I should have deflected. Kept it surface level. But something about the dim car and the rhythm of the train made it easier to talk than to stay silent. “We were based near the old city of Balkh in Northern Afghanistan, contracted by the CIA. The whole region is packed with archaeological sites—burial mounds, ancient settlements, places that haven’t been properly excavated. After the Soviet invasion, a lot of it was looted. The civil war made it worse. By the time we started, smugglers had been stripping sites for decades.”
“Smugglers? Like art thieves?”
“More like supply chains. Local guys would dig up whatever they could find and sell it to middlemen, who’d sell it to dealers, who’d sell it to collectors in Europe or the Gulf States. A farmer might get fifty dollars for a coin that ends up selling for fifty thousand at auction in London.”
“That’s horrible.”
“That’s economics.” I stared into the darkness beyond the window. We’d hit the tunnel soon. “The locals weren’t villains.They were broke, and there was treasure under their feet. Can’t blame someone for feeding their family.”
“So what did you do? Try to stop them?”
“Sometimes. But we worked primarily with the Afghan government and the international teams to secure the major sites. Set up protection for excavations. Made sure the artifacts our teams recovered went to the national museum in Kabul instead of disappearing onto the black market.”
Grace folded her legs, getting comfortable. “What kinds of artifacts?”
“Old stuff. Greco-Bactrian, mostly. The region was part of Alexander the Great’s empire and the Silk Road. We found coins with Greek inscriptions, Roman jewelry, Persian statues. Some of it was over two thousand years old.”
“Protecting antiquities is kinda your job, huh?”
“It was one of the reasons our task force existed.” People were my job. The antiquities were an interesting bonus. “The Agency figured so long as the treasure was still out there, it would continue attracting the wrong kind of attention. You know, insurgent groups, organized crime, foreign governments. Our job was to keep the artifacts out of their hands.”
She let out a long yawn. “Is that how you learned to identify things? The gold and the stones?”
“The archaeologists taught those of us who were interested. I figured it would help to understand what we were looking at. Otherwise, how would we know what was worth protecting?”
“So you weren’t just standing around with guns.”
“That too.” I almost smiled. I thought about those days all the time, but didn’t talk to anyone about them. The past was better staying in the past. “But yeah. We learned. Jean had been there for some time before I got involved. He was the one who taught me most of it. How to tell real gold from plated, how to date metalwork by the technique, how to spot fakes. He had this wayof explaining things that made you care about stuff you’d never thought about before.”
“Jean.” Grace’s head tilted back, and her eyes closed. “Are we staying with him?”
“We will be.” It was the safest place I could take her while we tracked down answers. I trusted Jean with my life, and so did my team.
They’re not your team, Garrett. You’re not working for Arthur.
“Sounds romantic.” Her words were slow and soft. She was half-asleep already. “Not romantic-romantic, but provincial. There must be more, and all of that.”
“You should sleep,” I said, without pointing out she wasn’t making any sense.
“Wake me up when we arrive?”
I agreed, but considering how soon her breathing slowed, she likely hadn’t heard me. The train swayed back and forth gently, and her head rolled sideways until it rested against my shoulder.
Her hair smelled like the hotel shampoo, an expensive spicy blend from some French designer. I sat in the dim car, watching the tunnel lights flicker past, and tried to remember the last time someone had fallen asleep next to me like this. Trusting. Unguarded.
I couldn’t.
My ex-girlfriend and I had slept in the same bed, but it hadn’t felt like this. There’d always been a gap between us, even when we touched, as though she were performing something rather than feeling it. I hadn’t clued in until later, when I’d come back from a deployment and found out what she’d been doing while I’d been gone.
She’d had green eyes, too. But those green eyes had hidden lies.
Grace shifted slightly, pressing closer. Her hand landed on my forearm, and her fingers curled loosely against my sleeve. I should have moved. Should have shifted her back to her own side and maintained the distance I kept telling myself was necessary. But I couldn’t. Instead, I covered her hand with mine as I had on the plane.
She was safe, so I could move on to the second level. This was comfort. It was still my job and nothing more.
Nothing. More.
Chapter 17
