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I jumped to my feet.
    And fell spectacularly into the pile of extremely used clothing behind me. I looked up from all fours to see he’d trapped me in some tiny apartment, or rather the back half of it. This looked like an unused bedroom, the type only found in the tenements. He was on the other side of the door and had it cracked open a few inches. Enough to see that the look he was giving me was exceptionally wary. Uselessly so. I had no weapons, I wasn’t a magic user, and he could slam and lock that door in an instant. My brief foray into upright-position-land had given me a glimpse of the windowless walls. He shut that door and I wasn’t getting out.
    And if I was right about the neighborhood I was in, no one was going to come get me if I screamed for help.
    “Don’t worry. Once I’m finished, I’ll leave word with your academic friend on where you are.” He used his square chin to point toward the back of the room. “There’s a bathroom, water, and military food packets. You’ll be fine.”
    It was sad he was so damn good-looking because he wasn’t going to be when I got out of here.
    “Look, I wasn’t following you—my friend was attacked. I didn’t even know you were behind the attack until now.”
    “Liar.” He flashed a dimpled grin. “You knew it was me, and you gave that woman a few samples to analyze.” The grin faded as fast as it had appeared. “You’ve made me speed up my timeline, and that makes me sloppy. I can’t waste any more time here.” He started to close the door.
    “Wait! I’ll leave you alone. Just don’t leave me in here.”
    “Why not?” All I could see was a slice of his face and one exotic leaf green eye through the small open space of the closing door.
    “I’m afraid of small places?” I knew he wouldn’t buy it, but I had to try something to keep that door from shutting.
    He laughed, then shut the door with a solid thud. “An archeologist afraid of small places? Good try.” His voice dropped, but I had rushed to the door and could still hear him muttering to himself. “Perallan never said she had a sense of humor.” Then the outer door shut and he was gone.
    Perallan? He’d known my former patron? Whoever Alric was, he wasn’t a part of the digger community. Someone like him would have stood out. So how did he know Perallan?
    Crap, what if he had been the one who killed him? The witch doctors had said it was a heart attack, but Perallan had been healthy as a team of oxen. His heart had been fine. I’d just chocked it up to the medical community being dumber than usual. But maybe it was something worse. My mouth went dry. I’d been seeing Alric as a nuisance. But what if he was far more depraved than that?
    I dropped back on the pile of clothing. It was clean, just left in a huge pile. Had we found something in the ruins that got Perallan killed? I wracked my brain, but the last major find had been a small burial pit. A few trinkets covered in salt mud, nothing more.
    I picked at one of the pieces of fabric from the pile of clothing in thought. Come to think of it, Perallan had been excited. Wouldn’t even let me properly clean or catalog the find. Covey would have killed me for that. But I made it a policy to never tell people things that would piss them off. Especially someone who could throw me across the room. Now I wished I had paid more attention. I normally studied what I found before I called in my patron, but these were so close to the surface I hadn’t given them much thought.
    There was only one thing to do, break out of here, sneak into a guarded and closed dig site, and find out anything I could about my last dig for Perallan. I would have added break into Perallan’s former home and try to find the original artifacts to my list, but his widow had sold everything before his last breath had fled the building. But if I could at least find out something about what Alric was looking for…I had to get out of here fast.
    ***
    Hours later I was