The London Deception (9 page)

“What’s it say?” Finn leaned farther forward but his progress was stopped by a towering stack of what appeared to be term papers.

“Oh, come on, Finn.” He didn’t miss the distinct notes of disdain in Rowan’s tone. “You can’t think anyone takes this seriously.”

Will raised his voice to be heard over her protests. “The rumors say that the wedding jewelry discovered in the cache will reunite lovers, bring people back from the dead, that sort of nonsense.”

“Anything else?”

A light flush crept up Will’s neck, but he kept going. “The wedding texts are also purported to house a recipe for a fairly strong sexual stimulant.”

“No way.” Rowan’s protests grew louder. “You think someone’s going to rob the tomb for an ancient recipe for Viagra? Come on. I might not think Baxter Monroe knows his head from his ass, but he’s still a scholar. That has to count for something.”

Even though he had no great love for Monroe, Finn did acknowledge Rowan had a point. With that thought came another, swiftly on its heels. “What if it’s a front?”

“For what?” Rowan looked up from her perch over Will’s shoulder, where she read the posts.

“To raise interest. Pull things off course maybe and hide the real prize. Nothing perks up the media like a good dose of sex talk, in any form they can get it. Add that to ancient Egypt, which has a high degree of interest anyway, and you’ve got a newsperson’s dream.”

“It still doesn’t make a lot of sense.” Although she disagreed, Finn was intrigued to watch her work through the details out loud. Which wasn’t all that different from watching her eat breakfast or ride the Tube or talk to Will.

She fascinated him.

A dull throb settled in the base of his skull at the increasing evidence of his interest in her.

Why had he thought this was a good idea? Rowan Steele might be one of the world’s experts on the provenance of antiquities, but there were others. Well-qualified individuals who could work on the project and whom he’d have no interest in seeing, let alone talking to, after the authentication was over.

“This is modern times. The world’s sort of moved past believing in curses. People are too attached to their technology to believe some supernatural force is going to sweep in and hurt them.”

“So if we go with Finn’s idea, what could it be a cover-up for? I leave you to ponder that.” Will pulled them both back to the problem at hand as he pointed toward the screen. “Want to go over the glyphs on the back of the
Younger Memnon
statue?”

“You found something?” Whatever Rowan had been willing to argue vanished in the face of more details that would lead to better understanding the discovery in Nefertari’s tomb. “Those last two glyphs on the statue?”

“You were right. They are about Nefertari.” Will leaned forward, his gaze focused on the computer screen. “‘Great king’s wife, his beloved. The one for whom the sun shines.’”

Finn thought through the translation, but couldn’t understand how there was anything new. “Those epitaphs for her have been found on other markings. It’s not uncommon.”

“No, but this last glyph is.”

“So you agree with me?” Rowan had already moved to stand over Will’s shoulder again.

“I agree the glyph’s highly unusual, but I don’t think it’s tied to a curse. At least not overtly beyond the standard ‘don’t mess with the tomb or else’ language.”

“What do you think it
is
tied to?” The excitement threaded underneath her words was unmistakable as she pointed toward the computer screen. “Especially since it hasn’t raised any questions up to now.”

Will sat back in his seat with a heavy thud. “Because no one knew about the markings that hadn’t yet been discovered in the tomb. They’re the key. And the match.”

“Ho there. For the lay people over here who don’t read hieroglyphics.” Finn waved his hands. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

Excitement practically telegraphed itself off Rowan’s small form as she danced her way around the desk. “The glyphs are clues to Nefertari’s lineage and the family who gave her to Ramesses in marriage.”

Even without the level of knowledge Rowan and Will possessed, Finn knew the reality of what they suspected was more than extraordinary. Nefertari’s heritage was one of the greatest mysteries in Egyptian history. “What does it say?”

Will spoke first, intoning the same inscription from before. “‘Great king’s wife, his beloved. The one for whom the sun shines. Descendant of all that is good.’”

But it was Rowan’s voice, quiet and full of ceremony, that added the context that made it real. “That last glyph matches the first images sent back already from the dig site.”

“Which means when we excavate more deeply into the chamber, we’ll find the rest of the message.” Finn pointed toward the screen. “Do you have the images sent back?”

Will flipped through a few screen before Finn stopped him.

“There. That one.”

The picture was dull, the lighting not optimal in the photograph, but the evidence of what Rowan and Will both believed was easy to see. Finn pointed toward the lower corner of the screen, where the imagery faded off into hard-packed earth. “That’s it, right? The advance team in there already believes there’s about six more feet of wall to uncover.”

“That’s the spot.” Color rode her cheeks into a vivid pink, and in that moment, Finn saw the love and excitement she had for her job. For how she made her life.

This was not a woman who’d be content to live behind the scenes or ride a desk.

Ever.

“We’ll discover where Nefertari came from, Finn. One of the oldest mysteries in Egyptology will be explained.”

The excitement he saw there—the near blind devotion to possessing that history—rose up and gripped him by the throat. He’d seen that same look once before, on the face of a young girl as she admired the rich patina of gold that overlaid a priceless bracelet worn by Queen Victoria.

And in the depths of that excitement, he saw the proof that she’d take any risk to attain her goal.

* * *

Finn was still off-kilter from their meeting a few hours later as they walked through St. James’s Park. The jostling, packed subway car that had carried them back toward the city center hadn’t helped his mood, but he knew the root of his discomfort went far deeper.

The October afternoon was a rarity in London with clear blue skies and a pleasant temperature that almost made their light jackets unnecessary. Despite the beauty of the day—and the beauty of his companion—he couldn’t shake off the unease that rode hard against his shoulder blades.

Their meeting with Will turned up little except the man’s promise he’d keep digging into whatever else had been found or cataloged to date at the site. He also promised to reach out to his private network to see what the word was on the cache.

Finn had been thrilled when this job came to Gallagher International. He knew it wasn’t without risks, but the opportunity and the ultimate payoff were considerable. Hell, he’d cultivated a relationship with the British Museum—and put up with wankers like Baxter Monroe—specifically to get access to opportunities like the Nefertari tomb.

So why was he so itchy?

The two of them walked along a wide footpath, Rowan’s smile broad and happy. She turned toward him and he was captivated by her warmth. “That was a productive morning.”

“I owe you some serious credit for the hieroglyphs on the Ramesses statue. While I enjoyed our late-night romp through the museum, I never expected those photos would pay off.”

“They’ll pay off even better when we get that wall fully exposed in Nefertari’s tomb. It changes everything.”

Was that the reason for his unease? That the job he’d prepared for had suddenly changed? “Come on, Rowan. You know we’re not going to get much of a chance at it.”

“Of course we will. We’re the only ones who know it’s there.”

“Right. And the moment you uncover it, Baxter Monroe will shut us out of there so fast it won’t be funny. We’re there to authenticate the wedding objects, not manage the scholarly aspects of the dig.”

“We’re both qualified to do both.”

“You’re qualified. I’m just the guy who provides the authentication services when they hit the mother lode.”

She stopped walking to face him, and Finn couldn’t help but notice how the bright blue sky was nearly a perfect match for her eyes. “You think I’m letting Baxter anywhere near the wall? He thinks the jewels are the big deal. I’m going to go for that darkened corner no one thinks matters.”

“That’s not why we were hired.”

“Who the hell cares why we were hired, Finn? It’s the find of a century. Hell, two centuries. Speculation has always run rampant about who Nefertari was. With this discovery we’ll know her lineage and even possibly how she came to be Ramesses’s consort. Despite the fact he had several wives, she was the one he loved and trusted above them all. This may explain why.”

Whether it was a combination of his strange unease from the morning visit to Will or the rising sense he was losing control of the work—work he’d deliberately brought Rowan in for—Finn didn’t know.

And suddenly, he didn’t care.

“It’s still not the reason we were hired.”

“So we change the game. React on the fly.”

“Like you did in the Warrington house twelve years ago?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Those blue eyes that so captivated him flashed over to anger in a blazing heartbeat.

“You heard me. You barreled into danger at sixteen and you’ve obviously not gotten a hell of a lot smarter in the ensuing years. The dig isn’t ours. Doesn’t matter what you or I think about that—the museum owns it. They’ve got the permit on it. And it’s the British Museum that’s deigned to allow us on as hired guns. They want us to authenticate the cache, nothing more. Don’t forget that.”

“I can’t believe you’re copping out like this.”

“And I can’t believe I’m on the verge of asking you off the project.”

Rowan dropped onto a nearby bench. “You can’t do that.”

“I can and I will, if you’re unwilling to take my lead. This is Gallagher International’s project. I brought you in as a subcontractor for your expertise.”

The anger he wanted to hold on to flitted away at the sheer sadness that filled her face. “This is the project of a lifetime.”

“It won’t be if it gets you killed.”

Something in his words must have broken through because he saw a subtle change come over her. The anger hadn’t vanished, per se, but it was almost as if she picked it up and set it aside for the moment.

She tugged on his hand, pulling him down next to her onto the bench. As he sat, his large frame dwarfing hers, he couldn’t help but make the quick comparison between them. She was so delicate, like a tiny pixie.

A crazed pixie, if the thunderous look in her eyes was any indication.

“I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for five minutes before I pull out my crazy-ass-bitch persona. But I warn you, it’s pretty damn lethal.”

“I’m not playing, Rowan.”

“Neither am I. So let me have it. Something has you weirded out and I want to know what it is.”

Well hell, how did he explain it?

It had all started in Will’s office. What had started as subtle humor at Rowan and Will’s strange sort of half language had morphed into something else as their discussion ramped up speed.

This project was historically significant yet the advance chatter was filled with curses and sex potions. Even the jewels themselves, while a significant find, had a strange air of distraction about them.

“I can’t explain it any better than this, but I feel like we’re all players on a chessboard, being dragged around at the whim of someone else.”

“To what end?”

“That’s what I can’t define. But seriously, don’t you sense something else is going on? What’s this completely idiotic nonsense about a curse? It feels like a distraction.”

“And you think someone’s deliberately manipulating the distractions?”

“Yes, I do.”

He heard the skepticism in her tone fade ever so slightly. “While I don’t want to dismiss the power of intuition, we’ve both been on projects where the adrenaline runs hotter than others. It doesn’t mean there’s anything to worry about.”

“I haven’t had this feeling many times in my life, but I’ve got it now.”

“Well, what happened the last time you had this strange woo-woo feeling?”

“I got shot.”

Chapter 8

R
owan’s initial urge to scoff at Finn’s strange and sudden attack of nerves vanished at his words. Instead, all she could picture was his body, twisted at an unnatural angle and bleeding over the Warringtons’ back porch, where she stared down from the roof.

“You want to run that by me again?”

“You heard me.”

“That’s the only other time you’ve had a bad feeling on a job?”

“Deep-in-the-gut bad? Yes.”

And what in the hell was she supposed to do with that?

“The British Museum is spearheading this. One of the most respected entities in the world. You really think they’re going to pull a fast one?”

“I think there are players involved we can’t begin to understand. But even if I’m wrong about all that, can you honestly sit there and tell me you don’t feel anything at all strange about what we know so far?”

“You’re really bugged about the curse?”

“Not a curse in and of itself, but the fact that someone’s using it as a distraction.”

Rowan knew Finn had a point. What had been effective in the early days of archaeology—or in endless adventure movies—was in reality fairly impractical. Because of the sheer number of people involved in the dig, from crew to press to a sizable security staff, generating creepy, curselike environs would be nearly impossible. Further, since each week’s discovered artifacts would be airlifted out of there and into labs, it made it harder to use one specific artifact to generate problems.

The transparency of technology made subterfuge a much more subtle game in this day and age—her brother Campbell understood that better than most—and preying on people’s fears of the unknown was a difficult proposition.

“So we prepare with that in mind. From the very first meeting, you told me this trip wasn’t without its challenges or its dangers. And I accepted that.”

“And if the dangers aren’t what we thought they were?”

“Then we make sure our escape plan is airtight.”

He hesitated and she thought he was about to argue, but instead, he lifted a hand to her face. She felt the warmth of his palm where it cupped her cheek. The lightly callused tips of his fingers where he brushed a thumb over her lips.

A rush of heat and something very much like yearning flooded her body at his intimate touch.

“Does anything frighten you?”

“Of course not.” She swallowed hard on the lie before reconsidering her words. “Yes, of course, I’m frightened. By a lot of things. But that fear can’t stop me from doing what needs to be done. From doing the things that are hard.”

“Is this some sort of youngest-child thing?”

She smiled, the exquisite torture of his touch on her lower lip only exacerbated when the movement of her lips dragged the pad of his thumb over the sensitized flesh. “According to my family, it’s a Rowan thing, plain and simple.”

He ran his thumb once more over her flesh, and she nearly gave in to the urge to move closer and press her lips to his, ending the madness. And then his gaze shifted and grew thoughtful before he dropped his hand.

“I’m sorry. For not telling you who I was from the beginning. And for letting you think I’d died that night.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Or find a way to tell me?”

After she’d gotten over the initial shock of knowing he was alive, the fact he’d remained quiet for so many years was the real question left behind. Why hadn’t he found her? Or given her some sense—even anonymously—that he’d survived.

“I couldn’t put you in danger like that. Those weren’t ordinary thieves that night.”

“Who do you think they were?”

“Best I’ve been able to discover, they’re part of a bigger ring of criminals. Something was going on in the Warrington house that night, and you and I happened into the middle of it.”

“How’d you come to be there?”

It wasn’t something she’d understood that night, but in the years that followed, when she’d dissected each and every moment of that evening, Rowan had come to wonder about his presence in her friend’s house.

“My father was a less-than-respectable businessman.”

“He’s how you got into theft?”

“Yep. And I went on to exceed every expectation he had for me.” Finn turned to stare out over the expanse of the park, memories stamped on his face like a mask.

She was more fascinated to hear his tale than she thought possible, but waited until he was ready to continue his explanation of his past.

“My father was never a rich man, but after my mother died, we moved from Dublin to London. He had a cousin here who suggested he could get better work than he’d had back home.”

“How old were you?”

“Five or six.”

She wanted to ask how he’d handled the loss of a parent but sensed it was a big step for him to share the story of his father. Pushing too hard might have the opposite effect of getting him to open up, so she offered up a light tease instead. “Hence the more British-than-Irish accent you put to such good use.”

The tease had her desired effect when a smile crossed his face before he continued, “Something like that.”

He took a deep breath before returning to the story of his father. “Patrick Gallagher wasn’t a bad man. Still isn’t. But he’s never been known for his smart choices. And the move to London only put more choices in his path.”

“You lived with the cousin?”

“Off and on, depending on how well the old man was running. Turns out his cousin did some thug work for a local dealer. Small jobs, running numbers and picking up payoffs from local businesses. My father started there but when he demonstrated his quick fingers, he was put into service doing other things.”

“He took the work, even though you were so young?”

She didn’t think the question held judgment, but saw the way Finn’s mouth tightened all the same. “It paid better than anything else he could have gotten, so yeah, he took the job.”

“And you?”

“I was the anomaly of the neighborhood.” He must have seen the question on her face because he added, “I loved school and I developed an ability to get in and out of a surprising number of scrapes.”

“Because you’re just that good?”

The smile was back, but it was what she saw reflected in the depths of his eyes that really grabbed her. A wisdom beyond his years. “Because I’m good and I listen. It’s a powerful combination. You’d be amazed how many people forget just how important that second part is.”

Rowan understood Finn’s comment, her own experiences only reinforcing his point. People were so focused on their end goal they frequently stopped listening and paying attention to the clues that were often littered around them. From casual comments to the increasing electronic footprint individuals left in social media, clues were everywhere. She knew better than most that keeping a sense of the world around you could pay dividends.

And it had for her several times over.

Human beings gave away an inordinate amount of information about themselves day in and day out, so long as you were willing to listen.

“When did you do your first job for your father?”

“I’d been running a few cons on my own. Small things. Funny how no one expects the school’s honor student to be the same one nicking stuff from lockers or sneaking into the school cafeteria’s coffers.”

“And then it got bigger?”

“More independent. I saw the people my old man was in with and I had no interest in following suit. I like being my own boss.”

Rowan knew his choices, misguided as they were, were an indicator of the man who sat before her. “Did it bother you? The morality of it?”

“Sometimes, yes. More often than not, I’m sad to say, it was no. You?”

“All the time.”

“Then why’d you do it?”

The urge to shrink away from the scrutiny was strong, but Rowan refused to hide from it. “I couldn’t not do it.”

* * *

I couldn’t not do it.

Her words echoed in the warm, breezy air between them, and despite the vivid blue skies above, Finn felt a chill settle in his bones. “Why?”

“It was a whim at first. About six weeks after my parents died. A Friday afternoon near the end of the school day. I was new and didn’t know many people. I was standing at my locker packing to go home. The girl next to me had hers open but she was paying no attention because she was flirting with the boy she liked. And there was a fresh pack of gum on the small shelf where she stored her books.”

“And you took it?”

“I took it. And for the first time since my grandmother woke me up out of a sound sleep to let me know my parents were killed, I felt something. It wasn’t much. A momentary triumph that had nearly faded by the time I got home, but it was something.”

“How’d they die?”

“A car accident on their twentieth-anniversary trip. They’d gone to spend the week in the Welsh countryside. It’s why we were at my grandparents’ here in London.”

His gut twisted at the thought of her loss. It was hard to lose anyone, but for it to be so sudden...

So absolute...

How did you recover from that? And as he imagined the small pack of gum, he realized that you didn’t recover from that. You simply marched on, day after day, finding solace where you could.

“And after the gum?”

“I graduated to a variety of items at school. A pair of gloves. A new wallet in an open purse. Even a beaker from chemistry class. It was more opportunistic than planned.”

“How’d you go from nicking odds and ends to breaking and entering?”

“How does anyone feed an addiction? They escalate their behavior, growing more and more reckless in search of the high to be gained.”

Although he’d never equated the two, Finn had to admit Rowan’s description of her slide into theft had a surprising correlation to addiction. The increasingly poor choices coupled with increasing risk. “Without the risk, there is no reward.”

“Pretty much. And then one day I was visiting my friend Bethany and I saw my shot at a big score. She showed off the Victoria bracelet and I was enamored. If I could only have it. Possess it. A score like that would fill the empty places. It had to.”

“Is that why you didn’t turn back after getting shot at from the street?”

“Yep. I was all set to leave. I was hiding on the roof next to the chimney and I was simply waiting it out until I could crawl down again. And then, as the night grew quiet once more, I thought better of it. The good old ‘Why not? I can stop tomorrow’ that every addict tells themselves with fierce commitment to the idea.”

The events of that night had never been far from his thoughts, but her story brought them crashing back in vivid clarity. The moment when he realized someone had beaten him to the score. The even bigger moment when he realized the other thief was just a child.

He hadn’t been far out of the schoolroom himself, but the sight of a teenager with her hand in the safe in the Warringtons’ bedroom closet had thrown him for a loop.

Even now, twelve years later, he could smell the light scent of her as they stood hidden behind the curtains. He could also taste the raw fear that coated his tongue with iron as the thugs casing the house had entered the room.

Could he keep her safe?

And would they get out of the house undetected?

With the exception of that night, every job he’d ever worked he worked alone.

“Why were you there that night?”

Rowan’s questions pulled him from his thoughts. “At the house?”

“Yes. That’s the one thing I’ve never fully understood. There were a hell of a lot of us after the same thing that night. How’d it come to be?”

“The Victoria bracelet was a hot topic of conversation after it came on the market. Warrington purchased it from a less-than-reputable dealer, and I just kept tabs on the house and knew when they were going away. And you?”

“It really was all Bethany. I’d never have known about it if it weren’t for her showing it to me. Girls do love to talk about pretty things, and Bethany was no exception.”

“There were no girls in the circles I ran in, and plenty of men talked about that pretty thing, too.”

“What about the others? The other thugs who set upon us that night?”

Finn shrugged, even as a small spark of electricity lit up the back of his neck. “I always assumed they found out same as I did.”

“What if you assumed wrong?”

* * *

Finn paced his study, the view of London from his window awe-inspiring. When he’d made the decision to move his business into the Shard, he’d purchased an apartment in the building, as well. Aside from the practicality of being so close to the office, the views were unparalleled.

Rare.

And the purview of a privileged few.

He’d come a long way and he never wanted to forget it. He had wealth and power and he had both because he’d worked his tail off. What he’d done before—acts that he’d felt minimal remorse for at the time—had become a mental albatross around his neck as he worked to change his decisions and make a better life for himself.

The scar that ran just under his rib cage and the occasional twinge of that flesh were a constant reminder of what he almost lost to youthful vanity and reckless immorality.

Thankfully, he’d long since retired the vanity.

Despite the inevitable consequences of growing up, he’d never been able to give up the spoils of that evening. Youthful folly or something to remember the evening by, he didn’t know, and after a while it no longer mattered. He unlocked the safe in his study and pulled out the Victoria bracelet to once again look upon its beauty. The light caught the gold, and the rubies that ran the length of the thick cuff winked in the fading light that streamed into the room.

Why had he kept it?

At first, it had been a matter of self-preservation. Putting the piece out on the black market would lead the thugs he’d run from straight to his door. But over time and with his connections...

He could have moved the piece years ago, yet he’d hung on to it.

The piece changed his life—literally and figuratively.

A man wanted to hang on to that. To remember the effect of something so profound. He could divide his life, before and after the possession of the Victoria bracelet.