Chapter 10

Stefan scowled as he faced into the wind, their small speedboat cutting across the water at a rapid clip, bisecting the azure waters as they approached the shoreline of the small island. His men had located the scavenger band's leader, who'd been more than willing to talk to them. The previous night's storm had yielded more gifts from the sea, and he had much to sell.

Stefan had much to sell, too. And now so did Nicki, unwittingly. The information she had on her video cam, if proven to be a connection to Prince Ari's airplane, was both good and bad news. Good, if Ari was found alive or dead, without foul play involved. Bad, if the king and queen had indisputable cause to do a full-scale search in this area—an area which wasn't O?rois territory, but Turkish. The nightmare of navigating the politics of those permissions, and the inherent insinuation that the Turkish government hadn't done all they could to find Ari's plane or the remains of the son of one of its neighbors and supposed allies, wasn't a possibility he relished.

Worse, Nicki knew where that wreckage was. So if someone wanted that information buried, she'd be the first person in line to be buried as well.

He grimaced. There were a lot of ifs in that statement, and he more than most knew the danger of getting too caught up in ifs. Part of what made him successful for the past century and a half was his ability to focus only on what mattered to the job at hand.

And what mattered at this moment was keeping Nicki out of access to anyone but him, until they returned her safely home to O?ros.

Home.His lips twisted at the word. The palace wasn't really his home, but it was the closest he'd probably get in all his long lifetime—an institution so entrenched in O?ros, it would outlive even him. His father had been a distant cousin to the king, but Stefan hadn't known the royal family well until after the accident that had taken his parents' lives. The reigning monarch at that time, King Orlof, had taken him in when he'd been barely fourteen years old, an idiot teen by any standard, and one who was perpetually angry at the world.

King Orlof and Queen Ida, King Jasen's great-great-great grandparents, had welcomed Stefan into the palace without question or conversation. They'd showered him with faith and understanding, and they'd asked for nothing in return but his unstinting service. He had given them that, and when his demigod nature had surfaced at age eighteen and he'd been given the opportunity to extend his service to god, Crown, and country at the age of twenty, he'd agreed to it with all his heart. He could do no less, and from generation to generation, monarch to monarch, he'd never regretted the decision. One of the high counselors to King Orlof had told him, sagely, that "after the first death, there is no other," and he'd found that to be true. He didn't consider himself heartless, but…witnessing the passage of time and even death had gotten easier, over time.

Beside him, Nicki sat forward on the edge of her seat with her lips pressed tightly together, clearly excited to be along for the op but trying hard not to show it. He tightened his jaw, thinking of what she'd heard in the conference room at the palace. He hadn't been wrong. She shouldn't have been asked to do this. But she wanted so badly to succeed…

He frowned, a new thought striking him. What was behind Nicki's urgency, exactly?

Stefan knew enough not to imagine it was solely because she was swept up in her attraction to him. So why? By all accounts, she was successful at her work. She was strong and fierce, and her friends and family adored her. Arguably, he hadn't read Nicki's dossier as closely as Emmaline's, after Prince Kristos had begun showering the girl with attention. Nicki had been a distant third in his concern behind the wide-eyed Emmaline and the shrewd-tongued Lauren. She was content to be in the background. Particularly if that background had a wall she could climb.

He pressed his lips together, considering. Despite Hermes's many gifts to his demigods, full-on mind reading wasn't one of Stefan's skillsets. He had a remarkable gift for reading emotions, though, especially for those he knew well. So what was Nicki's motivation?

She must have sensed his attention, because she turned at that moment, catching his expression. She grinned widely then, letting some of her excitement leach out before grabbing at the edge of the speedboat as the driver abruptly banked. They'd arrived.

Their trip had taken them around the southern tip of the island, facing out to sea. Stefan couldn't see any of the mainland from this vantage point, though it was only a few miles distant, and instead his attention focused on a small collection of huts that peeked out of the thick vegetation, virtually undetectable unless you were looking for them.

When they reached the sand, Stefan handed Nicki a broad scarf. "Hair and face," he instructed, and she complied without comment. Much of Turkey embraced Western ideas regarding a woman's need to cover herself in public, but Stefan wasn't taking any chances with these outliers. And Nicki didn't bat an eye—again, she was following orders, and delighted to do so. Her bright eyes took in everything, and her mouth stayed firmly shut.

They trooped up to the scavenger dealer and after quick orders delivered in O?rois, Stefan and one man continued on while Nicki, flanked by guards who were trying to act like anything other than her protectors, stopped at a lean-to bristling with junk. She and the guards would pretend to paw through the offerings while Stefan met with the dealer. Without another word, he and his lone guard moved on.

The dealer sat outside his hut, beneath a large fabric shade. He was fat in the way once-strong men often were, layers of softness obscuring but not negating the tough core beneath. He nodded as Stefan walked up, then focused on his team.

"Who is the woman?"

"Guest. Didn't trust her alone on the boat."

The dealer smiled, displaying cracked teeth. "Always a good idea, that. Not worth being wrong." He spoke Turkish, and he gave his full attention to Stefan. "Big man, big boat. Your people clearly thought I had something of value to offer you. What do you need?" He didn't offer specifics, but Stefan suspected everything was on the table—guns, ammo, jewelry, drugs.

"Information." He pulled out a printed photo of Ari's wristwatch adorning the wrist of the fisherman. They'd staged the photo to have the watch in close proximity to the man's face. "Six months ago you sold this watch to that man," he said, stabbing his finger at the photo. "Do you remember?"

The older man squinted at the photo and appeared to consider his options. "I sell a great many things."

"And you sold this honorably," Stefan said. "The man said you'd received it in exchange for several items from a man. This man?"

He held out a picture of Ari and waited. The photo was of Ari working on his plane, dressed in what amounted to rags for him. But he was clean and healthy, obviously the son of a rich man. With luck the dealer didn't realize exactly who he was, but?—

The man shook his head. "That man? No. That's not who sold it to me. He was a small man, not Greek. Maybe Egyptian. Crazy in the head." He touched his temple. "That man in the photo would not have traded the watch for a leaky boat and food. He is too smart for that, eh? Too smart to sell a watch at all, I'm thinking. There would be a story there."

Stefan pocketed the photo. "The Egyptian man, you ever see him again?"

The dealer shrugged. "No, but didn't expect to. He was drunk—gave me his flask too." He grinned. "Idiot. Didn't know what he had, either the booze or the watch. Maybe he got it from your friend, eh?"

Stefan smiled right along with him, but his heart knifed sideways. "Flask—you have it?"

"Yes, but it's not for sale." The man gestured to the table, his shrewd eyes missing nothing as Stefan turned. He didn't have to search hard. The flask had primacy of place on the man's side table, sticking out from the trash like a rose among thorns. It was six inches tall and three inches wide, a mixture of metal and waterproof leather.

And, in the bottom right corner, there was a defect. A part of the leather had been burned away…where the flask had once been stamped with the symbol of O?ros.

Stefan's next move wasn't so much planned as instinctual. Rationally, he knew the man could be telling the truth. There could have been a mysterious Egyptian man, drunk from Ari's own flask. That man could have killed Ari, taken his valuables, and pawned them off. It was all totally reasonable.

He launched himself at the big man anyway.

The dealer shouted in alarm to alert his guards, and Stefan had the vaguest sense of guards rushing out of the next lean-to with semi-automatic rifles.

They were too late.

Hermes had gifted Stefan with lightning-quick reaction speeds. By the time the guards cleared the door, Stefan had knocked the dealer off his chair with a roundhouse punch and divested the dealer of his own gun. He pushed the weapon up against the man's temple before the dealer finished bouncing off the woven mat.

"First, call off your men," Stefan snapped. "Then, tell me the truth. I have money, friend. Money and nothing but goodwill for you. I kill you, and your men won't mourn. They'll take all your money and goods and set up their own shop. I don't want that and neither do you. But I'm going to need the truth."