Night Of No Return

“This is the guys’ side of camp,” she was saying. “The latrine is on this side, too, about fifteen feet further down the wadi. We’ve got a shower, too. It’s on the other side of the main tent.”

“So the men get the latrine on our side of camp, while you ladies get the shower?”

Her eyes brightened with humor. “It wasn’t intentional. Honest. We situated the shower as close to the well as possible.”

“You have a well, then?”

“It was here before we were, and needed only a pump to be useful. The water is too brackish too drink, but it washes the dust off. That tent is Tim’s,” she said, nodding at the nearest one. “You can probably guess that the goat hair tent belongs to Gamal. He shares with Ahmed.”

“I noticed a small green tent on the other side of the big one.”

“That one’s mine. Lisa and DeLaney bunk in the main tent. They used to have their own, but…” She shrugged. “Someone has decided we’re here to increase their standard of living.”

“It was stolen?”

“I’m afraid so.” A small, worried vee appeared between her brows. “We’ve had a problem with theft.”

Their problem was a lot more serious than she realized, but he couldn’t tell her that. Alex put his folded tent down in the space she’d indicated. “I can put this up later. Why don’t I help unload?” It was best if the others thought of him as one of them, part of the close community that usually formed on a dig. He was aware of a tug of impatience, though. He wanted to get Nora Lowe alone.

“We don’t put our guests to work right away,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like some breakfast first? I can even offer fresh eggs. I saw Lisa carrying some in.”

“Think of me as an extra pair of hands, not as a guest.”

“I do usually throw a crust or two of bread at my workers before I hustle them out to the dig.”

“As appealing as that sounds, I ate before I left Feiron. I’m not hungry yet. How about taking a couple of cups of coffee out to the site? I’d like to get a look at the cave.”

“I wouldn’t mind a cup myself. I usually have some after my run.”

“Is that where you were? I, ah, saw you and Gaines coming into camp about the same time I did.”

“I run most mornings.” She started toward the main tent, where the cookstove was set up. “Partly to stay fit. Partly because I just like to. Tim came to get me this morning when Mahmoud radioed that he was bringing a visitor to camp.”

“Me.”

“Yes.” Her gaze flicked to his and a smile touched those full, unpainted lips. “Though I didn’t know it.”

He wanted to taste that smile. The urge was strong and troubling—and it was shared, he could tell. Their gazes held for another second before she turned away to kneel beside a large plastic box that sat near the stove.

It was the memories, he knew. He’d gotten her tangled up in his mind with nearly dying. After all, Nora Lowe had been the one to find him, to save him. He could sort out his reaction to her objectively, but he couldn’t seem to stop reacting. He wondered how much of a problem that was going to be. When pretense and reality blurred, it was easy to make a misstep. And when a man in his line of work made a misstep, people died.

“You take anything in your coffee? It’s strong,” she warned, taking two mugs out of the box and snapping the lid back on. “Not quite as stiff as the stuff the Bedouin make, but stronger than most Americans are used to.”

“I like it strong. And hot.”

“Good,” she said briskly, standing. “Getting things hot is no problem around here.” If she noticed any innuendo in his words or her own, she didn’t show it.

“Does Gaines run with you?” Or did they go just far enough away from camp to be alone?

“Are you kidding?” She chuckled and handed him his mug. “Tim’s idea of morning exercise is getting out of bed. He thinks I’m crazy.” Again that slightly shy smile flickered. “But that’s how I found you, you know. I was visiting a former professor of mine at a dig near Kibbutz Nir Am, and I’d gone out for my morning run.”

He knew that—now. At the time, he’d thought her appearance a miracle. “Funny. I like to run myself, but I never realized quite how important it was to my health before.”

She laughed.

A loud yelp hit the air a second before an even louder crash. Alex spun around, and saw Timothy Gaines lying flat on the ground near one of the tent ropes. Plastic bottles of Gatorade had spilled from the box he’d been carrying, and were rolling merrily around on the dusty ground.

Alex grinned. He suspected Tim had been trying so hard to keep an eye on him and Nora that he’d tripped.

His grin slipped away after a second, though. Everything was falling into place perfectly. Tim was jealous…and Nora was fascinated. Everyone was going to think exactly what he wanted them to think.

Pity it made him feel like such a heel.

Alex took a mug of coffee with him as he and Nora walked along the dry wadi toward the quarry. Nora had brought a mug along, too, as well as a thick slice of the grainy native bread smeared with the soft cheese the Bedouin made from goat’s milk. Alex enjoyed the strongly flavored cheese himself, having eaten it innumerable times as a child, but most westerners considered it, at best, an acquired taste.

There was a clarity about the desert that appealed to Alex, the raw virtue of extremes. The land was badly broken, the earth’s cracked bones thrusting up through its thin skin, their nakedness dusted in places with sand and spotted with the tough, bleached vegetation of the desert. Overhead, the sky was vast and cloudless. The dry air stirred against his cheeks in a baby breeze. Alex looked over the rugged landscape, and thought about death.

It wasn’t his own death that preyed on his mind this time. It was the death that others—one man in particular—wanted to carry across the ocean to the U.S. The many deaths he was here to prevent, and the traitor he needed to catch, a man they knew only as Simon—a man determined to bring down Jonah and the entire SPEAR agency.

Alex walked beside the woman he needed to charm in order to maintain his cover, sipping coffee as he considered means and ends, and when one justified the other. The coffee was exactly what she had claimed it would be—hot and strong. He glanced at Nora.

Heat and strength there, too, he thought. The strength showed physically, in the lean lines of her body. Lord, about half of the woman was legs—long, honey-gold and gorgeous. But she wasn’t just physically strong. Not many people tested themselves against the desert every morning and called it fun.

The heat didn’t show, but he sensed it. “You’re very quiet.”

“I was taught not to speak with my mouth full.” She popped the last bite of bread into the mouth in question and dusted her hands without looking at him.

In fact, she’d scarcely looked at him directly since the moment he’d turned around, seen her, and their gazes had locked. “I was expecting you to have more questions about why I’m here, what my qualifications are.”

“Isn’t that what you’re here for? To ask questions?”

“I’m here because you’ve found a burial chamber where there shouldn’t be a burial chamber. But that isn’t the only reason.”

“No?”

“Nora.” He stopped her with his hand on her arm. “Are you uncomfortable with me?”

She sighed and, at last, faced him directly. “Yes. Yes, I guess I am, silly as that sounds. I never thought I’d see you again, you see. After our, ah, dramatic first encounter, you took on this larger-than-life quality in my mind. Not quite real. Now here you are, sent by Dr. Ibrahim to check us out. Real as can be.” Her mouth quirked up. “It’s disconcerting. Life is certainly full of coincidences, isn’t it?”

Her honesty made things easy for him. Too damned easy. “My arrival isn’t entirely a coincidence.”

“What do you mean?” A few wisps of hair had worked loose from her braid, and that breeze tossed them against her cheek.

“Dr. Ibrahim did send me here, but it was at my request.” He turned away, running his hand over the top of his head. Reality and pretense were blurring in an uneasy alliance. “I’m at loose ends right now. I…the attack changed things. Once I recovered physically, I flew to Cairo to see my parents, and while I was there, they had Dr. Ibrahim to dinner. He mentioned your dig. I was interested professionally…and personally. I talked him into sending me instead of the man he’d had in mind. He wasn’t hard to persuade.” He grinned. “Like DeLaney and Lisa, I work cheap.”

She looked at him steadily for a long moment. “I’ve heard of you. You have the reputation of being something of a dilettante.”

“I’m lucky enough to have a private income, which lets me work when and where I choose. If that makes me a dilettante, or a dabbler—” He shrugged. “I suppose to some it does.”