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“No Kira, no coordinates.”
“You know why I want them?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have them?”
“Yes. Fahd trusted me.”
Rafiq grabbed Diana’s face, pinching her chin between his thumb and index finger. “Give me the coordinates, Diana, and this will go so much easier for you.”
She jerked back, out of his grip. “You don’t get it. I chose abduction for a shot at bringing you down. I betrayed everything I believe in because I want to see you captured and killed. And yes, I know where the site is. And I know why you want it. I know that archaeologists all over Syria banded together to protect their country’s history and every portable artifact that would’ve been sold to support your terrorist acts was hidden there. And I will die before I give you even a single digit of the coordinates. Because we are nothing alike.
“I was entrusted when you weren’t. Because Fahd knew what you are. The archaeologists in your country saw you for the traitor you are, and they hid it from you in a place where you will never, ever find it.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Diana knew she’d taunted Rafiq too much, but she didn’t care. All she felt was a kind of hate that wasn’t measurable or even fathomable.
She pulled the clip from her hair, her movement deliberately casual as she extracted the glass shard from its hiding place. She tossed her head, shaking out her hair as she palmed the weapon.
She wanted to strike out, but it was three against one, and Kira was nowhere to be found. So she waited.
Help would come.
“Very clever of you. You figured it out.”
She nodded. “Fahd didn’t tell me everything. I didn’t know the site was the repository for artifacts. I only figured that out last night, when I started to wonder why you were so desperate to get me alive. The photos I took in Jordan are meaningless without the actual artifacts surfacing on the market. And it’s my word against the world if I reveal that I authenticated the artifacts the Gardners just bought from Gillibrand when I was first abducted.”
“They’re all dead now, Diana. The archaeologists in the pact. Fahd was the last one. He only told you.”
She smiled. “And I will take the secret to the grave, just like the rest of them.”
Rafiq advanced on her. “You will tell me.”
The rage that had been building from the moment she watched the video of Fahd’s murder enveloped her. She lunged for Rafiq, but Mason, that little asshole, grabbed her, preventing her from taking down the Four of Diamonds. She twisted and lashed out, and the glass blade opened his cheek. His temple. His chin.
She was going for his eye next when Dennis grabbed her arm.
She kneed Mason in the balls, then turned the blade on Dennis Gardner.
One stroke and he was blinded by a shard from a fake artifact she’d bought from one of his stores. Best forty dollars she’d ever spent.
The man screamed and covered his eye, while Mason writhed on the floor.
She heard a scuffle behind her, and turned, ready to fight Rafiq. Relief jolted through her when she saw him, his face smashed against the floor, and Chris’s knee pressed to his back.
Rafiq was nothing but a man. A weak man. And now he was being handcuffed.
Arrested.
No longer a danger to everything that mattered.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
The FBI had been scrambling to get into position from the moment Raptor tipped them on the location. Once Rafiq had been identified, they had the go-ahead to storm the museum, and they had been moving in from three directions when Rafiq’s advance on Diana triggered the final confrontation.
The two henchmen had been in the process of wrapping Jamal’s body in a plastic sheet when they were arrested.
