“We’ve learned your fiancé’s little tricks. I’ll wait for you right here,” Louis said, pointing at a spot right outside the bathroom door.
Of course he would wait.
“I might be a few minutes,” she said.
“In five minutes, I’m coming in.”
It didn’t give Dani much time. Thankfully, she was skilled in the art of climbing in and out of windows. The instant the bathroom door clicked shut, she rushed toward the window high up on the wall. Not that she could reach it. Damn her short legs. She scanned the bathroom, eyeing a trash can in the corner, the only movable object in the room. Careful not to make too much noise, she tipped the round, three-foot-high bin on itsside, rotating it in the direction of the window. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she could do this. Once she situated the can directly underneath the window, Dani took a deep breath and placed both hands on either side of the bin. But right as she was about to lift herself onto the edge, she looked into the can and something caught her eye.
A grocery store sale paper advertising what appeared to be a bottle of something. She couldn’t tell because the paper was torn in half. But it wasn’t the prices or the realization that, sure, they had grocery store ads in Greece like in the US. It was what was on the bottle.
A μ with an eye. Like on that clay vessel in the museum.
She dug into the trash, pulling out the paper. What if this wasn’t a coincidence? What if itmeantsomething?
Then she couldn’t leave Theo. Not now.
She tucked the paper in her pocket, and then resituated the trash can and washed her hands, right as Louis busted into the bathroom.
“I said I’d be a minute,” Dani said, hoping Louis couldn’t sense her anxiousness.
He looked around as if not fully trusting her—fair—before they made their way back to the dock, coming up behind Maurice and Theo. Maurice noticed her first, then said, “Okay, we can go,” clearly not knowing that moments earlier, she’d been thirty seconds away from her escape.
But when Theo turned around and saw her, the color drained from his face and his eyes went wide. He shook his head as if asking what she was doing there.
She tried smiling, but he didn’t seem to be in a smiling mood.
“What happened?” he whispered into her ear as theyfollowed a few feet behind Maurice and Louis leading the way to the parking lot.
“I found something,” she responded, staring straight ahead and trying her best not to make it seem like a big deal.
“In thebathroom?” he asked, unable to fathom any sort of great archaeological discovery lurking in the public toilet. Also fair. “Juicy, we had a plan.” He sounded exhausted.
“No,youhad a plan. I came up with another.”
“This isn’t the time for competition. That was our one shot to get you out of here. We’re not going to get another opportunity like that.”
“You mean, another opportunity to use the great crapper caper?” she joked.
“This isn’t a game,” he snarled, gently pulling her in tight by the back of her arm and stopping them in their tracks.
She snapped her face toward his so they were now nose to nose—or rather, her face to his chest—and they paused for a beat. His nostrils may have been flared and his brows wrinkled with frustration, but God, she’d missed his face.
“Yet you wanted me to climb out a bathroom window and thoughtthatwasn’t a game? I get that I’m not someamazingarchaeologist like you,” she said, waving her arms around and rolling her eyes, “but I’m not some dummy, either. Just because I’ve never been out of the country doesn’t mean I don’t have experience.”
“I know that. And I never said you were a dummy.”
“Then why won’t you let me help you?”
Theo put his face in his hands and groaned. “I told you, I don’t need your help.”
“Oh really? Because it looks to me like you do. Whatever happened to ‘I’ll always be there for you’? It goes both ways,Theo. We were never like this before. Why won’t you talk to me?”
He put his hands on his hips, gazed up at the sky, and then blew out a long breath. She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he took in his thoughts, now closing his eyes to shield them from the bright Grecian sun. The fight within him was obvious. Of course he knew at this point he had no choice but to work with her, but she didn’t know when Theo became so…bossy. Growing up, she’d always been the bossy one. When had the tables turned?
“I know you don’t want me here,” she said, “but like it or not, I’mstillhere, so you might as well work with me instead of trying to push me away.”
He took one more deep breath, then returned his gaze to her.
