Desert Devil (Old School Book 5) Read online

  “Where do you learn this stuff?” Larry was honestly interested, but not as disingenuous as he tried to appear. Like all treasure hunters and collectors, he wanted to know her sources, and the more secret they were, the more he wanted them.

  Luckily, she had her own question to distract him. “Why were you digging around in the ruins of a forgotten temple?”

  Larry picked up his cup of tea.

  Neither of his assistants participated in the discussion, nor looked particularly interested in it. In fact one was staring out the window.

  Donna had met Larry’s assistants before, although not these two. Viola, his ex-wife, claimed that Larry chose his assistants for their similarity to water buffalo: placid, powerful, incurious, but in an emergency, lethal.

  Rest, however, was a courier not a water buffalo, and he didn’t wait for Larry to decide if he wanted to answer Donna’s question. “Larry’s looking for an apple that legend says came from the Garden of Eden.”

  “Huh. The story of the lost trader.” Donna contemplated Larry as he scowled at Rest for sharing his secret, then scowled at her, presumably for not being surprised, impressed, or, most annoying of all, ignorant of the tale. “How did you ever come across the story?”

  “How did you?”

  She considered his question for a minute. “I heard it as a campfire tale.” It hadn’t actually been told to her around a campfire. It had been at a lodge in Siberia. She’d been snowed in with three other treasure dealers and the man who held a legendary topaz and was considering selling it. They’d been swapping stories, trying to outdo each other. It had been a memorable and informative three days.

  “You know some interesting people,” Larry said, and looked from her to Rest.

  Rest was impatient to move the conversation back on track. “I assumed the apple was just a story.”

  “It probably is.” Donna spoke over Larry’s objection. “Paradise fruits are rumored to grant a person all knowledge. The story goes that Eve smuggled out three fruits when she and Adam were exiled from the Garden of Eden. Solomon ate one, and gained his reputation for wisdom. Some people suggest that the Buddha ate the second, but I don’t—”

  “It’s possible!” Larry burst out. “The travel routes existed, linking the regions. The apple could have reached a prince in India.”

  “The third fruit,” Donna continued before Larry sidetracked them into one of his endless arguments. The man could speculate for hours, about anything. “The third fruit was rumored to have been owned by a trader who fled from the major Silk Roads in his panic concerning Genghis Khan’s approaching horde. It’s clever to think he’d have sought refuge in a temple.” She made her peace with Larry with that bit of praise.

  Rest pushed his plate away and leaned back from the table. “If the priests at the temple were wizards capable of setting up a guardian that has survived centuries of burial, could they have stolen the apple from the trader?”

  “Or negotiated for it.” Larry steepled his fingers over his empty tea cup. “The question I have is whether they would have saved it or would one of them have consumed it, perhaps thereby acquiring the knowledge to build the temple guardian? But then, we have Donna’s assurance that temple guardians have been found elsewhere, which suggests that this was a spell known to wizards of the time.”

  “Unless the wizard who ate the paradise fruit travelled on from the temple, perhaps even fleeing ahead of the Khan’s men, to set up the spell in other places? Which would make your temple guardian the prototype for the others.” Donna couldn’t help but be caught up in the puzzle.

  “Whatever happened, I won’t open a portal back to the temple ruins,” Rest said. “As a courtesy I wanted to explore the issue openly with you, Larry, but it is too dangerous.”

  Donna managed not to snort. As if Rest cared about courtesy to a client. He’d been judging her honesty. She thought she’d passed and that he no longer suspected that her vision and the temple guardian he’d encountered were an elaborate setup. At first it had probably seemed damning that she and Larry knew each other, but as Rest relaxed into the discussion of temple guardians she deduced that he’d worked out the obvious: that if it had been a setup, she and Larry would have pretended to be strangers.

  “You’ll need to hire wizards to deactivate the guardian,” she advised Larry.

  “No, no, no.” He shook a skinny finger at her. “You’re thinking like a witch. I’ll leave my enchanted objects behind and go in safely as a mundane.”

  “And how will you find the paradise fruit without a magical sensor?” she asked.

  He tapped the side of his nose. “That’s for me to know…”

  It was true. He had his secrets. She had hers. “Be careful. Or I will tell Viola.”

  “I promise I’ll be careful,” he said instantly.

  She grinned, and when Rest stood, she followed him out.

  The billionaire had a question as he escorted them to the courtyard. “Rest, if Eden is real but hidden, could you open a portal to it?”

  Startled by the question, Donna tripped over fresh air.

  Rest caught her arm, steadying her. “No. As I explained when you hired me to courier you, I need an exact location, so unless you’ve found the Garden of Eden…?”

  “Nooo, not yet,” Larry’s expression was wistful but determined.

  Rest kept hold of Donna’s arm. “Let me know if you need me. Twenty four hours’ notice. I’m not counting today’s events, so you have ten trips remaining in our contract. But I won’t courier you back to the temple ruins.”

  “Understood.”

  Rest opened the portal and Donna entered with him. They re-emerged in her motel room. Now that they were alone, in private, she expected his apology for suspecting her. After all, she’d saved his life by warning him and giving him the black tourmaline crystal.

  Instead, he had a question. “Does your boss know you’re a seer?”

  “Yes, she won’t tell Larry, though. Viola’s an Old School girl.”

  His forehead crinkled.

  “You know, another Minervalle School graduate?” she prompted. She couldn’t understand his look of puzzlement.

  “Minervalle? Isn’t that the fancy boarding school you went to in England?”

  His bewilderment seemed genuine, which sparked hers. She sat down on the bed. “Surely my parents mentioned something about it to you when they enrolled me?”

  His eyes narrowed as he worked out that he’d missed something important. “Like what?”

  She yawned. It had been a long day, and now she was comfortably full of yummy Belgian waffles. She felt sleepy. “That the school taught magic.”

  There was a beat of silence, filled by the noise of the air-conditioner and traffic on the old highway.

  “No, Tony and Ellen didn’t mention that.” He sat down on the bed beside her.

  “Huh.” She was tired and as the bed dipped under Rest’s weight, she didn’t try to stop her slide that left her leaning against him. “And all that time, I thought you were being tactful by not asking me questions about Minervalle School.”

  “I knew you were happy there.”

  “I was.” She smiled. “Minervalle gave me a place to belong.”

  She remembered how scary it had been when her parents enrolled her at an English boarding school when she was ten. She hadn’t known what to expect. What if she hated the food? What if the other students hated her?

  However, what she’d found was a welcome and acceptance she’d never known before. Even with the hundreds of students, the teachers had time for her as an individual. Plus, older students mentored younger ones. From feeling forgotten and irrelevant at home, Donna found a place where she was valued.

  It had changed her, given her confidence.

  The first time she’d come home from boarding school, her parents’ house had been filled with kids. There was Rest and three younger children: a girl of eleven, and two boys aged ten and eight. Rest had volunteered to take
the younger kids to the park to fly kites that he’d helped them make. They’d take drinks and sandwiches and have a picnic.

  “What a wonderful idea,” Donna’s mom, Ellen, had exclaimed. “A picnic! We’ll all go.”

  Rest had looked at Donna, then back to Ellen, before, with a glance at Tony standing by the fridge in the large kitchen, he spoke. “I can handle the kids. Donna—”

  “Will enjoy the chance to play with ordinary kids,” Ellen had said, ending the matter.

  Donna had shrugged and smiled tightly at Rest as the other kids stampeded to grab their kites, and her parents went to change into sensible walking shoes. “It’s okay. Thanks for trying.”

  “It’s not okay.” He’d walked away. He’d tried to give her time alone with her parents on her first return from boarding school, but her parents hadn’t valued the gift—or her.

  She suspected she’d been an accident, and that Ellen, in particular, would have preferred fostering kids to raising her natural child. Fortunately, Minervalle School had instilled a sense of self-worth in Donna that saved her. The quiet, too-solemn child she’d been had blossomed through her teenage years into a woman of confidence and a degree of daring.

  It was memories like those, memories of Rest’s kindness and sense of justice, that dissolved much of her anger that he’d pushed her away for two years. Rest was a natural protector. Of course he’d have tried to look out for her, even if he should have let her decide whether she was willing to accept the danger of having him in her life.

  Perhaps it was a good sign that he didn’t move away as she leaned against his side. “Thanks for letting me know you survived the temple guardian’s attack.”

  “Thank you for the crystal.” He went to unloop it from around his neck.

  “Keep it. You don’t have to wear it, but…it’s yours.”

  He released the chain, letting the crystal pendant remain beneath his shirt. “Thanks. And I’m sorry.”

  She looked a question at him.

  “For bringing you to India. I never suspected Larry might recognize you.”

  “You didn’t tell him I’m a seer, so it’s all good.”

  He stood. “It’s not that simple. Everything I said about it being safer if people aren’t linked to me still applies, and now, Larry knows that you and I are still in contact. Your dad is protected by the government, but I’m not. The opposite, in fact.”

  Since she hadn’t wanted Larry to learn of her seer talent for fear that he’d gossip about it, she could hardly argue convincingly that it didn’t matter that Larry now knew of her connection to Rest. “What’s done is done,” she said inadequately.

  Rest shook his head in brief, silent disagreement.

  She got up and walked across to where he stood by the door. “For now, there’s something we forgot to do.” She hugged him.

  His body went solid, and his arms remained by his sides.

  She sniffed. “I missed you.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  She pulled back. “If I say I missed you, I missed you.”

  A small smile started in his dark eyes. Finally, he relaxed enough to return her embrace.

  That felt good.

  It wasn’t romantic, it was just…essential.

  She squeezed him, quickly, before stepping away. “I really did miss you.”

  “Okay.” He smiled. He was devastatingly attractive when he did. A dimple creased his left cheek.

  She frowned up at him. “Are you going to try and send me away again?”

  “Try?” he queried.

  But his raised eyebrow and attempt at a stern voice were easily dismissed now that his body language had accepted her.

  “Well, it’s not as if I’ll listen to you.”

  “Donna.” His momentary easy humor evaporated.

  “You get to choose your friends,” she said. “You don’t get to choose your family.”

  Both of his eyebrows flew up. “And you’re family?”

  As a starting point. What more they could be to each other was something he’d taken from them when he vanished two years ago. She punched his arm. “Yes!”

  It was obvious that he needed to process that information. He rubbed his arm, although she’d barely tapped it, and frowned at her. “I…”

  She decided to spell things out. “Right now, are you worrying about my safety?”

  “Yes, but I’d do that for anyone.”

  She held up her hand in a stop gesture. “Do you have memories that include me? A history in which you care about my feelings?”

  He nodded once, warily.

  “If I told you I was homeless and pregnant—”

  His gaze flew to her stomach. “You’re what?!!”

  “I’m not. But if I was, would you take me in? Sadie, my finder talent friend, says you have a ranch. A ranch would be a great place to raise a kid, or kids,” she added thoughtfully.

  “You…I…we…uh.”

  Donna laughed. “We’re family. You care what happens to me. I care what happens to you. When the chips are down, we know we can rely on each other.” She was struck by an unpleasant thought. “You do know that, don’t you? When your team walked into that trap, I was in Washington and I made Dad bring me with him to you at the hospital. You were waiting for news on your friend. You do remember, don’t you? After that, there was the furor with the military and 13OPS, and I couldn’t get near you before you vanished.”

  It had been a life-changing experience for her. She’d thought Rest had felt the same. They had connected as something more than people who’d shared a childhood.

  What if I was wrong?

  Before her cold shivers could start, Rest answered.

  “I remember you at the hospital. I’d scrubbed Darius’s blood off my hands, but it was still on my uniform, and you hugged me anyway.”

  “I thought the blood was yours!” Just remembering her fear for him had her body reacting in panic mode. “I hugged you to make sure you were in one piece.” In the hospital, she’d sat by him as long as she could. There’d been another guy waiting with him, a corporal as determined as Rest not to be moved till they knew their friends would survive. Captain Darius Selbourne had been critically injured. He’d lost a leg, but thanks to a healer mage, survived. Sergeant Gabe Shelby had been burned. He’d been treated and released to wait with them.

  “When you vanished…” She paused, recalling the fraught situation two years ago. The trouble had far exceeded her own quietly hidden emotional disturbance. Rest had been important to a number of people’s plans. “I gathered from what Dad said, and the people who arrived at the house to discuss matters with him, that 13OPS put significant effort into ‘recovering’ you as an asset.” Her nose wrinkled at the last word. “You’d chosen to leave. I…accepted that the best way to help you was to let you stay gone, not to search for you.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “They would have been watching you. The fact that you sat with me at the hospital would have marked you as a person of interest.”

  She nodded. “Agents followed me on a few of my business trips. It was annoying. Viola and I had to reassign our projects since some of our clients and treasures had to be protected from 13OPS scrutiny. They record everything!” She paused. “Not that they’re all bad. I have a friend in 13OPS, another Old School girl. She told me when the bureau downgraded interest in me. I’ve started picking up confidential jobs, again.”

  He raked a hand through his hair. “I’ve put all that at risk, again. When Larry mentions your presence with me—”

  “He can keep a secret.” Her shoulders slumped. “He also likes to prove that he knows more than other people. Sometimes a clue is all that is needed for a secret to unravel.”

  “Which puts you in danger.”

  “Maybe. It definitely needs considering.” She took a quick, determined breath. Now was the time for courage. She didn’t want to spend the next two years, or longer, thinking of what might have been. “At least I haven’t un
packed my bag.”

  “Pardon?”

  “We need to work out how to handle the situation.” She forced a confident tone. Working in Viola’s gallery had taught Donna how to sell an object—or an idea. “Maybe this is for the best. Sooner or later, hiding will cease to work for you. You need a plan to take control of your life. I have allies, people we can definitely trust. I assume your ranch is warded?”

  “Yes.” Such a wary assent.

  “Then I’ll join you there. I’ll be safe if I stay with you.” And I want to stay with you. She crossed her fingers behind her back for luck.

  “Huh.”

  She managed a faint grin. “You’re meant to say, ‘you’ll be very welcome, Donna’.”

  “Aren’t you meant to wait for an invitation?”

  Her grin became genuine. “Not when I’m family! Now, I rented the car under a false ID, so I don’t think anyone’ll trace it to me. How strong is your courier ability? Dad can manage people and struggles to courier animals, but he used to say that you would be more powerful than him. Can you drive a car through the Path?” She moved forward, wanting to hurry before he changed his mind.

  He blinked.

  She tucked her hand in his arm. “The thing is, it would save time, and if someone did manage to trace my false ID, the distance I drove the car would fool them if you returned it to the outskirts of Phoenix via portal travel.”

  “You’ve developed a talent for scheming,” he said slowly.

  “Aww.” Whether he meant it as a compliment or not, she smiled widely, teasing him. “Thank you. So, can you do it?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Which was how she ended up at his ranch.

  Chapter 4

  It was surreal to drive out of the Path in Rest’s pickup and into the darkness of an Arizona ranch. There were no city lights here. Donna was eager to see where he lived. Remembering the birdhouse he’d made as a teenager, she expected something special. Something Rest. The darkness made it difficult to see details, but the outline of the house and surrounding buildings was disappointingly ordinary.