The Megiddo Mark, Part 1 Read Online Free

If that didn’t work, he’d initiate his fall-back plan.
    “Sienna, enter, please,” he barked.
    Cullen knew his curious assistant had been hovering for the past twenty minutes. He could hear the graduate student shuffling papers at her desk outside his doorway.
    “Yeah, Boss?” The young woman stood in the doorway, her long black hair, scrunched up into two black pigtails. Sienna’s pale skin stood in stark relief to her aquamarine blue eyes, dark eye-liner, and black lipstick. She’d been working for him for the past year as a favor to her dad, his best friend, John Mitchell, who held a professorship at Cambridge.
    “See what you can find out about a Ms. Malena Alexander. She now owns a book that once belonged to my mother.”
    “Sure thing, Boss. You want to buy the book?”
    “I tried that today at the auction. No. Now I need to try to convince Ms. Alexander to reconsider my offer.”
    “Rotten luck.” Sienna pursed her lips, but didn’t hold her silence for long. She scowled at him. “Veronica called again.”
    “And you told her I’m out of the office on a permanent basis, right?”
    “What’s the bloody point? She’ll only ring again. She might stop if you talked to her.”
    “I’ve said everything I intended to say to her long ago. She’s no doubt run through all my father’s guilt money and now wants to make amends with me. Not on your life. I learned my lesson, I’m staying far away from that piece of baggage.”
    “Splendid, but don’t you think it’s time for you to get back on the horse?”
    “Get back on the horse?”
    “You know, start dating again? You are forty years old. Time to settle down before you can’t . . . a-hemm . . . Maybe I need to look into a mail-order bride for you before it’s too late. You might have better luck with one of those.”
    “Why would I want a post-paid bride when I have you?”
    “Leave off. Sure, I do your research. On occasion, I bring you coffee or drop off your dry cleaning and bring you lunch. But I am in no way remotely like any wife you’d choose.”
    “I know, I refer to your tendency to nag me.”
    “Oh.” Sienna tugged at her earlobe and looked down at the floor. “Well, someone needs to keep you in line.”
    He ignored her comment. He would not let his pixie of an assistant goad him into a response. “I need you to jump on this research right away. I’m supposed to meet with her tomorrow evening. Considering you don’t work weekends, looks like you have about two hours. Here’s what I know.” He threw the slip of paper onto the desk.
    She flattened the crumpled paper, and then peered closely. “Wow. Her name. A hotel address in Oxford. And her description.” 
    “The best I could do.”
    She fingered the silver cross that dangled on a long black cord, one arm tucked close to her waist. “No measurements?” 
    “Measurements?”
    “You know, bust, waist, hips.”
    He clenched his jaw hard. He would not respond.
    “Just trying to figure out if she fits the Wade profile of accepted women. Tall, beautiful, lanky, perfect measurements. Gold digger. No brains. This is a first, even for you. You don’t often have me track down your dates.”
    “This is not a date in the true sense of the word. She has a book I want, nothing more.”
    “Complete crap, Boss. I can read you like a penny dreadful.”
    “No such thing as a penny dreadful or its American cousin, the dime novel, these days.”
    “You ought to know better than anyone as much as you pay for books. Guess the book you lost today was the volume of poetry by A. Alexander?”
    “Check relatives of Ava Alexander. She must be a distant relation. Leave the details on my desk. I’ll need to convince her to relinquish the book before I leave for Turkey.”
    Her eyebrow winged up. “Right then, must be pretty important if you need it before you leave.”
    “Clever girl.”
    “Did you make a proper offer?”
    “Two thousand pounds.”
    Sienna whistled.
    “I don’t