Ed glanced behind the man at the woman, who hadn’t moved from her spot on a bench. She was wearing a colorful ankle-length dress while waving a fan lazily in front of her face as if this meeting was nothing to her, but those hooded eyes were sharp. Ed was not discounting her one bit. She wasn’t here by chance.
The man’s gaze shifted briefly to Ed and then returned to Soren. “Pretol,” he greeted stiffly, and Ed barely caught his reaction in time. Someone had forgotten to tell him what Soren’s fake name was going to be for this encounter. It would have been nice to know, so he didn’t risk a slipup. But that was Soren. The man was so fucking bad about sharing the tiny details.
“Mironov,” Soren replied. “I understand we have a shared interest in a new discovery that is about to happen in the Egyptian desert.”
“And it is our understanding that you have your hands on the person who can most quickly make that discovery happen,” Mironov countered in the same dry tone.
Soren grunted, sounding so very bored by this conversation. “We have the American professor. He’s working on the location of the tomb as we speak.”
“My business partner would like to make an offer for exclusive knowledge of the site when he uncovers it,” Mironov stated. “We also want possession of the Egyptologist, in the unfortunate event that there is an error in his research.”
His friend let out a weary sigh. “Now that…that’s going to be very expensive. You see, when we got our hands on the little guy, he was in bad shape. Bad shape that you put him in. That required a lot of medical treatment that is both expensive and time-consuming. We could have already had the location if you’d not forced us to waste days in treating him.”
Mironov made a dismissive noise, but he did shift slightly in his stance so that he could glance at the unknown woman from the corner of his eye. “You’re exaggerating. There were no bones broken. No organs in failure. You should have been able to get him behind a laptop within hours of acquiring him.”
Ed clenched his teeth hard enough that he expected his molars to be crushed into dust. Max had passed out in his arms. He’d been bleeding from a stab wound in his abdomen. Will said that Max had been severely dehydrated, malnourished, beaten, and burned. It was amazing that he’d escaped in the first place, let alone gotten far enough to find someone who might help him.
Thankfully, Soren kept the conversation going before Ed stepped forward and planted his fist in Mironov’s face. Let’s just see how productive this asshole would be when put through the same treatment.
Soren lowered his gaze to his fingernails, seeming to inspect them for dirt. “That’s an interesting story. I know what my doctor told me and Sutton’s state over the next several days. Maybe you weren’t there to oversee the archeologist’s treatment.”
Mironov turned almost completely around to the woman, holding his open hands out to his sides. “I was there. I swear. I oversaw everything. They are exaggerating.”
Now wasn’t that interesting. Was this woman his boss? The boss.
With the way their luck was running, this was probably another midlevel boss who reported to the boss.
The woman snapped her fan closed. “Shut up.”
Mironov instantly stopped talking and took a step backward, his head lowered.
Ed looked the woman over with fresh interest. He’d given her a passing glance when they entered the gazebo. Just enough to make sure she wasn’t an immediate threat as compared to the pacing moron, Mironov. She was older, closer to Charlie’s age, or maybe even older than that. There was a cold calculation to her pale-brown eyes as she stared at Soren that sent a chill down Ed’s spine. Talking to Rive had been infuriating and frustrating, but this woman, she seemed closer to the devil incarnate.
He didn’t get the impression that she was upset over Max’s treatment, but rather the possibility that Nail had not followed her instructions to the letter or even that he’d deferred to her while they were in mixed company. In short, Nail Mironov was a fucking idiot and Ed had to wonder if he’d live to see the end of the day.
“My underling is getting caught up in trivial details,” the woman said. She opened her white fan again with a flick of her wrist. There was a painting of the pyramids of Giza on it, but it wasn’t some piece of cheap tourist trash. No, this fan was a work of art all on its own. The image appeared to be hand-painted by a very talented artist.
“And you are?” Soren prodded.
“Katona. Katona Zsuska,” she introduced herself. Her accent was Eastern European, but that was all Ed could divine. He’d have to ask Kairo or Soren later where they thought she was from. Maybe even Alexei, if he was listening in to the meeting.