Return (Matt Turner Series Book 3) (41 page)

Kaleb didn’t speak more than two words of Coptic, but if he answered in Hebrew or Kush, the soldier would know no difference.

“Rhakotis,” Kaleb said quietly.

“Rhakotis, huh?” The Centurion leaned close to Kaleb’s neck. “Then why do you smell of Cretian iris perfume? You’re not from Crete?”

“Keep it down, back here!” the senior Centurion said as he stomped up to them. “The Emperor’s about to speak! What’s so important?”

“Smell this man.”

“Excuse me? Fall in, Naris.”

“No, no, listen,” the first Centurion insisted. “I know this aroma. Smelled it instantly as they passed. It has Cretian iris oil in it. If you can even locate a purveyor, that’s three hundred denarii, minimum.”

Now he had his superior’s attention. “Three hundred? That’s half a year’s salary. You, put that down and come here. Let me smell this oil. And hurry up.”

In front of Patra, Kaleb’s shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. His head turned subtly toward the Emperor, two hundred feet away.

No, no, no, don’t do anything foolish! Please!

“Soldier, sir,” the porter attempted.

“Silence!”

They slowly lowered the crate, still acting as though it held a burdensome load, and as soon as Kaleb’s fingers released the staff, he lunged at the first Centurion, snatched away his spear, and charged toward the Musaeum.

“Stop him!” cried the senior Centurion.

“He’s a thief!” shouted the first.

Patra clapped her hands over her mouth.

Kaleb! They hadn’t suspected anything but robbery!

He bypassed the ranks of legionaries caught off-guard, reaching only the middle of the Canopic Road. Shouts and drawn swords. Antonius rose from his throne. Zenobia studied the spear-wielding gatecrasher. Wahbi stood oddly still and confused.

In seconds, Kaleb was surrounded—well before reaching even the base of the stairs. He swung the spear wildly about him, barking at the advancing circle of spears, “Back! Get back! Rape! Fratricide! Incest!”

The evenly filed troops muttered and laughed, breaking ranks and spreading out wide, now blocking all but the view of Antonius, and fleeting glimpses of Zenobia’s face. The crowd’s calls grew to muddled chaos.

The din rapidly lowered to soft murmurs.

“I’ll ask only once more, my audacious friend …” Antonius unfastened his wolf mask, curling it under an arm. “… What’s your name?”

Now the whispers fell completely mute. Patra’s head spun. Her body tilted. Someone grabbed her at the elbows and held her up. Strange words whispered near her ear.

“… last chance. We go now …”

And then her ears sharpened at the first syllable trumpeted from Kaleb’s mouth. “I am Steward Philip Ammonius of Alexandria!”

Patra’s legs betrayed her, shuffling below as firm hands on her arms drove her from the scene, and up the deserted side street.

Alexandria, Egypt – Present day

“Matt? … Matt?”

The deafening commotion had finally ended, now reduced to the sporadic clinks and clatter of a settling disaster, stray fragments bouncing outward from the unseen chaos, and most dreadful: the muffled crunch of a buried object when it finally gives in to the burden above.

Matt wasn’t answering—or making any sound at all, for that matter. She wanted to rush forward to where she last heard him, but she had nary a clue what she’d be walking into. Perhaps there was a light switch by the door. Where was the door? There wasn’t so much as a feeble sliver of light creeping in from the hall.

If she hadn’t left her battery-less phone in the—

The phone!

She’d stuffed the phone Matt gave her into her front pocket! She pulled it out and hit the Home button. The lock screen was dim, but in the pitch black of the room, it cast a surprisingly helpful glow. She shined it before her and the outline of a barbed, tangled heap appeared in the blue glow.

“Matt?”

She unlocked the screen and tapped a random icon, hoping for a brighter color. A white background appeared, boosting its radiance many times over. Now, the room materialized in front of her and, with it, answers.

Before Matt and Joss’s visit to this storage room, one would’ve found a hastily arranged space with slapdash rows of dissimilar shelves, wire-style baker’s racks and wheeled carts, and repurposed cubicle desks, all jam-packed with seemingly ancient artifacts. What didn’t fit on surfaces was clustered in sections on the floor, or stacked up, or leant against other objects. Pottery, spearheads, tools, sculptures, glass jars of coins or rings, disembodied stone limbs and heads, and hundreds of other random fragments that may or may not have been in pieces prior to their arrival.

Joss guessed these relics had been whisked from the scroll vault so it could be made into the scroll vault. Somehow, the door handle must have given Matt an outdated view of the room. Maybe it was a new knob. Maybe it was moved from some other door. Or hell, maybe Pete or whomever moved this stuff in here had worn gloves!

As she tiptoed through the outlying debris, the terrified quake in her chest intensified. Only one of Matt’s legs protruded from the mountain of rubble, and it wasn’t moving. Threads of blood trickled down his exposed calf and ankle.

The screen shut off and she flinched as though the darkness was a physical thing, enveloping her. Pulling herself together, she reactivated the screen and steeled her nerves. Whatever his condition in there, her trepidation wouldn’t help.

Nor, she imagined, would the shouting Russian man in the hall.

“
Vykhodeet! Ya vizhu, vy tam!
” It sounded like he was yelling from the elevator lobby.

Joss touched the screen again to keep it lit, set it face up on a cardboard box, and plowed her way through the crunching wreckage. It appeared Matt had tripped over an object on the floor, blundered forward to discover even less stable footing, and then fell into an open space ahead, arms blindly grasping for a handhold. His hands found waiting on either side two overloaded, unstable wire shelves—probably on wheels—that toppled inward, unleashing a cascade of fragile artifacts, colliding and shattering and raining down on a body with only a T-shirt and cargo shorts for protection. The shelves’ bottoms looked to have rolled outward, smashing into yet more racks. Their final state was a sort of overlapped tent roof.

Joss tossed aside some sort of shield, then kicked and burrowed her feet until they found mostly firm ground. She knew she was creating another noticeable commotion, but the guy outside didn’t need any more clues to know something was up. Uncovering Matt was her top priority, either way.

No matter how she did this, more stuff was going to fall on Matt. As long as she didn’t lose control of a half-raised shelf, she figured matters couldn’t be made any worse.

She stretched back to reactivate her inefficient light source, took a breath, and hoisted up the top rack. Debris had settled beneath its former standing spot, so it didn’t exactly pop right up. She had to heave and twist and ended up finding more success in pushing it backward rather than sideways. More ancient artifacts crunched and popped, and something big shattered when she powered through the final shove. Out of her hands, the rack continued forward, sliding off the other shelf resting atop Matt, and crashed to the concrete floor.

Joss wrestled her way back to a standing position, trying to ignore the cold, spreading wet on her freshly sliced shin. Back in the dark, she fumbled around in search of the infuriating phone.

There’s gotta be a way to keep this damned thing lit … Does this OS have a flashlight function?

She hadn’t wanted to waste time figuring it out, but now she was wasting more time having to turn the thing back on every ten goddamn seconds.

Bam!

A flashlight icon had been sitting on the home screen the whole time. And now the scene shone bright and clear. Matt was even visible between some gaps in the pile.

The man in the hall shouted some demand again, but this time from the other side of the door. He pounded and slapped, and then revealed he knew a word or two of English.

“Open I shoot!”

More pounding as Joss adjusted her footing to tackle the other rack of shelves. This one appeared to be putting the most weight on Matt, and she wouldn’t risk sliding it away. She slipped the phone into her breast pocket so the light shone outward, and grasped the top shelf’s broad-side edge. It lifted up and away from her as she extended and arched to avoid stepping forward. A good, solid shove sent the rack tumbling all the way over, setting off a fresh series of thunderous pandemonium.

Joss didn’t wait for the dust to settle. She rolled away the heavy remains of a vase, a porous stone face, and other larger items before carefully removing the most hazardous fragments like sharp-edged ceramic and glass.

A second Russian-sounding voice joined the hubbub at the door; this one’s English enjoyed a much wider vocabulary. “We won’t hurt if you say where Matthew Turner gone. Don’t say? We get inside there, we take finger and piece like ear until you say. Or you save trouble, save hurt if you say now.”

“
A yesli oni vroot?
” the first one said.

“Da. If say lies, we come back …” he said as Joss continued swatting or throwing aside the smaller intact items and parts. The second guy figured right that she couldn’t hear over the racket, and repeated his latest message louder. “… we come back and take finger and piece, kill, and kill familut.”

As he waited for a response, Joss found and brushed off Matt’s face. Reddish-brown powder coated his beard and face. Around his lips, nostrils, and corner of his eye, the dust had concentrated in the moisture, forming little muddy sections.

She patted his cheek, whispering, “Hey!”

It was probably a good thing that these guys thought Matt had left. She didn’t want to risk them hearing his name.

But Matt didn’t flinch in the slightest.

Oh God, what if his neck is broken?

She put her fingers under his nose to check for breathing. Nothing.

Come on, this can’t be happening. With all the shit you’ve been through, a crazy accident gets you?!

The door erupted once more with furious banging and unintelligible blabber. She wondered if Pete was standing by at his monitor watching all this go down. Would he open the vault to appease them? What about police? Had they been called, despite the notion that it would only delay the inevitable? She imagined these guys had definitely done something to warrant an arrest, or at least—

Ptaff! Ptaff-ptaff-ptaff!

Gun shots rang out.

Joss ducked, but it’d do no good. Nothing lay between them and the door, and she didn’t think the door was bulletproof.

Ptaff-ptaff!

More shouts.

“
Skolko eekh!
”

Ptff-tff-tff-tff-tff-tff!

Machine gun fire. The corridor sounded like a warzone. Without any more sounds coming from the room, the Russians were apparently done waiting. They were going to blast away the entire door or frame and kick it in.

Ptaff-ptaff! Ptff-tff-tff-tff-tff-tff! Ptaff!

Joss smacked Matt’s cheek, though if the ear-piercing melee outside the door wouldn’t wake him, how the hell could she? And what if he wasn’t coming to because—

No, none of that! Just get him outside goddammit!

Slipping her hands under his back, she winced as jagged edges tore at her flesh. Without letting up, she hooked her arms into his armpits and dragged him backward.

Ptff-tff-tff-tff! Ptff-tff-tff-tff! Ptff-tff-tff-tff!

Machine gun bursts, then a pained shriek outside. The gunfire halted. Someone moaning. There’d been others shooting! They were firing at each other, not the door. Police, after all?

Matt’s legs cleared the debris, but beneath his legs or shoes, residual bits grinded across the cement like a fork on a chalkboard. She made it in between two more racks where ancient artifacts still lay upright on their shelves. Holding for a moment to catch her breath, she sat down, spread her legs, and let Matt’s arms flop over them. She hunched above his slumped head to shine the phone’s light on the back of her bloody hand. The cuts didn’t bother her as much as the tiny bulge she found. Grimacing, she used her thumb to prod the tormenting shard of glass out from under the skin.

Ptoff!

A single gunshot, just outside the room.

A new voice—not Russian—disgusted: “Piece of shit.”

Ptoff!

Joss was reasonably sure these new arrivals weren’t Egyptian police.

A woman called from the elevator lobby, but too quiet for Joss to understand.

“How long ago?” the man replied.

Joss plucked the phone from her pocket and directed the light behind her. They had a straight path to the exit door. With their luck, someone had built a brick wall on the other side.

The man’s voice—maybe an African accent—drew close to the room, becoming clearer, just as the Russians’ had a few moments ago. “If he’s certain that’s all he has of value, tell him to put him down, and the other one, too—not a single one of them left alive in the country … Imara, wait. Why were they still here?” The door handle rattled. “The men down here weren’t on their way out, or at least they didn’t appear primed to go.”

Joss turned off the phone’s light and closed her eyes, resting her chin on Matt’s head.

Shwup … clack-shink-click …
and then the dull
shunk
of a pistol’s top part sliding forward with a fresh supply of bullets.

Joss had seen and heard the operation on TV and movies enough times to feel like she’d done it herself. And the abrupt end to the dialog outside foreshadowed nothing good. In the center of Matt’s chest, she slowly curled his T-shirt into her grasp, and then suddenly noticed something. She pressed her hand down flat.

Yes!

She
knew
she’d felt a heartbeat! And a quick one, at that. His chest was rising and falling, too.

Quick, short-stepped footfalls approached the door along with the woman’s voice, which definitely sounded like an African accent. “… at the end is electronic lock. All the rest are key.”