Her Dirty Archeologists by Mika Lane

Chapter 25

FLEUR HOLMES

Turns out staying up all night to watch an excavation site was about as exciting as watching paint dry. The desert night was beautiful, without a doubt, but it was dead silent, and I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction, even with my headlamp turned up high.

Simply put, there was nothing to do but stare into the blackness and hope the thugs had decided to stay home that night. And every time I started to read my book, I began to doze off.

I wandered back to the mess tent to make myself some coffee and to my horror, found there wasn’t enough left to even make one pot.

Goddammit. How was I supposed to stay up now? And hadn’t the guys just gone shopping for provisions? How could they have forgotten coffee?

There was no way I could stay awake now, and while it might not hurt to doze off a bit, hadn’t I pressured the guys to let me pull my weight? Slacking was not an option.

I peered over at the neighboring camp, one we’d tried to stay away from since our run-in with Brad. Not surprisingly, people over there were wide awake. It seemed like that group was more into partying than anything else.

Did I dare head over?

Oh, what the fuck. I needed to stay awake, and to stay awake, I needed coffee.

Grabbing my empty mug, I turned off my headlamp and quietly walked toward the campsite so that if I decided to bail at the last minute, I could.

As I got nearer, I could see a few members of the team sitting around a table, playing a card game. A couple were drinking beer, but I saw someone with a cup of coffee.

I was in luck.

Yes.

“Hey, what’s up, bro? I got some good news for you.”

I whipped around, almost doing a three-hundred-sixty-degree spin to see where the voice had come from, and whether it had been talking to me.

“Yeah, it’s the fucking middle of the night here. It’s the only time I can call you. Most of the camp is asleep and the couple folks who are up don’t give a shit what I do.”

That was Brad’s voice.

I inched closer to their latrine, where the voice was coming from, and realized Brad was on the camp’s satphone, probably thinking he could have a conversation from there without anyone overhearing.

“Yeah, I was able to get my hands on some of the shit the idiots in the next camp over dug up. Nah, they’ll never know. And the shit they’ve come up with will demand a fortune on the black market. We’re gonna be rich motherfuckers.”

What the fucking fuck?

Brad had stolen our stuff? When he was supposed to be watching it? And then had blamed it on local looters?

A wave of dizziness washed over me, and I prayed I wouldn’t fall over and reveal myself. I clamped my hand over my mouth so not even my breathing could be heard.

“They have no fucking idea,” he continued.

Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.

“So listen. They have the girl guarding the site tonight. Yeah, I know, how fucking dumb is that. I’m having the guys from the village come and pretend to be there to fuck their stuff up to throw them off my trail. It will be easy. They don’t have a damn clue.”

He was silent for a moment

I no longer needed coffee and in fact was exploding with adrenaline. I wanted to tear him limb from limb.

“Yeah, I told them to just take the girl. She’s a stuck-up bitch. Maybe they can teach her a lesson.”

He burst out laughing and ended his call.

I flattened myself against the latrine while he headed back to his camp. In the light from the mess tent, Brad silently returned the satphone to its proper spot and noisily joined the rest of the people playing cards.

For several moments, I couldn’t move, I was so petrified. But then I quietly jogged back to my own camp, a million thoughts racing through my head.

But there was one thing I was sure of. It was time to wake up the guys.

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