Relentless (2 page)

With one slash of a boning knife, and a couple of bullets, he’d gone from one of MI5’s most trusted operatives to
this
. “Don’t you want me to find your cat?”

She gave him a sparkling look from those big brown eyes, clearly enjoying a private joke. “I’m allergic.”

Of course she is,
he thought, unamused. “Dog, then.”
Something small and yippy, named Baby.

Her pretty mouth pinched as if she were biting back tears, or suppressing a smile. “Deathly afraid of them.”

Pissed off and not really sure why, he found his patience, what little he had, abruptly ending. “Are you a librarian or a nursery school teacher?” He imagined her surrounded by sticky hands and adoring gummy smiles.

“I’m guessing from your tone that you don’t hold
teachers or librarians in high esteem? How do you feel about photographers?”

“Photographers?”

“I’m a commercial photographer. Mostly print ads for agencies. Diapers, shoes, jewelry, that kind of thing. It pays the bills.” She cocked her head. Miss Magee wasn’t nearly as sweet and wholesome as she pretended to be. There was a definite bite in her tone when she said sweetly, “I hope you don’t find that as offensive to your sensibilities as teaching?”

“What you do for a living is immaterial. I’m attempting to ground the conversation.” Find that equal ground that allowed people like her to trust that someone like him could find her missing pet. Or ex-lover or piece of jewelry or whatever it was she wanted from Lodestone.

Light duty. He’d been instructed by a team of MI5 doctors to take it easy. No running, chasing, falling down, or getting shot at. One year, they’d ordered. No excuses or exceptions. He wouldn’t like the consequences if he didn’t comply, they’d warned.

He was complying, goddamn it.

Thorne left rainy London for rainier Seattle, and somehow managed to make it to day forty-three. He was bored out of his mind. He’d rather deal with the oddly intriguing Miss Magee than contemplate if he’d ever be fit for duty again. Permanently in the mood to shoot something, socially unacceptable in his present position, he schooled his features to appear as polite and affable as he could manage.

It took effort. No offense to the curly-haired woman
in front of him, but he just didn’t relish jobs where bullets weren’t a factor. It was a shortcoming he had to live with. Temporarily. Desk duty, or being crippled for life.

“What
do
you want me to find?” Because, goddamn it, he’d find it. Whatever it took. At least he’d earn his paycheck from his friend Zak Stark, and not freeload during his recuperation.

Tucking her hair behind one ear, she pointed at the thin file folder on his desk. The one he hadn’t bothered to look at. He’d seen her in the waiting room, and labeled her Nursery School Teacher, Lost Cat. Proving that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, no matter how Librarian Spinster looking.

“Give me the CliffsNotes.”

“I want you to find a tomb.”

Bloody hell. “I don’t do tombs.”

Her eyebrows vanished beneath her bangs and she blinked behind her glasses. “You… don’t
do
tombs? What does that mean?”

Her bangs needed cutting; they were constantly in her eyes. “It means, Miss Magee, that if it’s a tomb you’re looking for, I don’t find them.”

Her stare was a little too direct. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t like heat, or sand, or going to places I find unpleasant.”
Not unless I’m fully armed and have some asshole bad guy in my sights
. It was in a desert that he’d received his injuries. Thorne was in no rush to go back.

Only 322 days to go, he thought bitterly.

“How… limiting.” She pushed her glasses up her nose again. “Isn’t it your job to go wherever the client needs
you to go?” She paused, and when he didn’t respond, said, “Who says the tomb I want found is somewhere hot and sandy? Maybe it’s the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Hietaniemi cemetery in Helsinki? Or the tomb beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris? Or—”

Terrier, meet bone.
He repressed a sigh, a groan, and the words
fucking hell
. “Do you have a general location?”

Her fingers tightened on her purse. “Egypt.” She cleared her throat, and just in case he was hard of hearing repeated firmly, “Egypt.”

Bugger it.
Magee? Egypt?
He joined some dots, and didn’t like where they led. Fuck. He resisted cursing in any or all five languages, and opted for a teeth-clenched, polite “Did you bring me something?” While Thorne didn’t believe in coincidences, some people did. Anything was possible. He hoped that wherever his logic was leading him, it was dead wrong.

“Like what?” Her lips twitched. “A Bundt cake?”

Thorne’s back teeth ground together. “Like something I can hold so I can tell you where your tomb is.”

She leaned forward in her chair, avid curiosity sparkling in her eyes. “Right. That thing. How does your superpower work?”

“I’m
not
a freak.” Even if that’s what he considered himself in his heart of hearts, he didn’t have to admit it out loud. And he sure as hell didn’t have to sit under her suddenly too-interested microscope. “What I do is referred to by scientists as a well-developed sixth sense.” Which had materialized full-fucking-blown after he’d died on the table and been brought back to life eight
months ago. He started to rub his thigh under the desk, then realized what he was doing and placed both hands on the desktop. A
desk,
for Chrissakes!

“Oh.” Leaning forward, she contemplated him for several moments. “How does it work for you?”

He leaned back. Her subtle movement made him feel… invaded. Ridiculous. He’d killed men twice her size with his bare hands without a single flutter of his heartbeat. Why should this slip of a woman with her Bambi eyes rattle him? She didn’t, of course; she was just the most interesting thing to happen to him since he’d started working for Zak. Which just showed how restricted his life had become.

“I hold something and can tell you where the person who had it last is located.”

Her brilliant smile stole his next smart-ass comment. Her teeth were white and straight, except for her eyeteeth, which were just crooked enough to charm him. If he were a man who was enchanted by teeth that needed braces. The smile, which lit up her whole face, was like an electric shock jolting his body. It took her from pretty to stunning and caused an unwelcome, and annoying, chemical reaction in his body.

“Perfect!” she told him cheerfully. “They told me to bring something connected to the tomb when I made the appointment. But I couldn’t figure out how the box would help you—” She dug in her bag and withdrew a chamois-covered item about the size of a ring box. She gave him an inquiring look.

“Put it down, and slide it over.” Not because her placing
it in his hand diluted anything, but Thorne wasn’t ready to stand just yet, and for reasons he refused to explain to himself, he didn’t want to touch her.

Opening the bag, she dropped a small gold box covered in hieroglyphs into her palm. Clutching the purse to her middle and the box in one hand, she rose to lean over the desk and nudged it forward. His response to her nearness was immediate and visceral. His head swam with the enticing fragrance of her cookie-scented skin. He could drown in her chocolaty eyes—goddamn it. The woman was as tempting to his palate as she was to his senses. Enough of this crap. Redirecting his attention, he picked up the small box. It was light in weight and heavy in ominous undertones.

For fuck’s sake. Sand. Desert. Egypt. The goddamned trifecta. And then—

512946010355149598317637251
.

A
superfecta
!

The numbers scrolling through his head made him set the box on the desk. Not quite as fast as if it had burned his fingers with a flaming blowtorch set on high, but close enough.

Not Egypt. But only slightly less repugnant. “This comes from London.”

“No,” she assured him firmly as she resumed her seat. “It’s from the tomb of Queen Cleopatra, which is somewhere in Egypt, I believe.”

He flicked open the lid. “It’s empty.”

“I know. Whatever was in it was lost. Can you use your superpower to find where it came from?”

Thorne picked up his GPS, although he didn’t need confirmation. He punched in the coordinates he was seeing in his head, then turned the device to his new client. “The Natural History Museum, London.”

She bit her lip, her expression pained. “Can’t you go
further
back than that?”

There was an imperceptible shadow dancing right behind the London GPS location. Try as he might, Thorne couldn’t read it. “Apparently not.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Damn. Damn. Damn.”

“No charge.”

Her gaze shot to his face. She was not amused. “Well, of course not. I hired Lodestone to find a tomb, not a museum.”

“Then bring me something from the tomb and I’ll tell you where it is.” He drummed his fingers across the tabletop. If he couldn’t shoot something, was it too early for a drink?

“If I could do that then I wouldn’t need you to find it, now would I? This is all I have.” Her expressive eyes welled.

He checked the clock. Noon? Good enough. There was a bar a block over. “Are you going to cry?”

“Maybe. Yes.” She sniffed. A tiny tear, magnified by the lenses of her glasses, shimmered on the edge of her long, dark lashes. “Probably.” It fell, glistening as it slid over her rounded cheek, beneath the frame. “This was pretty much my last option. I’m so disappointed and frustrated.”

Who wasn’t? They only came to Lodestone when they were desperate enough to try anything—even something
as out of the park as sixth sense locating. “Why’s this tomb so important? Are you an amateur archaeologist?”

The answer he wanted to hear was no, she had nothing to do with archaeology and was just curious. Or it was a bet—or any bloody thing that wasn’t related to who and what he knew she was about to tell him. The tears were about to fall in earnest, if that trembling lower lip was any indication, and she looked so forlorn, Thorne figured he’d give her a minute before shuffling her out of his office and sending her on her way. He should call his shrink and report progress. Six months ago he would’ve kicked her out in the first thirty seconds. Yes, progress indeed. The desk job was making him soft. Christ.

“My father’s an archaeologist.” The tear dripped off her stubborn chin, leaving a shiny trail on her cheek. “August Magee.”

And there it was. Dots all joined and tied in a big fucking red bow. Which was why, he was damned sure, his new boss and soon to be ex–good friend, Zak Stark, had given him this assignment just before conveniently hieing his arse to some jungle in South America for months on end to build an adventure camp for pre-parolees.

The tie-in between Miss Magee, London, and Egypt was so blatantly obvious as to be laughable. Too bad he was rarely amused.

Thorne’s father was one of the professor’s largest benefactors. What he knew of the professor was precious little. But he did know the man liked his booze, and had a propensity to lie. Did
she
know who
his
father was? “Go on.”

“The tomb of Cleopatra has been my father’s life’s work for over twenty years.” Tears apparently forgotten, she was now all earnest sincerity. “He finally discovered its location three months ago.”

“He’s ‘discovered’ that tomb—what? Five or six times?” Thorne pointed out dryly.

“Oh, damn,” she sighed, drawing his disinterested gaze to her small, plump breasts. “You really
do
know of him. Seven times. But the seventh was—”

He redirected his attention. She had a soft, delectable mouth slicked with glossy pink lipstick, and just looking at those shiny lips made him hard. And annoyed. Thorne wasn’t in the market for a lover at the moment, and he doubted the luscious Miss Magee was the one-night-stand type, even if he was. Pity, but there it was. “Look, Miss Magee—”

“Isis.”

Of course it was. Trust a crackpot archaeologist like August Magee to stick his kid with the name of an Egyptian goddess. “Let me be brutally frank here,
Isis
. Your father’s reputation precedes him. He was archaeology’s darling more than a decade ago, but he has a problem with veracity. He’s cried wolf more often than not. And frankly his drinking hasn’t done him any favors.” He pinched his fingers together as if holding a shot glass and tipped it back for illustration. “If the tomb
really
exists, and if this time the find is genuine, then he’s going to need evidence before he’s believed. Having you do it for him probably won’t do the trick.”

“He has Alzheimer’s,” Isis said flatly.

Thorne stared at her for a moment, waiting to see if there was anything else. Satisfied there wasn’t, he got to his feet. Not that he was walking anywhere. But he rose so she’d take the hint and leave. “Then it would appear you’re screwed.” His leg protested as if a great white shark had seized his thigh muscle between its teeth. He gripped the edge of the desk, keeping his expression neutral with effort, even though his knuckles were turning white. “Sorry I can’t help you.”

She beamed those big, tear-drenched eyes up at him like a surface-to-air missile with complex target tracking. “Please.”

Gut tight in reaction to her soft plea, he resumed his seat. “All I can tell you is that whatever was inside the box is somewhere in the museum in London. While my skills are pretty specific, the best I can do is give you the general location of what you’re looking for. Finding it could possibly take you months, if not years. There are in the neighborhood of seventy million items there.”

She frowned. “How could you
possibly
know that?”

“My father is one of the benefactors of the museum. The
Egyptian
section of the Natural History Museum in London, in fact.” Thorne was going to hand Zak his arse on a platter five minutes after the emotional Miss Isis Magee departed. He was supposed to be recovering, not dealing with emotional-baggage-laden weepy females.