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Max would have rolled his eyes if his head wasn’t already killing him. This was utter bullshit, and they all knew it. There was no way in hell this con artist and his goons were going to do a decent enough job of “covering their tracks” to make it appear as if grave robbers had found this huge score years ago. Let alone the very obvious fact that all this new loot would hit the black market in a rush. It was going to be damned obvious where all these Egyptian artifacts came from. And everyone was going to point fingers at him.
He would be the first to admit that he might have done some shady shit as a kid, and he knew a lot of disreputable people even now. This was what happened when you schlepped your innocent child around the world, but didn’t give him proper supervision as you went on your way looking for lost cities, dead people, and forgotten treasure.
But he’d given all that up.
Mostly.
He’d had enough close calls to scare him straight.
Sort of.
He’d gone to college, completed the fieldwork, gotten the degrees, and built a relatively solid reputation. Why the hell would he fuck all of that up now?
Living sounded good, though.
Except Tall Man was feeding him one bullshit line after another.
He wanted to tell the bastard he’d heard every line in the book, had even written more than his fair share of them, but there was no point.
Right now, his one and only option was to stall until he figured out a new way to escape this mess and put as much distance between him and Egypt.
What he really wanted to do was to finish his goddamn work and find the Tomb of Kazemde, but that didn’t appear to be in the cards for him. Without a heavy dose of protection, there was no way he could finish his research and head back out into the desert. He’d get caught again, or these assholes would follow and steal the goods from the tomb as they pulled them out. Or worse than that, the bastards would follow him and the dig team into the desert and gun everyone down after the tomb was located.
Nope. Nope. Nope. None of that would work.
Most of those diggers and crew runners had been doing this kind of work for generations. He’d spent time with a lot of them on other sites. They were good people trying to support their families. They didn’t need to get swept up into a bunch of illegal nonsense because they had the misfortune of getting selected for the wrong crew when there were likely a dozen different digs happening along the Nile.
Max closed his eyes and swallowed a sigh. He’d stopped listening to Tall Man trying to sweet talk him a while ago. His mind drifted on a sea of the asshole’s white noise. Right now, his best option was to escape and pray that Big ‘n’ Sexy—that was how he thought of the gorgeous Black man he’d encountered in the airport—had followed his instructions. Janet should have the scarab any day now.
If he was lucky, she’d be able to get it into the hands of a museum that had the proper security to protect the thing. Afterward, he’d publish online all the notes he had on the tomb. Let others get killed in the race for its ultimate discovery.
Wow!
Just wow.
Those were some shitty plans. Loser plans.
This was the best he could do?
No. He could do better.
He rubbed his forehead with one hand and briefly weighed his chance of getting a glass of water. Probably not good. The heat in the room was stifling, and there was no movement in the air. Sweat was trickling down the nape of his neck and soaking into his T-shirt. Unfortunately, he was still in his jeans from the Athens airport. At least they’d let him shed his hoodie, because if they hadn’t, he would have passed out already.
“No,” Max cut in. He’d heard enough from Mr. Chatty. “I won’t lead you to the tomb. I won’t give you the coordinates to the place. Not on a train. Not on a plane. I won’t eat green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.” He dropped his hand and glanced up at his captor. Not so much as a smirk. Apparently, he wasn’t a Dr. Seuss fan. Fascist.
Glaring at Tall Man, he switched to Arabic to plead with the hired muscle. “Where is your patriotic spirit? This asshole is trying to rob your home of its rich heritage and culture by selling those important relics to a bunch of rich schmucks who want to lock them up in a vault so they’re lost to the world. At least if they’re given to the Egyptian Museum, others can properly study them and share the information with all of your people.”
