The Eden Factor (Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Romance Adventure Series Book 2) (16 page)

"But that doesn't follow
suit. I had two sons, not one."

"Are you pregnant now?"

"I don't think so."

"Are you sure?"

No, she wasn't. She and Marcus
had made love the day before without contraception, so she couldn't say for
certain.  Concern welled in her but she fought it.

 "No, but I seriously doubt
it."

Fayd simply nodded as if he
didn't believe her and then continued with his hypothesis. "So if you are
the woman the Book of Revelation speaks of, then the darkness is...."

The hairs on Kathlyn's arms stood
up. His tone was ominous. "What?"

He cocked a dark eyebrow.
"Who is the most holy man on the planet, the one that millions believe in
without question?"

It didn't take a genius to figure
that one out. Kathlyn's gaze moved to de Tormo. "The pope?"

Fayd merely shrugged, his manner
cool and collected. "Evil comes in many forms, Kathlyn. The most dangerous
is where you don't expect it.  You've done Biblical excavation all over the
world and The Vatican hasn't paid much attention to you, or me for that matter.
So why now? Why is a representative of the pope here, watching every move you
make?"

Kathlyn's brain was in overdrive.
In a weird flash of clarity, she understood exactly what Fayd was saying.
"Because we're excavating the four horsemen of the Apocalypse."

"The Devil's Henchmen."

"And he's sent someone to
make sure we do it right."

Kathlyn just stared at him.
"Oh, my dear God," she murmured. "Do you really believe
that?"

Fayd shrugged. "I'm not sure
what I believe. But it's an awfully strange coincidence, don't you think?"

She suddenly didn't feel like
digging anymore. Putting the brush down, she thought perhaps she needed to
sleep on this. Her imagination was way too overactive with little sleep and too
much drink. Maybe when she woke up in the morning, all of this craziness would
seem like a distant bad memory.  All she knew, at the moment, was that she was
scared to death.  Fayd had her worked up with his theories, whether or not he
believed them himself.

"I think I need to go to
bed," she stood up, trying not to think about the skeleton at her feet or
de Tormo several feet away. "We'll talk some more about this during
daylight when it doesn't sound so much like a horror story."

Fayd stood along with her.
"I'm sorry, Kathlyn. I didn't mean to upset you, merely sound out a rather
bizarre theory."

"Bizarre or not, it makes
sense. I've got to get some sleep so I can think clearly."

"Then I will too so we can
think clearly together. We've got quite a mystery to unravel, Dr. Trent. I am
sincerely glad we are working on this as a team."

She didn't say anymore. Fayd
watched her walk into the darkness, the womanly curves of her figure catching
his appreciation. Good thing Burton wasn't around to see him.

***

"Fahdlan, wake up."

Fayd struggled from a heavy
sleep. His tent was still dark and he guessed he hadn't been asleep very long
from the way he felt. He blinked his eyes in the darkness to see a massive
figure standing over him. He knew, without even seeing the face, that it was
Marcus Burton. He endeavored to sit up.

"Dr. Burton?" he asked.
"What's wrong?"

Marcus just stood there in the
darkened tent, shirtless, with only his jeans and boots on. He wasn't even
wearing socks. He was incredibly tired, but he was also incredibly angry.

"You and I need to have a
chat, Dr. Fahdlan," he said.

 "What about?"

"My wife."

"What about her?"

Marcus put his hands on his hips;
in the silhouette of the moonlight outside the tent, Fayd could see the
enormous circumference of the man's arms.

"My wife takes her work very
seriously. Sometimes too seriously. These relics have her spooked, and I've
never known her to be the jumpy sort. That conversation you two had after I
went to bed has her all worked up and I'm here to ask you not to fill her head
with that kind of stuff anymore. She's got enough of an imagination without you
telling her that de Tormo is an emissary from Satan and that the two of you are
excavating the four horsemen of the Apocalypse."

Fayd sat up in and scratched his
head. "Dr. Burton, you have to realize that Dr. Trent and I work in a
field where basically everything is considered mythology. Such is not so with
Egyptology; you have hard cold facts to back up your work.  With any other
specialty, there is always some sort of physical evidence. But with Biblical
Archaeology, we're dealing with myths and legends. It's harder for us. Our
faith and our reason must be stronger. Working through theories and scripture
is a way of putting the pieces of the puzzle together."

"I know that," Marcus
snapped softly. "And I've been around Kathlyn enough to know that she has
more faith than anyone I've ever known. But she's also got a vivid imagination
and I don't think she knows where to draw the line sometimes. She doesn't need
you encouraging these wild fantasies she has."

"They're not fantasies, I
assure you," Fayd said. "To people like me and your wife, they're
very real."

"But to people like me,
they're bedtime stories," Marcus was having a difficult time being
patient. "In any case, I don't want you discussing those theories with her
any more. They're making her crazy. Whenever she brings it up, change the
subject."

"It's not that easy, Dr.
Burton. We're Biblical Archaeologists. This is what we do."

"And I'm telling you to back
off. Kathlyn doesn't need any more stress."

Fayd laughed softly. "Back
off from what? I've not done anything but discuss theories with her. If she is
stressed, I have nothing to do with it."

The man wasn't intimidated by
Marcus; that much was apparently. Short of wringing his neck, Marcus wasn't
sure what more he could do. He used the next few moments to stand back and
regroup.

 "Then I'll make my wishes
plain," he said quietly. "I don't want to hear any more talk of
Armageddon and Apocalypses. If Kathlyn comes back to me one more time shaken up
over some conversation she's had with you, I'll pull her and my team out of
here and you can do this all yourself. Is that clear?"

"Your wife will have
something different to say about that, Dr. Burton. As we saw in Egypt, she can
make her own decisions and make them well. You had better not make threats that
you cannot fulfill."

Marcus did what he was trying not
to do. He exploded. The small card table with Fayd's laptop went sailing over
the archaeologist's head, busting through the wall of the tent and pulling down
one entire side. Only the portion where Marcus stood remained upright. While
Fayd was ducking the flying table, Marcus reached down, grabbed the man by his
tee shirt, and pulled him to his feet.  His grip on Fayd was like a vise as he
gazed angrily into the olive-skinned face.

"I've asked you very nicely,
Dr. Fahdlan, now I'm going to ask you not so nicely," he growled.  "I
know you once asked my wife to marry you, so at some point, you had feelings
for her. Now magnify those feelings by one million and you will understand how
I feel about her. This whole dig has her unbalanced and upset, and your
speculation of the end of the world isn't helping her in the least.  I'm
telling you to cut that shit out or I'll make sure that you do. Is that
clear?"

Fayd was no match for Burton's
brute strength.  Although he had visions of having his teeth knocked out, he
would not let Marcus know how frightened he was.

 "Let go of me, Dr.
Burton," he said calmly.

Marcus' grip tightened. "Do
we have an understanding?"

"We have nothing if you
don't let me go."

"And what are you going to
do if I don't?"

It was a good point.  He nodded
his head, stiffly, in the direction of the camping Iraqi army. "I have a
good deal of support on my side."

"And I have the whole
goddamn American army on mine. Do you really want to go there with that? We
know without a doubt who will win that one."

Fayd sighed. He was becoming angry
now as well as frightened. "Dr. Burton, this is no way for rational men to
act."

Marcus laughed, ironically.
"Who in the hell ever said I was rational? I need your cooperation on
something that involves the well-being of my wife and I'm damn well going to
get it.  All I want is your agreement that you won't encourage this hysteria of
hers. Simple enough, Fahdlan."

"Let me go and we'll discuss
it."

"Tell me you will comply to
the best of your ability and I'll be happy to let you go."

Fayd eyed him. There was a
certain amount of pride at stake here, but not enough to risk this kind of a
stalemate. He finally nodded his head, shortly, and Marcus immediately released
him.

"I would thank you, but that
probably sounds stupid," Marcus said, moving out of the tent. "But
thanks anyway."

Fayd stood there long after
Marcus walked away, shaken and angry. He didn't like anyone gaining the upper
hand on him. He thought himself rather clever to sit back and let Burton and
Davis do all the heavy excavation work, but now he wondered if it was worth it.
The complications he had originally anticipated were only going to get worse.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

"So that is what you want to
do?"

Fayd had the cellular phone
pressed up against his ear. The reception was terrible and he tried not to
shout as he spoke. "Burton is too much of a threat. We need to move on
this quickly."

"And Trent?" the voice
cracked in the receiver.

"She's formidable, but not
as much a threat as Burton is. She shouldn't be a real problem."

"How close are you to
releasing the first of the four?"

"It should be done by today.
It's daybreak now; I would suspect we'll be complete by dusk. Burton and his
colleague are voracious workers." He paused a moment. “There is an
American Marine with them.”

"Is he armed?”

“Of course. Aren’t they always?”

“Are you sure you want to do it
this way, then?"

"We've no choice. It's got
to be done swiftly and decisively."

“What of the Marine?”

“If anything happens, he is a
casualty of war.”

"Very well. Notify me when
you're ready to leave with the relic."

"I will."

Fayd shut down the connection.
The great thing about cellular phones was that there were no phone bills to
trace, no evidence of any kind unless his air transmissions were monitored. He
doubted that anyone would be able to make heads or tails out of his
conversation. Shoving the phone back into his pocket, he meandered back to camp
as the others were rising for the day.

Burton and Davis were up. They
were very dedicated men and Fayd admired that. Trent's people were staggering
over to the larger tent that acted as the mess tent to get their coffee. He'd
never seen such caffeine and nicotine hounds. In the distance, the Iraqi
military was up and moving, though Fayd couldn't imagine what they were moving
for. All they had to do was sit and wait for the dig to finish.  When Fayd saw
Kathlyn emerge from the small tent she shared with her husband, Dr. Davis and
Dr. Maurer, he decided to go over to the site and wait for her.

For the mere fact that she had
only gotten about three hours of sleep on top of a drinking binge, Kathlyn was
moving much better than she should have been. When Marcus and Lynn had left to
go to the site, she stripped down and tried to wash off some of the grime with
a precious bit of water. It was a futile effort even though it made her feel
better and she dressed in some fresh clothes she had brought, shorts and a tee
shirt and the ever-present 'damn' duster, as her husband called it. She pulled
her honey-colored hair up into a knot and threw on some sunscreen lip-gloss.
Juliana was still lying around and Kathlyn kicked her cot as she left the tent,
drawing a groan of pain and irritation.

 It was already hot and bright at
six-thirty in the morning. Kathlyn put on her sunglasses and headed for the
larger tent to get some coffee. Mark had made the coffee and he had done a very
good job; he was a great cook aside from all of his other talents. The doctoral
students were in the tent, swathed in yards of white fabric like characters out
of Lawrence of Arabia. They were preparing the video equipment to record the
morning's work. She could hardly wait to see the video they would shoot of the
site, normally accompanied by head-banging rock and roll or some kind of
hip-hop.  Kathlyn just smiled at them and shook her head; they were comic
relief in a field without much humor.

She ran into Mark on her way out
of the tent. He handed her prepackaged crackers and peanut butter for
breakfast. Thanking him for the gourmet meal, she headed down to the site where
Marcus and Lynn were already pounding away in the early morning sun.