Mariah Stewart - Last Breath

Daria entered the quiet house and locked the front door behind her. She dropped the bag holding her laptop at the bottom of the steps and went into the kitchen. It was closing in on eleven, and she realized that she hadn’t eaten all day. She rummaged in the refrigerator and came out with an orange. She made a piece of toast and spread it with honey from the jar Vita had brought her that morning from one of the local farms and ate standing up. Her hunger sated, she sat at the table and went over her notes.

Six, she told herself. This morning she’d known only that they were missing. Now she knew where they were, or at the very least, where they had been. There was always the possibility that one or more items had been sold or gifted or loaned to a museum. For now, it was enough to know that these six artifacts existed and were almost within reach. And there was also the very real possibility that some of the owners might know of other pieces in other private collections.

She opened her bag and took out her notebook, prepared to check off the items which may have been located. She noticed that her phone, which she’d silenced in the library, was blinking to alert her to a new message.

“Daria, it’s Louise. I couldn’t wait until morning, so I called Jim Sanders. We have a meeting with him tomorrow morning at eleven. Please meet me at my office by nine-thirty and we’ll go over to the museum together and select a few items to take with us. See you then.”

Daria erased the message and scrolled the phone’s list of calls received. When she found the number from which Connor had called her two nights ago, she hit send and waited while it rang.

“Shields.”

“Connor, it’s Daria. I just got a message from Louise about tomorrow. We have an appointment with the bank at eleven, and I’m meeting her at nine-thirty to go to the museum and select a few of the artifacts to take with us.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“I don’t know.” She frowned. She hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know if the presence of the FBI would alarm the banker or reassure him.”

“In that case, go without me but let him know we’re on the case if you feel you have to. I’ll spend the morning trying to locate more of the artifacts. I’ve already put a call in to my friend at the Bureau to see what he suggests, so maybe we can add to that list we started tonight.”

“Good idea. How about I call your cell when I get back from the bank?” Through the phone, she could hear sirens and traffic sounds in the background. He was still on the road.

“Great. Then you can let me know what the banker had to say and I’ll tell you what the FBI’s computers have been able to dig up.”

“Deal. I’ll see you then. Good night, Connor.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Daria disconnected the call and dropped the phone into her bag. She wondered if she should have offered him a room here at McGowan House. There were five empty rooms on the second floor. Funny, if he’d been one of her colleagues, she wouldn’t have thought twice about having a man stay in the house. The men she spent time with in the field were all friends, and nothing more. They shared commonalities of education and philosophy and reverence for the past. They spent much of their days together on a dig, painstakingly sorting through the debris of the ages, and their nights gathered around a communal fire talking about the day’s finds and frustrations. There had been the occasional fling, but other than a professor in Near Eastern studies she’d met two years ago at a symposium at Harvard, serious affairs had been few and far between. She thought of the men with whom she’d spent the greater part of her adult life in the field, and couldn’t name one who had sparked more than a professional interest. Compared to Connor, they all appeared in her memory as dry and pale. Intellectually stimulating, perhaps, and comfortable companions, but not the sort of men who set your pulse racing.

There was nothing dry or pale about Connor Shields.

Stimulating, on the other hand…yeah, she could say that. Tall and rugged, a killer smile. Nope, nothing dry or pale there…

Careful, girl, she told herself as she got up and went to the back door to make sure it was locked. He’s probably not going to be around for that much longer, and even if he was, do you really think you’re his type?

She tried to close the windows, but except for one, once opened, it was as if they were resisting being returned to the position they’d been stuck in for God only knew how many years. Daria gave up and gathered her notes, her bag, and the phone from the table and turned off the kitchen light. She checked the front door, turned off the lamp in the parlor window, and headed up the steps.

In Iliana’s bedroom, she paused and glanced in the mirror that stood on the dressing table near the window. Nothing flashy about that face, she told herself. She ran a hand through her hair, which had grown out since the last time she’d cut it. Good enough for the field, but maybe now a real cut from someone who knew what they were doing might be in order. Maybe even some makeup.

Forget it. She turned away from the mirror and went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. What was she thinking? Neither a new hairstyle nor a new face would make her anything other than what she was, and right now she was…well, field-weary, her mother would say. Tired from trekking over hills and mountains, with dark circles under her eyes and skin dry from too much desert sun.

“Yeah, I’m a real glamour girl,” she said softly as she stripped off her clothes and headed for the shower. “Chances are there’s a woman in his life anyway, so don’t set yourself up for a fall.”

All the same, she thought as she began to shampoo her hair, she could use a cut with a little style. After all, if she stayed at Howe for a while, there’d be meetings with the bankers and the trustees and members of the archaeology department, and eventually the media, if they really got this project off the ground. She would need to look a little more polished-all right, a lot more polished-and less like she’d just crawled out of a tent.

She made a mental note to ask Louise if she could recommend a salon.

“How’d you make out at the bank?” Connor asked when Daria opened the door to McGowan House around one the next afternoon.

“We caused quite the commotion.” She grinned. “Louise’s banker took one look at the pieces we’d brought with us and immediately called in the branch manager and several others. Long story short, they’re preparing a vault and will have an armored truck pick up the crates as soon as humanly possible. In the meantime, they’ve hired armed guards, the first of whom should arrive by three.”

“Pretty much as I thought. They’re not going to take any chances. I figured they’d want the entire collection safely under lock and key.”

“Right. Their lock and key. Which is as it should be. If they’re going to loan such a huge amount of money to the school, they’re going to want to protect their collateral. They’ve already locked up the artifacts we took with us. We left them in one of the vaults.” Daria walked toward the kitchen and Connor followed. “There’s a meeting scheduled at the bank’s main branch in Wilmington on Wednesday, to show the finance guys some of the collection.”

“So the loan looks like a go?”

“They’re giving Howe a modest line of credit to start out, but I’m sure that getting money for the building repairs isn’t going to be a problem.” She was still grinning from ear to ear. “There was so much excitement in that room when we started unwrapping the pieces we’d brought with us. I’ve been handling antiquities for so many years, I’d forgotten how it feels to see something like that for the first time.”