“Hello, Max,” the woman greeted, staring at him, probably conducting the same inspection.
“Hello, Lauren. No, sorry. You’re Katona now, right?” Max cocked his head to the side and smirked as his eyes darted between the two women. “Katona and Rive. Remade yourselves with new names, but clearly didn’t bother to change the horribleness underneath.”
Katona’s cold expression never changed as she stared at him with dead eyes. “The same horribleness that raised you. Aren’t you worried about that lovely man finding out what kind of person you really are? You know the one. Edison Walker. The man you’ve been seen hopping all around Egypt with.”
Max clenched his teeth. He got her point. Her people had been watching him. That wasn’t exactly news.
Resting his hip against the nearest stone brick, he lifted one finger. “First off, Carl raised me. Not you or Dad or Rive. Carl. And he did a fabulous job of teaching me to value human life and respect other people’s cultures instead of trying to rip them off for a fast buck. And second”—he lifted another finger—“I’ve told Ed all about this little shit show here, and he knows I’m not like you people.”
Sadly, both of his last remaining family members looked utterly unmoved by his speech. If anything, they seemed bored. Great.
“If you’re done, how are we supposed to settle this?” Rive demanded.
“The answer is obvious,” Katona drawled. “You and your people walk away now. My organization is larger and my reach is farther than yours. Even if you walk out of here with the information tonight, there’s no way for you to keep it.”
“But is it worth it if you can’t be sure you’re going to walk out of here alive tonight?” Rive asked, pointing her gun at her own mother’s head.
The two women continued to argue back and forth, each one trying to outdo the other’s threats, no longer paying much attention to Max. He edged slowly toward Hudson.
Turning his head to his friend, he attempted to whisper without moving his lips. “Get behind the stone and be ready to duck. Shit’s going to get crazy.”
“Crazier than this?” Hudson hissed. But Max could see from the corner of his eye that Hudson moved farther away. There was a soft “Oh!” that escaped his friend, but he didn’t have a chance to check on him because the mother-daughter conversation had taken a turn he’d hoped it wouldn’t.
“Well, you know our other option is to just shoot Max and take the information off his lifeless body. We’ll work together this once and split the treasure.”
Fuck…
And such a nice sentiment from his mother.
“Except for the fact that he said the thumb drive is encrypted. We’d need a hacker to pull the information free,” Rive countered.
Katona shrugged one narrow shoulder. “I have a hacker on staff. Since we’d need to use my man, I would argue for an eighty-twenty split.”
“Hardly. At best a sixty-forty.”
“Max.” His name was a wonderful growl in his ear, and he almost smiled, except that Ed did not sound happy.
“Yeah, I think we’re gonna have to move now. This haggling isn’t going to last long,” Max murmured as softly as he could to the team waiting in the shadows and behind the various column bases that filled the hall.
All of Ed’s friends were there except for Izzie and Will. They were waiting a short distance away in a van with a shit-ton of medical supplies in case this went really, really wrong. He prayed they wouldn’t need the doc tonight.
“It’s not dark enough,” Kairo hissed. “They’re going to notice.”
“We need to move before they begin shooting,” Charlie ordered, and Max tended to agree. He didn’t want himself or the ruins to be peppered with bullets.
“Last chance, Max,” West whispered in his ear like the devil that he was. He knew what the man was asking, and he wasn’t going to deny that it was tempting. To finally get even after all the pain, anger, and heartbreak they’d caused him.
“I’m better than them,” he replied.
“Yes, you are, kitten,” Ed firmly said, and the words felt like the best hug. But he couldn’t let that go.
“You know we’re going to have a very long discussion about that nickname later.”
“I look forward to it.” Ed sounded as though he was looking forward to it. Masochist.
“We’re going now,” Charlie interjected.
Max chewed on his bottom lip, his eyes trained on the women discussing his fate as well as their cut of the potential treasure. He was also watching the goons closely. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed something.
“What’s that hissing noise?” one of the muscle demanded sharply. All the others turned toward him and stared at the ground.
Max inwardly groaned. That wasn’t going to help. “Hissing? Oh, that’s probably just a snake. Egypt has quite a few of them.”