Page 21 of Trust Me

Harun tapped at the keyboard. After a moment, a video began to play.

On the screen, Dr. Fahd Yousef, the professor she’d worked with for the last four months, faced a camera. His face was battered and bleeding, the skin around his left eye swollen, purple, and open only a slit.

Fahd spoke in Arabic. “I will not tell you.”

Blood dribbled from his lip.

A voice off camera said, “Then one of your students will.”

“They don’t know anything but the location of the site they’ve excavated with Dr. Edwards.”

“Dr. Edwards.” Her name was spoken in a flat tone. A statement, not a question.

Yousef said nothing.

A fist shot out, and Yousef’s head snapped back. His head lolled as he wheezed in a painful breath and struggled to focus. “She’s no one. Visiting professor. Paid for by an American corporation. Free labor. Little brain.”

Her heart ached. Not at his words, but at his struggle. Yousef hadn’t liked her at first, but one thing he did respect was her brain.

He’d tried to protect her, just as he had his students.

“She has seen the maps. She knows.”

“No.”

Another blow.

“She knows nothing. Stupid American. She speaks Arabic poorly and isn’t the expert on Nabataean history she claimed to be.”

Later, Diana would wonder if that obvious lie was the tipping point that told Rafiq and his minions that Diana did indeed know everything.

Chapter Ten

Amman, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

July

Diana rolled her shoulders as she reread the note.

Diana,

Meet me in my office as soon as you’re done uploading the day’s notes into the database. – FY

This was the first time Dr. Fahd Yousef had made such a request, and she wasn’t sure if it was a good sign or bad. He’d been reluctant to work with her, but she was the price of the funding he’d accepted from Gardner Holdings, which made her Dr. Yousef’s assistant in running the dig in the desert.

She’d spent her first weeks here convincing the professor that she wasn’t Gardner’s sycophant and mole. She was here for the work and cared for the resource. Gardner was a means to an end for them both.

Dr. Yousef’s request to meet in his office was reminiscent of those first weeks, when he monitored her every move and double-checked her work. Perhaps he wanted to see if she was still coloring within the lines now that he’d relaxed his monitoring.

She replied to his message saying she’d be in his office in ten minutes.

After closing the database, she then sent an email to Morgan confirming the security team would meet her at the usual place and follow her into the Friday market tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow, she’d try again to convince Bibi to show her the real artifacts in the back of the stall.

Email sent, she closed her laptop and tucked it into her satchel, then draped the cross-body strap over her shoulder.

She locked her temporary office and went down the hall to meet with her colleague.

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