The Other Crowd. Alex Archer

how to dig correctly.” He tapped her trowel, which she had been absentmindedly scraping across the surface, and now realized she’d nicked a piece of something white. “What do you have there?”

      “Looks like a bone. Excellent. Let me show you how well I can dig.”

      “All right, American. Hey, what’s that?”

      Looking up from the find, Annja squinted and scanned the horizon. A crowd was gathering at the field edge where the grass grew high and both camps joined.

      “Let’s go take a look.” Wesley left her behind, but not for long.

      “Annja!” Eric appeared, gestured toward the commotion and took off, camera at the ready.

      The cause of the excitement wandered onto the dirt area in front of a parked vehicle. A woman about twenty-two. Surrounded by curious people, she held out her hands as if to ask for space, or maybe just to keep her bearings.

      “Beth,” Annja heard Wesley say.

      The missing girl? She quickened her steps to join the gathering. The crowd was keeping its distance, not blocking her in, yet one woman took Beth’s arm and led her to a stop.

      “Beth?” Wesley approached her. “Where have you been?”

      The bedraggled woman stared blindly at Wesley. A few leaves were tucked in the dirty blond strands of her tangled hair. Her fingers and palms were dirty, as well as the knees of her khaki pants. All in all, though, she looked healthy; maybe she’d just taken a stumble in the dirt.

      Annja recalled what Daniel had said about her disappearance. She had been missing a little over thirty-six hours.

      “Who took you?” someone called out from the crowd.

      “Yes.” Annja stepped forward and addressed the woman. “Do you know what happened? Who took you? Or did you get lost?”

      Beth looked up and when Annja thought the frail, shaking woman was looking into her eyes she realized she was focused just over her shoulder—where Eric stood with the camera.

      “The fair folk,” the woman said.

      The crowd nodded, muttering that they knew it. Didn’t want to believe it, but now it was a sure thing.

      Annja turned to Eric and rolled her eyes at the camera. “Cut,” she said.

      6

      Garin left the details of landing at the airport to his pilot. The man had never failed him, and always managed to land within minutes of his estimated arrival time.

      Garin planned to send his luggage directly to his Manhattan penthouse because he was headed straight for the auction house.

      Strolling toward customs, Garin mused over why he’d jumped so quickly at the snap of Roux’s fingers. He didn’t usually allow the old man to order him about. Hell, for more than five hundred years the two of them had embraced a sort of unavoidable acceptance of the other. Because they were the only five-hundred-year-old men walking the earth these days. They had a connection that neither would deny, and when one truly needed the other, all petty disagreements were overlooked.

      And if Roux thought Annja would appreciate the Fouquet, then Garin could see that—much as he never wanted to look at that painting again. Obtaining it would be no problem. So long as he made the auction in time.

      He checked his watch. Bidding didn’t start for another hour and a half. The limo could have him there in forty-five minutes.

      Annja Creed. Now there was a remarkable woman. She put the woman Garin had left in his bed to shame. There was simply no comparison between the two.

      Annja was a breed apart from the sort of women with whom Garin surrounded himself. She would never allow any man to push her around, to make assumptions regarding her willingness to please and/or serve him. Smart, sexy and adventurous, she also owned the one thing that kept Garin up some nights.

      The sword once wielded by Joan of Arc.

      It was a sword Garin had seen in use by the sainted young woman, for he had been apprentice to Roux when the man had been appointed to guard Jeanne d’Arc. For some reason, after the sword had been wrested away from the Maid of Orléans and shattered, Garin and Roux had become immortal. He didn’t know why, but he’d accepted the gift for what it was. Who wouldn’t accept immortality?

      But now that the sword had been put together and Annja wielded it as if a mystical extension of Jeanne’s will—what then?

      Garin couldn’t be sure if his immortality had been lost. He didn’t feel older. It had only been a few years since Annja had taken possession of the sword. And Lord knows he’d tried to take it from her, to smash it, and put things back the way they should be. But he couldn’t.

      Out of Annja’s hands the sword would not remain solid, unless she willed it so. She could hand it to him to look over, if she wished—and she had. But she did not trust him to do anything more than quickly inspect the thing. And she shouldn’t.

      But would he really break the thing should he again be given the opportunity? Some days he wasn’t so sure. Gaining Annja’s respect overwhelmed any desire to push her away as a result of stealing from her. He sincerely wanted to know her. To experience her in ways that not only included the flesh, but the mind and soul, as well. She fascinated him.

      Very few women did so.

      With a smile on his face, and his thoughts on the limber body of Annja Creed, Garin handed his passport to the customs official behind the counter.

      He’d romanced Annja. He’d attempted to seduce her with fine things. She played along, but only so far. She wasn’t stupid, rather leery at times, and then at other times he could almost believe she was as interested in him as he her.

      But to win her completely would end the wanting, the yearning, to learn more. And did he really want to spoil that anticipation?

      “Did you have your passport, Mr. Braden?”

      “Huh?” He steered his focus to the woman holding his wallet. He’d handed her his wallet by mistake? How one’s mind could get distracted when it was focused on a gorgeous woman. “Sorry.” He reached inside his inner suit coat pocket. “I have it…somewhere.”

      Where was the damned thing? He’d had it on the jet. Had he dropped it after disembarking? “I seem to have misplaced it. I’m sure it’s on my private jet. I’ll just give the pilot a call—”

      “If you’ll just step aside, Mr. Braden, we can work this out.”

      Garin stroked his fingers down the lapel of his Armani suit and delivered his best sexy grin to the woman, who looked like she was serving the end of a thirty-hour shift and desperately needed a kind word. “I’ve got an appointment. If we can make this quick? I know it’s in the jet.”

      The daggers in her look pricked his confidence. “Your jet just taxied for takeoff, Mr. Braden.”

      “What?” He looked aside, as if to search for the jet, but he was too far from any window overlooking the runway. “We’ve only been on the ground twenty minutes. He couldn’t have refueled so quickly. Where is the man headed?”

      “I have no idea, Mr. Braden. Please, if you’ll come with me.”

      Garin slammed a fist on the counter, but refrained from swearing.

      This was not going as smoothly as he’d anticipated.

      7

      Annja watched keenly as Michael Slater argued with Wesley over who would give Beth a ride to a hospital in Cork. Beth had disappeared from the good camp—as Annja had come to already consider Wesley’s camp—so why Slater cared was beyond her.

      They didn’t argue for long. One of the women caught Beth as she fainted, and barked at Wesley to start up the Jeep. Slater conceded with