Undiscovered (Treasure Hunter Security Book 1) (6 page)

“And this is Morgan Kincaid.”

Layne nodded at the woman and she returned the gesture. She was seated, cleaning a hand gun on the table in front of her. From her moves, it looked like she’d done it many times before. The woman looked like she had tough and badass down to a fine art.

“Well, I welcome all the help you’re bringing to keep my dig safe,” she said.

Declan shifted. “That’s not what you told me. You started bitching about us getting in your way.”

“That was because you were being a pain. Issuing orders and getting all bossy.”

Declan’s gray eyes darkened and Layne heard Morgan snort.

“She’s already got your number, boss man,” Morgan said.

Declan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, everyone strap in. We’re about to take off.”

Layne settled in her seat. Before she could do anything, Declan dropped down beside her and reached over and fastened her belt.

Even though they’d been pressed together already once before, this time, she was able to get the scent of him. Man with a hint of perspiration. Something told her Declan Ward didn’t bother with fancy colognes. Warmth poured off his hard chest.

His fingers brushed her belly and she felt a tingle of heat. She sucked in a breath. His eyes whipped up to hers.

Shit
. He felt it, too.

“I can do my own belt up, Ward.”

“Your safety is my number-one concern now, Rush. Just doing my job.” He sat back in his chair.

Layne’s stomach did a funny flip-flop. She’d lost her parents when she’d been in her teens. Since then, she’d only had herself to depend on. No one else had ever worried about her safety.

He’s getting paid for it, Layne. Don’t get mushy
. She looked away from him and felt the rumble of the jet’s engines.

A man was not in her plan. Evan had made her swear off men for a few years. She had more to achieve in her career, more adventures to go on, and then she’d think about finding the right man.

Plus, she owed it to her parents to do the best she could in her career.

It was the two people who’d created her who’d stirred and fed her love of history. As an only child, she’d been a little spoiled, but not by things, instead by the unconditional love and attention from her parents. They’d been poor by most standards, but she’d never felt the lack growing up. Her father had spent every Sunday afternoon snuggled up with her watching history documentaries. Her mother had taken her to museums every month.

They’d been the best family, despite having cheap clothes and no fancy things, until the day it had all come crashing down.

She owed them. And Declan Ward, for all his dark, sexy looks, was not the right man for her.

***

“I hate the desert.”

Dec turned, his boots sinking into the golden sand of the dune, and eyed Logan as his friend joined him. “You’ve sure spent a hell of a lot of time in them, O’Connor.”

Logan crossed his arms. “Well, when I joined the
Navy
, I didn’t expect fucking sand all the fucking time. It itches, it’s scratchy, and it gets into places where you really don’t want it. Now that I’m not a SEAL anymore, I was hoping for no sand.”

“Quit your bitching,” Dec said. “You’re being paid far better than the Navy ever paid you.”

Logan let out a gusty sigh. “That is true.”

Dec let his gaze drift over the archeological dig. They were deep into the Western Desert, and the sun was bright and hot in the clear blue sky.

Local laborers were hard at work, moving buckets of sand and lowering ropes into the large hole in the ground. Many were dressed in the lightweight jellabiya robes. Here and there, it was easy to spot the archeologists and their student assistants. They were all wearing wide-brimmed hats, and light-colored trousers and shirts.

They’d been here a day, and Dec and his team had already finished their assessment and started implementing new security procedures. The security guards they were working with were local but trained by an international security company. Not the best Dec had worked with, but not the worst.

There’d been no sign of Anders, and Dec wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or worried.

The one person who wasn’t making it easy was a certain archeologist.

He spotted a slim figure talking earnestly with some of the local workers. Rush tended to speak with her hands, and she rivaled an admiral at giving out orders. She always seemed to be busy doing something. He suspected relaxing was not in her vocabulary.

They’d butted heads. A few times.

As he watched, she smiled at the workers, then moved out onto the wooden scaffold that lined one side of the deep excavation. She disappeared from view.

A light wind picked up, throwing sand Dec’s way. He saw Hale circle around some tents and head up the dune toward Dec and Logan.

“Hate the sand,” Hale grumbled.

Dec grunted and thrust a thumb at Logan. “Join Logan’s club.”

“Kind of jealous that your brother scored the other job,” Hale said.

Dec wasn’t so sure Callum would agree. “Cal’s in the jungle. You have sand, he has mosquitos.”

“I hate mosquitos,” Logan added.

“I think you’re both going soft on me.” Dec looked at Hale. “Safe all set up?”

The man nodded. “Yep. Left a few artifacts in the storage tent, but that gold dog and anything else valuable will go in the safe I have hidden in one of the personal tents.”

“Good work.” A rush of movement around the excavation made Dec focus back on the dig. He frowned, wondering what was going on.

“Dr. Rush is planning to bring up a stone statue. A big sucker,” Logan said. “She’s pretty excited about a big lump of rock.”

The workers were tossing ropes down into the hole.

“Better keep an eye on this.” Dec started down the hill. “Hale, check out the western side of the site and check in with the guards.”

“Got it.”

“Logan, check in with Morgan. I want to make sure we haven’t seen any signs of anyone trying to get close to this dig.”

Logan nodded. “On it.”

In an instant, Logan and Hale turned into the serious former soldiers they were.

Dec reached the excavation hole and saw the workers heaving back on the ropes. He could hear Rush yelling orders up from the bottom of the pit. He stayed to the side, scanning, making sure everything was okay.

Then he heard a
thwap
sound. Workers started shouting.

A rope had snapped.

The workers on the other rope were pulled toward the hole.

Dec touched his earpiece, sprinting forward. “Logan, we need another rope. Fast.”

Dec jumped over the scaffold railing, landing on the uppermost wooden platform. He saw the large statue of a man hanging at a precarious angle. Below, Rush was urging workers and archeologists to get out of the way.

Then he heard another sound.

A metallic ping.

The scaffold beneath his feet lurched away from the wall.

Shit
. The screws had given way and the scaffold was threatening to collapse.

He spread his feet, trying to balance on the wobbling structure. Below, he heard panicked cries. Workers stuck on the scaffold were trying to get down, making it rock even more.

“Dec!”

Logan’s and Morgan’s heads appeared above. Logan tossed a coiled rope down.

Dec grabbed the rope, moving it through his hands, getting a feel for the weight of it. He quickly made a loop at the end, then he leaned over, eyeing the dangling carving.

Then he saw Rush, right below the statue, helping workers down off the scaffold.

His jaw tightened, but he forced himself to judge the distance to the dangling artifact and compensate for the sway of the scaffold.

He tossed the rope.

The loop fell perfectly over the end of the statue. He pulled back, tightening the rope.

“Logan?”

“Here.”

Dec tossed the rope up. Logan grabbed it and yanked.

The statue leveled out and moved upward.

Dec swung onto the outside of the scaffold and quickly climbed down. He felt the structure tilt farther away from the wall. He moved faster.

It was going to come crashing down at any second.

He felt more screws let go, felt the wood giving way.

Dec leaped the last few feet to the ground, rolling once, then coming back up on his feet. He saw Rush and two workers still in the line of fire.

“Run!” he called out in Arabic. The workers scrambled back toward where the others were huddled by the far wall.

“The artifacts—” Rush’s face was pale, her eyes wide.

Dec ran like a football linebacker. He scooped Rush off her feet, hearing her muffled cry. He heard the groan of the structure falling behind them.

Then he swung her around in his arms and skidded toward the far wall like a baseball player into home base, keeping her tucked tight against his chest.

The scaffold slammed into the ground behind them, and a cloud of dust rose up.

He sat up and Rush did, too. She was coughing, waving her hand to clear the air.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” he bit out.

***

Layne coughed one more time, enjoying the feel of a hard, muscled chest pressed up against her.

Pity the muscles belonged to an awfully cranky, bossy man.

She straightened, pulling away from him. She’d been working on isolated digs her entire career. Not to mention the halls of academia. She was used to cranky men. She’d dealt with crankier.

“Well—”

“You have a damned artifact dangling precariously and it weighs a hell of a lot more than you, and a scaffold threatening to collapse, so you decided to stand right under it?”

She straightened at his cutting tone. “I was helping my people get to safety. I was trying to see if I could save any artifacts. My people, my dig, Declan.”

And Layne intended for the rest of this dig to go off without a hitch. She eyed the shattered remains of the scaffold. Her chest tightened. Well, no more hitches.

Declan pushed to his feet in one lithe flex of muscle.

Layne quickly stood, not wanting to have him towering over her.

Not that it helped. She was average height, and he was well north of six feet. Even with his khaki cargo trousers and shirt covered in dust, the man made an impact. She hated that she kept noticing that—the muscled body, the lean face, the intense gray eyes.

“You do not risk your life.” His face hardened. “My company was hired to take the risks. We take care of security, and the lives of the people on this dig.”

“I’m not going to sit around watching and wringing my hands like some medieval damsel.”

Declan thrust his hands on his hips. “Rush—”

Ugh
. She hated when he said her name in that tone. She turned away. “I need to check the statue.”

Firm fingers circled her arm and she felt his touch burning through her shirt.

“The scaffold is in pieces. You can’t get out yet.”

Dammit, he was right. “I need to check my team, as well.”

He eyed her for a second. “The statue made it out okay. Logan has it secured at the top.”

Relief punched through her and she forced herself to be polite. “Thank you.”

A brief smile flickered over Declan’s face. “That didn’t hurt too much, did it?”

She shook her arm free of his hold. “It stung a little.”

His smile widened, but when he touched his ear, she realized his team was contacting him.

Layne took the chance to head over to where her archeologists and grad students sat huddled with the local workers. “Everyone okay?”

There were nods and grumbles. She was damn grateful that no one was injured.

“Dr. Rush, we could have been killed. I am extremely upset this occurred, and want to know how you’ll ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

Layne rolled her eyes at the snippy voice. She turned and faced her senior archeologist, Dr. Aaron Stiller. Almost every day, she regretted choosing him as part of the team. She knew he had been hoping to land the job as head of this dig, and had been disappointed he’d lost out to her.

He’d been taking that disappointment out on her daily.

“Dr. Stiller, I will ensure this is investigated.”

Stiller was in his forties, tall and very thin, with a head that was rapidly losing its hair. The man sniffed. “All the work we’ve done down here is ruined.”

She turned and eyed their worksite. The carefully placed markers and ropes were all jumbled. She saw several pots had been smashed. She sighed. There was nothing of huge monetary value damaged, but it still hurt her heart a bit. Everything they dug up was a piece of history and that made it valuable to her.

“Rush?”

Declan’s voice made her turn.

He waved to a rope ladder that had been dropped into the excavation. It was what they’d used before the scaffold had been erected.

“Okay, everyone,” she said, clapping her hands. “Let’s get topside and take a break.”

She watched her team all head up the ladder.

Then she felt a hand touch her side. She gasped, grabbing the thick wrist.

“You’re bleeding.” Declan was frowning. He tugged at her shirt.

“Hey.” She slapped at his hands.

“There’s blood on your shirt. Let me see.”

“It’s nothing.” Now that he mentioned it, she felt a slight sting.

He tugged her shirt free from her cargo trousers and lifted the hem a few inches.

Layne huffed out a breath. She’d been looking after herself a very, very long time. She wasn’t used to anyone tending her wounds but herself. She felt the stroke of callused fingers on the skin of her belly and her breath rushed out.

“Scratch. Must have hit a rock.” Declan was looking down, completely focused on her injury.

Layne blinked, pushing back the strange and unwanted warmth running through her. “It’s nothing.”

“Here.” He pulled something from one of the million pockets on his cargo trousers. Then he pressed it to the scratch.

She blinked. It was a pink bandage with cartoon princesses on it. A reluctant laugh broke from her. “Why do you have kiddie bandages in your pocket?”

He grinned. “I get them for my guys. Logan hates them.”