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dollars. She was reasonably certain that nothing Jack had ever recovered—excepting some items from the Egyptian digs and those had gone to the Egyptian government—had commanded such a price.
    And if she knew anything about Jack, it was that he had a heightened sense of punctuality where money was concerned. For a quarter of a million he would have been in London a day early.
    “Regardless of what happened to you and Jack, what he does for a living is not usually dangerous,” Romero said, as if listening to her thoughts.
    “You’d be surprised how many people don’t like him,” she said. “They’re scattered around the world.”
    “Actually I’m not surprised.” Romero chuckled. “I was there when a number of those impressions were formed.”
    Esperanza knew that, of course, but Romero had played the honest businessman for so long that she sometimes forgot about his days spent gallivanting around the globe. The exchange pulled a smile from her, although it faded almost immediately.
    It wasn’t lost on her that she had come to London for the sole purpose of ending things with Jack, yet now the anger that had fueled her flight was transitioning into something else. She wouldn’t call it worry—not yet—but it was something close, despite that Romero was right—there were few real threats to someone in Jack’s profession.
    “Reese is dead,” Romero said, again knowing where she had gone.
    At that, Esperanza released a sigh. “I know. I also know that it’s been three years, and if anyone was going to come after me or Jack for what happened, they probably would have done it by now.”
    All of them had looked over their shoulders for a long while, even after the billionaire had succumbed to the cancer he’d hoped to cure with the bones. After all, a man as powerful as Gordon Reese could have paid any amount to have the ones who had ruined his chance at an extended life killed—and such a directive could well have extended past the duration of that life. There came a time, though, when one had to stop living in fear, and Espy had chosen that path some time ago.
    Still, she knew that Reese was not the only player in those events.
    “If they’d wanted you dead, they would have done it when you were in Australia,” Romero said.
    She knew this, but entertaining the thought that the secret organization that had protected Elisha’s bones for millennia was somehow involved in Jack’s disappearance played into her need for closure. In her estimation, these people who had played Jack against Reese were an open question, and she disliked not having answers. Even so, Romero was right again. They could have killed her and Jack, as well as anyone else who had helped the pair, at any time and yet had not done so.
    “You know how he gets,” Romero said. “He likely began what he thought would be a simple expedition and it has become something more involved.”
    “And so he turns off his phone?”
    “Or he’s someplace with no cell reception.”
    Esperanza grunted and leaned against the wall.
    Romero did not say anything else right away, and Espy knew he was thinking.
    “What is the name of Jack’s friend at the university?” he asked. “The one that worked for their government.”
    “Duckett. Jim Duckett.”
    “And he has a way of procuring manifests for plane flights?”
    Esperanza’s eyebrows rose, but a frown replaced that expression in short order. “Except that we don’t know what flight he was on.” She paused and then added, “If he was even on one. For all we know, he was driving somewhere.”
    Romero grunted an acknowledgment of that possibility but then asked, “What other choice do we have?”
    Esperanza’s silence told both of them the answer to that.

    Jim Duckett leaned back from the table and released a contented sigh. He didn’t know what it was about the pancakes produced by the grill staff in the student union, but even after years of weekly consumption, and a pancake count he