Page 121

A few hours earlier, Neil would have scoffed at that sort of assertion… but he had seen the cool certainty in Jacobs’ eyes when he had tried to deny any further knowledge about the translation of the tablet.

Jacobs hadn’t just guessed that Neil was lying. He had been sure.

He always knows.

As the phrase echoed through Neil’s brain, it triggered an even more dire realization.

If Neil destroyed the tablet, Jacobs wouldn’t just kill him. He’d first ask what Neil knew about the tablet’s contents… and Neil would be unable to lie to him.

Already, the coordinates from the translation were burned into his brain, whether Neil liked it or not. He couldn’t erase the knowledge from his mind. Jacobs would cheerfully beat him—or worse—until Neil finally coughed it out.

Which he would, he admitted with a sinking sense of dread. Because he was a boring, lily-livered academic, not a stoic hero out of some adventure novel.

If he truly wanted to stop his former supervisor from ravaging the tomb of Neferneferuaten and all the precious knowledge it contained, Neil had to destroy every reference to those cubits and rods… even the ones in his own head.

Neil wasn’t going to have to wait for Jacobs to subject him to a painful demise. He had to do the job himself.

The panic of the realization nearly made him drop the professor that he was still frantically bracing with both hands.

Neil fought the urge to laugh hysterically, biting his lip. It came out as a groan instead.

How was he to do it? He was locked in a study on a boat. There was no convenient sword to fall on—or even so much as a dagger. It was too much to hope that there might be a convenient dose of cyanide lying around.

All he had was a pen, the nib still warped from when Ellie had used it to pry up the stones of Hatshepsut’s sun altar.

Could he kill himself with a bent pen?

Neil pictured the various places he might try to stab himself and fought back a wave of queasiness.

He was still reeling from all of it when he heard the doorknob turn.

He startled, losing his grip on Dawson’s side. The professor began to fall, and Neil caught at him again, his spectacles dropping to the floor in the process. With a burst of desperate inspiration, he set his shoe to the leg of Dawson’s chair and shoved, spinning the seat a quarter-turn. The maneuver put Dawson’s lean in the direction of the table, where Neil lowered him—as gently as he could while fighting the urge to shriek like a schoolgirl.

“Pleased to accept…” the professor mumbled sleepily, “…great honor, Your Majesty…”

To Neil’s immense relief, Dawson settled, his cheek puddling against a Sumerian lexicon as he fell back into a soft, gurgling snore.

Whoever was at the door had come up against the lock, but a rather ominous scratching sound now rose from the wooden panel.

Neil fought a rising panic. What should he do—smash the tablet before they came in or stab himself with the pen? He wouldn’t have time to do both, and failure on either front would leave Julian with the keys to find the tomb.

Only one other course of action remained to him—he must try to disable whoever was coming into the room, which would hopefully leave him time to do away with both the tablet and his pathetic self before anyone else arrived.

He felt frantically around the blurry objects on the table for something that might serve as a weapon. His hands closed around the girth of a thick, heavy tome. Was it the boundTransactions of the Royal Historical SocietyorThe Hittites and Their Language?

It didn’t matter. The lock clicked, and Neil was out of time.

He scurried to the space behind the door, raising the book over his head and preparing to strike at whatever threat stepped inside… which he wouldn’t be able to see very well, as he’d neglected to retrieve his spectacles.

He contemplated going back to fumble for them under the table, but before he could act on it, the door swung carefully, quietly inward.

Hefting the book, Neil drew in a shaky breath—and swung wildly at the figure that slipped into view in front of him.

He only had time to notice that the intruder was smaller than he had anticipated before it grabbed him, twisted like a snake, and tossed him onto the floor.

Neil landed with a wind-stealing impact, sprawled across the Turkish carpet with the book in his hand and something firm and shapely straddling his chest.

A blurry face hovered over him, light brown in hue and framed by a halo of dark hair.