Heather Graham (35 page)

“Why?” Wayne laughed, and the sound was hard and cruel. “Not the money, D’Alesio, although there will be certain financial rewards that will come in handy. We don’t all have the Midas touch, and we can’t all be instant successes. No, D’Alesio, I probably can’t explain it to you, but Alex might understand. It’s the fame. Something even you can’t match. It’s gaining. immortality with the pharaohs, a permanent place in the history books.”

Dan adjusted his stance, and despite the fact that the two Arabs stood behind Dan with their guns on him, Wayne flinched; Alex felt the cold steel boring against her head. “Move too fast again, D’Alesio, and you’ll watch her die right here.”

Dan lifted his hands, praying Randall didn’t see the sweat breaking out on his brow, the cold fear that gripped him as he watched Alex’s eyes, bright and wide and terror-filled, within her white features.

“I’m not moving, Randall, and she can’t hurt you. You, uh, wanted her back, and now you’ve got her. You don’t need that gun … there.”

Wayne suddenly laughed. “You know, I did want her back. And if she had any sense, she would have come. And she would have led me to the tomb all on her own. I wouldn’t have to kill her now. …”

Alex suddenly realized that she had been married to a madman. He was actually speaking with a certain regret. She swallowed, terrified that she was going to pass out.

“How did you find us now?” Alex was amazed that Dan could be speaking so calmly, so conversationally.

“I’ve been following you all along. I saw Sheriff leave you in the Valley of the Kings, and then I realized that you two weren’t coming back out. I scoured the hills until I saw you again, and then I knew Alex had stumbled on something.”

“One more question, Randall,” Dan said tensely. “Where is Crosby?”

“That I don’t know,” Wayne said with a shrug. “I lost him out here one day. He must have fallen into one of these ancient tunnel holes and maybe met with a cobra. He knew I was following him, although I don’t know whether he knew quite what I was up to. I kept telling him how I wanted to get back with Alex, but he still wouldn’t let me in on it. His loss.”

“How are you planning on getting away with Alex’s and my disappearance?”

Wayne smiled again. “Easy—the curse of the pharaohs. The world expects terrible accidents to happen when people dip into ancient Egyptian tombs.” The smile left Wayne’s face. “Get back into the hole, D’Alesio. Now.”

As Dan paused, Wayne tightened his grip upon Alex. “Pay attention, D’Alesio, and you can spend your last hours together. Give me any trouble and I’ll shoot. You see, I’d just as soon not. I’d rather come back and ‘discover’ the tomb myself in about a week—and, of course, discover that the two of you died in the noble quest for knowledge. Force me and I’ll pull the trigger. The little bitch chose you, D’Alesio, so now she can have you. For eternity, as they say.”

Dan shook his head. “She didn’t choose me, Randall. I forced her. Leave her out of this; you can come back together and discover the tomb—”

“Forget it, D’Alesio. I’m not an idiot. Even if she were still in love with me, I’m afraid Alex is a little too honorable for her own good. She’ll blame me for her father—and for you. And she’d stab me in the back one night, if she hadn’t gone to the authorities first. Now get in there. There’s a trip gear right beneath that hole, a safety precaution. As soon as you two are back down there, I can release a granite block weighing a ton to seal you in. The Egyptians really were masterful architects. And they planned retributions just like you’re about to receive for grave robbers. A rather fitting end, don’t you think? Now jump, D’Alesio—unless you want to see Alex’s head spattered on the rocks.”

Dan shrugged and lowered himself back into the hole. A second later Alex heard the thump of his feet on the floor of the tomb. “Now you, sweetheart,” Wayne whispered against her ear. He shoved her toward the hole. Her knees were wobbling so badly that she could barely walk and crawl to reach the hole. She tried to lower herself with fingers that were frozen and shaking. She couldn’t hold on to the opening, and she fell into the darkness. She was sure she would break a dozen bones before being left to die, but Dan caught her in the blackness, buffering her fall with his strong arms and his weight.

“You should have stuck with wars and famine, D’Alesio!” Wayne called down to them. “And Alex, sweetie, you should have stuck with me.”

Alex thought numbly then that Wayne
hadn’t
been a half-bad Egyptologist—he
had
found the ancient gear. She heard the whir of air as the massive granite began to slide downward within the chamber. She and Dan had to step backward to avoid being crushed beneath it as it slid smoothly into its slot, leaving them in total silence and darkness.

For a moment Alex merely stood still, but then she realized exactly what had happened and exactly what position they were in. Sealed in a tomb, locked in with the dead in a tiny, no-exit cubicle. In a matter of minutes? hours? their oxygen would run out.

She screamed, and the sound amplified and reverberated throughout the stone cubicle. It didn’t matter; she screamed and screamed again, realizing that she was going to die.

“Alex!”

She was being fervently shaken, then wrapped in strong, warm arms. Dan’s arms. She felt his heartbeat, the soft whisper of his breath against her cheek. She inhaled the musky masculine aroma of him: sandalwood. The scent she so loved.

“Oh, Dan!” She suddenly started babbling, knowing now, when it seemed all was lost, that petty things were so trivial. They were going to die, and she had never whispered how she loved him.

“Oh, Dan, I’m so sorry, so sorry I got you mixed up in all this. Dan, hold me, please, tight. I love you so much, I need you, I want to feel your touch until. …”

“What?” Dan murmured hoarsely. He had the advantage of not believing that they were destined to die; if they hadn’t been carefully followed by Ali’s most trusted men, Ali himself would be looking for them now. Dan’s one concern had merely been to keep them both from getting shot.

He wanted to tell Alex that, but his words froze in his throat. They were sealed into the outer chamber of a cold and dank tomb many feet below the earth’s surface, but suddenly it didn’t matter a heck of a lot. He had just heard the sweetest music in the world.

“What did you say, Alex?” he demanded.

Her arms clung tightly around his shoulders. Her fingers were winding into his hair, touching his nape and shooting little jolts of need along his spine that were a sunburst in the darkness.

“I love you,” she whispered feverishly again, pressing close to him. “Oh, Dan, I love you so much and now it’s too late, and oh, Dan, hold me, love me, with whatever time we have left.”

He should have told her that he didn’t believe they were going to die. He should have. But it had been days since he had touched her … since their argument over Randall. And it was cold and dank and slimy within the rock, and they were both covered with dust and cobwebs and sand.

None of that mattered. She had whispered that she loved him. Her soft body was pressed against his, and he was more than willing to love her within the forbidding caress of the rock.

“Oh, Alex,” he groaned, crushing her against him. He couldn’t see her because of the darkness, but he could feel her. He showered the top of her head with kisses and slipped his hands beneath the hem of her shirt, splaying them over the silk of her back. He moved his fingers around to cup her breasts within the confines of her bra, grazing his thumbs lovingly over the nipples that stood erect and hard beneath the lace. And his lips came down to savor hers, hungrily, slowly, completely.

They were so involved with each other that neither heard the sound of rock scraping against rock. They were both stunned when they realized light was filtering through to them from the steps that led to the entrance of the second chamber.

Alex was facing the steps. Her eyes opened wide as Dan kissed her and she stiffened, terror once again permeating her bones. She broke the kiss and gasped out a scream.

The tomb itself was opening; the second sealed door was sliding open. She could think of nothing but the time and place; the ancient mystery and magic of Egypt; the curse of the pharaohs, the rebirth of the dead.

“Oh, my God …!”

Dan spun about at her cry, slipping his arms protectively around her as he shielded his eyes against the sudden light. And then he was clasping Alex in his arms as he stared down the steps, because she had passed out cold.

Then, to Dan’s amazement, a voice boomed. “Good Lord, D’Alesio, I was hoping you would get together with my daughter, but you don’t have to make love to her beneath my very nose!”

James Crosby, his blue eyes mischievously boyish, his blond hair tousled, was walking up the steps that led from the tomb, his huge battery-operated torch creating the light.

Alex screamed again when she came to; but her father’s face was the first thing she saw, and after a moment of shrieking hysteria she realized that they were all alive and that it was indeed her father smiling down at her. Then she hugged him for at least ten minutes, yelling at him, scolding him for scaring her half to death, then asking a million questions that she gave him no chance to answer. Finally she calmed down and looked around her.

They were in the antechamber, and it was awe-inspiring. The room was stacked with coffers, guarded by statues; the walls were grooved with deep niches that held more finery; golden gods and goddesses, the pharaoh as Osiris, the pharaoh guarded by Mut, on and on … her eyes couldn’t even register the treasure of this, only the first room. But along with the treasure were several modern-day items—cotton sheets, a pillow, a portable electric grill.

“I don’t get it, Crosby,” Dan was saying, shaking his head. Alex realized that she had come to in the middle of a question-and-answer period between him and her father. “You’ve been living in the tomb all this time?”

“Umm.” Jim Crosby sat with his arm around his daughter as he replied dryly. “When I went out to see Ali, I knew Haman was quite interested in my movements. But Haman didn’t need money, and he isn’t any archaeologist! I knew he was following me around, but that hadn’t really bothered me.” He hesitated a moment, glancing briefly and uncomfortably toward Alex. “Randall had been making me very nervous. He’d been too ingratiating, too determined to make me believe he wanted to get back with Alex and be a model husband. I didn’t know how far he would go to be in on this find, but like I wrote you, honey”—he smiled as he tousled Alex’s hair—“I was nervous. I tried to tell you where the tomb was without saying it over the phone or putting in on paper, just in case something did happen. And I told you to get to Dan and Ali because I knew you’d need protection.”

“But why are you in the tomb, Dad? How have you been living?”

Jim Crosby smiled broadly. “Randall was following me the day I decided to check out my theory alone. He’s had men crawling these cliffs since. I knew I was on to the tomb—and that Randall was on to me. And so when I tripped onto this—literally, I fell through the floor from the tomb above—I just stayed here.” His eyes started twinkling in the reflection of the brilliant light from the torch. “I was seeing a certain young Egyptian woman, who happened to be with me. Her name is Lani Habu and she is a villager from Qurna. I decided that the only way to keep Wayne from either smuggling the goods out of the country or killing me to claim the find was to lay low, disappear—and pray that the three of you could get to me without anything else happening! If I emerged from the tomb, Randall would have found me. But he wouldn’t know Lani from a dozen other Egyptian women. And so she brought me food and clothing and an occasional newspaper.” He shook his head with a wry grin. “I was a little worried about the two of you getting together—knowing you both—but it appears you’re getting along well.”

Alex lowered her lashes, suddenly unable to answer as she remembered how she had thrown herself at Dan just moments ago, believing that the end had come. She wondered as blood rushed to her cheeks just how much of the scene her father had witnessed.

“It seems determined opposites attract,” Dan said breezily. “Which reminds me, Crosby,” Dan suddenly growled, “why didn’t you ever tell Ali and me about your assistant being Alex—your own daughter?”

James Crosby looked mildly surprised. Of course, Alex thought, he didn’t know that she had crossed a desert and been abducted first by Dan and then by Haman, to get to where she was now. He couldn’t know that the very man who had helped her reach him had once bodily tossed her out of his hotel room.

“I didn’t want Alex’s name listed at first because of the danger involved. And then, as I said, knowing you both, I really didn’t want either of you knowing too much about the other. You might have thought I was trying to play matchmaker, which I wasn’t, really. Well, maybe just a bit. I thought you might be strong enough to keep Alex away from Wayne and, well … I know I shouldn’t interfere, but I also knew enough about Wayne … oh, never mind! My motives were really for the best. And you’re both here now.”

Yes, Alex thought, we’re both here now. And Dan did keep me from Wayne. At least he tried. And he was strong. Very strong. He made me love him.

Alex stood up suddenly. “Shouldn’t we, ah, be doing something?”

Her father exhaled a long breath. “Yes. Now that we’re all here, someone needs to get to the authorities. But it’s going to be tricky. Randall is going to have people watching the cliffs.”

Dan, sitting cross-legged in front of Crosby and continually staring about the room with awe, cleared his throat. “No one is getting out the way we came in. That granite block weighs at least a ton.”

Jim Crosby shook his head, his boyish smile back in place. Dan found himself smiling in return as Crosby’s look reminded him that he had once believed Crosby’s daughter to be his mistress. It was easy now to see why. It was incomprehensible that this man could be the father of such a mature, sophisticated woman. Yet he was, and seeing them together more than proved it. They were both talking—reasonable and pragmatic already. And yet they seldom took their eyes off each other.