Raiders of the Lost Heart(80)

What’s that?

A flicker of light came from beyond the trees. The unmistakable zigzag of a flashlight. And then nothing.

She squinted, zeroing in on the tree line.

There. There he was, emerging from the jungle. Dirty and wet. What the . . .

Fire burned in Corrie’s belly. That sneaky sack of turds. He’d gone back. Back to the waterfall. Without her, or anyone else.

Corrie had started to rise from her seat when Ethan caught her attention. “Right, Corrie?” he asked.

She shot her gaze to Ethan, then glanced around the table, all eyes on her. “Um . . . sorry. I missed what you were saying,” she said, settling back onto the bench so as not to draw too much attention to the situation.

“I was telling them about that time you tricked the museum director with that fake gold necklace, convincing him it was a five-hundred-year-old relic, when in actuality you bought it from, what, a mall kiosk?”

“Claire’s boutique,” she clarified matter-of-factly, though her focus remained on Ford at the outskirts of the camp in the corner of her eye.

Ethan and the others laughed, even though she wasn’t trying to be funny. “Oh my God, yes. You should have seen his face when she admitted it was a fake,” Ethan explained to the group.

Call it a knack, but Corrie could smell a gullible person from a hundred yards away. And sorry, but that director should never have been hired if he couldn’t tell the difference between Claire’s costume jewelry and the real deal.

That little act hadn’t earned her any fans with the “serious” experts in her field, though. She probably should have thought about that before pulling such a stunt on the husband of the International Institute of Archaeology’s conference director. All right, fine. Maybe she was partially to blame for her less-than-stellar reputation.

With the conversation focused on her, however, she couldn’t exactly leave to go confront Ford. She bided her time, planning in her head what she was going to say to him when she finally had her chance. And the instant dinner wrapped up, Corrie hightailed it straight to Ford’s tent.

“Care to explain where you were today and what the hell is going on?” she demanded, blasting into his tent without even the barest attempt at a knock.

Though her commanding presence immediately softened upon finding Ford standing in the middle of his room wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his trim waist. Water droplets dripped from the tips of his blond tresses onto his chest. His clean, fresh juniper scent wafted in her direction, intoxicating her senses. She rubbed her fingertips against her thigh, picturing them grazing his hard abs. Pulled her lower lip into her mouth, ready to feast upon his skin. Damn. She should have joined him in that shower while everyone else was distracted by dinner.

“Jesus, Corrie,” Ford said, startling at her presence. “You scared the shit out of me. Think you can give me a minute? I’m trying to change,” he said, clutching the towel around his waist to keep it from falling.

Trying to change?

“Ford, we literally spent half the day naked together. It’s nothing I haven’t seen.”

“Yeah, well, things are different now.”

She cocked back her head.

“Different now? What the actual fuck, Ford? Are you going to tell me what’s up with you? Or, I don’t know, tell me why your clothes are lying in a pile over there soaked and completely covered in mud?” She nodded her head in the direction of his clothes.

“We’re done here. I got the knife. We can pack up and leave now.”

Corrie’s jaw went slack. Not that she didn’t already suspect he’d gone there alone to investigate, but this? Excavating the tecpatl on his own in a mere matter of hours? The odds were highly unlikely that he followed the proper protocols.

“Why the hell would you do that? What were you thinking?” she demanded.

“I was thinking it’s time for us to go. Get back to our lives. Put an end to all this . . . this thievery nonsense. Now that I’ve got the knife, we can all finally go home.”

“But what about Chimalli and Yaretzi? And their child? We still need to excavate—”

“No, we don’t. The investor wants the knife, that’s it. He doesn’t care about the rest of it, so neither should we.”

“You’re joking, right?” Corrie examined Ford like he’d come down with an illness. “Ford, this is one of the greatest Aztec discoveries in decades. We can’t forget about it and leave.”

“Well, this is what the investor wants, and seeing as it’s his money and his land, sorry, but you don’t have a choice.”

“So that’s it?” she asked, watching him nonchalantly get dressed as if it were any old day, though he took care not to flash his ass to her as he pulled on his boxer briefs under the towel. As if she hadn’t already seen his goods dozens of times. But Ford was right . . . things were different now. Like everything they’d shared was of no consequence anymore.

“That’s it.”

“And what happens after we leave here?”

“I guess the investor will either sell the piece to a museum or keep it for his own private collection.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She paused, trying to settle her heart, which was about ready to pop out of her chest from pounding so hard. “I mean . . . what about us?”