4. Present Day

CHAPTER FOUR

PRESENT DAY

HARRISON

M ax is watching me, and I don't know if I should laugh and push him away or grab the front of his T-shirt and kiss him. Kissing him isn't something I'd ever planned on doing. Max has always been there, like a younger brother…until I came home for a visit two years ago. Suddenly, he wasn't a kid. He'd almost finished his degree—he was always smarter than Jay and me—and all grown up. Two inches taller and solid muscle, and I wanted to do things with him that were not very brotherly.

Jay would've punched me for thinking about Max in that way. Lucky for me, Jay wasn't in my head when I was jerking off.

The next time I was home, it was for Jay's funeral, and it was a lot for everyone, especially his parents. They kept saying how much I was like a son to them, and Max had gotten drunk and confessed how he'd split with his girlfriend of three years because she'd taken a job over east in Sydney.

It was a bad time all round .

This is supposed to be a fun time. A trip to complete the plans we'd made and put his ghost to rest. To remember the mischief we'd gotten into growing up. There were times Jay hated the way Max tagged along, but they were my family, and I wasn't about to ditch a brother.

I try to keep that in mind. This is Max.

My dick agrees. This is MAX . Max, whose dark auburn hair has a matching happy trail that I try not to notice while we're in such close quarters.

Max, who let me cry on his shoulder at the funeral.

Max, who'd gotten drunk with me and tucked me into his bed to sleep it off while he slept on his parent's sofa.

"Yeah, for Jay," Max says, looking at me like there is something else he wants to say.

I force out a breath and stand up. I need to do something to shake off this tension and to stop imagining what he'd feel like pressed against me, all that muscle holding me down. Somehow, he grew into the kind of guy I'd like to manhandle me.

I hold out my hand to help him up because that is the right thing to do, not because I want to touch him. He reaches up and takes my hand, and the contact sends a jolt to my dick like I'm sixteen and rubbing one out while watching the rugby on TV—those guys have thighs I'd happily die between.

Max played rugby throughout high school. Still does for a local team…huh. I don't want to think too hard about what that means, either.

I pull the torch out of one of the pockets in my pants. "Grab the drink bottle."

The last thing I want is for us to wander around, get lost, and die of thirst. But Max is already on it, as though he doesn't need me to look out for him anymore .

I don't need to. He's a whole-ass adult who patches people together for a living. I blow them up. But I like looking after him, even though the lie that I do it because he's younger no longer sits right.

We follow the wall around our cave. I'm wondering if there's any other exits—ones big enough for us to use—because, like him, I'm worried that if the sand banks up too much, we won't be getting out the way we came in, which will be inconvenient at best and fatal at worst if we run out of water. I'm not a fan of digging through sand, and help will take time to arrive and dig us out.

And if the sand is piling up on all sides?

I push the thought away, not wanting to dwell on the possibility of being buried alive. "So…think we'll find any mummies?"

"Fuck, I hope not," he mutters behind me.

"Booby traps?" I'm stirring him now, mostly to distract myself. I doubt the cave has anything of note concealed. "Dinosaur bones? We could make a cool discovery."

Now that's a story worth telling. Yeah, we hid out from a killer sandstorm and found a new kind of dinosaur. A complete skeleton.

My unit will piss themselves laughing that I stumbled onto a find. A smile forms.

"Stop." His voice cuts through my thoughts.

I freeze without questioning the order. "What?"

"I saw something glinting ahead."

My first thought is that the eyes of a wild animal glint in the light. That doesn't calm my heartbeat. There are no lions in the area. The biggest things out here are sand cats and snakes. Do scorpions glint?

Slowly, I slide the flashlight over the sand that forms the base of the cave. Is that proof that sandstorms have driven in at some point? I catch the glint and pause, not sure what it is.

"There," Max says half a second too late.

"Well, the good news is it's not moving." I exhale, reassuring myself as much as him. It's different when I'm all kitted up and with an armed, trained team. Here, it's just me and him, and the last thing I want to do is see Max get hurt.

He gives a nervous laugh. "About time we got some good news."

"Come on, the storm is the first bad thing that's happened." Everything else has been grand. We saw some of the sights, roamed the markets, and ate some random street food before collecting our supplies and meeting with the guide, who helped set up the trip.

We have a camel ride booked at our next stop that will take us to see an oasis and some desert ruins. I assumed Max was having a good time, even though motorbikes aren't his thing. "You aren't enjoying yourself?"

Have I dragged him into this because it's a trip I'd planned with his brother?

Is he here out of guilt?

I thought it would be fun for us to do and remember Jay.

"I am. It's pushed me out of my comfort zone." But his words are hesitant, like there's something else he wants to say.

Then I remember the look he was giving me, and I'm right back to where I started, remembering the way he walked around the hotel room in a pair of shorts, looking like he belonged in the kind of fitness magazine I didn't read for the articles as a teen.

Have I missed those looks before, writing them off because he was younger? Three years as a teenager is a lot. But now we're both in our twenties, things are different…

"Come on, let's have a look." Max gives me a nudge, and I creep closer. Just because it's not moving now doesn't mean it's not going to start moving.

I keep scanning the floor, searching for trouble, and then ahead to where the glint remains unmoving. The sand is smooth and free of tracks…or at least anything I recognize as tracks. Though given the way the storm outside brushes over my skin as a breeze, I'm not sure how long tracks could last here, anyway.

My boot hits something, jolting whatever it is and causing the sand to slide away.

"Fuck!" I step back, almost crashing into Max. The dark, hollow eyes of a skull stare back at me. Its mouth hangs open as if laughing at my shock.

Max's hand rests on my lower back from where he stopped me from stumbling into him. "I hope they didn't die here while waiting out a sandstorm."

I scan the skeleton and its green clothing. It's a military uniform. "Want to find out?"

"I'm not sure we have time. I've got plans for the rest of the day…" He smacks my shoulder. "Of course I want to find out. We've got nothing else to do."

I can think of a few things we can do besides disturbing the dead, but poking around the bones will cause less trouble than poking around with my bone. I walk around the skeleton, careful not to step where his legs must be from the way he's lying, and dust some more sand off his clothes. According to the faded name badge, he was E Connell.

I glance up at Max. "Connell. He was military."

"Allied soldier? "

"His name doesn't sound German, and we're still in Egypt." The Italians held Libya and were reinforced by the Germans. That is, of course, if he isn't wearing a stolen uniform.

Max nods. "Jay would love this. He knew all the details."

Jay loved military history. For him, this trip was about going to see where his great-grandfather served. For me, it was a chance to hoon through the desert with my best mate. For Max…I'm not sure, aside from the fact he agreed to do this with me to fulfill his brother's dream. I'm glad he's here.

"We should find out a bit more so we can report his body. His family must have wondered what happened." He'll be one of the many names at the memorial. Men who died, or who were assumed dead, and whose bodies were never recovered.

Max snorts. "His family is long dead."

"Hey, his great grandkids will have been told about him, and telling them, returning his body, matters." It matters to me because I'd want someone to do the same if I died overseas. My family never learned what happened to my great-grandfather. We assume he was one of the many killed in Europe, with no remains found. But for all we know, he hooked up with a French woman and started a new life, leaving my great-grandmother to raise the twins he gave her before he shipped out. That a family member created that specific rumor means there was either a bit of truth…or they were being malicious because they didn't like the way she got herself a boyfriend after the war ended. Over eighty years later, when everyone who was an adult at the time is dead, it's hard to uncover the truth. Either way, my great-grandfather was dead to the family he left behind .

I put the torch in my mouth and search his pockets.

Max crouches next to me and sweeps the sand away from the golden thing that caught his attention in the first place. It's on the wrist of another skeleton. "How many more bodies are here?"

My gaze darts to him, then back across the sand to where I left the glow stick. Did we stomp over a graveyard? I shudder at the idea of the Axis soldiers dumping bodies into the cave to hide them. "Hopefully, only these two. Does yours have a name?"

"C Brown. He's wearing a satchel."

"That's where the good stuff will be." I move around to his other side to help him.

Max flips open the satchel. "Whoa. Are we sure they're soldiers?" He pulls out a six-inch-tall gold cat statue and holds it up to the light. "Or were they tomb robbers?"