Night Of No Return

Professionally, they were making progress. Personally, they were stuck in a dance where he called the steps—and he was making some very mixed moves. He seemed interested in her, giving her those special smiles, sitting with her at meals, talking. He had a way of getting her to talk about herself, but he didn’t say that much about himself.

And he didn’t do anything. Like try to get her alone. Or let her get him alone.

Or kiss her. Her mind veered to that thought and got stuck. She wondered what his kiss would be like. Not gentle, she thought, though she wasn’t sure why. He acted perfectly civilized.

Yet he didn’t look civilized. Maybe it was those hard, sharp cheekbones, maybe the odd color of his eyes, but she had the sense that there was something wild about him. Power, she decided, dragging a brush through her hair. He felt like leashed power.

He came from money, she knew. Not on any grand scale, but his parents had private incomes, long pedigrees and two permanent homes, one in Cairo and one in New England. Perhaps she was simply picking up on the confidence that came from growing up wealthy and assured of his place in the world.

It was a type of confidence she’d never know. But real self-worth came from actions, not heritage, she assured herself as she fastened a band at the end of her braid. She knew she could take care of herself, that she wasn’t dependent on the whim of a man or the grinding, inadequate charity of the system. That was what counted.

Whatever the basis for the impression Alex gave of being a wild thing that had somehow wandered into camp, he behaved well enough. In fact, he was so darned pleasant and polite she couldn’t tell if he shared any of the feelings that assaulted her around him—shivery, excited feelings that were part physical need, part something else. Maybe imagination. Heaven knew she had plenty of that.

She sat on the cot to tug on her socks. She picked up a pair of athletic shoes and thunked the heels against the ground to dislodge any creepy crawlies that might have curled up inside for a snooze overnight.

It was entirely possible that she’d fantasized about him so much before he showed up that she now imagined some sort of connection between them that didn’t really exist. She was a romantic. Nora admitted that, made no bones about it. And she’d been waiting a long time for the one man, the special man, to come along. The man she could give her heart and her body to.

Maybe she had persuaded herself there was something special about Alex just because she wanted him so badly.

In the dune-rippled Negev desert, dawn is a sudden arrival. Not so in the broken land of the southern Sinai. Although the tumbled hills Alex walked now were every bit as much a desert as the one that had soaked up his blood last month, here dawn seeped in more gradually, announcing itself in graying skies before the sun peeked over the crags that had hidden its first appearance at the rim of the world.

The dim light now blending night into day told Alex he’d stayed out too long and would have to hurry to get back to camp before he was missed.

Distances and directions were hard to gauge in such rough country. He had a map, of course. It had been built by combining the twenty-first century digital wizardry of computers and satellite and reconnaissance photographs with the only detailed on-ground survey of the Sinai’s interior in existence—the maps drawn by Professor Edward Henry Potter of the British Ordnance Survey Expedition to the Sinai in 1868.

Alex knew that the terrorist base was close to the dig. He knew it was underground. That much he’d managed to learn before someone took exception to his questions and left him for dead in the Negev. But that was all he knew. Using the map, he’d selected the likeliest locations and had begun a methodical search, heading out in a different direction every night once the moon was up.

He hadn’t found the base, but last night he’d found evidence that someone had been camped on a bluff overlooking the camp. A watcher, he thought, which might mean that El Hawy didn’t have anyone planted with Nora’s crew, after all.

Alex wasn’t depending entirely on his own wanderings to find the base. He’d left word in Feiron Oasis for a man he’d worked with before to come here to the dig. Farid Ibn Kareem was a smuggler, a businessman, a thief—a canny scoundrel with an unrivaled information network, and good reason to hate El Hawy.

In the meantime, Alex would search, and he would keep track of the comings and goings of the others at the dig. Just in case. Alex hoped there was a plant. He or she would have to make contact with El Hawy at some point. Following one of the terrorists to their base would be the easiest way to locate it.

He had more than one reason now to find the base quickly.

Apparently, the mild discouragement of petty thefts was no longer enough. The damaged ladder was meant to cause an accident—an accident that, added to the other misfortunes, might cause the nosy foreigners to pack up and leave. It wouldn’t matter to the terrorists if someone died or was badly hurt—not if it accomplished their goal.

It hadn’t, of course. Nora had no intention of leaving her tunnel unexcavated.

Alex paused at the crest of a ridge, scowling at the burning sliver of sun nudging itself above a knobby hill to the west. He was not in a good mood.

He should have been. Though he hadn’t found the base, he was in a good position to search for it. With the moon nearly full, he had had decent light for his search, and his biggest problem had been solved the day he arrived. The vandalized ladder had given him a reason to pitch his tent in the quarry. He could come and go at night without anyone knowing.

From a professional standpoint, the sabotage had been a stroke of good luck. From a personal standpoint… He had no business having a personal standpoint.

He paused. That narrow slice of sun told him he’d better hurry. He had been following one of the smaller wadis, using it as a guide to get back to the quarry, but moving alongside it rather than at the bottom. He briefly considered moving to the bottom of the wadi, where he could make much better time, but the idea made the nape of his neck prickle. This particular wadi was too narrow and too exposed. A perfect place for an ambush.

He continued along the top of the wadi, his thoughts much darker than the gradually brightening air around him.

Nora was in danger. She didn’t realize that there were people who didn’t want her here routinely used mutilation or death to express their opinions. The thefts that worried Nora had reassured Alex. They had indicated that El Hawy hadn’t wanted to draw attention with anything as overt as murder.

But the open act of sabotage was a warning. The terrorists were getting nervous. The arms were on their way, and the buyer of those arms—the traitor named Simon—would be arriving once they did. El Hawy didn’t want outsiders nearby.

It was not healthy to be camped near a bunch of nervous terrorists.

The worst of it was that he couldn’t tell Nora she was in danger. He couldn’t even mention the watcher, much less tell her what was going on. He couldn’t afford for her to become too frightened or discouraged, because he needed her to continue to work the dig. He had to have a reason to be here, where few outsiders came.

Tourists didn’t venture into the Sinai’s interior. Religious pilgrims visited Mount Sinai and St. Catherine’s Monastery, while pleasure seekers stayed at resorts scattered along the coasts. Foreigners weren’t even allowed to leave the few main roads without special permits.

No, he couldn’t say anything, couldn’t even—

Alex’s thoughts stopped as suddenly as his body. He froze, head up, listening. Footfalls, coming this way down the wadi. Fast.

He moved quickly behind a boulder that overhung the dry waterbed. A perfect spot for an ambush, yes. Which was fine—as long as he was doing the ambushing.

Nora had finally managed to run her mind blank, free of all the problems that had beset the dig—and free of the man who kept invading her dreams. Her whole being was focused on the challenge and exhilaration of moving swiftly over rough terrain, in spite of the aches that still plagued her from her fall.

She was breathing hard and sweating lightly. A tight curve loomed ahead where the wadi narrowed drastically, banked by a huge boulder on one side and crumbling rock on the other.

The ground was littered with gravel and loose stones. She slowed, not wanting the complication of a turned ankle.

Something hit the ground, hard, right behind her.

She stopped dead.

A hard voice demanded, “Why the hell didn’t you keep running?”

She spun around.

Alex. He stood four feet from her. There was no mistaking him now for civilized. From the savage readiness of his stance to the beard stubble on his cheeks to the glittering anger in his eyes, he was everything wild and unpredictable.

Her hand went to her throat. “Good grief! Where did you come from?”

“You’re a fool, you know. I could have slit your throat before you turned around. You would have been dead before you hit the ground.”

Chapter 4

Nora took a step back, fear balling up in her stomach. “You need a new line, Alex. That one won’t impress many women.”

“You think I’m trying to impress you?” He closed the distance between them, stopping close to her. Too close. “That’s as stupid as coming out here alone.”

She licked suddenly dry lips. “I’ve been out here alone almost every morning ever since we set up camp. So far, you’re the only thing that has happened to worry me.”

His mouth twisted in what looked more like a threat than a smile. “At least you’ve got the sense to be worried now.”

Should she try to get away? Somehow, in spite of the way he was acting, she couldn’t believe Alex meant to hurt her. But fools seldom recognized their folly while they were busy committing it, did they? “What are you doing out here, anyway? Did you follow me?”

He hesitated. “I was following someone, but not you. I must have lost him.”

“Did someone come messing around the quarry? And you took off after him!” Anger licked in, freeing her from the fear. “And you’ve got the gall to call me stupid! I knew I shouldn’t have let you camp away from the rest of us, but I didn’t realize you’d turn into a one-man vigilante squad!”

“I wasn’t in any danger.”

“But I am?” She shook her head, disgusted. “You went chasing after someone who is either a thief or a vandal or both. I’m out here by myself, yes, but I’m no threat to anyone.”

“You could be, if you see something you’re not supposed to see. The Sinai is a major drug smuggling route.”

And he had been nearly killed—by bandits, maybe, as she’d first guessed. Or maybe by drug smugglers. That might explain his odd behavior. “Is that what happened to you?” she asked more quietly. “Did you see something you weren’t supposed to?”

He turned away abruptly and started down the wadi, heading back the way she’d just come. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

Nora fell into step beside him. She supposed that talking about whatever he’d seen might be dangerous. The authorities wouldn’t want their investigation jeopardized, either. “Look, I appreciate your concern, even if I don’t like the way you went about expressing it. But most smugglers aren’t as bloody-minded as the ones who stabbed you.” A grin flickered. “Take Mahmoud, for example.”

He frowned. “Your driver? You think he’s connected to smuggling?”

“Probably. This odd quirk he has about driving at night—he claims he doesn’t like the heat, but I suspect it’s habit. He’s used to driving after dark to avoid patrols. Smuggling is an old, honored tradition among many of the Bedouin, you know. They don’t consider it wrong.”

“It’s a tradition that has become tainted by the drug trade.”

She sighed. “I suppose so. So many of their ways have been changed, and often not for the better, by what passes for modernization. But that’s another subject.” She reached out to stop him, laying a hand on his arm.

He was warm to the touch. And hard. She pulled her hand back quickly, because her blasted heart started thumping again. “Alex, I’m not claiming that I’m perfectly safe, but I’m probably safer on my dawn runs here than a lot of joggers are in big cities. I do take precautions.”

“Precautions.” One lifted eyebrow loaded the word with a wealth of skepticism. “Such as—?”

“Why do you think I always run in the same place at the same time?”

“Do you?”

“Yes. If I’m predictable, I’m less likely to surprise someone who wouldn’t appreciate it. So I run at the same time, along the same route, every day. I made sure Mahmoud knows this, just in case, and I’ve mentioned it to people in Feiron Oasis, too.”

Grudgingly he nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. But…” His glance slid down her body, then back up to her face. “Let’s keep moving. You could use some cool-down time.”

Nora bit her lip. She ought to ignore him and finish her run.

She went with Alex instead. “We’ve talked about my safety. Now let’s talk about yours.”

“My safety isn’t your concern.”

“Not personally, no. But professionally—”

“Let’s not pretend, Nora. You and I will never have a truly professional relationship.” He said that coolly, as if he were mentioning the weather. “There’s too much heat between us.”

That messed up her breathing, even as it infuriated her. She got both breath and temper under control after a moment. “Still, the last time I checked, I was in charge of the dig. You may only be here temporarily, but while you are here you are under my authority.”

“You’re in charge of the dig, yes. You’re not in charge of me.”

“You’re quibbling. I assume you went chasing off after this intruder you spotted because of the vandalism at the site, which makes your actions my business. I don’t want you doing such a foolish thing again. Is that clear?”

“We don’t always get what we want, though, do we? I don’t want you taking these blasted solo runs of yours.”

She wanted to kick something. Maybe him. “You sound like Tim. He’s always nagging me to give up my runs, but it’s terrorists he’s got on the brain, not smugglers.”

A pause. “Terrorists?”

“Ridiculous, isn’t it? I’ve tried to tell him that terrorists are interested in headlines—big, splashy acts that will draw attention to them and their cause. Pestering a handful of archaeologists in the middle of the Sinai isn’t going to do that.”

“Americans are targeted for kidnapping sometimes.”

Good grief. He sounded as paranoid on the subject as Tim was. “What good would it do anyone to grab me? I’m not connected to the government or to any big, rich corporation that might pay to get me back. And though there’s always tension in this area, there isn’t anything going on right now that has people especially stirred up against the U.S.” She shook her head. “They’d have to be pretty stupid to waste time on me.”

“There’s no rule that says terrorists have to be smart.”

“Oh, come on. Do you really think there’s a danger of some under-bright terrorists snatching me on my morning run?”

“Are you willing to bet your life that there isn’t?”

She thought about it. “There are risks in everything,” she said at last. “I’m from Houston originally. Have you ever seen the traffic there? People risk their lives on the way to work every day, taking the chance that they won’t become a statistic, the victim of road rage or another driver’s inattention. Or their own.”

“That’s not risk taking. It’s habit, coupled with the comforting conviction that the bad stuff only happens to other people.”

She nodded. “Partly. But I think people do automatically take risks when we feel the outcome is important—whether that outcome is a good job, a new house, or time alone in the desert. I’m not going to give up my morning runs unless I can see that the risks outweigh the benefits.”

“I take it I haven’t persuaded you of that.”

“No.”

The silence that fell between them then wasn’t entirely comfortable. In spite of her confident words, Nora had to wonder if she was being foolish. Ibrahim had included a professional bio of Alex with the letter he’d sent her. Not only had Alex Bok spent large parts of his childhood in this region, he’d spent a fair portion of his adult life here, too, on various digs. He was much more familiar with the area than she was.

She glanced at him. According to Myrna, he was a great deal more familiar with other things than she was, as well.

Sex. Any woman would think about that around a man like Alex. It wasn’t any pleasant, pastel version of romance he conjured up, either, but the raw, blunt side of passion. Tangled sheets and straining bodies. Sweat and need and urgency.

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