The Protector of Ambra (Mercenaries of Fortune, #5) (3 page)

Pierce had to get them. One of them anyway.

The Knights of Ambra had very rigid rules about their work. His organization did whatever was necessary to save cultural treasures. They’d kept Sassanid vases and Greek triremes safe in their warehouses, while returning lost royal jewels and Fifth Century books to the descendants of former owners. It was a dignified livelihood and a harsh one. It was why so many of his teammates were former military or intelligence.

And then there was him. He’d left his life of luxury and joined the Navy to help others. Then some terrorist bastard had left him with a near worthless knee. The injury resulted in a medical drop from the front lines.

He’d recovered after countless surgeries, but the pain would always be there, along with a note that he’d been relegated to working back in the States. He’d done it. It was his duty. But when his former colleague, Checkers Storm, said she knew of an opening that might give him a taste of adventure again, he’d jumped...and landed right here with Team Ambra.

It was a hell of a thing. A good thing. But ultimately, a thing not too different from what he’d left in the Navy. He was still, essentially, on shore duty. Every so often, he’d have to fly out to patch up an agent in a Chilean cave, but those excursions paled in comparison to what the others got to do.

He wasn’t swinging from suspension bridges in Madagascar or fighting Chinese smugglers in Bhutan. He was just...doctoring. A good life, but not as adventurous as he would have liked. The only thing that gave him joy these days was his collection.

The knights on the team were as different as night and day, but one thing they all had in common was a love of history. It manifested itself in varying forms for all of them. For Pierce, it was medical antiques. His personal collection was freaking amazing. Everything from Civil War surgical kits to papyrus with doctors’ notes found in Egyptian pyramids.

But this prize in Mexico? Cool as shit.

One of the antiques up for auction was a 700ish BCE statuette of an Olmec healer. It was one of the earliest representations of practicing medicine. He had to own it. At the announcement of the auctions, he’d booked his flight. Then Checkers, the only other team physician, went on her lark to Macedonia. He’d been forced to follow Ambra’s house rules and cancel his trip.

And that led him here. He’d tried buying it outright before the bidding started, but the monks shut that down pretty fast. The next logical thing for him to do was steal it.

It would be his first time burglarizing a church. Hopefully his last. He gave a shit about his mortal soul and he was definitely going to make it right. At auction, the piece
might
fetch fifty or eighty grand. Pierce had a million dollars sitting in escrow, anonymously, to be delivered once he and the statuette were safely on the way home to Massachusetts.

If he auctioned like everyone else, he risked being discovered away from his post by his superiors. It wasn’t worth the possibility. Without the Navy, there was Ambra. Without Ambra, there was nothing at all.

His plan would have gone perfectly, if not for the beauty trudging back towards the passenger’s door.

The woman who had every possibility of ruining everything, slipped into the bucket seat. “Everyone’s been called. Everything’s on hold. Mama and Angela – that’s my sister – are holding everything down.” Then her nose scrunched up. “I bet you already knew Angie’s name.”

“Yeah...”

Melody shivered and rolled her eyes. “So, I’m ready. You? Time to save the world,” she said, high-fiving herself against the window.

Time to save his ass. And hers. If not for the same drive to protect that had put him in the military, he would have left her on the street. But he couldn’t ignore her or those damned children she’d thrown in his face. “Your guilt game is way strong.”

“Irish grandmother. I’ve had a lifetime of practice. She came to a new country with nothing but the money in her pocket and started a new life. She met a stranger, fell in love and...” She cleared her throat and snapped her seat belt into place. “We should go.”

*****

M
elody sunk as far back into her seat as physics would allow. She sure as crap wasn’t projecting her grandparents’ love story onto this massive toss-up she was in. “What I meant to say...”

“Was that your grandmother lorded her awesomeness over you. I get it. It’s sweet. That’s what grandmothers should do. Now, you’ll have your own adventure to throw back at her. There’s nothing better than that. Is she still around?”

She hummed deep in her throat, unable to keep the smile from her face. “That lady’s got a permanent seat in the corner of my shop. She’s probably yelling at Mama about the temperature right now.”

Two of Pierce’s long fingers circled the air, insisting she keep talking. She did. Droning on about the perils of three generations of tough Irish women inhabiting the same space. His chuckles every few minutes backhanded away the awkwardness from a few moments ago.

She was a great businesswoman, but the worst judge of character. Her face reddened at her jumping out of a moving car to get away from this man. A smarter woman would have clung to him like an 80s romance novel cover.

He stopped the car a few minutes later, saving her from turning into a complete teenager. “Did you get a chance to eat something? Depending on how long things,” he looked away and wiped dust from the dashboard, “take, it may be some time before you have a proper meal. This might be our last chance at a real restaurant. Once this is over, we’ll probably need to head straight back to the airport. Seems like we both have big boy and big girl problems to take care of back home.”

“I can manage.”

He didn’t look like he believed her. He latched his hands behind his neck and dipped back against the headrest. “Grandmothers are good at spotting liars. So is my boss. If someone asks what we were up to in Mexico, we can safely say that we were on a dinner date. That ought to give Granny a run for her money.”

Forget Grandma. Her mind was doing its own running and hop-skipping around. She reminded herself that this was a man showing a kindness. Nothing more. The guy was Prince Charming on steroids. He was the kind of guy that, in the real world, might have distracted her from her business.

Melody wrapped her head around that thought and held on as tightly as she could. Vacation romances were best kept to 50s movies. He was taking time out of his mission to help her. While she appreciated it, Pierce made it very clear that anything having to do with her was secondary to his career. She more than respected that. She needed to copy it.

The easiest step was reminding herself that love at first sight didn’t exist. Not anymore. What she was probably experiencing was
like
at third sight and that was pretty cool, but cool didn’t pay her bills. Coolness would be bringing Noah to his knees, destroying his “business,” and leaving him a crying, hollow husk of his former self.

“Melody?”

“Hmm?”

“That’s the widest smile I’ve seen since the last time I went to Vegas. Thinking about Grandma?”

“Revenge,” she said with a quick nod. “And food. I’ll take you up on that offer. Maybe not a sit-down thing, though. It’ll slow us down. We’ve both got work to do.”

His shoulders sagged. Probably in relief. That knowledge was reaffirming as hell. Yes, he could chase down thieves, speak the language and probably do a billion other things while riding a unicycle, but she won in the keeping-her-eyes-on-the-prize game. He had and might continue to derail things, ever so slightly, for her. She wouldn’t let him make those mistakes.

He hopped out of the car first, but before he made it over to get her door, she jumped out. He didn’t say anything about her overt rudeness. The best she could hope for was that he saw it as professionalism. Nothing wrong with that.

Pierce stepped inside the restaurant first, shoving his sunglasses on top of his head. “What do you want for dinner?”

“I don’t love Mexican food. Maybe nachos? This isn’t a meal to me. It’s about sustenance and having enough calories to keep moving.”

“I accept that challenge,” Pierce said with a snap of his fingers. He went on to order who knew what, speaking amiably with the waitress behind the counter.

And she didn’t like that either. Jealousy was too stupid of a word for a man she’d just met. He wasn’t her hero, but it did weird things to her to see him making some other woman smile. She excused herself to the restroom.

By the time she came back, their food was bundled and wrapped. Three liters of water were put on the counter, along with a slip of paper. Melody knew a thing or two about transactions. Typically, they ran in a certain order. Money went from the client to the seller. The seller then returns a receipt or change. The end. After Pierce’s predictable step of pushing away the extra change, the waitress scribbled on a sheet of paper and slid it across the counter.

This guy – saving lives and getting digits. At the end of the day, Prince Charming was still a dude.

“You don’t do a good job of hiding your emotions,” he said on the way to the car.

“What are you talking about?” She desperately tried to keep her tone as even as possible. Her face burned a little, then a lot. Getting inside the car was a small relief. Any situation that involved him not directly looking at her was a win.

Pierce clipped in his seat belt, then reached into a bag that had grown dark and soggy with grease. “This is a cornmeal dumpling,” he said, handing her a wax paper-wrapped bundle. “And I’ve got some pechuga adobada – chicken breast – for back up. I went a little more basic for myself,” he said, pulling out something a little thinner than a standard quesadilla.

He looked at her food with an almost childlike hope, nodding her on as she took her chicken whatever to her lips. It was less horrible than she’d expected. Not great, but better than the excrement they served from fast food joints.

“You’re working very hard not to frown, aren’t you?”

She shrugged. “Sorry. Hey, it’s not bad. Just not...you know...my thing.”

“Hmm,” he said, handing over a Styrofoam drink container. “Our team demands countermeasures, redundancies and backup plans for every situation. Try this.”

She shook her head. “Not in the mood for soup.”

“Not offering you soup. Try. This.”

As soon as he lifted the lid, she caught the scent of sugar and cacao. Pure cacao. The kind she’d get a freaking second mortgage for. She ran her nose along the rim of the cup and her heart skipped a beat. “What
is
this?”

“Pozol.”

“Iced chocolate?”

“No ice. Made from cornmeal and—”

If Pierce said anything after that, she didn’t hear it. Every cell of her being was lost as the cool, chocolaty rain from heaven skipped across her taste buds. “Good God.”

“You’re welcome. Do I win this one?”

“Mm-hmm.” He didn’t steal this sweet moment from her. After a fist bump of triumph, he put the car in gear and drove away. A relaxed silence settled between him, her and the pozol. Honey in the rock. She drank it almost to the last drop, choosing to save the rest for a second dose of culinary loving later on. “You still have that woman’s number?”

“The waitress?” His cheeks turned Santa Claus red and he fished the scrap of paper out of his back pocket before balling it up. “Meant to toss it as soon as we got away.”

She plucked the crumpled mass from the ashtray. With utmost reverence, she flattened it out over her plump thigh as best she could. “Don’t you dare. This is some amazing grade cacao. Your flirtations may have just found me a new supplier. I could kiss you for that.”

“One, not flirting. Two, I’m not opposed to a kiss.”

“I was kidding.”

He wagged an unbelieving finger. “You weren’t.”

“Just met you.”

“I know. You’re weird.”

As they drove, modern buildings morphed into yellow and orange stucco colonial houses. Out here, moisture trapped in massive spider webs glittered, not broken glass on street corners.

More miles passed. The road cleared. Mission bells and archways replaced the brutish spires of towers and antennas. The air cleared too and new sounds emerged. Birds cawed and trilled at their arrival. Maybe the birds had been doing it all along. But with nothing but the rumble of their jeep’s tires on the gravel, for the first time she could hear their winged companions. It was, in a word, perfection.

Aside from the corrupt business partner she needed to hunt down, a strong-armed robbery on the street and riding into the jungle with an American spy, this had to be the most perfect trip ever. Pound for pound, her first trip out of the country was a win. Not only was she set to potentially come home with a new supplier, but she was
this
close to exposing Noah for the snake he was.

In the end, that was all she’d wanted. The truth. She hated liars and thieves. Noah was both and she’d do whatever it took to bring him to justice.

H
e was a liar and a thief, but Pierce smiled anyway, as they pulled into the town where the monastery waited. Melody had fallen asleep hours ago. Her brows twitched against her short bangs. His fingers itched to brush her hair aside, but it wasn’t his place and his hand dropped lamely to his lap.

She wasn’t his to console. Protection was one thing, but when his feelings started moving towards something more than minor flirtation, he redirected his focus back to the artifact.

Olmec treasures were hard to get. The market on them was small – everyone preferred Aztec, Mayan or Toltec treasures – and those who did own Olmec artifacts rarely sold them. Then there was the fucking heartbreaking thought that more Olmec items did exist, but so many early archeologists had mislabeled them as having belonged to some other culture, and the pieces were now locked away.

Well, he’d do his small part in making the world right again by stealing a piece of that history tonight. He looked back over at the beauty to his right. She complicated things, but on the whole, she’d kept his mind occupied. Instead of worrying about saving his ass, he’d fallen into the oddly comforting role of saving hers.