34
“Tablet?” Kellen counted the pieces on the shelf. They were missing one.
“The last piece of the collection is a tablet chiseled from the tomb wall. Very rare find.” Carson’s enthusiasm began to rise. “Most Mayans wrote on paper called amate, made from the wild fig tree.”
Kellen widened her eyes at him.
“And…you don’t care.” He sighed and got back on the subject. “I don’t read Mayan hieroglyphs well, so I brought it back here with the others and used my college textbook to translate the symbols. It’s a curse, and I’m superstitious enough to not want to be tormented by a long-dead Mayan lord, so I returned it to the storage room.”
“The way things are going, I don’t know if you replaced it quickly enough.” She gestured at the statues. “Can we package these up? I’ll take them to Max for safekeeping. That’ll be one worry relieved.”
“Of course. I’ve got the parcel they came in.” He went to his closet and came out with an oblong box filled with Bubble Wrap.
Together they wrapped the tomb art.
“I would think the last piece is safe enough in storage. We’ll get it when we’ve secured the situation.” She offered her hand. “Thank you, Mr. Lennex, you’ve solved half the crime.”
He took her hand and held it. “What’s the other half?”
“Who’s doing this.”
“One scary bastard.”
“We need something a little more definite than that, but I believe we’re getting close. Let me get these off your hands, and we’ll move on to the next step.” The box was heavy for its size, and knowing what was inside, she used both hands to carry it.
He escorted her to the elevator, pushed the button to summon it and said with some humor, “Next time I find you in my bedroom, can I assume you’ve come on a less deadly quest?”
“Of course, Mr. Lennex. Please be careful. I’m not the only one who knows you had the artifacts.”
“Who else?”
“Mitch Nyugen.”
“He works in maintenance and he drives for the resort. He’s a friend of yours.” Carson was very well-informed. “Are we suspicious of him?”
“Suspicious is a strong word. Let’s say wary.”
“He’s been here less time than you have.”
“He could be working for the scary bastard, and if that’s the truth…” She took a breath. “Mitch was a good soldier. He’s trained to survive, and he’s trained to kill.”
“He’s the real deal.”
“Precisely.” The doors opened and she got in. “To get him out of the way, I sent him to the airstrip with the last of the guests, but if he works for or with someone, he could have contacted them.”
“Someone who cuts off people’s hands? I’ll be careful. You, too.” He saluted as the doors closed.
Kellen exited near the security center, and as she walked the empty corridor, she glanced around. The sense of being watched crawled up her spine.
And apparently she was being watched, for when she got close, Max opened the door. “What have you got?” he asked.
“Smuggled art.”
She entered and he shut the door behind her. “You liberated smuggled art.” Now he looked at her as if she was Wonder Woman.
According to Birdie’s fictitious account, she was a superhero, and right now, she was feeling pretty smug. “Think it will fit in the vault?”
“We’ll make it work.” He ran through the code, then pressed his finger to the identifier. It figured that he was one of the privileged few who could access the safe.
The big old bank vault with the new locking system creaked open.
He cleared off a shelf and they placed the box inside.
When the vault door shut with a solid sound, she relaxed against it and grinned. “We’re doing good. Any sign of Nils Brooks yet?”
“None.”
“Any trouble in sight?”
With some humor, he said, “You’re here.”
She remembered that hungry look he’d given her earlier. Now his interest seemed businesslike.
“Who is Nils Brooks?” he asked. “Who is he really?”
Should she tell him? Annie had sent her trusted nephew as security for the resort. But death stalked the dim corridors and windswept grounds. Kellen needed help and Max could give it, and so in the plainest, fastest way she could, she outlined her history with Nils.
When she finished, Max said, “The CIA? The MFAA? He’s undercover? Come on! You do realize how absurd that all sounds?”
“I do, especially in light of his disappearance. But, Max, right now, I only trust me and thee, and I’m not so sure about thee. Or me, for that matter.” She meant that more than she could say. About both of them.
But he chuckled, a nice, rich, warm sound. “I’ll help you search. You think he’s here—”
“He is not leaving now, not when things are coming to a head.”
“Where can he be that we can’t see him?”
Her annoyance with Nils fought with her fear for him. “Dead under a rock on the beach.”
“Kellen, with all due respect, I can hardly believe he’s former CIA and undercover with a newly re-formed government agency that is concerned with, of all things, antiquities.”
Everything Max said fed into her own doubts, made her feel foolish and resentful. “If there’s a chance that he’s telling the truth—”
“I know. You’re right. Re-forming the MFAA is a good idea. I simply don’t know that I believe the government ever follows through on good ideas.” Max pushed his hair off his forehead. “Where is he if he’s not dead under a rock?”
“In the spa. In the restrooms. In one of the guest rooms. Because of privacy issues, there are no security cameras in those locations.”
“I’ll check the spa first,” Max said in heavy irony.
“I’m going to check his cottage. He didn’t answer the house phone this morning when we wanted him to evacuate. He didn’t respond when Frances knocked on his door. She said she went in and called for him and searched. But she’s frightened. I can’t see her poking into every corner.”
“You think he hid in the closet or behind the shower curtain?” Max’s tone started out incredulous and ended in a brief, humorous laugh.
“Or he was out beating the bushes.”
“Or he’s dead somewhere.” Max said that in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Yes. That’s possible, too. I texted him and he never answered.”
“Be careful out there,” Max said.
“Be careful in here,” Kellen replied.
“No problem. I’m the Incredible Hulk, remember?”
“And I’m Wonder Woman.”
As she started to walk out, he caught her arm. “After this is over, we’ll need to talk.”
She took a breath. “Philadelphia?”
“You remember?”
Her heartbeat sped up. Confirmation. He was part, maybe all, of her forgotten past. “Not really.”
Heat shimmered in the air between them. They looked at each other, each searching for some remnant of the past, of passion remembered and passion forgotten.
“Later,” he said and let her go.
Later? There might not be a later. And she wanted to know.
She leaned into him, settled against his big body, absorbed the heat and the muscled strength.
If he’d known her before—and she did believe him—he’d known her as a woman to be protected, to be handled with care. So he waited, his chest rising and falling with each desperate breath.
She slid her hands up his arms, around his neck, went on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his.
Still he waited.
So she turned a touch into a kiss and a kiss into sunshine and shadow, nuance and blatant lust. The long dark of the Washington winter disintegrated and became summer on a restless ocean where they drowned without breath, without care, without self.
She pulled back with a gasp—some parts of her body didn’t care if she drowned, but her lungs finally objected—and her hands trembled as she let them drop out of his hair.
At some point in the kiss, he had wrapped one arm around her waist, the other…
“Um, can you let go of my butt?” She looked everywhere but at his face. “I really need to go and, um…”
“Right.” The rumble of his voice was harsh, scratchy, and he released her reluctantly.
Well, sure. He was ready to go all the way. No mistaking that.
She slipped out of the security office and then the resort. She didn’t need this distraction. Not now. All these years…
She had never seen the grounds so deserted. The bitterly cold wind whipped through the grass, swirled chips of ground cover into the air like tiny wood shards aimed at the eyes. To the west, tall gray clouds sped toward her; the storm the weather people had predicted was arriving at last. Desolation hung over the resort, waiting for that moment when the tempest broke, when the blood spilled, when death or justice claimed the land.
Since when had Kellen become a fanciful idiot?
She didn’t know, and she didn’t like it, but as she drove the ATV toward Nils’s cottage, she felt exposed and hunched down to make herself a smaller target. Her Kevlar vest didn’t cover nearly enough flesh.
She parked and clattered up the stairs; no point in sneaking up on him, the man had a gun. She knocked loudly and yelled, “Nils!” then inserted her pass card and swung the door wide.
“Come in,” he called from the shadowy depths.
She texted Max, Found him, stashed her phone and walked into the cottage. She took one look at Nils stretched out in the easy chair, his feet elevated on the ottoman, and shut the door behind her. “You look worse for wear.”
He had a black eye that extended down to his jaw and an ice bag strapped to his left elbow.
“Did you try to kiss somebody else?” she asked.
“Ha.” He wore a leather holster strapped to his chest with the grip of his Beretta M9 protruding.
“Why didn’t you answer my text?”
“Last night, I lost my phone.”
She looked him over again. He had a fighting knife and a Ruger LCP .380 ultracompact resting on the end table close to his right hand. Somehow, he’d been involved in a fight. With Vincent Gilfilen? Against Vincent Gilfilen? “Tell me about last night.”
“After I left you—”
She went to the refrigerator and got them both bottles of water.
“—I stepped out of your house, and I couldn’t see any lights down at the dock, but the wind wasn’t blowing, the clouds were low and I could sure hear that big boat engine roaring toward shore.”
“You said you didn’t want to interfere, that that wasn’t going to help capture the Librarian.”
“I was tired of sitting around.” He accepted the bottle and pressed it to his black eye. “I needed some action. I was horny.”
She laughed. “Oh, Nils. You romantic devil.”
“Do you want to know what happened or not?”
She thought maybe she knew now, but she perched on a chair arm and got ready to listen.
“I couldn’t take the ATV. They make too much noise. So I started running, keeping my head down, doing bursts, zigzags, stopping suddenly. If the smugglers had some kind of night vision, I figured—confuse them.”
“Talk about luck. If they’d had thermal night vision—”
“Right. I know. They would have seen me. But they didn’t, so I managed to get to that give-everybody-the-finger tree and not get shot—I was pleased about that—and I stood there next to the trunk. One person was standing off to the side on a rock.”
“The Librarian.”
“He was directing the operation, so yes.” Nils held up one hand. “Before you ask, no, I couldn’t see him. It was dark. Two guys carried a box up from the beach. Heavy box, took them both to lift it. No, I couldn’t identify them, either.”
“But you could see them.”
“I had my night vision by then, and I was wondering what the hell I was doing there, because this was a suicide mission. I had my pistol, but no doubt they had more firepower than I did and sooner or later they were going to look at me and register that I wasn’t a tree trunk and I was going to be dead.”
“Not so horny anymore?” Not that it wasn’t an appalling story, but he was obviously still alive, so she could make jokes.
“All of a sudden, the dude on the rock signaled, and the two with the box put it down and all three vanished into the stack of boulders like cockroaches in the light.”
“They spotted you? No, couldn’t have. They wouldn’t have vanished. They would have shot you.”
“Right. Something else was going on, but at that moment, I didn’t care what. The box was right there, and their ATV was right there, and I thought…make a little trouble.”
“What were you thinking?” Before he could answer, she gestured him to silence. “I know—you were horny and that precludes thinking.”
“I was thinking with the small brain. It happens. Damned good thing it did, too. I lugged the box over to the ATV, unhinged the seat, damned near ruptured a vertebra lifting it up and into the storage bin and dropped the seat over it right about the time the shouting started.” He watched her for a few moments. “You don’t want to say a word about what could have happened next, do you? You’re afraid to feed me information, lead the witness.”
“Correct.”
“I made a good choice when I picked you.”
His phrasing made her want to slap him. But right now, she wanted to slap a lot of people. Or shoot. Whatever. “Why did they disappear?”
“They’d spotted the resort’s security chief, Vince Gilfilen.”
“How did you know about him?”
“I didn’t. I only knew he was in those rocks fighting for his life—the bad guys had him in a stranglehold, so he must be on my side.” Nils looked her in the eyes. “We introduced ourselves afterward.”
She shook her head and half laughed. Guys.
“So Vince, that son of a bitch is skinny and he slipped down and out. He’s strong and wiry. He likes to fight, and he got his licks in, but they got a cord around his neck and the Librarian slashed at his wrists and…” Nils sat there and shook his head.
“What did you do, Nils?”
“I couldn’t watch anymore. I couldn’t be safe anymore. I couldn’t do the smart thing anymore. I got one of the ATVs, one without the box inside, started it, put it into gear, gave it the gas and bailed out right before it hit the boulders.”
“My God.” She wavered between horror and laughter at the description of the scene, of the evidence of Nils’s mad innovative fighting skills.
He painfully sat straight up in his chair. “They scattered. I slammed one guy with a rock to the head. The other guy smashed me with a rock to the arm.” Nils lifted his elbow. “Want to refill my ice pack?”
She took it and headed for the freezer. “Keep talking.”
“The guy lifted the rock again. I saw it over my head, figured I was a goner, and by God, Vince Gilfilen comes roaring out of those boulders. His hand is half-off, so he kicks the shit out of the guy’s head. Guy goes down, they’re fighting, I’m trying to scramble around and get into it before the third guy jumps in on the action. That was one helluva brawl, three against two, and Vince throwing punches and flinging blood everywhere. And then—”
“And then what?” Kellen stood, hand half in the freezer, totally involved in the action.
“And then nothing.” Nils flopped back in the chair, winced and held his arm. “The guy Vince is fighting takes off.”
Quickly, she shoveled ice cubes into the bag. “Running away?”
“No, chasing the ATV that the third guy is driving.”
“The third guy—was that the Librarian?” She slammed the freezer door.
“I have no idea. The way we were mixing it up, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t chase them, because then Vince collapsed. My God, that hand of his.” Nils accepted the ice bag and placed it on his elbow. “Is he still alive?”
“Critical, but stable.” This explained a lot, like how Vincent Gilfilen had survived at all. “What did you do? How did you get him back to the resort?”
“I took off my shirt, wrapped up his hand, had him put that over my shoulder, and we walked back to his suite.” Nils shook his head in amazement. “Toughest man ever.”
“Yes. He really is.” She groped her way back to her chair, never taking her gaze from Nils. “But you’re not too bad, either. What happened to your face?”
“I think Vince stepped on it, but I’m not sure. You know how it is. You’re fighting, you get hurt, it’s dark, might be the enemy, might be friendly fire.”
“Why didn’t you stay with him? He almost expired before I got there.”
“He called you, then he had me stretch him out on the bathroom floor with that rug under his neck. He was pretty pissed, and so was I, and I thought he would be fine until you got there. So I went out searching for the bad guys. I figured they had to be somewhere on the resort grounds.” Nils grinned savagely. “I didn’t find them, but I found the right ATV. Still warm, and the box was still under the seat. They drove those artifacts back to the resort for me.”