Cassie maintained a stony expression. Animals could sense fear. These guys weren’t that much farther up the evolutionary ladder.
“Where your friends?” the man with the cap asked again.
The pythia brazened it out. “They’re waiting for me at the Jeep. I had to go back to the stone circle because I dropped my room key.”
The Turk fished in his vest pocket. “This your key?” He held it out for her to see.
“Yes, that’s right. Can I have it back?”
The Turk chuckled. “I keep for now.” He placed it back in his pocket. “Why you follow us?”
“To get my key back, of course.”
The Turk didn’t appear convinced. “You think you take key back from us by yourself?”
Cassie gave a little shrug. “Well, I wasn’t going to rush you if that’s what you mean. I just wanted to see where you went and then I was going to get my friends and have them take it back.”
The man said nothing.
“My friends are waiting for me.” She tried to sound bold now. “If I don’t get back to them, they’ll come looking for me.”
The man smiled grimly. “They not find you.”
Cassie couldn’t believe her own composure in the face of the threat. She felt nothing but an absolute stillness at the core of her being. It helped her keep a clear head. She took a step forward. “I’m worth more alive than dead.”
The Turk paused to consider. “What you mean?”
There it was. He was interested. She pressed her advantage. “I mean ransom. For me and the golden bee. I work for an organization that will pay you.”
The Turk ogled her, walking around her in a slow circle.
She read his thoughts and nipped them in the bud. “And I mean intact. You don’t get to sample the merchandise. If you touch so much as one hair on my head, the price goes down.”
That stopped him short. Apparently, money trumped lust. His two associates were whispering to each other trying to understand what was being said in the foreign tongue.
The man with the cap rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
The pythia slowly lowered her arms. “Name your price. My people can afford to pay you twice what you’d get on the black market for that artifact.”
“Plus, they pay extra for you,” the man corrected her.
“Absolutely!” She nodded and folded her arms across her chest. Cassie thought about her teammates standing above and hearing every word she said. She spoke a little louder for their benefit. “Now take me someplace where I can write a ransom note. It has to be in my handwriting, so my friends will know it came from me. You should enclose the room key with the note as extra proof. One of your men can take the message to the hotel where we were staying.”
The Turk’s face took on a crafty expression. “If you play joke on us, we bury you. Maybe you not dead when we bury you. Then we have good joke.”
Cassie returned his stare without flinching. Animals could sense fear. In a humorless voice, she said, “I’m not joking. You deliver me to my friends unharmed, and you’ll get the money just like I said.”
The Turk turned to address his companions. After a lengthy and very heated conversation, they fell in line and headed down the forest path. The man with the gun nudged Cassie forward.
***
The Arkana team let out a collective sigh of relief as they watched the party disappear around the bend.
“That chick must have brass ovaries!” Erik’s voice was filled with admiration.
“You usually refer to her as a kid,” Griffin reminded him.
Erik grinned. “No kid would have had the brains or the raw nerve to do what she just did. She’s definitely been upgraded in my book.”
The three of them rose to follow at a safe distance.
“Game faces, guys,” the security coordinator told the others. “Time for us to save a kick-ass damsel in distress.”
Chapter 37 – Rustics Retreat
The sun was well past its zenith by now. Its beams slanted downward to the forest floor. The Turks and their captive traveled in silence for about a mile. They followed a single well-worn trail though several other paths crisscrossed theirs along the way. Eventually, they came to a small stone cottage hidden among the evergreens. It was a single-story building with a low-pitched roof that hung over a wooden porch. The structure was run down. The stucco was grayish and cracked in many places, exposing the stone wall underneath. Broken terra cotta tiles had slid off the roof and lay scattered around the foundation.
The man with the cap pushed the weathered wooden door open. It wasn’t locked.
The Turk with the rifle shoved Cassie through the entrance. She looked around as her eyes adjusted to the dim interior. The whitewashed walls were as gray as the exterior. Black streaks from innumerable cooking fires ran up the wall above the hearth. There was a central room with two deeply recessed casement windows. The glass was so grimy it afforded very little light. A pair of doors led off to other rooms which Cassie guessed to be bedrooms or storage areas. The house smelled musty as if it had been abandoned decades before.
“You live here?” she asked the man with the cap.
“Sometime we stay here,” he replied cryptically. “Now you sit.” He gestured toward one of the chairs drawn up next to a rough plank table in the center of the room. This might once have been the kitchen though there was no running water or electricity that Cassie could see. An unlit oil lamp sat in the middle of the table.
The man with the cap walked over to a cupboard and began rifling through drawers and shelves. After a few minutes, he returned with the nub of a pencil and a torn piece of paper.
“Now you write,” he commanded, handing Cassie the objects.
His two companions stood looking over the pythia’s
