Heather Graham (33 page)

“She is,” Ali mused to Alex, “an extraordinary woman—very beautiful, as you said. And I do think she was trying to convey some message to Dan when she first saw us.”

“Perhaps she would like to be the first to create a harem for Dan!” Rajman piped up with a broad grin.

Dan and Ali both laughed. Alex glared at the lot of them with little humor and spun about to return to her tent. She heard Dan’s dry comment in the background. “That’s not a bad idea.”

Alex muttered an oath beneath her breath and ducked into her tent. She wanted to study the statuette again. It was her only tangible link with the tomb—and her father.

They spent the day prowling the open tombs again. If nothing else, Alex decided, she would study the tunnels and chambers within the cliffs and hills and know for certain where Anelokep’s tomb
wasn’t.

She was angry with Ali, but she was angrier with Dan, and so she chose to spend the hours linked with Ali. She didn’t like remembering how much she had enjoyed seeing Dan that morning, shirtless, his broad back bronzed and gleaming beneath the sun, shaving foam covering his face. She had felt both little chills and a strange comfort to see him half naked. She could easily envision a life in which she awoke every morning to duck beneath his arm as he shaved to retrieve the toothpaste, at ease with one another.

It wasn’t to be, she told herself solidly. It was never intended to be. Dan lived his own life, and it seemed as if even the calculated and demanding desire he had once felt for her was gone. She had been a conquest; the conquest had been conquered. Perhaps too easily. Perhaps she had become too jealous; perhaps they had fought too much.

They were in the tomb of Knut, a nobleman of the eighteenth dynasty, when she and Ali wandered back to the burial chamber alone. She was idly pointing out some exceptionally fine wall paintings depicting a scene of women making shat-cakes with huge containers of honey spread across the table. Kohl darkened the eyelids of the workers, and in the next picture, Tye, the wife of Knut, sat before a dressing table with the reeds of her eye paints spread before her. “It’s easy simply from this one picture to date this tomb after the Intermediate period,” Alex told Ali absently. “Those years were lean; eye paints were kept in hollow reeds. By the eighteenth dynasty the wealth of the land was flourishing again. See, here Tye is keeping her paints in containers of alabaster.”

She pointed at the picture and turned to see that Ali was smiling at her. She frowned, and he laughed. “I’m sorry, Alex,” he murmured, still smiling affectionately. “It’s just that I was watching you, listening to you, and you’re such a knowledgeable and independent lady! This must be very hard for you—Dan ordering you about, and me … well, me being an Arab and a Muslim and having four wives. …”

Alex lowered her eyelashes. “This is your world, Ali. And yes, sometimes I am eager to return to my own.” And, she added silently, I’m not so terribly sure I’d mind Dan being so bluntly commanding if he did so out of love instead of plan and determination.

“Ah, Alex,” Ali murmured. “They are different worlds. But think on this: we do cherish our women. We may seem chauvinistic to you, but in my land, the punishment for rape is usually quick decapitation. Women are also protected.” He was silent for a moment, studying the paintings. “Alex, we are harsh because we care. I have grown very fond of you, and I believe Dan has fallen in love with you.”

Alex felt her breath catch. For several seconds her heart pounded wildly; then she realized that she couldn’t live on hope because of the words of a man’s friend. “I think you’re wrong, Ali,” she said casually, walking to another wall. “Oh, I believe that Dan does care for me. Perhaps a lot. But not enough. Dan is too involved with the world to be involved with a woman. He likes to keep moving; he doesn’t like the shackled feeling.” Alex smiled at Ali with a little grimace. “I think Dan
would
be happy to have our mystery lady join his ‘harem.’ His international collection!”

Ali laughed. “Men and women can be such fools! It’s a pity that it seems that I have forced the two of you together—but not into an honest confrontation. Ah, well, I can say nothing more to either of you, except perhaps this: Dan also believes that you are still in love with your ex-spouse. I do not believe that. But as I’ve said, you are both adults. You must come to your own conclusions. Adults—but also scared children. Americans!” he said, and laughed. “Always so worried about pride.”

He turned away from the paintings and to the door that led from the burial chamber to a corridor and then to the antechamber. “Let’s find the erstwhile Mr. D’Alesio, shall we, Dr. Randall?”

“Just one more moment,” Alex murmured, pretending to stare at the wall again. “You go on ahead. I’ll be right there.”

She wasn’t really seeing the ancient paintings. She was thinking about Ali’s words. Dan has never said that he loves me, she thought sadly.

But I am in love with him, and perhaps the greatest injury I could do myself wouldn’t be to lose, my pride or to take a chance on a broken heart, but not to ever admit my feelings to him.

“Alll … lexxxx …”

Ice suddenly seemed to congeal her body from her head to her toes as she heard the eerie whisper within the burial chamber.

”Alllleeexxxxx!” The long, hissed whisper came again. She didn’t dare turn to the corner of the chamber, the source of the sound, and yet she was compelled to turn. She wanted to scream; she couldn’t. Terror brought the clamminess of the tomb to her flesh as she pivoted slowly and yet irrevocably to the darkness of the shadowed corner that was never touched by light.

Her sudden inhalation of breath was so sharp that it seemed to thunder throughout the chamber. She exhaled, feeling her mind spin with relief and then amazement. The whisper was coming from the Egyptian woman who had brought her the statuette.

Dizziness swept through Alex with her relief, and she was at first too grateful to discover that her name had been whispered by the woman to wonder how she could possibly have gotten into the chamber, when the corridor was behind Alex.

“Who are you?” Alex begged. “Please—”

She cut off her words as the woman suddenly rushed forward and gripped her hands. Alex stared downward as a tiny object was stuffed into her palm. “Thank you,” she murmured stupidly, “but who are you? Where did you find the statuette of Anelokep? Please …”

The petite beauty with the glorious green eyes suddenly swept past her and into the corridor. Alex raced after her, but when she left the burial chamber and reached the corridor, it was empty. Alex kept running, out to the antechamber. It, too, was empty. Two other doors led to a shrine and a small treasury; both were empty of all life except that of ancient Egypt, depicted in the wall paintings.

Unable to believe that the woman had disappeared as if into thin air, Alex rechecked the chambers. Then she sighed and walked up the steps that would lead her out of the tomb, out of the realm of death and darkness.

Ali and Dan were awaiting her on the outer steps. Both jumped up with alarm at her expression.

“Did she pass here?” Alex gasped.

Ali and Dan exchanged glances that clearly denoted that she was a candidate for a nervous breakdown.

“Who, Alex?” Dan asked softly, catching her arms.

“The woman! She was there with me, in the tomb, and then she disappeared.”

“We’d better head back to camp,” Dan said. “It’s been a long day.”

Alex ripped her arms from his grasp. “Damnit, D’Alesio, I’m not crazy! She was there! And—” She suddenly remembered that her fingers were clenched around another gift from the woman. “Here!” She shoved the object triumphantly into Dan’s hand.

His dark eyes stared down at the object, then sardonically back to hers. Alex frowned with confusion at his look. “What is it?” she demanded.

He opened his broad palm. Laying upon it was an ordinary chess piece—the white queen.

“She gave it to me!” Alex insisted. “She was there, the woman was there—”

“All right, Alex,” Dan said softly. He had to believe the evidence of the chess piece, and yet he still sounded skeptical. “You saw this woman, but you say she isn’t in the tomb, and she hasn’t passed us.” He reached out and took her arm. “Alex, she’s either still in there or she disappeared into thin air.”

“Then she is still there! Dan, I don’t carry chess queens in my pocket!”

Dan smiled. He dropped her arm and headed for the tomb, then stared back at her. “Come on, Alex, let’s look for the woman.”

Biting her lip and lowering her eyes, Alex nervously started to follow him. Ali stood still, and Alex turned back to him. “Ali, are you coming?”

“No.” He smiled devilishly. “I’ll leave you two to solve the vanishing woman mystery. I’m going back to camp. I’ll see you when you get there.”

Dan’s long strides made quick work of the tomb—antechamber, shrine, treasury and burial chamber. He met her back in the antechamber. “Alex, there is no one in here. And no one passed us.”

“She was here,” Alex persisted stubbornly. She stared down at the cheap plastic chess piece she held. The white queen. A mysterious woman had suddenly appeared in a tomb to hand her the white queen, and then she had apparently disappeared.

“No!” Alex suddenly exclaimed aloud. “Dan, there must be a tunnel out of here!” He stared at her with jet eyes narrowing determinedly and arms crossing over his broad chest. In a moment she was going to find herself being removed bodily from the tomb.

“Dan, listen to me, please. People were buried among these cliffs for centuries—not just the pharaohs but nobles like Knut and even commoners. So many tombs were dug that they often hit upon another; there are just plain tunnels that run into other tunnels with mass graves of the poor. Everyone was mummified and buried with whatever ceremony his or her mourners could manage.” He was walking toward her; in the damp space of the tomb she was suddenly reminded of how very alive he was, powerful, vibrant and vital. His heat and electricity seemed to radiate to her. He had decreed himself her keeper, and in another moment she would be swept into those strong arms and she would lose the will to fight because it would be so much easier to feel the security of his hold, the sweet beat of his heart as he commandeered her against his chest.

“Dan, please, let’s check?” she whispered, praying he didn’t touch her. She was close to forgetting they were in a tomb, forgetting that the search for the father she loved was at stake, and bursting into tears to tell him that she was in love with him and that if he would just hold her, nothing else would matter—even his apparent belief that the sun had finally made her crazy.

He halted, sighing in a very masculine fashion. “All right. How do we look for the one of these tunnels?”

“I—I’m not sure. The walls, I guess. Press along the walls.”

He shrugged. “I’ll start in the treasury. You take the shrine.”

Alex nodded mutely.

After ten minutes she was hot and sticky and beginning to think she
was
crazy. The walls were solid rock. There was nothing in the shrine except paintings and rock walls. Biting her lip, she moved back into the antechamber.

The room was lit by a single bulb strung in the center with naked wiring. Alex noticed uneasily that the shadows in the chamber were growing more dense. Outside, night was failing. Soon the bulb in the tomb would cease to shine as the Valley of the Kings—as a tourist attraction—closed for the night. The feeling of chilling fear, of knowing they might all be in danger, that had swept through her with the whisper of her name descended over her again. She was ready and willing for Dan to drag her away.

“Alex!”

Her name was shouted with such tense excitement that she jumped, then raced to the far end of the corridor leading to the burial chamber.

Dan’s long jeaned legs were stretched along the floor. She almost tripped over them. “It’s here,” he told her tersely. “You were right. Look—this block is cut. See, the rest of the wall is sheer—one piece with the hill. But this—it’s limestone, not granite!”

He pushed upon the piece of rock to which he referred. It backed up several feet, made a grinding noise and then stopped, leaving a space large enough for a person to crawl through. “I’m going to follow it,” Dan said, pushing through the opening feet first. “You stay here.”

“I will not, and this time I mean it, and you haven’t any of Ali’s tribesmen around to act as guards!”

“Alex—”

“Dan, it’s getting dark. I’m not staying here alone, and I’m not wandering back to camp alone! I’m coming with you.”

Dan’s eyes reflected meditative jet as he mulled over her words. “Okay,” he said unhappily. He reached behind himself to retrieve the flashlight he had crammed halfway into his back pocket. “Let me get in all the way first, just in case.”

Alex nervously waited as he crawled through the opening. Seconds seemed to pass as hours; then she heard his voice. “Come on,” he said huskily.

Alex scrambled into position behind him, still clutching the tiny white queen chess piece in her hand. She slithered through the opening much more easily than Dan had, since she was so much smaller. A second later he was helping her to stand. The tunnel was small. Dan was stooping, since otherwise his head would hit the rock ceiling.

He trained his flashlight on the walls, then turned it off for a second. Alex almost protested, since she was sure they would be plunged into total blackness, but some light was seeping in from somewhere to make the tunnel gray and misty. Dan flicked the flashlight back on. “Let’s go.”

He trained the light ahead of them as they moved at a snail’s pace. Alex’s grip of his hand was a cold vise as they walked more deeply into the unknown. She gasped as she suddenly tripped over something.

“What is it?” Dan demanded, turning the light to her feet.

For the second time that day Alex would have screamed but she instantly realized that she had stumbled over a mummy. Its wooden coffin lay to the side; it had been dumped out as if some robber had searched quickly and then discarded it as worthless. The decaying wrappings were in tatters; the face was half uncovered, and an empty eye socket stared out at them with eerie reproach. Alex’s foot still touched the leg; she moved it back, and the wound limb snapped and broke off from the brittle body.