The Eden Factor (Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Romance Adventure Series Book 2) (32 page)

Jace wasn't the only one who saw
how ridiculous this was. Marcus was beginning to see it, too. Deverona wasn't
an idiot; that was certain. But Lynn wasn't moving and wanted an answer.
Finally, Marcus put his hands on Lynn and turned the reluctant man around, back
in the direction of the sarcophagus. It wasn't an easy task. But just as he got
him moving, Dennis rolled up on Deverona and took their place. True to form,
the high-strung archaeologist looked every inch the hopping mad Irishman.

"All right, you little
prick," he hissed. "I'll tell you what's going on here. Dr. Davis and
Juliana have a relationship and your presence here is making both of them
goddamn uneasy. You've been apart from Juliana for several years, so why don't
you just give her a damn divorce so she can move on with her life? You're not a
part of it anymore and Lynn is. Now do you get the picture?"

Crude as it was, it was the first
straight answer Jace had received since his arrival. He looked at Lynn, standing
several feet away. "I get the picture," he said quietly. "Look,
I didn't come here to muck anything up. I came here to do a job. As for
divorcing Juliana, that's kind of a complicated issue."

Marcus held up a hand to silence
him. His dander down, he was weary of acting like an idiot. He knew that if
Kathlyn had seen any of this, she would have killed him.

  "It's none of our
business, Deverona," he said. "But you have to realize how we feel
about Juliana. You're appearance here has been rather uncomfortable."

Dennis, still flushed, backed off
and Jace came away from the wall. "And I appreciate that. I'm really happy
she's found such a loyal group of friends. As long as she's happy, that's all I
can ask for. So I'll tell you, briefly, that the reason we haven't gotten a
divorce is because we're both Catholic and our parents asked us not to. I guess
they held out hope that someday we'd reconcile. But six years down the road,
that's just not going to happen. In fact, one of the reasons I asked to come on
this assignment was to ask Juliana if she'd consider a divorce now." He
lifted his arms in a helpless gesture. "I've met someone, too."

Lynn just looked at him. He
suddenly felt like the biggest moron in the world. "Damn," he hissed.
"I thought... well, hell, you know what I thought."

Jace brushed the dirt off his
back from smacking against the wall. "That I was here to reconcile? Not
after six years. Besides, it was over the day we split up, for good."

Lynn and Marcus were sheepish,
trying not to look like total fools in the wake of their testosterone seizures.
Dennis was the only one who wasn't remorseful. He just shrugged and went back
to work.

  "We're a bunch of idiots,
you know that," Marcus cast a glance at Jace. "Any minute now we're
going to grow hair all over our bodies and start knuckle-dragging."

Deverona laughed. "Don't
worry about it. Your intentions were good."

"Just don't tell my wife.
She'll kick my ass."

Deverona put his hands up as if
to ward off the mere thought. "Say no more. My lips are sealed."

Marcus felt even more guilty now;
Deverona was proving himself to be not so bad after all. "So what did you
want to ask me about Fayd?" he thought it best to just move forward.
"I'll tell you what I can, but like I said, I don't think it'll be much.
Kathlyn knows him better than I do."

Jace didn't hold a grudge.  He
knew it had been a test and was rather glad that the storm, though rough, had
quickly passed. Only his quick thinking had saved him from utter annihilation.

"Any observations you might
have would be helpful, don't kid yourself," he said, switching the tape
recording to the 'on' position again. "Why don't you just start from the
beginning."

Marcus didn't get a word out
before Gary was suddenly entering the chamber. He looked right at Marcus.

"You're in big
trouble," he said. "Your wife called and you missed it."

Marcus smacked his forehead with
the palm of his hand. "Goddammit," he hissed. "Who did she talk
to?"

"The administration tent was
empty. A Marine just happened to be passing by and heard the phone ring."

"So she's okay?"

"She's fine. And she said to
hell with you for not answering the phone when you were the one who made her
call. What in the hell happened?"

Marcus looked first at Lynn and
then at Deverona. "The Neanderthal Society was in session," he said.

"What?"

"Forget it. I'll get the
next call, I promise."

"You better or there will be
hell to pay."

Marcus shook his head.
"Don't I know it."

***

"My husband is a
moron."

Juliana laughed softly, watching
Kathlyn click off the cellular phone. She sat there a moment, lips pursed.
"You think I'm kidding? I'm not!"

"So he didn't answer the
phone? So what?"

"After he told me to call
him at regular intervals on penalty of death if I didn't?"

"Forget about it."
Juliana grabbed her by the arm and gave her a tug. "Come on. We've got a
long drive to Zubayr."

Kathlyn put the phone back in her
bag. They had just landed at the small rural airstrip fifty miles southeast of
their destination, flown there by a private chartered plane and flying low so
it would be less detectable to radar. Since Iraqi air space was still patrolled
by the United States in the no-fly zones, it made for a bit of tricky flying
from their pilot, but they had paid him well enough. Such were the perks of
World Geography's sponsorship. There was danger involved, which always got
Kathlyn's heart pumping. To her, danger and excitement were, most of the time,
the same thing.

The Iraqi sun was merciless and
the landscape around them was dead and rocky. There was nothing for miles in
any direction. And there was no Iraqi military this time to escort them. Hassan
had personally come with them to lead them back in what was something of a
covert operation. They were traveling very light, and fairly incognito. Hassan
had provided them with traditional garments and chadors for the women. 
Kathlyn, Juliana and Debra Jo were swathed in back gowns and black veils. 
Kathlyn wasn't sure where Hassan got the clothing, but they were dusty and they
stank.  She hated putting the material on her head for fear of lice, but there
was little choice.

 They made the trip back to Zubayr
in an old truck that could barely go over forty miles per hour. While the women
sat in the cab, the men sat in the bed and kept a look out for anything
threatening. They had boxes of gear and food that would be very valuable to
bandits or the military.  Tony had given Mark and Otis guns before they left,
three 9 millimeter automatics and a box of ammunition.  Kathlyn didn't know
about the weapons; they were for emergency situations only.

 The drive was long and hot. By
the time they arrived, Kathlyn was very ready to stop traveling and get to
work.  The village seemed more populated than it had the last time she saw it.
People went about their business and the streets had a few cars on them.  Her
first thought when she got out of the truck was to go to the fossil river. She
wanted to see if anything had happened to it since her last visit. Taking Mark
and Juliana with her, she went off toward the site.

A hot wind kicked up swirls of
dust. They walked among the scrub bushes where they had set up their camp weeks
before, the terrain now very familiar to them. Kathlyn climbed down into the
riverbed, noticing there was no guard on the site. It worried her. When she
finally came to stand on the edge of the excavation pit, she saw why.

"Damn," she hissed.
"I don't believe it."

Juliana was behind her.
"They're gone. All of them."

Where three skeletons should have
been, now there were just ugly, rough cut holes.  Mark went down into the pits
and ran his fingers over the torn earth.

"Somebody excavated
them," he looked up at Kathlyn. "I've got a guess who it was."

Kathlyn had a guess, too. She
shook her head slowly. "Fayd," she breathed. "He came back for
them. Damn him!"

It was a disheartening sight, but
not a surprising one in retrospect. Juliana pulled on her. "We can't do
anything about it right now," she said. "Come on; we've got a bigger
site to see, unless Fayd has beat us to that, too."

Mark hiked up out of the pit.
"I'm starting to think that Fayd has ties in this village."

"So why do they call us in
if Fayd has ties?" Kathlyn demanded. "Why not just leave everything
to him?"

Mark shrugged. Their pace back to
the village quickened. "Maybe there are two factions here - one that wants
us to handle this, and one that wants Fayd to."

"Whatever is going on seems
strange," Kathlyn said. "So let's get a look at this cave if Fayd
hasn't already mucked it up."

Their sense of urgency had
doubled by the time the reached the truck. Otis, Larry and Andy were waiting
for them.  Kathlyn told the doctoral students to collect their video gear,
small state-of-the-art devices no bigger than a three by five card with a small
retractable video screen for playback and editing. The rest of them grabbed
their backpacks. As a group, they followed Hassan into the village.

One of the three village elders
that had originally met with Kathlyn and Marcus those weeks ago was waiting for
them in a small, tidy home at the edge of town.  As the team entered, the man's
wife and family cowered in a second smaller room, the kitchen, looking at the
Americans as if they were otherworldly creatures. Kathlyn was prepared to sit
and negotiate with the man as she had done before, but he didn't want to talk.
He just led them through the house where they exited a back door and into a
large communal yard.

 It was bone dry, a few dogs
scattered about, a woman here or there doing laundry. They followed the
brown-prune skinned man across the yard, behind some houses, across another
street, and into the dry desert beyond. In the distance sat a few hills, time
scarred, and another branch of the fossil river bed. They came to the edge of
the ancient river bank, noting the twenty foot drop to the sandy ground below.
There were small paths cut out of the side of the cliff and they followed the
elder down one of them. It was narrow, rocky going; Kathlyn trudged down while
Juliana, disliking heights, had more trouble.

 When they finally reached the
bottom, they followed the path of the ancient river west for what seemed at
least a mile. It twisted through the desert like a roiling snake, cutting a
progressively deeper swatch into the barren land.  After a particularly sharp
turn in the course, there was suddenly a gaping hole breached into the side of
the cliff. It wasn't particularly large; in fact, Kathlyn would barely be able
to stand up straight in it. The elder pointed at it, and silently took the
small path leading up toward it.

Kathlyn stood there for a moment,
looking up at the yawning mouth blown into the side of the hill. Her hands
began to tingle and she knew from many years of experience that her Intuition
had awakened. Something that had remained largely silent from the beginning of
this venture was suddenly kicking in and the longer she stood there, the more
painful the tingle became. It moved up her arms and into her chest until she
could hardly breathe. A lesser version of the State settled over her and in her
mind, she could hear a moan coming from the open bowels of the cave, swirling
in and around her, growing louder by the second.

It was a horrible, empty sound
that shook her. She took a step back and stumbled into Otis, who was standing
directly behind her. Startled, the moan raking through her mind abruptly
vanished.

"You okay?" Otis asked.

Kathlyn's heart was pounding in
her ears. "Whew," she tried to shake off the experience. "I just
had a very weird sensation."

"What?"

She looked at the gaping hole
again. The elder was standing at the threshold, motioning to her. "I'm not
sure," she said softly. "It was strange... nothing good, I think. I
feel a very strong Flow."

Otis had been with Kathlyn for
ten years. He had seen her work in every kind of condition. He knew that when
the State gave way to the Flow, something was definitely afoot. He'd never
known her to be wrong.

"Another score," he
said with quiet triumph. "There's got to be something in there if you're
feeling it."

Kathlyn cocked an eyebrow.
"Yes, but what?"

"Let's find out."

She was reluctant but he gave her
a gentle shove. She went up the path with Otis, Larry and Andy behind her, Mark
directly in front. Debra Jo and Juliana had already entered the mouth of the
cave. It was like entering a tomb.

It was very dark inside, a murky
blackness. Reaching into the packs they carried, the team brought out their
Maglights. The electric torches went on, one by one, casting a shower of beams
against the wall and ceiling of the rocky cave. The elder said something to
Hassan, who bade them deeper into the dusty grotto. About twenty feet back
against the rear wall was a shaft. Hassan pointed into the black hole,
gesturing for them to enter.