Heather Graham (34 page)

“Oh, God! How awful for the body to be left like this.”

“Come on,” Dan said gently. “We’ll notify the right authorities to pick him up when we get out of here.”

Alex clamped her mouth shut and obeyed Dan, stepping over the pathetic remains of the violated mummy. She held onto Dan’s hand as they moved onward.

“Step carefully,” Dan suddenly warned. “I think we’ve stumbled upon a common graveyard.”

Alex nodded mutely, pressing her face between his shoulder blades. The tunnel had become wider, and both sides were lined with sarcophagi in various stages of upheaval. One open wood coffin held two bodies laid to rest head to toe. In other instances the mummified bodies had been dragged half out of their coffins and left in teetering positions. “And they thought they’d have eternal life. …” Dan murmured dryly.

“I know and it’s awful that they’ve been desecrated this way,” she said.

He turned for a moment to bring her head against his chest, ruffling her hair with a tenderness she had dearly missed. “We must be getting near the end of this thing. More light is beginning to filter through.”

“Yes, but it won’t last much longer,” Alex murmured. “It’s getting dark outside.”

Dan gripped her hand again. “Come on.”

They kept walking. “How far have we gone?” Alex asked.

“I don’t know,” Dan murmured. “We’ve been winding in circles, going deeper, climbing again. Maybe a thousand yards all told. Alex, this is it. Look.”

She glanced over his shoulder and breathed a long sigh of relief. The tunnel took another upward slant and then opened to the darkening sky; a small opening. She giggled suddenly, hoping Dan would manage to squeeze his broad shoulders through it.

“Laugh at me getting through that thing,” Dan warned wryly, “and I’ll let Ali teach me a few good measures in disciplining disrespectful women!”

“Sorry,” Alex murmured with no remorse.

A moment later they reached the small opening. Dan pushed Alex up and through it. She found her footing on the rocky cliff, then stared around her as she waited for him to chin himself up and squeeze through. He was standing beside her as she tried to gauge their position in the starlit dusk.

They stood midway up a cliff in a tangle of dry grass. Straight across the narrow valley beneath them, she could see a new rise of cliffs. Alex gasped suddenly, realizing where they were. And then she started laughing.

Dan dragged her around to face him by the shoulders. “I swear I will think you are crazy shortly, Doctor. What are you laughing about?”

Alex gripped his shirt as he held her, smiling radiantly despite his comment. “I’ve got it, Dan! The last puzzle piece. We’ve hit the end of the Valley of the Kings. That’s the beginning of the Valley of the
Queens!
Oh, don’t you see, Dan? Remember. The queen, Hatshepshut, was buried in the Valley of the Kings! That was the reference—and Anelokep did just the reverse. Our mystery lady handed me the
queen.
Anelokep is buried in the Valley of the Queens! And I even know exactly where, just as Jim did. The hieroglyphics did have the answer! He’s buried between Nefertiti and Shenkah. I’m sure of it, Dan!”

He raised his brows skeptically, then couldn’t help laughing in response to her enthusiasm. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Okay, Alex, I believe you. First thing in the morning—”

“No, Dan, now! Please! The walk won’t take us thirty minutes and I’ve been there before and we’re all alone and I can check out what I’m thinking. And oh, Dan! Please. We might find the answer to my father’s disappearance and I can’t possibly just go back to camp and sleep now when I might be this close to knowing something about Jim!”

Dan held her for a moment, feeling a tight squeeze within his heart. The agony within her voice when she spoke of her father was outweighing his better judgment. He couldn’t bear the pain she had so valiantly contained so long.

“All right,” he said lightly. He grimaced, dusting off his jeans as he took her hand. “There’s going to be a full moon,” he said dryly. “What’s an Egyptian night with a full moon in the desert without a nice long walk among the old tombs?” He carefully began edging down the cliff, supporting her scramble after him. “I always did believe you were a romantic at heart. A walk through a mass graveyard. Wonderful.”

“Oh, shut up, D’Alesio!” Alex groaned in reply. At the moment she didn’t care how he teased her—as long as he was with her. Helping her, beside her. Ready to lend his support no matter what they found—her father … or the answer to James Crosby’s disappearance. And please God, she prayed silently, let him be alive.

Her goal was within sight, and the tiny plastic chess queen was still gripped tightly in her fingers. It was the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle. In just moments she would be able to see the entire picture. And Dan would be with her. She tightened the grip of her fingers around his.

T
HE MOON CAST A
glow over the rock and rubble as they hurried across the valley.

“I don’t know what you think you’re going to find in the darkness, Alex,” Dan warned as they approached the new set of the cliffs. “There can’t be anything obvious; when Carter and Carnarvon were looking for Tut, they excavated everything in sight. And if we do find anything, we’re still going to have to wait for tomorrow. The supervisor of antiquities is going to have to be notified, we’re going to have to call in my film crew, and the Egyptian government is going to have to set up a guard system.”

“I know,” Alex murmured, huffing slightly to keep up with his pace. “It’s just that I want to see what is where I think an entrance should be. …”

“We’ll probably stumble into a pit of cobras,” Dan muttered. But he was the one setting the pace, and he never released her hand. He suddenly stopped in the moonlight, staring at the strange line where the dark sky met the cliffs. “Where to, Doctor?”

Alex bit her lip for a second, orienting herself in the darkness. She closed her eyes to remember her last visit to the Valley of the Queens, envisioning the arrangements of the tombs in her mind. “Up …” she murmured slowly, then more excitedly. “Up—and to the left. We’ll pass the entrance to Nefertiti’s tomb first.”

She was already scrambling up the rocks, dragging Dan along with her. They would come to a footpath, and then the steps, and then more steps to the entrance, sealed off for nighttime.

“It has to be just left of here, Dan. Let me have your flashlight.”

Dan obligingly handed Alex his flashlight. Then he actually stood patiently for twenty minutes as she meticulously scanned the light over the landscape. And in all that time Alex could find nothing. Dan was right; if anything had been there, someone would have seen it years ago. But she stubbornly kept walking over the cliff, until she noticed suddenly that the outcropping of rock was wider at the tomb of the queen than it should have been. She had been inside the tomb, and if she remembered correctly, the antechamber was very narrow.

The roadway dipped into a deep and treacherous gully on the side of the tomb. “Dan! We’ve got to get down there!”

He sighed, but didn’t argue. “All right, Alex, but we’ll spend only another half hour here at most, agreed? The morning is a better time to explore.”

“Agreed! Agreed!” Alex promised. She was already scrambling down the rocky incline. And at the bottom she found what she had been seeking.

A thicket of dry brambles was camouflaging the tiny opening—a hole even smaller than that of the tunnel opening they had stumbled out of. But Alex was suddenly sure she had found what she was looking for. It had gone unnoticed previously because it would be absurd to search for a tomb in a tomb.

She scratched her hands badly and ripped her trousers as she slid the last few feet.

“Would you please be careful?” she heard Dan chastise from behind her.

She spun on him. “Help me! We need to clear some of this rubble away!”

With a deep sigh he complied. The small opening widened enough for Alex to slip through. “Un-unh!” Dan stopped her when she would have started down. “I go first.” He jiggled his brows in the moonlight. “Someone has to scare away the cobras and scorpions for the doctor.”

His voice was tense, and Alex realized he was as excited as she was—just a little more practical. She bit her lip as she watched him descend into the hole, holding the flashlight firmly in his grip. She heard his feet thud as he hit the floor. A second later he called her.

“Lower yourself in. I’ll catch you.”

Alex lowered herself, clawing at the rock and sand around her. She felt Dan’s hand span her waist and she was supported the next several feet until she could stand on the floor.

“Doctor,” he said, and bowed dramatically as he released her, and then his jet eyes met hers with bright admiration. “I do believe you have found it!”

He swept the light around, and Alex caught her breath. Before them was a set of steps, but they were already in some type of outer chamber. The walls that surrounded them were the rock of the cliff. Only a break in the stone above had allowed them entrance. And at the end of the steps before them, two life-size statues of the pharaoh Anelokep guarded a door smothered in shadow—and marked with the royal seal of the pharaoh.

“Dear God!” Alex exclaimed at the sight of the statues. She began to tremble. They were in the right place; just the statues she stared upon were priceless. But apparently someone, at some time during the millennia, had tried to rob the tomb. That was why there was the entrance they were now in.

Dan’s arms suddenly slipped around her, and he kissed her exuberantly on the lips. “Congratulations, Dr. Randall. And now, come on. We can’t go any farther without proper excavation procedures and, more important, without help and security.”

Alex nodded, biting her lip with disappointment. They had found the tomb—but no clue to Jim’s whereabouts. What were you expecting, she charged herself, Jim waiting for you at the entrance?

“Alex?” Dan said gently. “We will find your father. Something will break when we start the excavation. We’ll find the mystery woman, and we’ll find Jim. I promise. You believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she lied, clinging to him.

His lips brushed past her ear. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she murmured. But she wasn’t fine, and she was grateful that at least he was real, there, a living, breathing strength beside her. As always when she was near him, she could feel the pulse of his blood through his system, the pleasant scent of after shave combined with something very subtle but very male. She opened her mouth, ready at the entrance of the tomb to throw herself upon his strength and burst into tears and tell him how afraid she was, how she needed him, loved him, could only handle what was to come if he would hold her through it all.

Ridiculous. He did hold her, he did care for her and, being Dan, he would be with her as long as she needed him.

But she couldn’t make an idiot of herself. There
were
certain strengths to be gained from retaining pride.

And the moment was passing. Dan bent to lift her so that she could reach the opening that was about ten feet above the chamber floor. “How are you going to get back up?” she asked as she grasped the sand and earth above her.

“Jump—I hope,” he said and laughed. “I’ll make it; just don’t go running off without me.”

She started to smile as she grasped and clawed her way back through the small opening, assisted by his push. “I guess we weren’t the most brilliant of explorers,” she murmured when she was halfway through the opening. “We should have brought a rope—”

Her words were suddenly cut off, and wide-eyed panic seized her along with the hand that suddenly and fiercely clamped over her mouth. She was dragged the rest of the way from the hole, her heart pounding fiercely, her fingers clawing at the hand that cut off her speech and left her struggling desperately for breath.

As she was dragged kicking and struggling from the entrance, she saw that three men were silently taking part in the capture: two black-clad Arabs and a third man, in black jeans and black shirt, were holding her.

She recognized the third man instantly with a wash of illness that threatened to steal her consciousness more than the loss of breath. Wayne.

“Alex?”

She heard Dan call her name, the thumping of his feet against the rock wall as he leaped for a hold on the rubbled circumference of the opening and balanced himself from below. She bit into the hand holding her mouth, screaming in her throat, attempting to warn him.

She managed to sink her teeth firmly into Wayne’s hand, but he merely emitted a rough oath and threw her from him, sending her flying hard against the rocky ground. Scratches from the jagged pebbles tore her palms and cheek as she landed and scrambled to find her feet again. She turned to face Wayne; like his companions, he was carrying a gun, and it was aimed at her.

She didn’t recognize the man standing before her. His handsome face was marred by a hardness that was cold, cruel and ruthless. His lips were drawn into a tight line; his face appeared pinched. “Get over here, Alex,” he said softly. She ignored him, and he smiled, training the gun on the opening where Dan’s strong bronzed hands and arms were visible, tensing to pull his weight up. Alex paled as she realized the man she had once thought she adored was dead serious—he would pull the trigger without a thought. Biting her lip, she stood, ignoring the Arabs as she walked toward her ex-husband. He pulled her back against his chest this time, and it took all her willpower not to cry out as he set the cold muzzle of the gun against her temple.

“Alex, damnit, answer me!”

She heard Dan’s annoyance, then saw his eyes, his hard, frozen expression as his head lined above the hole and he saw exactly why she wasn’t answering. Time seemed suspended in the air. Then Dan crawled the rest of the way out of the opening and stood, apparently unsurprised and unruffled.

“Randall,” he said with quiet disgust. “I was wondering when you would make your appearance.”

Alex felt Wayne’s shrug. “Wonder no more, D’Alesio. This is it.”

Dan too shrugged in response, keeping a careful eye on Wayne’s trigger finger. “I’ve got one question: Why? The money? The Egyptian government will get the majority of the treasure.”