Relentless (12 page)

“Oh, I’ve never been better,” she assured him, sarcasm thick in her voice. Her eyes looked dark and huge in her pale face. Snapping open her camera case, she removed her glasses and shoved them with some force onto her face. She was filthy, but he didn’t see any blood on her. Her respiration was erratic, and a pulse throbbed hard at the base of her throat. She turned her head to give him a hard look. “We’ll be arrested when people see you covered in blood like this.”

“Trust me, no one will even blink.” He kept to the shadows of a stand of trees looking for a cab. Looking for more trouble. He’d look for answers later.

“Hang on…” She rummaged in her bag, which somehow hadn’t been dislodged from her shoulder despite her recent activities. Isis handed him a wad of tissues and a
tiny bottle of hand sanitizer, shoving them into his chest. “Here. Do the best you can. I can’t afford to bail either of us out of jail right now.”

Thorne cleaned up as best he could, the alcohol in the sanitizer providing a bracing sting in his cuts and abrasions as he scanned the vehicles passing and weighed their options.

How had Yermalof found him?

More important, did Yermalof know about Isis? Or had his men just been instructed to take
him
out? Were they even Yermalof’s men, or had they been followed from the airport by opportunistic thieves?

He spotted a cab and stepped out of the shadows to wave it down. After stuffing Isis inside, he got in, too, slamming the door and giving the driver the name of their hotel.

Thorne kept watch in the rearview mirror as the cab pulled into the street. He considered if the attack had really been ordered by Yermalof.

“What…”

He shook his head. Not in the cab, and not until he had some definitive answers. She nodded a silent agreement. Smart girl. A chill cooled the sweat on his skin.

This hadn’t been a random group effort. He’d been followed from the airport. Followed from London? Boris Yermalof had friends in low places all over the world. Especially here in Cairo.

Thorne knew going to London might reactivate Yermalof’s directive. Now he knew. Fucking hell.

What the hell was he going to do with Isis?

“We landed less than an hour before the accident. Since I’m not stupid enough to believe that everything we’ve just gone through could be
random,
who could possibly know we’re here?” Apparently she could only hold her silence for thirty seconds.

He slid the glass partition shut between the driver and themselves and lowered his voice. “The van that hit us followed us from the airport. They knew we were coming in on the flight.” His tone was grim, and his eyes constantly flickered from the rearview mirror to the side mirror and back again.

Something struck him as off. Yermalof was nothing if not chillingly efficient. Sending that many men to rough him up wasn’t the sort of message Thorne expected his archenemy to deliver. Good old Boris was a direct man and liked to inflict maximum pain. Personally. He’d waited eight months to come out of the shadows? He held one hell of a grudge, and the truth of the matter was, the
Russian
had won the last round.

Those guys, while fairly adept, hadn’t been as skilled as Yermalof’s usual men. Thorne would either be dead or back in the Russian’s clutches if that were the case. The thought brought bile to his throat.

“How long till we get to the hotel?” Isis demanded tightly, eyes glittering. She looked a little green and swallowed convulsively. The adrenaline was definitely wearing off.

“Ten minutes. Are you going to puke?”

“Probably,” she said in a small voice. “Don’t worry, I’ll try and wait until I get to my room.”

She didn’t make it.

WRAPPED IN A HOTEL
robe, Isis opened the door on the second knock. “Sorry about that,” she said immediately on seeing Thorne standing there. He’d obviously showered, too, and he was wearing clean clothes. The black T-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders and skimmed his flat abs. Black jeans, and even new shoes.

He’d been busy
shopping
while she’d huddled naked on the edge of the bathtub, fingers shaking so bad she couldn’t turn the faucet. Residual tremors still shook her frame. Nauseous and in shock, she’d forced herself to stand under the jets until her stomach settled and she could hold on to the soap.

Clean, but naked beneath the robe, she eyed her ruined clothing heaped on the floor beside the bed, and her camera bag on top of the comforter. The only not-sucky thing to come from the evening was that her three-thousand-dollar camera had survived the running and mayhem unscathed.
That
she could not afford to replace. It was a miracle her camera made it through, which mattered more than a pair of jeans and a shirt. She pressed her hand to her belly.

There was always a first time for her iron stomach to let her down. Violence and death apparently was her sticking point.

Thorne filled the door frame, solid. She felt like a wet
noodle. “How are you feeling?” she asked, studying his stoic face for clues.

“Fine.” He finger-combed his damp hair back off his forehead. Just another day in the life of Connor James Thorne.

She tightened the belt around her waist, conscious of the rasp of the terry cloth against her naked breasts. “Nice clothes.”

“I brought some for you.” He lifted the shopping bag at his side. Just when she thought he was an insensitive male, he redeemed himself and then some.

“Thanks. I couldn’t put those on.” She indicated the general direction of the mound on the floor behind her and stood back, allowing him room to enter. Tempted to fall into his arms and borrow his strength, Isis curled her bare toes into the short nap of the carpet instead. “I’ve never been up close and personal to that kind of violence before. It’s different on TV.” She was sure she’d hear fists against bone and see pools of blood in dark alleys in her nightmares for the rest of her natural life.

He paused, as if he wanted to say something but then changed his mind. “You look better,” he observed, his gaze inspecting her from her wet hair to her toenails. “Color in your cheeks.”

“Sorry if I embarrassed you.” She wasn’t really, but thought it was a polite way to open the conversation. She had so many questions, her mind was going a mile a minute. Luckily, when she’d been violently sick on the floor of the cab, she’d missed him, but only by a hair. The cabdriver
had been vocally furious, but she’d been too sick to be embarrassed. Too terrified to care.

“You didn’t,” he told her shortly, his limp more pronounced as he moved a few steps inside and closed the door behind him. Isis was acutely aware of his sex appeal and of the bed taking up most of the room behind her. He lobbed the shopping bag onto the foot of the bed from where he stood, without even looking. “As for the driver—a hundred American could buy him a new car. Don’t worry about it.”

Since he wasn’t moving farther into the room, she didn’t, either, but the narrow opening between the bathroom door and mirrored closet was forcing her to stand closer to him than she felt comfortable with and gave her a fantastic view of his backside. Isis was confused and disgusted with herself. Men had
died
. How could she be even remotely aware of Thorne’s body, his very alive body, when things could’ve fallen apart so easily? He could have died.
She
could have died. And what the hell was going to happen when the authorities discovered the bodies in the underpass?

“First thing in the morning, we have to report both the accident and the men who attacked us, and see if anyone retrieved our luggage from the cab.”

Not that she was looking forward to reliving their experience, nor going to the local authorities, who could just as easily accuse them of both crimes. They hadn’t shown any concern for her father when they’d found him wandering the desert alone and injured. In fact, at first they’d accused him of murdering his crew himself. Isis
shuddered and rubbed her upper arms, more for comfort than warmth.

“Already done.”

How long had she been in the shower? She locked gazes with him. “You should’ve told me. I would’ve gone with you.” And hated every second of it, but she should’ve been with him. She at least owed him the courtesy of standing beside him since he’d gotten her through the incident alive. “What time do we have to go in for questioning?”

“We don’t. It’s all squared away.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. Moves like that took bribes. Expensive bribes. “Thorne, I can’t afford baksheesh. I told you, I’m doing this on a shoestring—”

“You didn’t mention that, actually,” he pointed out dryly. “But don’t worry about it. I assure you, it’s taken care of. I know people.”

Isis bit back a sharp reply. He’d saved her life tonight, and his leg must be killing him. Maybe his royal lineage got him places she couldn’t go, like the museum. She blew out a breath, determined to be fair. “Your networking skills are impressive. Remember that I hired you, and that I’m responsible for expenses, okay?”

Heavy bribes—baksheesh—were the cost of doing business here. Everyone expected them, especially the authorities. They weren’t in her budget.

“I told you not to worry.” He stared at her as if that was all that needed to be said.

She lifted her chin in defiance. Okay,
three times
was enough. She needed to reestablish the ground rules.
“Seriously? You work for me. I think we’d better establish who’s the boss, and who signs your paycheck.” Isis dropped the finger she’d pointed at him and stuck her hand in her pocket. Anger was good. Healthy. Much better than finding his arrogance sexy.

“
Zak Stark
signs my paycheck, and while we’re here,
I’m
the boss. If you don’t like it, feel free to hie your pert arse back to Seattle and wait for my report.” His British accent became more clipped and pronounced and she got the feeling he’d prefer it if she left.

“You can be such an ass.” She said it without rancor. He was who he was. And it was clear he wasn’t going to change his tune just because… what? She was Isis Magee? A paying client? Her lips almost twitched as she realized she was giving herself a pep talk.
Right?!

“So I’ve been told.” He stuck his fingertips in his front pockets. Loose, but controlled. “We have no idea who those men were, or if they’ll come after us again.”

“The ones you left alive and still able to walk, you mean?” she demanded, matching his sarcasm. She refused to believe the police had let him get away with murder. Even if it had been warranted. There was more to Connor Thorne than met the eye. She had to stop letting his appeal distract her.

“Yes, those. And whatever friends and relatives they want to cut in on the deal.”

Reality check, Isis Cleopatra
. She fell back against the bathroom doorjamb with a thump. “You
don’t
think it was random, do you?” Oh, God. She’d been hoping her suspicions
were wrong. It was hard to maintain her anger at him, even when he deserved it, when she had withheld what might be relevant information. Now who was the ass?

“Thorne—I—Those men—The accident. The ambush. I think they might be the same men who attacked my father. I’m sorry. I had no idea I’d be bringing you into danger. Not that you weren’t amazing at defending us. But now that you’re in danger I think you should go back to London, or Seattle. I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”

He raised a dark brow that spoke volumes.

Her cheeks heated. She didn’t want him to go. But she had no right to ask him to stay. He could’ve been killed tonight. She could’ve been killed tonight. She walked farther into the room, but he didn’t follow her, so she went back to where he stood reflected in the mirrored doors of the closet. One Connor Thorne was enough for any woman. Two was overkill.

She stuck her hands in the deep pockets of the robe and forced herself to maintain eye contact. Confessions sucked, especially when she was the one in the wrong. “I think those men might have been after me. You were in the way, which is why you took the brunt of the attack.” Guilt gave her a pain in her midsection as she considered what happened from this point of view. Not random. Deliberate. Her fault.

Isis saw her too-big eyes, huge in in her pale face, reflected beside him. Her wet hair was slicked back off her face and moisture dribbled down her throat, tickling
her skin. Thorne said nothing. He towered over her petite frame, and even though he was only a foot or so taller, he was big, broad, and incredibly masculine.

“My father didn’t make up his attack—I think even you have to believe that after tonight.” Not an ounce of empathy was evident on Thorne’s face as she spoke. “I’m not going to let a bunch of thugs scare me off. I’ll hire some bodyguards. Tonight’s events convince me more than ever that my father found Cleo’s tomb—” She sucked a painful breath into her aching chest.

God. What a mess. What a scary, insane mess.

“Someone wants to discredit him. And now I think those men knew I was here to find it—”

“Before you confess to masterminding the entire attack yourself”—he paused and sent her a look verging on kind—“this is Cairo. It’s possible the attackers followed two rich Europeans from the airport with the express intention of robbing us.”

“What thieves would go to that much trouble to attack two tourists? I’m not dripping in diamonds, and you…” She waved her hand at his nice but not too nice black-on-black ensemble. She stumbled over her words and caught herself from calling him gorgeous out loud. “Or, we could be close to uncovering a clue to the whereabouts of the tomb, and those people were sent to stop us,” Isis insisted stubbornly, distracted by the path his eyes were taking as he followed a drop of water that trickled from her hair down her throat.

“Stop us from—
what
exactly?” He put his hand on the door handle and gave her a politely inquiring look that
held a trace of heat. “Arriving at the airport and taking a quick drive through the souk?”

She cinched the belt around her waist and wished she’d ignored her repugnance to re-dress in the bathroom. Even though she was decently covered from throat to ankles,
she
knew that
he
knew she was naked underneath.