Thief of Hearts (Elders and Welders Chronicles Book 3) (4 page)

BOOK: Thief of Hearts (Elders and Welders Chronicles Book 3)
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Both Bedouins and mercenaries stirred uneasily when they too noticed her approach. Neither of the opposing factions knew what to make of her—a young woman in leather breeches and Hessian boots who piloted a dirigible for a living. But she was used to that. Men tended to underestimate her because of her gender and age, and she was more than happy to let them.

“Thought I told you to wait onboard, woman,” Janus sneered.

She smiled her most serene smile, refusing to let him cow her. It wasn’t too difficult to do, since he was such an unmitigated ass. She reckoned his threats over the past few days were quite heartfelt, but it was just
so hard
to take the lout seriously.

She took the Bedouins’ flashing steel blades quite seriously indeed, however. There seemed to be a lot of them. Too many.

She felt the Bedouin leader’s eyes, obscured as they were underneath those tinted spectacles, studying her as if she were some insect under one of Simon’s microscopes. A cold chill washed down her spine, despite the desert heat. This man—tall, austere, pale for a Bedouin, but so obviously hewn from battle—made Harlan Janus look like a chubby little kitten in comparison.

She told herself to remain calm, though. She couldn’t afford to show any weakness in front of this nest of vipers.

“I was feeling lonely,” she said with a casual shrug. “And may I remind you of your deadline, Janus? Didn’t you say you had to make it back to Cairo by Friday? That’s in two days. The
Amun Ra
is fast, but not that fast.”

Well, it was when it wanted to be, even with a faulty sun panel. But she wasn’t about to tell Janus that. He coveted her ship enough as it was.

“I know what I said. We’ll be leaving by the morning,” Janus declared, shooting daggers in the sheikh’s direction with his eyes.

Omar inched his way closer to Hex’s side. “The sheikh claims this is a holy site, Miss Hex,” he said in an undertone for her ears only, gesturing nervously toward the petrified dune. “He says that Allah has wrought a miracle and that no infidel should disturb it.”

She glanced toward the sheikh, who continued to regard her with far too much interest, and tried not to roll her eyes. It was her hair that had the man so fascinated, she decided. That was usually the case. It was even brighter than her father’s and was somewhat of a novelty in this part of the world. It attracted a lot of attention, which was of course undesirable in her line of work. But her last attempt at remedying her problem had left her with green hair.
Not
a flattering look.

She’d thus developed a fondness for hats, all of which she’d left back in Cairo in her haste to accommodate Janus before he’d decided to start shooting people.

“And have you told him why we’re here, then?” she asked.

Omar nodded jerkily. “He says the treasure of the ancient gods remains where it is. He is quite insistent on that, Miss Hex.”

“I’ll bet he is,” Hex said, scrutinizing the sheikh just as closely as he was scrutinizing her. It was only fair she returned the favor. She had dealt with a few Bedouin traders herself in the past few years, and though they were steeped in a fair amount of tradition and superstition, they were some of the canniest businessmen she’d ever met.

The Bedouins may have stopped last night out of curiosity, but she was quite certain they weren’t staying to protect any holy site. The sheikh had no doubt swiftly deduced why a dirigible carrying a load of gun-toting ruffians was out in the remote reaches of the Sahara.

She turned to Janus. “If I were you, I would negotiate with him. He wants a cut.”

Janus’s sunburnt face scrunched up in a most unattractive manner. “I ain’t giving him nothin’.”

“Fine. It’s your funeral,” she said.

He grabbed her arm hard enough to bruise, and she heard her father bluster half-heartedly in protest at the rough treatment. A fat lot of good
that
did.

“If it is, I’m taking your old man with me,” Janus spat. “I may have to keep you alive to pilot that death trap—”

“Hey!” she cried. No one insulted the
Amun Ra
. Except her.

“But there’s nothing to keep me from gutting your father, other than your continued cooperation, woman.”

“My
name
is Miss Bartholomew, you pig,” she said in her calmest voice. “And you’ll have my cooperation. But you’re going to start a war with these people if you’re not careful,” she said, pointing toward the rather large gathering of hostile nomads surrounding them, “and you’re going to lose. Badly.”

“Yeah, but we’ll be taking a fair number with us,” he retorted, patting the two guns he had holstered at his hips.

Dear God, he
was
a cretin. “Tell me you aren’t that stupid, Janus,” she chided.

He scowled down at her. “I can’t go back to Cairo without that dosh,” he hissed, jerking his thumb in the direction of the hidden tomb. “I’d be as good as dead to my employers. They want what’s in that tomb. And even if I cut a deal, who’s to say these savages won’t turn on us the minute our backs are turned?”

She nearly snorted. Janus thought the
Bedouins
were the savages? Really?

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” she muttered. “That’s exactly what you plan to do to them.”

He shrugged, unaffected by this revelation of his hypocrisy. “So what should I do, since you’re so bloody smart, then?”

She gave him her drollest look. “You are asking
my
advice? Are you serious, Janus? Solve your own damn problems. I’m just here to make sure you don’t get my father killed.”

Without waiting for his response, she pushed past him in the direction of Hubert, who was looking at her with an expression of fatherly concern that never failed to piss her off. The big old liar. If he were so concerned for her, he’d never have brought his troubles to her doorstep in the first place, expecting her to sort them out.

She rued the day she’d ever allowed him back into her and Helen’s lives. At the time, however, she’d been in no state to make intelligent choices. She’d just wanted out of Baltimore and away from all the mistakes she’d made there as quickly as possible.

“Hex…” he whispered as Janus and the sheikh resumed their strained negotiations. She noticed that Janus was taking her advice after all, offering the Bedouin leader a cut of the plunder.

The sheikh, just as she had suspected, was quick to change his tune now that Janus had caught on to the game, though she didn’t at all like the way the sheikh kept his eyes on her the entire time. She just hoped Janus didn’t include
her
in any deal he made. She was not for sale.

She glared at her father. “Don’t start,” she muttered.

Hubert, as usual, didn’t listen. “I just wanted to say thank you...”

Unbelievable.
“I don’t want your thanks. Or your apologies.” Not that he’d offered any of
those
yet. “You didn’t even ask before you volunteered my services.”

“That’s because…”

“…you knew I wouldn’t have agreed? You’re damn right I wouldn’t have,” she hissed. “I told you to stay away from me, and you drag me into
this
.”

Hubert’s brow creased, as if
she
were the one being unreasonable. “Don’t worry, my dear,” he whispered. “Things will work out. Trust me. As soon as we have the treasure aboard the
Amun Ra
…”

She snorted. Of course.
Of course
he had put her through two days of hell because he was hatching some scheme. Yet again.

“Trust you? Trust
you
?” she hissed. “I
knew
you were up to something. It would be too easy for you to just pay off your debt. You think you’re going to double-cross Janus, don’t you? And use my ship to do it?”

He gave her that pleading look she’d never been able to resist as a young girl. She
hated
that look. “The entrance to the burial chamber is completely undisturbed,” he gushed. “Sealed tight. Omar’s seen it with his own eyes. No one has been inside in
four thousand years
. Think of it, my dear! If it’s anything like what Petrie has been finding down south, we’ll be set for life.”

She scowled in the direction of the interpreter, who pretended to not see her. And to think she’d felt sorry for the little weasel. Innocent bystander her ass.

“So Omar is in on whatever foolish con you’re trying to run. I should have known.”

“All we have to do is wait for the right moment, my dear, once the treasure is aboard.”

There were so many things wrong with his plan—foremost among them not even knowing exactly what was in the tomb—that it was hard to know how to argue against it. Not that she was going to argue at all, for that would only encourage him.

“You assume that I’ll fall in line with your schemes, but I’m not a little girl anymore.”

Hubert’s eyes dropped ever so briefly down to her gloved hands, clenched angrily at her sides, and some shadow—perhaps guilt, perhaps mere frustration—passed over his expression. But it was gone in the blink of an eye, too quickly for it to count at all.

“My only goal is to get the four of us back to Cairo,” she growled. “
Alive
. But if you fail to follow my orders when I give them, I
will
leave you to your fate. My duty to you has its limits. I’m not dying for you, father, and neither is Simon.”

“But…”

“Do you not believe me?” she cut in. She’d be damned if she listened to his wheedling for a second longer.

Now he was definitely frustrated. He glared at her petulantly. “I believe you,” he said in a low rumble, something hard and just a bit cruel glinting deep in his eyes.

Oh, she knew that look well too—the look of the true Hubert, hidden behind all of that Scotch charm—and she knew that she was going to have to watch her back even more diligently. Hubert was going to attempt to have his way come hell or high water, even if it meant sacrificing her. He’d done it before, and he’d damn well do it again.

Well, he’d find out the hard way just exactly how far she was willing to go if he decided she was expendable. Hubert was always finding things out the hard way, as his greed inevitably trumped his foresight. It was a testament to his sheer pigheadedness that he was still alive at all.

She glanced longingly toward the
Amun Ra
, its sleek, gleaming mahogany hull hovering above the shimmering desert sands, suspended by three colossal, billowing thermal ballonets the same soft color as the sky.

For a moment, she was tempted to reconsider Simon’s advice. Even with one of the sun panels down, she and Simon could make a clean break from all of this and run far enough away that Janus could never catch them. She really didn’t owe her father anything, did she? Especially when she knew all too well he was going to stab her in the back the first opportunity he had.

Only the thought of Helen kept her rooted to the desert floor. If she abandoned her father, she’d never be able to look her little sister in the eye again.
Damn it
. But if thinking of Helen had worked to rouse
her
conscience, it might do the same for her father’s. He, after all, actually loved Helen—or so he was fond of reminding her.

“Just remember Helen,” she murmured to him. “Remember she’d not want you to endanger yourself.
Or
me.”

That petulant look returned, but the hard edge in his eyes was blunted at the mention of his favorite daughter. He huffed out a breath as if greatly put-upon. “I will be careful. And careful of you. How could you doubt it?”

She barely restrained her eye roll. She
doubted
everything that came out of that mendacious mouth of his. It didn’t escape her notice that he’d not actually promised to set aside his scheming against Janus, but his half-hearted assurances would have to be enough.

For now.

 

JANUS AND THE
sheikh finally reached some sort of agreement and mustered their respective troops in the direction of the dunes, where crates hauled from the ship—some filled with tomb-raiding paraphernalia, some empty and ready to be packed full of plunder—sat waiting to be put to use. This was not Janus’s first job pillaging priceless historical artifacts from their less-than-eternal resting places, so his men got straight down to business, prying open the crates with crowbars and rummaging around for their tools.

An equal number of the sheikh’s men dismounted their horses to join in the effort, arming themselves with shovels, picks, steam torches, and rope. Omar finally led the party to a narrow crevice, hidden behind a large sandstone rock at the base of the inexplicably petrified dune.

In the end, after another interminable round of arguing, it was decided that two of the sheikh’s men and two of Janus’s men would accompany Janus, Omar, and Hubert on the first foray into the dark passageway.

Needless to say, by the time this last negotiation was worked out, the sun was at its zenith in the sky and Hex was dying of boredom.

BOOK: Thief of Hearts (Elders and Welders Chronicles Book 3)
2.64Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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