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The tracker itched, begging to be pressed. It was dark now. She didn’t think they would move her in the night. Not when they could come and go freely during the day.
Surely these men had satellite phones. How else would they communicate with their overlords? But were the phones turned on?
If so, she could press that spot on her arm, and a team of SEALs would swoop in. At least, that was what Morgan and Freya had said, that SEALs usually performed hostage rescues, sometimes in conjunction with Green Berets. They’d said this with confidence, and both women were married to Green Berets, so Diana had no reason to doubt their veracity.
She’d met their husbands when she’d trained for this with Morgan and Freya. She’d spent months with them in a gym, where she’d learned advanced fighting techniques, and on a firing range, where she learned how to shoot. Private lessons in addition to the paid SERE course she’d completed were something Morgan and Freya offered all their contractors, but few had time like Diana had before she’d headed to Jordan to work on the archaeological dig.
Losing everything she’d ever wanted in a single hour had left a hole in her schedule. She’d had nothing but time and despair to burn.
And now here she was, in an oh-so-different kind of mental void where she felt nothing but pain and fear and had no control over what she’d lost, no clue what the next hours would bring. No idea of how she’d survive.
Her life as she knew it was over. Even if she somehow made it back to her home in Maryland, nothing would be the same after this.
Again.
The sound of male voices speaking Arabic was the only warning that she was about to have visitors. A light shone on her face. She closed her eyes against the bright blow to the pupils after at least an hour of sitting in the dark.
Harun—she recognized his commanding tone—barked an order for her to open her eyes. She complied, squinting.
All she could make out was a tall man looming over her, standing next to Harun. The light remained fixed on her eyes, making it impossible for her to discern more. She couldn’t tell if the man was Middle Eastern, but his Arabic words spoken with a Syrian accent quickly answered that question.
“This is the girl who refused to clean the artifacts?”
She tried to get a look at the man’s face. She still couldn’t see anything distinct. Bearded and wearing a keffiyeh over his head.
“I don’t have the proper tools and didn’t want to damage them.”
Harun slapped her again, but not as hard as before. “You were not spoken to.”
The other man spoke. “You have the proper tools to dig, yes?”
There was a long silence as she tried to figure out if he was asking her. Did they want her to dig? Was this slot canyon a…site?
“We have shovels, trowels, brushes, and screens,” Harun finally said.
“Then you will dig tomorrow, starting at first light.” This time, she was certain the man was addressing her.
Her heart sank as the truth she should have guessed earlier clicked into place. She was to become the source of the supply chain.
She opened her mouth to protest, but was at a loss for what exactly to say. Why hadn’t she considered this?
The flashlight dropped slightly, giving her eyes a chance to adjust as the men talked about where she would dig and what artifacts they could expect to get from this site.
Her eyes adjusted a bit, and she stared hard at the newcomer’s face, then had to work to stifle her gasp.
No.
It couldn’t be.
She kept her face blank. She needed to appear broken.
But she wasn’t broken, and her mind worked just fine.
During her months of physical training with Morgan and Freya, there had been lessons on the key players in the Middle Eastern antiquities black market. Included in that was what they’d dubbed the Valkyrie cards, much like the deck of cards that had been given to troops to aid in remembering the faces of terrorist leaders at the start of the War in Afghanistan and later the ones that identified antiquities that needed protection in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and other places.
There were things a person could change about their appearance, but the scar that cut across his nose and cheek was unmistakable. The man standing before her was much more than an artifact trafficker. He was one of the leaders of a terrorist organization. Among other things, he was rumored to have acquired the chemical weapons that had wiped out a village of rebels in a Kurdish-held area in Syria.
She was staring at the Four of Diamonds, Makram Rafiq, a man who had supposedly been killed by a US military strike nearly two years ago.
