Hatch, page 14
“Like when your parents were out on digs?”
“If they were on a dig, and I could join them, that was fine,” she shared, “but there were lots of times they were too busy.”
The way she said busy told him so much. “As it turns out, my parents traveled a lot too,” he noted.
“How come?”
“Mostly for business. My dad was a geologist, and he had his own exploration company. My mom always traveled with him, and that left us kids sometimes with aunts and uncles, but the two of us were very close, and that made up for a lot of it.”
She nodded. “I don’t think people should have kids, unless they’re prepared to look after them,” she announced bitterly.
Hatch agreed, reaching out to hold her hand. He smiled. “Lots of people have kids because it’s the thing to do, but then, when they get them, they find they hadn’t realized what it entailed and how much it would curb their lifestyles. So they make the best of it by trying to make a compromise between their lives and the lives of their kids.”
“Yeah, but all that really means,” she said sadly, “is no life for the kids, or at least not one where they spend enough time with their parents …” She yawned yet again.
“I think we’ve had enough of this. Why don’t you close your eyes for a bit and get some rest.” She looked up at him, and he saw the weight of the world pulling her down again. “Come on. Just rest.” He helped her to her feet, walking her back to the bed, where he sat down beside her. “You’re safe now.”
“I know,” she whispered, “but, every time I close my eyes, something jerks me awake. I am back in that cold dark cave, and I am all on my own. I feel like I’m being buried alive in there.”
“And …” he added, “while you rest easy, we’ve hired a couple locals to see if we could locate where you were held, but they’ve not found anything yet.”
She nodded. “I have no idea how far I walked, but it seemed like he wasn’t that far wrong when he said my body would be found down the road at an archeology dig down the road in three thousand years.”
“He was wrong.” Hatch gently stretched out and joined her on the bed, tugging her beside him.
She shuffled a little bit, so that her head rested against his shoulder. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“Sleep,” he said. “That’s what you need most.”
“Yeah, and what will I do to sleep when you’re not around?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you not realized that, since you found me, every time I sleep, it seems to be in your arms.”
He chuckled. “You know what? I can’t see how I’m supposed to get upset about that. You’re a beautiful woman. Where’s the problem?”
Her lips quirked as he watched. “Maybe there is none. But, if you have a girlfriend, it may not go over that well.”
“No girlfriend,” he replied cheerfully. “Single and happily available.”
Her lips twitched again. “Is that a hint?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Are you in the market?”
“I don’t feel like I’m in the market for much of anything. I feel a bit like damaged goods right now,”
“What happened with your last partner?” Of course he knew from hearing Strand’s side but wanted to hear her side of the story.
“We broke up because I was planning to go on a dig, and he wanted me to stay home.”
“Well, that was very inconsiderate of him,” Hatch noted gently.
Her eyes drooped yet again. “I thought so too, but, hey, he didn’t agree.”
“Did you break it off?”
“Yeah, I sure did,” she stated. “I really wanted somebody who would be a little more accommodating.”
“Yet I’m sure he wanted to be around you more than you expected.”
“Maybe, I don’t know. I just wasn’t feeling it. He wanted to get married, and I was not up for that. In the end, that was probably the biggest issue overall.”
“Sounds like it was the right thing to do. Why date someone you have no intention of marrying?” He reached up and stroked her hair, helping her to relax further.
“I guess …” She yawned yet again and snuggled in close to him and fell asleep.
Chapter 10
Millie woke up from her impromptu nap, started, and realized once again she was completely on Hatch’s lap. She stared up at him. “Wow.” She immediately tried to pull back.
“Easy, … take it easy,” Hatch said. “Wake up first.”
She sagged against him, looped an arm around his chest, and yawned. “That’s becoming a habit.”
“And I’m okay with it.” He chuckled.
She smiled and rubbed her cheek gently against his shirt. “Thanks for that. It’s embarrassing, you know? I keep crawling onto your lap, every time I fall asleep. Almost like a homing pigeon.”
He wrapped his arms around her and tugged her up close. “Obviously some traumas still need to be dealt with, and that will take time.”
“You think?” She straightened using his hard chest to push herself upright. “I’m hungry again,” she stated abruptly.
“Good,” he replied. “I ordered lunch not very long ago. It should be here any second.”
Then she noticed her belongings piled at the bedroom door. “Did that come in while I was napping too?”
He nodded. “I had to disturb you, when I got up to bring them in, but, when I returned, that’s when you pretty well moved onto my lap.”
She shook her head. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s not a problem,” he repeated gently.
She rolled her eyes and then her shoulders.
“Except, it hardly seems to be the best sleeping position for you.”
“Maybe not.” She smiled. “But it was definitely safe and cozy, so I thank you for that.” She got up and stretched. “Any chance I can sort through my stuff?”
“Sure you can,” he agreed. “Let’s take a look and see if it’s all there or if anything important is missing.”
“I’ll just be happy to have some clothes and some of my personal stuff back, but it’s my passport is what worries me,” she noted. “It’s such an odd feeling to lose it all. Even though each item is inexpensive and easily replaceable, yet, in some way, they feel priceless because, like those days I was a captive, they were stolen from me.”
“Understood.” And, with that, he picked up the bags, carried them into the other bedroom, and put them on the undisturbed bed. While she inspected her stuff, he just stood to the side and watched.
“Well, I think everything is here,” she muttered, looking at her retrieved belongings. “I was in the process of cleaning out some of this stuff anyway,” she murmured. “Oh, thank heavens for that. My passport is here.” She held it up with a happy grin. “I wasn’t sure how you were planning to get me out of here without one. I usually keep it hidden in my suitcase when traveling as purses are easily stolen. However, obviously I don’t have my laptop or my dad’s phone or my purse.”
“No, but I’m pretty sure the kidnappers would have taken any electronics. However, we did claim Marcus’s belongings as well, so we have his journals.”
A hand rose instinctively to her heart as she nodded, tears in her eyes. “Thank you.” She continued to nod. “Thank you. … I’ll want to keep those.”
Hatch approached her and gave her a hug, waiting for her to process this.
She pulled away from him and nodded. “So, when is the food coming?” Right about then came a knock on the door. She startled at the noise.
“I want you to stay here in the bedroom.”
At that, she felt fear sliding into her heart with icy precision. “That’s guaranteed to make me not want to answer a door ever again.”
“Are you the one who opened the door to your kidnappers?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t have any reason not to.”
“Well, you do now,” he stated. “Don’t ever open a door while you’re here.” He started toward the front door, listening first, then opening it to find packages of food outside, just waiting for them to be retrieved.
“I like this system,” she stated, smelling the air.
He grinned. “Anything within reason we can get,” he explained. “We enjoy it while we have it, but it’s definitely not the reason we do any of this.”
“No”—she nodded—“though I can’t imagine why you put yourselves in these dangerous situations.”
He looked over at her. “Because it’s just what we do. Corbin and I have worked together on missions for the last twelve years,” he explained quietly. “At some point in time most people need a change, and this was the change that we got, moving into this special section of the government.”
“Is it a change?”
“Not much of one,” he admitted on a chuckle. “We’re still out trying to rescue the world but now with less bureaucracy.”
“Well, you obviously have a talent for it.”
“Hey, you rescued yourself,” he reminded her.
She nodded. “Good point.” She followed him to the couch and used the coffee table to spread out the food. “What about Corbin?” she asked. “Do we need to save any for him?”
Hatch shook his head. “No, definitely not. He’ll grab something while he’s out, or we’ll get more in when he returns.”
“Good.” She picked up one of the dishes and started eating. “I wasn’t planning on sharing anyway.” She flashed Hatch a bright grin.
“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better.”
She nodded. “That nap seems to have done a lot for me.”
“Good,” he said. “Has anything else come to mind?”
She shook her head. “No, not yet. I keep hoping but nothing so far.”
“Well, it all falls to that locker, it seems.”
“I know,” she murmured. “I was trying to avoid thinking about that.”
“When you have a problem like this, it’s best to face it head-on. We need to see what’s in that locker, and we need to track down that email we found earlier.”
“How do you do that?”
“I already handed it off to the team, and they’re tracking it down now.” She nodded. “Did your father work with anybody over in England?”
“Not that I know of, but again what do I know?” she murmured sadly. “It seems like my father had a life that didn’t have much of anything to do with mine.”
“And yet you already knew that in many ways, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she agreed, “definitely. I went off and did my own thing, and I guess that opened things up for him to do his own thing.” She stopped and stared. “God, that just sounds terrible, doesn’t it?”
“In what way?” he asked, as he took a bite of the food in front of them.
“Just …” She stopped, took a deep breath. “I mean, … if I had been there more, maybe he wouldn’t have gone down this pathway.”
“Maybe not, or maybe he had a disease that was already killing him and was making him a little bit crazy,” he suggested, with a shrug. “Without his body we can’t ever have a postmortem, and, at the rate we’re going, by the time we do find it, … chances are, we won’t get much information off it anyway. We do know he had a rickety heart.”
“To put it down to an organic problem,” she noted, “is a cop-out. And he said nothing about his heart.”
He grinned. “It gives you an out in terms of an option,” he offered gently. “I wasn’t trying to excuse his behavior, but maybe offering ways to try to understand it. Sometimes having a condition, in this case his heart, might explain some of his behavior.”
“And trying to understand it would help a lot,” she admitted, “because that’s the part that I’m really stuck on. Why would a man, who has spent all this time preserving all these artifacts, intentionally do something to damage them?”
“But you don’t know that he’s damaging them.” Hatch’s fork froze midair. “Or do you?”
She stared at him. “I don’t. But, if the artifacts left the country, he’s taking them away from their rightful owners. So that’s just plain and simple theft. In this case, in this country, it’s considered quite a nasty crime, with very high penalties.”
“And yet he hated the Egyptian government and was quite vocal about them causing all kinds of damage to the industry. So again, I think we’re back to the idea that he may well have thought he was helping to protect these antiquities.”
“That would be an easier scenario for me to understand,” she murmured, “but it’s still not necessarily the right one.”
“You can’t be bothered about right or wrong,” he stated. “That isn’t the point right now. Just be open and understand what might have been going on in his head.”
“That’s hard to do,” she replied, “almost impossible actually, because, well, like I said, … he was a difficult person.”
“How much of that difficulty could have been because he was doing something that he knew he shouldn’t get involved in and was afraid of getting caught?”
She frowned, as she studied Hatch. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I guess that’s possible too.”
“I’d say it’s quite possible, and maybe the best answer you’ll get at this point.”
“Which isn’t much of an answer at all,” she noted miserably.
“Maybe not.” He grinned. “But, when you think about it, you already got to see your father’s body. You know for a fact that he’s dead, so you’re not looking for closure in that sense. Instead you are looking for closure about why he might have gotten involved in something as distasteful as moving some of these archaeological finds out of the country, calling it theft. And yet, if you look at it from another point of view, does him trying to preserve these antiquities make sense to you or not?”
“It does make sense.” She sighed. “Maybe he had instructions to bring it all back, if the Egyptian government, you know, cooperated or something.” She shook her head. “I have to admit that all of it just, … it just sounds bizarre.”
“You don’t know of anybody who he worked with here?”
“Not here. He did have a couple friends in England though. He stayed with one of them whenever he was over there.”
“Okay, so he didn’t work with people in England, outside of this import-export company, but he did have friends.”
She nodded slightly. “I guess that’s what you meant in the first place, isn’t it?”
“No, I meant business associates, but friends are just as good,” he stated. When they were almost done eating, his phone buzzed. He pulled it out, took a look, and smiled. “Corbin is on his way back.”
She looked down at the food and winced. “We just ate his lunch.”
“No, we didn’t.” When a series of odd taps came at the door, Hatch got up casually and opened the door, letting Corbin in.
Corbin walked in, carrying a bag of food. He looked at them, surrounded by food, and smiled. “Looks like both of us had the same idea.”
She gave him a fat grin. “I would be very happy to eat yours as well.”
He burst out laughing and then stopped, looked at her cautiously. “I spoke to the brother of your jailer Aman.”
She nodded slowly, put down her plate, and leaned toward him. “And?” she asked. “What did you find out?”
Corbin sat down. “So, per his brother, Aman apparently took a job that got him into trouble with the law a long time ago. When I told his brother there were suspicions that Aman may have been involved in the disappearance of you and your father, he just nodded and said he wouldn’t be surprised. When I asked him if he would be surprised about Aman being involved in murder, his eyes widened, and he winced, but he just shrugged.”
“Did he have any idea where Aman has been staying?”
Corbin nodded, then held up piece of paper. “I’ve got an address. I took a look and watched it for a bit. It looks like maybe it is some secret hostel, with several people staying there at the moment,” he noted. “I’ll go back after we eat, hoping a bunch of the people would have moved on by then.”
“I’ll take a look, while you eat,” Hatch offered immediately. “I’d like to get an idea of the layout.”
Corbin nodded. “Perfect, your turn.” He handed over the address. “I’ll eat some food and tank up a bit. Maybe I’ll crash for about thirty minutes, and, hopefully by then, you will have contacted me.”
At that, Millie looked over at Hatch. “Do you think that’s wise? If the brother is in contact with Aman, you could be walking into a trap. What if you waited until nobody is there?”
Corbin laughed. “If it’s truly a hostel, people will always be there. Plus, from my surveillance, it’s a huge building with a potentially large capacity.”
“Don’t worry,” Hatch told Millie. “In such a huge place, tourists must come and go all the time. I’ll be safe, maybe pose as a dig worker.”
She snorted at that. “Like hell. Everybody will have you pegged. You look like a foreigner. It doesn’t matter if you change your appearance or not. Plus, how much do you even know about the digs?” she asked. “You need to come up with a better, more believable excuse.”
“Got it,” Hatch replied, smiling at her.
His smiles didn’t help. She didn’t like this idea at all, and she openly glared at him. “Corbin is on babysitting duty now then, is that it?” She couldn’t explain her reticence. “You know it’s a bad idea.”
“Why is that?” Hatch asked.
“Because Corbin has already been made, and the brother probably tipped off Aman. Now they’ll both just be waiting to see who shows up next.”
“Well, I’ll be next,” Hatch said, “and I’ll take a look around and get inside and check it out some more.”
She glared at him. “You know it’s not a good idea.”
“It’s what we do,” he stated. “Have a little faith.”
She subsided somewhat. “Fine, but, for the record, I don’t like it.”
He grinned. “Try to relax. Even nap while I’m gone. You’ll feel better.”
