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“I think the seat is adjustable, if you’re not comfortable?” she said.
“Ah, no worries.” He smoothed a palm along his left side. “An injury that is yet stiff, you see.”
“How’d it happen? Base jumping? Extreme running—what did you call it?”
“ Parkour. Running all over building tops and jumping at high speeds. You use the architectural landscape as your obstacle course. Very exciting. Good for the quads, glutes and delts. You should give it a try.”
“I just may.”
He tossed her an approving nod.
“But that was not how I came to this injury. It is of no importance. Up there, just around the corner, we’ll find the dig site. Why are you stopping, Annja?”
In the rearview mirror, the sight of the big black SUV that had barreled up on them put Annja to caution. The pistol jutting out the passenger’s side could not be ignored.
She couldn’t outrun the monster truck in her little beater. While her gut prayed it was merely mistaken identity, her intuition screamed that this vacation had suddenly taken a new yet familiar twist.
3
Annja stopped the car on the country road. The sun had set, but the sky still glowed yellow. The SUV’s headlights dimmed in the rearview mirror.
“For reasons that elude me, we’ve been followed,” Annja said.
Tilting a glance across to her passenger, she was taken aback to spy him nervously swipe a palm down his face.
What had she stepped into?
Certainly she had jumped into the adventure with little more than anticipation for a fun excursion. No parachute, that was for sure—parachutes were for wimps. Yet now that she had jumped, it had become apparent she should employ caution at all turns.
“Ascher, do you know the hulking, black-suited men who are currently getting out of an imposing SUV, tucking pistols into their inner pockets and marching toward us?”
The man’s sudden lack of conversation struck her to the core. Annja sucked in a heavy breath.
“Ascher, my background check on you didn’t turn up any jail time or criminal leanings.”
“You checked me out?” he asked, sounding offended.
“Obviously not well enough. What have you involved me in? Have you enemies who feel the need to keep tabs on your every move?”
“Every man gains an enemy or two in his lifetime, no?”
“No—”
A thud against the window alerted them both. Annja twisted in the driver’s seat to spy two palms pressed flat to her window. Ten fingers disappeared, and were replaced with the barrel of what looked like one of her favorite pistols, a 9 mm Glock. It wasn’t her favorite at the moment.
From outside the car, a staunch French voice commanded they exit with their hands up.
“Be cool,” Annja said. “And get out slowly.”
“I am cool. You be cool, Annja.”
“I’m cooler than—oh, for cripes sakes, what are we doing? Now is no time to act irrationally. Let’s do this slowly and carefully and together.”
“Exactly. We cannot allow them to divide and conquer us.”
Holding back the retort, “Whatever you say, Napoleon” seemed wise.
Each slowly opened a car door, and before Annja could get her hands up, the gun barrel pressed into her rib cage. She wore a white, sleeveless T-shirt and khaki hiking shorts, and she was sweating.
A tall, brutish man dressed in nondescript dark pants and a short gray coat wielded the gun. A thick gold chain snaked about his tree-trunk neck. High-top sneakers rounded off the attire that was strange for only a drive in the countryside. He looked ready for a hike through an urban nightclub.
Pressing the backs of her thighs to the car door, Annja surreptitiously glanced over the roof of the rental. Ascher stood with hands raised, and a gun about a foot from his nose.
“You had no intention to invite us to the dig?” the gunman beside Ascher asked in French.
She heard Ascher fumble for a reply. “And have you get your hands dirty? Of course not.”
“Who is she?”
The gunman eyeing Annja lifted a blocky chin and eyed her down his nose. One crushing palm to the tip of that nose and he’d be snorting blood. But though she knew Ascher was athletic, she couldn’t be sure he’d know to react defensively when she did. Just because he was an enthusiast for sports didn’t make him a self-defense expert.
“A girlfriend,” Ascher volunteered. “No one you know, or need to know. She can stay in the car while we go on to the dig.”
She felt to her bones that Ascher knew these men, or at least wasn’t as surprised to see them as she was. And while his efforts to protect her fell flat in the chivalry department, she wasn’t about to stay behind when the situation could turn dangerous.
And did you just hear your own thoughts, Annja? You know it’s going to be dangerous, so you intend to march right into the fray. You really buy into all this protect-the-innocent stuff the sword has brought into your life.
If she couldn’t avoid danger, she figured might as well join it. That would grant her more control than if she simply surrendered. Besides, she was armed, but the sword wasn’t exactly a weapon to win against bullets.
“She comes along.” The gunman gripped her upper arm, hard, and poked the Glock into Annja’s back. She hated unnecessary aggression focused through the barrel of a gun. “Vallois, you will take us to the sword,” he ordered.
They knew about the sword? And they knew Ascher’s name.
Good job on checking the online contact’s history, Annja, she chided herself.
Once around the hood of the car and shoved to Ascher’s side, Annja saw he had a pistol barrel stuck against his temple.
“Does she know where the sword is?” the thug with the gun stuck into her side asked.
“I—I’m not—” the safety on the pistol aimed at Ascher’s skull clicked off, which made the truth flow easily from him. “No, but I have told her about it. The dig site is through the forest.”
“Then lead us.” Both of them were given a shove.
Annja stumbled in the growing darkness as they descended into the shallow roadside ditch, but kept her balance. Her hiking boots squished over soggy grass, but didn’t sink in far. An owl questioned them from somewhere in the distant forest. A cloud of gnats pinged against her shoulders and neck. She didn’t shoo them away. Any sudden moves could result in a bullet wound, which was less desirable than a few insect bites.
As she trudged up the incline and through the long grass, she felt fingers touch her hand. Ascher tugged her up the opposite side of the ditch and they continued onward, close, hands clasped.
“Trust me,” he whispered.
“So not going to,” Annja replied. Keeping her voice to a whisper, she asked, “Are there others at the site?”
“Two. They camp overnight.”
Not good. Annja didn’t want to endanger anyone else, and it wasn’t as if she expected a rescue team to be waiting for their arrival. Archaeologists did not the cavalry make.
At the moment, no other option presented itself. She’d play this one with a feint, holding back the riposte for the right moment. Now was no time to bring out the sword. Not until she determined if their guides were eager to use their weapons, or if they were more for show. She wouldn’t kill unless her life was threatened or the lives of others were. But a few slices to injure were warranted.
Ascher stumbled and she instinctively reached to catch him. A shout from behind, “Don’t touch him!” parted them quickly.
Ascher and Annja entered a copse of maples capping the tip of the forest. Surrounded by trees, twisting branches and leaf canopy obliterated any light lingering in the sky. Verdant moss and autumn-dried leaves thickened the air with must. They slowly navigated the uneven ground, snapping twigs and dodging low branches. Boots crunched branches; leaves brushed her skin. Briefly, she hoped there was no poison ivy.
“It is growing difficult to see without a flashlight,” Ascher hollered over his shoulder. Rather loudly, Annja noted. The dig site must be close. Ascher might be trying to warn whoever was camped there.
A fine red beam zigged across the ground between the two of them. It came from the rifle scope one of the men had pulled out of his coat. It was bright, but only beamed a narrow line across the forest floor. It illuminated nothing.
It occurred to Annja to be worried about wild animals as they tromped over an obvious trail worn into crisp fallen leaves between birch trees. Wolves were rampant in France, though Annja knew they were most prevalent in the southern Alps.
Right now, taking her chances with one of them almost sounded favorable. At least with a wolf she stood a chance of escape, or if she was attacked, knew it wasn’t personal.
Was this personal for Ascher?
Knowing little about this situation notched up her apprehension. Annja flexed the fingers of her right hand, itching to hold her sword. Was Ascher an ally or foe?
“Just ahead!” Ascher suddenly shouted.
The small golden glow of a camp light beamed across the front of a large pitched tent. Inside the tent, another muted glow lit up the two visible sides of the structure.
She hoped no one would rush to greet them and thus freak out the gunmen and result in someone getting shot.
The tent was pitched outside what Annja determined to be a shallow dig site. Pitons and rope marked off a territory about thirty feet square—a guess, for darkness cloaked most of the area. A small leather case, likely for tools, sat open next to the roped-off area alongside two buckets and a short-handled shovel.
Pale light illuminated the interior of the tent, and as the foursome approached, a man in slouchy blue jeans and crisp yellow button-up shirt emerged, saw the situation and immediately put up his hands.
“Vallois,” the surprised man said in English. “Didn’t know you were bringing more than the girl. Guns. Christ, two guns. Evening, gentlemen. What’s up?”
“You have the sword?” the thug who held the gun on Annja demanded.
“Ah.” The man considered that request for a moment. He eyed Ascher, who remained stoic, the gun at his temple. “The sword.”
British, Annja decided of the man. Probably midthirties, and slender, with long graceful fingers. He had expected Ascher to bring her along with him, but the gunmen were a surprise.
Of course, when were gunmen not a surprise?
“Are there others in the tent?” Annja asked, and then mentally kicked herself, because if there were others they might have been planning an ambush. Until she had opened her big mouth.
“Just the one,” the Brit offered. “Jay is sleeping.”
“With the sword?” Her henchman was persistent.
“Er…most likely. Yes, the…sword.” Again the Brit looked to Ascher, who offered nothing by means of physical comprehension.
“We all go inside,” the gunman said.
Shoved roughly, Annja tripped forward, past Ascher, until she stood before the confused Brit. They exchanged furious gazes, but no matter how hard she tried, Annja couldn’t decide whether to compel anxiety or reassurance. She knew nothing, beyond that she wanted to stay alive—and figure out why everyone was being so evasive. To do so required following orders. For now.
“Go in! Go in!” the gunman shouted.
Annja shuffled in behind the nameless British man, with Ascher on her heels. As the pair of gun-toting thugs tromped into the tent, another man, looking like a teenager and lying upon a makeshift camping cot, woke and pulled a pillow from his face. “What the bloody hell?”
“Ascher has brought along some friends,” the other explained, with a flair for understatement.
“The woman from the television—” Jay suddenly noticed the guns, and chirped off his sentence.
“Hands up!” Annja’s gunman shouted, and the recently risen boy dropped his pillow to the tent floor and complied.
“What do they want?” he asked, standing and shuffling over to the older Brit’s side. He wore long flannel sleeping pants and a clean white T-shirt. His feet were bare.
“The sword,” Ascher said. “The one you found last night. You know?”
Last night? But he had only just called her this morning to announce they had yet to completely unearth the sword.
Annja couldn’t read Ascher’s expression in the dull light, but beyond him, she noticed a folding table laid out with a few pieces of crockery—obviously dig finds—and another item covered over by a white cloth. The sword? It couldn’t be. Well, it could be. But that would mean Ascher had lied to her when he’d promised he’d wait to unearth it.
“Where is it?” the gunman asked.
“On the table,” the younger man answered, bowing his sleep-tousled head and toeing the ground. “Under the cloth.”
“D’Artagnan’s sword?” the other gunman finally spoke, and his deep, throaty tones startled Annja. It sounded like a ten-pack-a-day rumble.
“I guess so,” the teenager said. With an elbow nudge from his cohort, he continued. “It is. We uncovered it last night. Bloody hell, you’re not going to take it, are you? That’s a valuable—”
The gun that had been focused on Annja found a new target on the nervous teen. He immediately shut up, offering a pantomime of zipping his fingers across his lips.
“It hasn’t been authenticated,” the other Brit spoke up. “There’s no proof it is real. I’m not an expert in weaponry—”
“You are trying to trick me,” the gunman said. He motioned at Annja with his gun. “You. Get it for me. Keep your hands up where I can see them.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” she muttered under her breath.
Annja walked carefully toward the table, hands up near her ears.
For years she had researched, tracked and searched for this very sword, and now, before she could barely glance at it, it would be taken from her hands?
But I will have seen it. Touched it. All that matters is that it exists.
“Careful,” Ascher directed over his shoulder.
Careful? No freakin’ kidding, she thought.
