AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In walked a tall, muscular blond man. Whew. Kira had thought Ian Boyd was handsome, but this guy was chiseled perfection. Just what she needed. Handsome men made her nervous. They triggered her social anxiety and possibly even PTSD.
The blond man looked like the actor who would be cast to play the too-pretty jerk and rival to the dark-haired awkward hero in every romantic comedy ever made.
His disinterested gaze scanned her from head to toe as they were introduced. “Dr. Kira Hanson, this is Lieutenant Commander Randall Fallon.”
“Lieutenant Commander?” He was dressed in civilian clothing. Business casual. Military was the furthest thing from her mind.
“US Navy. Call me Rand. We won’t be mentioning I’m active duty at the auction house.”
She nodded and looked down. His eyes were too blue. She could feel her cheeks flushing. This was ridiculous. He was just a person.
“Have a seat, Rand,” Morgan said, “And we’ll bring you up to speed.”
Kira resumed her seat, just catching Morgan’s gaze as the pregnant woman looked guiltily away. Morgan cleared her throat. “As this is a tricky situation, really, the less you both know of the details, the better.”
Why did Kira have a feeling Rand already knew way more than her, and she was the only one being left in the dark?
Chapter Forty-Four
Harun Taha. Having a last name for the man who’d smacked her and forced her to watch the video of Fahd’s murder after all this time was…weirdly unsettling. It was even more unsettling to know the man had been trafficking artifacts for a decade.
She assumed she hadn’t come across him in her time in Jordan because she’d focused on the market and Bibi as her best gateway into the artifact underworld. Woman to woman.
As their next step, the research wizards at FMV would go through Taha’s background and try to find a link with Rafiq. Maybe the rumor that Rafiq had worked for a museum in some capacity before the Arab Spring was true.
She shuddered at the idea that Harun could be the man to run the “dig for a day” excavations for tourists. The field-workers she’d trained in the desert could work alongside wealthy Americans looking to get dirty.
She wished Chris weren’t still at the store. She wanted to talk to him about Freya’s revelation that Harun was a legitimate businessman in Jordan.
It all had to circle back to the grant to the university to fund the excavation. Gardner had insisted on having an American on the dig—her—but what had his real goal been in funding her work?
She went through each step in her mind. Applying for the grant sponsorship. The subsequent vetting. There was nothing about the process that showed undue interest in her. She was just the most qualified applicant.
If anything, she was the one with the agenda, looking for a project in the Middle East so she could begin her work for FMV. That wouldn’t look great to the State Department as they evaluated whether or not to extradite her.
She was so screwed.
Worse, she could take Chris and Morgan and Freya down with her.
She continued to pace, hating the fact that even going outside felt unsafe and exposed.
They were in the middle of a damn forest. Sure, there were neighbors, but this was ridiculous. It wasn’t like her face was all over the news. She was on a few niche news sites, or buried deep on the mainstream ones.
She grabbed her coat and the knit cap Chris had given her yesterday, right before she thought she saw Jamal again.
Was it possible she’d been wrong about seeing him on the Metro? In the hospital?
No. He’d slid a finger across his throat. No way did her mind make that up.
She tugged the cap down over her ears. It was windy today. She grabbed a scarf and wrapped it around her face, then slipped out into the yard. She circled the cabin to the woods in the back, leaning heavily on the cane as she traversed uneven ground.
She breathed deeply of the almost-winter air. Cold with a biting wind, and a whiff of fireplace smoke. Probably from the cabin next door. Diana had wanted to build a fire, but figured it would be more fun when Chris was back. She intended to seduce him.
Sure, they’d had sex, but now that they knew each other, their relationship had been borderline chaste. She knew he wouldn’t make a real move. She had to be the one to initiate it or he’d worry he was taking advantage. A fire in the hearth on a cold almost-winter day was better than chocolates and flowers.
The smell of the pine boughs gave the air a fresh scent, and she breathed deeply of it as she went into the ever-darker forest. The lot the cabin was on was long and narrow and would eventually meet up with another lot hollowed out in the woods. The boundaries were marked with orange flagging tape, and there were notices in the cabin about not trespassing. The neighbors didn’t appreciate having a vacation rental in their forested neighborhood.
She kept an eye out for the markers as she went deeper into the woods, sticking to as straight a line as possible to make sure she didn’t veer across the property line.
