The Other Crowd

“Huh?” He steered his focus to the woman holding his wallet. He’d handed her his wallet by mistake? How one’s mind could get distracted when it was focused on a gorgeous woman. “Sorry.” He reached inside his inner suit coat pocket. “I have it…somewhere.”

Where was the damned thing? He’d had it on the jet. Had he dropped it after disembarking? “I seem to have misplaced it. I’m sure it’s on my private jet. I’ll just give the pilot a call—”

“If you’ll just step aside, Mr. Braden, we can work this out.”

Garin stroked his fingers down the lapel of his Armani suit and delivered his best sexy grin to the woman, who looked like she was serving the end of a thirty-hour shift and desperately needed a kind word. “I’ve got an appointment. If we can make this quick? I know it’s in the jet.”

The daggers in her look pricked his confidence. “Your jet just taxied for takeoff, Mr. Braden.”

“What?” He looked aside, as if to search for the jet, but he was too far from any window overlooking the runway. “We’ve only been on the ground twenty minutes. He couldn’t have refueled so quickly. Where is the man headed?”

“I have no idea, Mr. Braden. Please, if you’ll come with me.”

Garin slammed a fist on the counter, but refrained from swearing.

This was not going as smoothly as he’d anticipated.

7

Annja watched keenly as Michael Slater argued with Wesley over who would give Beth a ride to a hospital in Cork. Beth had disappeared from the good camp—as Annja had come to already consider Wesley’s camp—so why Slater cared was beyond her.

They didn’t argue for long. One of the women caught Beth as she fainted, and barked at Wesley to start up the Jeep. Slater conceded with a shake of his head and a glance to Annja. He’d obviously decided to blame her for things that went wrong.

“Quite the commotion, eh?” Daniel joined Annja as she turned to pace back to the tented area for a respite from the sudden mist. The saying was true: if you don’t like the weather in Ireland, just wait five minutes. She’d give it ten.

“Beth’s been missing for almost two days,” she said. “I can’t imagine what she must be feeling right now. Or thinking. She must be out of her head. At the very least, hungry and in need of a shower.” And so mentally traumatized as to believe she had actually been taken by faeries. “Is the hospital far?”

“It’s a bit over an hour’s drive into Cork.”

She would have liked to ride along with Beth and Wesley, asking questions as they made their way to Cork, but Annja did have a sense of compassion. And she had promised Wesley she would respect the situation. She was not a paparazzo desperate to get a photo of a wide-eyed innocent. Yet she must talk to her. Whatever Beth had been through could lead Annja to discovering the other men who had disappeared, and who was behind it.

“I might drive to Cork tomorrow, see if she’s coherent,” she said. “I don’t think she needs too much fuss right now. Wesley will ensure she gets the proper care. I suppose not much will get done on the dig now. I should head to my B and B. I’ve got some research to do.”

On hospitals in Cork and Beth Gwillym, she thought.

“You fancy that meal at my mother’s?” Daniel’s attention focused on the retreating vehicle, a strand of grass twitching at the corner of his mouth.

“A home-cooked meal sounds great, but there’s Eric, too.”

“He can come along. Mum always makes a feast on Fridays. She expects me to bring over friends. Girlfriends mostly, but I haven’t been a good son about that lately.”

He cast her a wink and marched off.

Had that been flirtation? The man had to be twenty years her senior. Not that he wasn’t attractive, albeit eccentric.

MICHAEL SLATER MARCHED across the trampled grass to the edge of the excavation site where the dried peat cushion made his footsteps feel as though he were walking on a strange planet.

The chief archaeologist, Maxwell Alexandre, was packing up his shovels, buckets and other equipment. He ran an efficient dig and was meticulous about putting things away at the end of the day. Slater appreciated anyone with a fastidious bone. Maxwell did what he was told, with little argument.

Rain rolled down his temples. Slater did not like the weather in this country; it was much worse than his native London, and that was saying a lot.

He gripped the handle of his Walther P99, still in its holster. It was something he did probably a dozen times a day. His training buddies had given him shit for his attachment to the thing. Bugger them. Some guys stroked their bollocks every now and then; he stroked his gun.

Alexandre popped his head up from the area marked off with pitons and ropes. “What was the commotion over there?”

“The girl is back,” Slater spat out. “The one the captain grabbed the other day.”

“How the hell did that happen?” Alexandre kicked the base of a black bucket, toppling it over. It was empty. “How’d she get free?”

“I don’t know, but heads will roll.” Twisting his neck against the tight muscle tugging along his jaw and throat, Slater nodded toward the black SUV that transported the crew into town each night. “You packing up?”

“It’ll be dark soon.”

“I thought you understood we are on a time crunch? I want to be out of here within the week.”

Everything else Frank Neville had his hands in was scheduled to come down to the week’s deadline. This wasted nonsense of digging in the dirt twisted his knickers the wrong way. He had not signed on for kicking about bones.

“I know that.” Alexandre stood before Slater. He was taller by three inches, but both men were aware that when push came to shove Slater held the upper hand. “I’ve uncovered the entire skeleton.” He gestured behind him and Slater eyed the ground. “She’s a beauty thanks to the peat. Preserves bones and bits of fabric real nice like. But not sure I’m going to find any more rocks.”

“Give it another few days. Don’t things tend to…move around over the years?”

“Erosion does tend to do that, though not so much in these conditions. We’ll strip the area for sure. Won’t leave a single pebble unscrutinized.”

“You think it could have spread as far as the other camp?” Slater asked.

“Unlikely. Such a contained cache is probably going to be within the marked area we’ve pitoned off. I think it would be next to impossible for the rocks to move from the bog to the dirt the other camp is working in. Unless an animal did it? That’s always possible. When’s the next truck come in?”

Slater tucked his hand under an arm over the pistol. “Not that it’s any of your concern, but tomorrow night.”

“Just want to know to get the crew out on time. Settle your britches, Slater, the operation is going well.”

“This operation is a joke.” Slater harnessed his anger. “The girl—Beth—should have never gotten away. I’m going to check on the guys down by the river.”

8

“We moved them.” Reggie Marks, the captain of the officious little barge that camped down by the river, scratched his belly, and slapped his grungy felt cap back onto his bald head.

“And in the process you managed to lose one helpless woman?” Slater fisted his palms. “I can’t believe your ineptitude. Who hired you?”

“Your boss, that Neville bloke.” The captain sniffed, drawing far too much phlegm into his nasal cavities for Slater’s liking. He hacked and spat a globule over the starboard side of the barge. “Ain’t gettin’ paid to babysit or mollycoddle. You want we should keep some woman fancy and entertained, then you’re looking at the wrong crew. Just be thankful I didn’t let Smelly Joe get his hands on her. That man breaks his women.”

Despite his managing to keep a handle on all the operations Frank Neville had set into place since arriving in Ireland, Slater hadn’t been quick enough on the draw when hiring the barge crew. Good men were few and far. Neville trusted Slater to oversee this operation and as a right-hand man for his business deals, yet he still did a lot of work on his own. He was too determined, and far too controlling, to sit back and let it all happen.

“What you standing there for?”

Slater winced as the captain snorted again. “Nothing at all.” He turned and strode off.

TO CLAIM THE OFFICIAL title of village in Ireland, the settlement had to have a church, a post office and a pub. No other buildings required. These three things met, you have got yourself a village, Annja thought.