Heather Graham (36 page)

“There is another exit—out into the tomb above. But the problem is going to be getting out of the valley. I’ve no doubt Randall would shoot any of us on the spot,” Jim replied.

“Well, Ali is out there somewhere, not far away,” Dan said with a shrug. “I’m sure I can reach him.”

“I don’t know,” Crosby protested. “Now that you’re here, I can try getting out myself—”

“No way,” Dan said firmly. “Crosby, I’m better suited for the job. I’ve crawled around a lot of war zones and I know when to drop and crawl on my belly. Show me the way out, and I’ll go.”

Alex bit her lip as she watched her father mulling over Dan’s words. Suddenly she didn’t want either of them leaving. She had just discovered her father alive; she couldn’t lose him again. But thinking Dan might be a target for her ex-husband was also more than she could bear.

“Wait!” she exclaimed. “I was wrong—we shouldn’t be doing anything. Dan, you said Ali was out there. Let’s just wait until he gets to us.”

Dan shook his head and stood. “No. If Ali is with the men he had trailing us, he may not know yet how deadly Randall is. I have to try to get to him. Jim, how do I get out of this mausoleum?”

“Left corridor over here—come on, I’ll give you a boost.”

Alex didn’t get a chance to say any more. Dan didn’t even say good-bye to her. Her father and Dan disappeared into the shadows, and then Dan was gone.

A moment later Jim walked into the antechamber and the glow of the torch. Alex tried to smile. He stretched out his arms to her, and she rushed into them. “Oh, honey,” Jim murmured, “I was so worried about you. I can’t tell you the hours I sat here wishing I had never gotten you involved.”

“I—I’m fine, Jim, and I had to be involved,” Alex murmured in return.

Jim grimaced as he released her, watching her nervous eyes follow the trail across the stone floor. The moments they waited, he knew, would seem like hours. He tried to talk to ease her mind.

He waved his arm to encompass the room. “Well, what do you think, Alex? Have you ever seen anything so staggering?” He laughed. “I can’t tell you how itchy my hands have been. But I haven’t touched a thing. We’re going to have to work slowly and thoroughly, photographing, categorizing. It will probably take us months just to clear. …”

Jim was talking on, and Alex was grateful to her father, she knew what he was trying to do. But the situation was sinking through to her heart and mind more and more thoroughly. She had been in love with and married to a man who would have killed her without batting an eye. She had been ready to reconcile their marriage. And Dan was out there now trying to save all their lives from the madman she had been willing to love again.

She was caught in a turmoil of emotions she couldn’t begin to sort out: gratitude—heartfelt gratitude to find Jim alive. Fear—the primal, instinctive fear of being beneath the ground in a shrine for a dead pharaoh. Fear for Dan. And pain, and shame, and humiliation. She had been more than an idiot, first with Wayne, and then with Dan. How could he ever care for a woman who had been so besotted by a man like Wayne? How had she ever been such a fool? There was suddenly only one thing she wanted to do—dig herself her own hole in the ground and crawl into it.

Jim was talking about unsealing the door to the actual burial chamber, musing over the various coffins that would house the mummy.

Alex suddenly burst into tears.

Jim stopped talking and wrapped her in his arms as if she were a little girl. He held her, rocking her, in the dank confines of the tomb, and she garbled out incoherent speech. “Oh, Dad, it’s not that I’m not crazy with joy to see you … I am … but Wayne … and Dan … oh, Dad, I know how wonderful this find is, but I want to get away from Egypt. Just for a while. I want to be with you, I love you, but I want to get away so badly. I want Dan to be okay … I want to wake up and pretend it all never happened. …”

“Shhh,” Jim consoled her. “Dan is going to be okay. That one is a cat who lands on all four feet. You’re in love with him, honey, aren’t you?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know, Dad. I’ve got to get away—from the tombs, from … from everything.”

“You will, sweetheart. You will.” He just held her for a long, long time, then tried to speak again. “I’ve got a surprise for you, sweetheart. One I hope you’ll like.”

Alex tried to dry her eyes. She knew her face was a mess. Her tears had turned the dust on it to mud. She managed a weak smile as she pulled away from her father. “What’s the surprise? I’m not sure I can handle another one.”

“But this is a good one!” Jim protested. “I’m going to get married!”

His surprise did the trick of jolting her out of her depression. “You are! To whom?”

Jim’s eyes twinkled. “My Egyptian lady, Lani—the woman who brought you the statuette and the chess queen. She doesn’t speak much English, so you’re going to have to brush up on Arabic while we teach her. Think you’ll be able to like her, Alex?”

“Oh, Dad! Of course. She’s a beautiful woman, and she must have taken great risks for you. I’m so happy for you!” Alex smiled and then frowned. “Dad, if you were trying to get a message to me, why didn’t you just write a note?”

“Too risky,” he said with a grimace. “But I figured if you didn’t get my message from the statuette, you would have to figure out the chess piece eventually! I was lucky to have had it in my pocket; that’s one we can thank Haman for! He insisted I keep the piece after I taught him how to play the game!”

Alex chuckled and then sobered. “Oh, Jim! I kept thinking the culprit was Haman … and it was Wayne!” She shuddered. “Dad, a man I lived with for a year and a half. …”

“Alex!” Jim chastised softly. “Don’t blame yourself for Wayne! Honey, we all make mistakes. I did. Your mo—”

He broke off as quickly as he had started. Alex said quietly, “Don’t bother trying to spare my feelings, Jim, really.”

“She wasn’t a bad person, Alex. She just couldn’t handle responsibility or an infant. I wish I could tell you what has happened to her, but I really don’t know anything. I haven’t seen her since you were a month old. I don’t even know if she is dead or alive.”

“And I don’t care, Jim,” Alex said softly. “I suppose the in thing is to be curious about one’s roots, but I’m not. I’ve never missed out on anything, because you made an entire world for me. Did I ever thank you for that?”

James Crosby hugged his daughter to him. A second later he heard her sob again, and he didn’t even try to console her. There was nothing left to be said. She would have to fight her own mental battles of love and guilt; all he could do was stand by and pray that he hadn’t made another mistake. And that D’Alesio did love his daughter. And that he did make it through.

Dan had little difficulty getting from one tomb to another and then out of the chambers that had been the final resting place of Nefertiti. The entrance was barred only by cheap wire fencing, which he was easily able to sneak through.

But then he stood within the shadows of the cliff and he could see the silhouettes of men standing guard a hundred feet or so from the entrance he was supposedly sealed into.

“Damn,” he muttered softly beneath his breath. The full moon was now acting as a spotlight. The only way he was going to get off the cliff was to belly it down all the way.

Gritting his teeth, he flopped to the gravelly earth and started inching downward. How he was going to streak across the naked valley he didn’t know. He would have to cross that bridge when he came to it.

Minutes—or was it eons—later he reached the valley floor. As he waited, contemplatively chewing his lower lip with his brow knit in a tight furl, he saw lights flashing across the valley. He closed his eyes. Ali’s men? He couldn’t be sure. Then he heard the roar of a jeep coming, He raised his head to try and get a better view.

A shot exploded into the night. The bullet whizzed by his head so close that he could feel its deadly whistle against his cheek.

The men in the jeep had to be from Ali, because the shot had come from behind him. And he couldn’t sit still because he was a better target now than a sitting duck.

Dan crouched low, bunching his muscles. Then he bolted out into the open. He staggered his hell-bent run, winding a trail as he had learned to do from guerrilla fighters he had interviewed. He heard more shots, and each time he heard one, he was amazed that he didn’t fall. There were feet pounding behind him, but he kept running with his zigzag motion. The jeep was in sight, and he could see Ali, Rajman and Ahman in it. Ahman was standing, aiming a rifle.

The footfalls behind Dan suddenly ceased. He couldn’t stop his impetus and he careened into the jeep, desperately gasping for breath.

Ali picked him up by the shoulders. “You’ve been hit, my friend. A nice good graze across the temple.”

Dan touched his forehead. Sticky blood came off on his fingers. “A graze,” he muttered. He glanced back across the valley at the fallen man, then at Ahman, who was kneeling by the body. “Was it Randall?”

“Yes.”

Dan felt a shudder ripple through him. Alex. …

“We’ve got to get the authorities—”

“Already on their way,” Ali assured him.

“And Alex, and Crosby. They’re in the tomb. I’ve got to bring you back. I’ve got to—”

“You’ve got to do nothing. You belong in a hospital.”

“Not until we get Alex.”

Ali sighed. “All right, my friend. But Raj and Ahman and I will do the crawling into the tomb.”

Alex could have sworn that days had passed. She was so nervous that she was certain she would soon be physically sick. Her stomach churned painfully and her head was swimming. She and Jim had given up all effort to talk; they merely sat holding each other.

And then there came a noise from the corridor. She tensed with terror, wondering who it would be as she and Jim both leaped expectantly to their feet, Jim holding her protectively behind him as if he could shield her from danger with his body.

“Dr. Crosby? Alex? It is me, Ali Sur Sheriff.”

“Oh, God!” Alex sobbed out with relief, feeling her head spin. A second later Ali was standing in front of her and she was embracing him. The Arab unabashedly embraced her father also, pumping his hand, telling him how glad he was that they had found him.

“Long story,” Jim told Ali. “I’ll explain it all later. I’d like to get out of here, and so would Alex—if it’s safe.”

“Yes,” Ali said. “Egyptian troops, on orders from the Department of Antiquities, are outside now.”

“Ali,” Alex said suddenly, her throat going dry. “What happened? Where is Dan? Wayne. …”

“There was some shooting,” Ali tried to explain. “I’m sorry, Alex, but I’m afraid Wayne is dead. And Dan—”

Alex could bear to hear no more. She let out a strangled scream that echoed in a primeval wail throughout the tomb and she fell to the floor in a dead faint.

“Oh, merciful Allah,” Ali moaned.

Dan, having heard the scream from above, compressed his lips and shook off Ahman’s restraining hand. He dropped down into the tomb despite the now-throbbing wound on his temple.

It was he who carried Alex from the tomb.

T
HE SKY OVERHEAD WAS
cornflower-blue; the sun was a radiant orb of brilliant yellow. Alex could hear the bleat of sheep across the sparse grassland and the occasional melodious Arabic call of one of the boys tending the flock.

She closed her eyes against the sun and lay back upon a crooked elbow, feeling the heat of the ground beneath the blanket she had spread in the spidery shade of a date palm.

She had come back with Ali to the oasis in the desert to rest, and to find some kind of a peace. She had promised Jim she would return in two weeks, but he had understood when Ali had offered to bring her here and she had so quickly agreed. Strange; there had been times when she would have thought this the last place in the world she would come to be at ease. But she was comfortable here, as comfortable as she was going to be while she attempted to straighten out her tortured heart and soul.

Was it just five nights ago that she had been sealed into the tomb? It all seemed so distant. She had come to in her cot in the camp, only to discover that all hell had already broken out. Officials were swarming through the camp and the valley; members of Dan’s camera crew and other press members were also arriving. Field radios were set up, and the Egyptian police were questioning everyone. It was a bedlam of jeeps and donkeys, experts and tourists. News services across the world were already broadcasting the story.

Anelokep and the circumstances surrounding the discovery of his tomb were becoming the property of the public—and history. Ironically, Wayne would have his name remembered through the centuries. He would become not a victim of his own greed but a victim of the curse of the pharaohs.

Alex had barely seen Dan. Ali had told her that he had carried her from the tomb and held her all the way back to the camp. But then he had been swarmed by the police and by his own communications team, and she hadn’t been able to say a word to him.

Ali, who despised crowds and notoriety of any kind, made his decision to leave that night. He had touched Alex’s pallid face and suggested that she accompany him. She had agreed; but though she had clung to Jim, she hadn’t been able to find Dan. She had chewed three nails down to the quick wondering whether to leave or not, but then the feeling of humiliation over Wayne had gripped her again, and she had wanted desperately to hide, to pull herself together again before trying to face Dan.

What would he be thinking? she wondered. He knew that she loved him; she had admitted it. But if their relationship was nothing more than an uncomfortable entanglement to him, she would have to be cool and flip and convince him that she had had “tomb fever.”

A cold sweat suddenly engulfed her. How could he possibly care about her? The things she had said, the things she had done. Defending Wayne. …

She tried to think about Wayne. She had believed she would feel pain and remorse, but nothing broke through the barrier of numbness. She didn’t even hate him; if anything, she was sorry that such a bright man had been so besotted by the longing for fame.