She could’ve been killed tonight. She walked farther into the room, but he didn’t follow her, so she went back to where he stood reflected in the mirrored doors of the closet. One Connor Thorne was enough for any woman. Two was overkill.
She stuck her hands in the deep pockets of the robe and forced herself to maintain eye contact. Confessions sucked, especially when she was the one in the wrong. “I think those men might have been after me. You were in the way, which is why you took the brunt of the attack.” Guilt gave her a pain in her midsection as she considered what happened from this point of view. Not random. Deliberate. Her fault.
Isis saw her too-big eyes, huge in in her pale face, reflected beside him. Her wet hair was slicked back off her face and moisture dribbled down her throat, tickling her skin. Thorne said nothing. He towered over her petite frame, and even though he was only a foot or so taller, he was big, broad, and incredibly masculine.
“My father didn’t make up his attack—I think even you have to believe that after tonight.” Not an ounce of empathy was evident on Thorne’s face as she spoke. “I’m not going to let a bunch of thugs scare me off. I’ll hire some bodyguards. Tonight’s events convince me more than ever that my father found Cleo’s tomb—” She sucked a painful breath into her aching chest.
God. What a mess. What a scary, insane mess.
“Someone wants to discredit him. And now I think those men knew I was here to find it—”
“Before you confess to masterminding the entire attack yourself”—he paused and sent her a look verging on kind—“this is Cairo. It’s possible the attackers followed two rich Europeans from the airport with the express intention of robbing us.”
“What thieves would go to that much trouble to attack two tourists? I’m not dripping in diamonds, and you…” She waved her hand at his nice but not too nice black-on-black ensemble. She stumbled over her words and caught herself from calling him gorgeous out loud. “Or, we could be close to uncovering a clue to the whereabouts of the tomb, and those people were sent to stop us,” Isis insisted stubbornly, distracted by the path his eyes were taking as he followed a drop of water that trickled from her hair down her throat.
“Stop us from—what exactly?” He put his hand on the door handle and gave her a politely inquiring look that held a trace of heat. “Arriving at the airport and taking a quick drive through the souk?”
She cinched the belt around her waist and wished she’d ignored her repugnance to re-dress in the bathroom. Even though she was decently covered from throat to ankles, she knew that he knew she was naked underneath.
“My father was well-known here. At one point his reputation was unimpeachable. People know the name Magee. Many people in antiquities know me, or at least my name. Maybe they’ve been watching the airport to see if my father came back. You have to at least entertain the idea that we’re on to something, and those men may have tried to stop us from getting close to the tomb.”
“I’ll add the info to my list.” Thorne’s gaze was fixed on her mouth.
Was he actually listening to her, or just looking? The terry cloth abraded her nipples as she shifted. “You have a list?” He was sex on a stick, Isis thought, annoyed with herself. It was impossible to concentrate on what was important when her body was hyperaware of him all the time. She wished there was an off switch for a few hours so she could think straight. “What kind of list?”
His warm hand slid under her hair and his fingers closed around her nape without him seeming to have stepped closer. She certainly didn’t step back.
“I never rule anything out.”
Her vision blurred, her insides melting as his thumb lightly caressed the base of her skull. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Thorne to kiss her—God only knew she did, and badly. “About these men—”
“Don’t want to talk about them right now.”
“Then about my father—”
“Definitely don’t want to discuss him now, either.”
“But—”
He brushed his other thumb over her lower lip, effectively boxing her in. Her lips throbbed with anticipation. She sighed as he took her mouth in a deep, slow kiss that mated their tongues in a slick, hot dance.
Isis liked to have the upper hand, and he was taking that away with his persuasive, marauding lips. When she was in control, she could stop. Not easily, but she could. When he took that away from her, she was helpless to resist. He was taking the balance of power from her, and she shouldn’t like it. Shouldn’t want it—but God help her, she did.
She opened her eyes to see the darker outer ring of green around his irises. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Isis broke the lip-lock and had to clear her throat before she managed to say, “This isn’t very professional.” It sounded a whole lot more breathless and inviting than she intended.
His hand slid down her back and around her waist and he drew her up on her toes with his palm on her back. “Not in any way, shape, or form,” he admitted with a breath from her lips. The penetrating green eyes saw right through her bravado, saw right down to the part of her that was naked, willing, and wanton. It would be foolish to claim she didn’t want him when her desire for him was evident in every atom of her body.
He brushed her lips with his and murmured, “You should lodge a complaint.”
“You don’t listen to complaints.” Isis slid her palms up his chest, feeling the tensile strength of solid muscle. She bracketed his face with both hands as he angled his head, pulled her in tighter, then parted her lips with his tongue. His jaw was rough, he hadn’t shaved, his skin was warm, his mouth decadently pliable. Stroking his cheeks with her thumbs, she hummed her pleasure as she ran her stiffened tongue over the roof of his mouth.
Thorne shuddered. She let her tongue soften, slinking over his to prowl along the hard edge of his teeth. His fingers tightened on her back.
He was a Master Kisser. And Lord help her, Isis was a woman who loved kissing. But he took it to a whole new level, to uncharted reaches. She loved the slip and slide of meshing tongues, and the firmness of smooth lips. She loved the heat, and the textures. She loved hurtling into the unknown. For her, a kiss wasn’t necessarily the endgame or a prelude to bigger and better things. A kiss was its own entity, to be savored and enjoyed while it lasted.
A hot, trembling need swept through her body, filling every cell with want. They’d fight for supremacy—later. For now she sank into the kiss and enjoyed every moment of it. He tasted of whisky, smoky and powerful, but more profoundly, he tasted achingly, wonderfully familiar.
By the time their lips parted, they were both breathless. Isis dropped her head to his chest as she waited out her crazy heartbeat and breathlessness. Her lips buzzed deliciously. “Wow. That was…”
“Yeah.” His breath blew hot on the crown of her head.
Isis stepped out of his arms and smiled up at him through a haze of lust. She had to clear her head. “I’ll get dressed. Thank you for bringing me—What did you bring me?” Her body hummed.
“Something to wear tomorrow.”
“Was the boutique open? What time is it?” Well after midnight.
“The hotel staff opened the shop for me briefly so you would have something to wear. You can choose what you like in the morning.”
Like any woman, Isis loved new clothes, but her thrifty side insisted they might get their luggage back, and if not, then she wasn’t willing to pay the exorbitant prices at the upscale hotel boutique. “Not at those prices I won’t.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll pay.”
“No, thank you. I’ll pay my own expenses. And would you please stop telling me not to worry?”
His chest rose and fell and her fingers ached to touch him. “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of ever seeing those suitcases again. Probably stolen before we came to a full stop after the accident. Fortunately I had our papers and passports on me.”
Isis stared at his lips as he spoke. She was mesmerized. How could a man so controlled kiss like a bohemian? It was great news, but it still wasn’t an answer. “And a gun, apparently.” She gave him an even look. “How did you manage to get that through customs?”
“I have a permit.”
Connections and money—a life much different from hers.
“I know some little shops in the souk. When we go to see Beniti, I’ll take a quick detour to find something suitable.” And cheap. “I can’t believe this.” Isis put her hand to her belly. “I think I’m actually hungry.”
“Get dressed.” He jerked his chin toward the bathroom. “The dining room is open for another half hour.” Hot green eyes held hers. “Unless you’d rather stay in and order room service?”