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Achilles.Achilles?
“Is this a joke?” I pointed to each man. “Pollux. Orestes. Achilles. Come on.” An explanation to all this hit me as hard as I would have hit the ground ifAchilleshad managed to push me out of the train. “Did Diana put you up to this?” It was hard to get out the name of my former advisor, the one person in this entire world who truly hated me.
What about your parents?a little voice whispered, but I shut it off.
My advisor from Harvard believed I had stolen her glory when I found the ancient piece of pottery, and she had been very vocal and underhanded in her attempt to train the spotlight onto herself. This sort of ruse—men showing interest in me, named after Trojan heroes, men who already worked at, or lived near, Oxford—this was right up her alley. A good mind fuck was Diana’s favorite revenge.
But this was elaborate, even for her. Still… “How do you know Diana?”
To be fair, the looks they exchanged appeared confused. “We don’t—”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on,” I said again. “This whole thing. Your names. This bullshit about being enemies. The dramatic near death scene. What did she pay you? Is this simple revenge? Or did she want you to tell her about my research? Were you supposed to follow me until I turned up another piece of pottery and take it? What’s. Your. Fucking. Game?”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about—” Orestes began, but Pollux cut him off.
“We want to know what you know, but no one sent us. We know each other because what you found is… important to us.”
He wanted to say something else. The shard was more than important to them. But how was that even possible? The thing was hundreds of thousands of years old. What connection—or claim—could they have on it?
“Why?”
“Yes, Pollux,” the man they called Achilles asked. “Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
There was that word again. “Un-complicate it. I’m a smart woman.”
The side of Pollux’s lips lifted and those green, green eyes lightened for a moment. “It’s not the sort of story you tell in public.”
Ohhh, no.“If you’re expecting me to go somewhere with you at this point, you’re nuts.”
Pausing, he studied me. “I see your point.” He seemed to be thinking, and gazed out the window for a moment.
“At the next station, we can get off. There’s a pub, right here. It’s public. Cameras and all that, but noisy enough we wouldn’t be overheard.” Orestes stared hard at Pollux and then Achilles, whose face had become serious.
“Do we?” the huge man asked.
Orestes nodded. “Call them.”
So now I was supposed to follow them out of the train car, to a pub, where—and I quote—it was “noisy enough we wouldn’t be overheard,” and there were others?
Nope. “There’s no way in hell I’m going anywhere with you.”
Pollux frowned. “We won’t hurt you.”
I pointed to Achilles. “Will he?”
There was too long a pause before he answered, “Me? No.”
Shutting my eyes, I let out a breath. When I opened them, both Pollux and Orestes were glaring at Achilles.
I could swear the three of them were having an entire conversation right in front of me.
“We don’t want you to find it.” Orestes stared at them as he spoke, and Achilles threw his hands into the air before crossing them over his chest.
My stomach clenched with this mix of excitement and distrust. If they didn’t want me to find it, did that mean I was close? Or did it mean they knew where it was?
“Why?” I asked, and when he shook his head, I went on quickly, “You’re asking me to trust you with my life. As if I wasn’t nearly thrown from this train minutes ago. If you want anything from me,anything,tell me why.”
