As she wandered further from the dig site she felt the excitement growing in her belly and saw the adventure looming in front of her. She rounded a bend in the small, tight chasm and heard a dirt bike roar to life. She stopped dead to listen for a moment then burst into a sprint up natural stair like ledge and ran about twenty feet until she could see men moving around carrying large crates and loading them onto small trucks. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled another fifteen feet to get even closer and to hear what was going on.

The workers loaded the trucks as full as possible before they left. A few of the workers kept referring back to a man in tan. He was a tall, slim man who held himself with an air of arrogance and intelligence at the same time. She couldn’t see his face but knew that Scottish accent anywhere. It was Ian McLeod, a known looter and scoundrel in the archeological business. He had a knack for finding ancient artifacts and selling them on the black market before the rest of the archeological community knew what had happened.

She had to tell someone, namely the authorities, but as she started to back up her hand slipped causing a handful of rocks and dust to sail over the ledge alerting the men down below. There was a lot of scrambling and yelling as the men realized that they had been caught. Evelyn jumped to her feet and began running the way that she had come.

A bullet flew in front of her face and lodged itself into the rock causing her to jump back. She quickly looked over her shoulder at her adversary and smiled wickedly as his eyes widened in recognition. When McLeod started yelling orders telling his men to shoot her she wasted no time taking off again trying to dodge the bullets that seemed to be just narrowly missing her and hurling into the soft rock at her back.

Then the bullets were coming from in front of her too and she had no choice but to dive to the ground panting for breath and reveling in the excitement. She lifted her head and looked over the ledge. McLeod was frantically pointing in every which direction sending the trucks away and then he suddenly looked back up at the ledge where she lay shielded from the gun fire. She smiled knowingly at him.

She turned away breathing heavily, trying to figure a way to continue the adventure and excitement and not get shot. She looked above her head at the rock towering ever upwards. There was a crevice in the wall just a head of her, just big enough for she to squeeze her slim frame into and climb the hundred feet to the top.

As she decided to make her move she heard the forgotten dirt bike that she had heard earlier. It was headed up the ledge straight toward her. If she turned around and went the other way she would get shot she had nowhere to go but up.

Evelyn jumped to her feet and sprinted to the crevice and started to climb. Before she had gotten three feet up the wall she was pulled roughly down and thrown to the ground. She scrambled to her feet and kicked her opponent in the face making him hit the ground hard. She whipped around and ran out of the crevice turning right to run down the natural stairs but was met with armed men speeding toward her. She turned the other direction and was staring down a gun barrel.

She looked over the gun at it’s handler and then over his shoulder at the wicked smile on McLeod’s face twenty feet below and then everything went blank as she was hit at the base of her neck with the butt of a gun.

She awoke several hours later tied to a chair in front of a highly polished and expansive mahogany desk that dated back to the seventeen hundreds.

Evelyn looked around her and saw two burly, armed guards flanking her. She turned her attention to the door behind the desk knowing that was where McLeod would be coming from and he didn’t disappoint her.

He entered wearing the same tan suit that did his dark complexion no good. He walked around the desk and sat down on its corner removing his hat as he did so.

“For one so young, you seem to get yourself into a lot of scrapes. Now why is that? Is it just me?” McLeod asked smoothly.

“Don’t kid yourself McLeod,” Evelyn said glaring at him from under her hooded arched brows. “Despite what you think you’re not all that women desire in fact you’re quite far from it. Now to answer your question. Why you? Because I like pushing your buttons, which I’ve noticed, seem to be getting a little tight.” In reality he was only in his mid twenties but tended to come off as older because of the air of importance he carried.

McLeod tossed his hat on the paperless desk, which he had been fiddling with. He stood up easily then suddenly without warning back handed her across the face. Her head whipped violently to her left shoulder. She brought her head around to face him. She could feel the blood running from her nose. She was dazed but not enough to miss the furious rage burning in his Cobalt blue eyes.

“I’ll ask you one more time! Why my establishment?” he yelled.

“It has nothing to do with your establishment. It’s all you. Tell your goons to leave and I’ll tell you more.” After a moment of thought he motioned for his men to leave and the leaned against the desk right in front of her.

She looked seductively up at him, her pale blue eyes glazing over. She stretched her long leg out and ran her ankle up the out side of his leg and then down again.

“For one so young you are defiantly not a child.” He said.

She ran her ankle up the inside of his leg much slower. “I’m sixteen, old enough for you.”

He placed his hands on the armrest of her chair, which brought his nose dangerously close to hers. She thought that she would be repelled by his breath and not be able to do what she had to but was surprised by the peppermint wafting to her nose.

“I thought you said my buttons were getting too tight?” he whispered.

“I didn’t say it was fat, did I?” Evelyn said as he brought his lips hard to hers. As quickly as he had hit her she brought her shine smashing into his groin. He cried out in pain and fell back against the desk.

What her captors and McLeod didn’t know was that she always carried a taped razor blade under her watch and had been working across her rope bindings for the past ten minutes and had finally cut through the last string.

Evelyn pulled her arms free and stood rubbing her wrists for a split second before realizing that McLeod was starting to recover. She smashed her fist into his jaw then slid quickly across his desk and out the door he had come through earlier.

As a last minute thought she stuck her head back in the door and said, “Your kisses aren’t that bad, for an old guy.” And then ran as fast as her legs would carry her to the nearest car. She crossed the wires to jump it and was gone in a cloud of desert dust.