Sands of Time (Out of Time #6) (32 page)

The four of them walked swiftly, hugging the dark edges of the cliffs above them. The moon was bright and while they tried to be quiet, every footstep seemed to echo in the silence.

Before long, they came to the small wadi that held Henri’s tomb. Jack peered around the edge as the others pressed themselves against the rocks. He nodded his head. “Clear.”

He looked again and then started the dash across the open, moonlit ground toward the steps of the tomb. The others followed until they were all safely on the other side and standing at the entrance.

Hassan held out the two lanterns he’d been carrying. “Do not light them until you are inside,” he cautioned.

Simon and Jack each took one. Hassan gave Elizabeth a small rucksack with a few small tools in it.

“I will stay here and keep watch,” he continued. “Be quick and be safe.”

Elizabeth squeezed his arm in thanks as they passed him and started down the steep stairs. Once they were a dozen feet inside the tomb and the darkness was nearly complete, Jack lit a match and they lifted the glass coverings to light the lanterns.

Simon went first, Elizabeth second with Jack behind her. They made their way through the first and second corridor until they reached the rough walls.

“Be careful,” Simon said, needlessly.

Elizabeth had already almost caused a cave-in here, she wasn’t looking for a repeat performance. She gathered her skirts close to her body and walked slowly and carefully down the steep sloping stairs.

They passed through the large outer chamber and finally made it into the smaller chamber at the dead end of the tomb. Both Jack and Simon held up their lanterns and quickly scanned the walls before setting them down near the middle of the floor. The room was small enough and the lanterns bright enough that they could see the entire room clearly.

“Jack, you take that wall, I’ll take this one,” Simon said. “Elizabeth, the back. Feel for any indentations, any seams, any anomaly. We’ll search the floor and the ceilings next.”

Elizabeth nodded and set to her task. She hated touching these beautiful frescoes, but they had no choice. Gently, she ran her fingers along the outlines and felt for anything out of the ordinary. The reliefs were very detailed making it slow going. The wall was fairly smooth beneath her fingertips. Occasionally, she could feel a chisel mark or a tiny bit of 3000-year-old paint would flake off. She would have to volunteer the rest of her life at a museum doing restorations to make up for this.

Her wall was divided into three large panels. The first showed Akhenaten and Nefertiti seated opposite each other as they held their three children. It was remarkably normal. The king held one of his daughters to kiss her while the others climbed all over their mother. It was something she expected to see at a mall not in a Pharaoh’s tomb. It made these people who live millennia ago, so real, so human.

Elizabeth tried not to get caught up in the images and stick with the task at hand, but it was nearly impossible. She was in an ancient tomb and her imagination started to take flight, but she clipped its wings and forced herself to focus. The watch had to be here.

She moved on to the second panel, this one more formal with the King and his family offering something to the Aten. The giant sun disk hung above him, its rays reaching down toward him. She felt around the edges of the Aten disk, hope flaring in her chest, but it was just stone.

The Aten disk was repeated lower, smaller, but it wasn’t a relief, just a painting. She ran her fingers over the smaller disk anyway.

“Show me,” she whispered to it.

She waited for something magical to happen, but nothing did. “Open sesame?”

The walls didn’t speak or move.

“What?” Simon said.

“Nothing.” So much for Hollywood.

With a sigh, she continued exploring the outline of the Aten disk when something suddenly gave. She gasped as a bit of clay or plaster or whatever it was, fell away.

“Guys,” she whispered, her heart beating just a bit faster with each passing second.

“Have you found something?” Simon asked as he came to her side.

Elizabeth traced the edges of the disk and more clay fell away. Something was embedded in the wall.

Jack brought one of the lanterns closer and as another bit of paint and plaster fell away, a glint of gold caught the light.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

Elizabeth turned to smile in triumph at Simon, but he’d gone to retrieve the chisel from their tools.

Carefully, he ran the tip of it around the edges of the disk until he could get a little leverage. With a few gentle pushes, he pried something out of the wall and it fell into his waiting hand. Elizabeth held her breath as he brushed the remaining paint and clay away until all that was left was a gold watch.

Elizabeth laughed, releasing pent up tension. “How about that?”

“Yes,” a voice behind them said and Elizabeth’s blood ran cold. “How about that?”

As Elizabeth started to turn, she saw Jack out of the corner of her eye reaching for his gun. She was vaguely aware of Simon dropping the chisel and doing the same thing, when a shot rang out, nearly deafening in the small chamber.

Instinct made her duck and cover, but not before she heard Jack grunt and saw him spin away from her. Dear God, he’d been shot. She looked back to see that a bullet had torn through his arm. His gun slipped from his fingers and clattered to the stone floor.

“Jack!” Elizabeth cried.

He groaned and heaved a few deep breaths to try to control the pain. Across the small room, Simon moved to point his gun.

“I would think twice about that if I were you, Mr. Cross,” Katherine Vale said, as one of her henchmen leveled his gun at Simon’s chest.

Simon had been too slow on the draw and was caught still trying to get his gun from his jacket pocket. And thank God he had. It was the only thing that kept him from being shot.

One of the four henchmen Vale had with her stepped past her in the tunnel and took Simon’s gun and retrieved Jack’s from the ground.

“Jack?” Elizabeth asked.

He squared his shoulders as best he could. “I’m all right.”

But she could see from the pinched look on his face, he was far from that.

“I’ll take that as well,” Vale said, indicating the watch Simon tried to conceal in his fist.

One of the men took it from his hand.

A smug smile spread across Vale’s faced. “And your grandfather’s,” she said. “I’d like to complete the set.”

Simon took a deep breath, glanced over at Elizabeth and then reached into his vest pocket, but something was wrong. Elizabeth could see it in his body language.

“I seem to have misplaced it,” Simon said, sounding pleased with himself, but she heard the tint of worry in his voice.

Vale’s smile fell. “Search him,” she commanded.

One of the men patted Simon down, but found nothing. Elizabeth’s heart didn’t know whether to sink at the thought they’d lost the watch or soar because Vale couldn’t have it.

“Very clever,” Vale said. “But I’ll find it. I’ll find them all.”

Simon glanced over at Elizabeth, his expression worried and confused, but he quickly schooled his features. “You have what you came for,” he said, his voice steady.

Vale laughed, savoring the flavor of the moment. “Like mice to cheese you came.”

So, it had been a trap. Elizabeth’s heart sunk even lower. They’d walked right into it. But why such a ruse? Apart from the loathing and wanting to see them eaten alive by dingoes, why not search the tomb herself? What game was she playing now?

“How did you know it was here?” Elizabeth asked.

Vale smiled. “How is it I know so many things you don’t? Hmm?”

She looked at Elizabeth with what she must have thought was pity, but that was an emotion Katherine Vale wasn’t capable of and her expression just looked pained.

“I will admit, I didn’t know you’d be here. Egypt, of all places. I hoped, of course to find you. When they freed me from Bedlam, I had a very short list of things to do and you two,” she said, her eyes glittering, “were very near the top.”

Vale sighed dramatically. “I was worried for a while. You were so slow to catch on, despite my best efforts to leave a blazing trail here.”

Elizabeth shook her head. She’d led them here? To this moment? To this place? She hazarded a glance at Simon and could see him working it through, seeing the pattern he hadn’t seen before and knew he would beat himself up for having missed it.

Elizabeth slipped her hand into his and he looked at her, apology in his eyes. Elizabeth shook her head.

“So charming,” Vale said, pulling their attention back to her. With a nod of her head, she indicated that she was ready to her men and they stepped forward. Elizabeth reached out and took hold of Jack’s hand and held tighter to Simon’s. She flinched, closing her eyes, ready to be killed.

“Oh,” Vale said in delight. “I’m not going to shoot you, my dear.”

She waited until Elizabeth opened her eyes and with a smile she tilted her head. The men picked up the lanterns and ushered them all out into the larger antechamber.

Once there, her men bound their wrists. Jack’s arm was bleeding badly and he grunted in pain as the men wrenched it behind his back to bind his hands. Simon caught her eye briefly as he scanned the room for something to use against their captors.

Elizabeth’s heart raced as the men tightened the ropes around her wrists. This was the second time she’d been tied up since they’d arrived in Egypt and she had a feeling this one wasn’t going to end as well as the first. She joined Simon in a search for something, anything to help them, when she heard footsteps at the door to the outside corridor and turned to look.

“Oh, yes,” Vale said.

Two men stepped into the chamber, a man dragged between them. They threw him onto the floor at Elizabeth’s feet.

“Hassan!”

Vale looked down at him in disgust. “Got in my way.”

Elizabeth swallowed her shame and guilt. When Vale and the others arrived without Hassan, she’d foolishly assumed he’d seen them coming and hidden. That he’d magically gotten away. Tears at her own naiveté stung her eyes as she looked down at him.

He was alive, but barely conscious. Blood ran down his face from a gash on his forehead as he rolled onto his back and blinked up at Elizabeth, his eyes struggling to focus.

“I’m sorry, Hassan,” Elizabeth said.

He tried to speak, but couldn’t manage it.

“Quite a little party,” Vale said. “I’m just sorry your girlfriend couldn’t be here,” she added to Jack. “I don’t like her.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Jack ground out between clenched teeth.

“She is a loose end I will snip off,” Vale said with a laugh. “I will be having another party soon. Perhaps she can join that. I know your darling Christina will be there.”

“Leave the girl out of it,” Simon said.

“So noble, and yet so thoroughly ineffectual.” Vale smiled. “I owe you a debt on that score. I was going to find any old virgin and you served me one on a silver platter. Knowing her death will be because of you is the icing on the cake.”

Elizabeth felt sick. Was there anyone they hadn’t dragged down with them?

“Please,” Elizabeth said. “You don’t have to do this. Any of this. Let us help you.”

Vale paused and looked at her, her face set in animated shock.

“Help me?” she said with a laugh that didn’t just border on insane it had permanent residence there. “Like you helped me in San Francisco?”

Elizabeth flinched.

Abruptly, unnaturally, Vale’s laughter stopped. “Oh, no, my dear. I’m going to help
you
this time.”

She waved her hand toward the doorway to the burial chamber and one of the men stepped forward toward Elizabeth. She tried to move away, but there was nowhere to go. He clamped his hand around her arms and jerked her forward. Despite herself, she cried out.

“Elizabeth,” Simon said. He lunged forward, but was caught by one of Vale’s men and held in place.

“You see there are many kinds of prisons,” Vale said.

Elizabeth looked back at Simon, who was helpless as the henchmen held both him and Jack, while another dragged her to the mouth of the burial chamber. A darkened tunnel stretched out before her.

“This one’s for you, my dear,” Vale said and then made a show of looking down into the tunnel toward the burial chamber. “Although, I don’t think it or you will last long.”

Elizabeth’s breath came faster and faster now as she started to realize what Vale was going to do.

“No,” she said, struggling against the man who held her.

“Please, don’t,” Simon begged, but it only seemed to make Vale happier.

“Please don’t what? Bury my wife alive?”

Elizabeth gasped as she said it. Somehow she’d known that was Vale’s plan, but to hear it. Her breath hitched again as she turned to Simon. His eyes were wild with desperation. His breath came in quick, short bursts as he struggled.

Vale pursed her lips and looked critically back at Elizabeth’s room. “Perhaps six or seven hours of oxygen. Less if you struggle? That is if it doesn’t crush you, of course.”

“Please,” Simon repeated.

Elizabeth pulled against the man that held her. “Simon.”

“You will have a choice, Mister Cross,” Vale said.

Simon pulled his attention away from Elizabeth to Vale.

“Once we leave,” she continued, “we will collapse this corridor to the outside.” She gestured to the main tunnel.

She looked around the larger antechamber and adjoining tunnel, gauging the size. “You could, perhaps, dig your way out, but of course, then your wife would die. But if you choose to dig your way in, you will use the oxygen you have in here and not have enough time to dig your way out. Save yourself and your friends, or condemn them all to death with your selfishness.”

She smiled almost dreamily. “Either way, she will be dead and you, even if you live, you will be a hollow man.”

Elizabeth looked at Simon. “Don’t listen to her. If you can save yourself—”

Simon shook his head.

“Isn’t that romantic?” Vale said. “And do not think help from the outside will come in time. You will all probably be dead before the dawn, long before anyone even knows you’re missing.”