Page 186

“I do,” Ellie replied, glaring up at him with all the certainty and fortitude she could muster.

Something flickered through Jacobs’ black eyes—something that looked like a flash of grudging respect.

“What did you see, then, Mr. Jacobs?” Ellie carefully, deliberately prompted. “What is your innermost desire?”

The knife in Jacobs’ hand was steady. His look never broke.

“Justice, Miss Mallory,” he replied. “I wantjustice.”

Ellie wondered if the world had just turned inside out. “Youwant justice?” she burst out. “Justice forwhat?”

His expression closed. “Your turn.”

Ellie had run out of moves. She only hoped that she had played the game out long enough for whatever Zeinab had been hoping to accomplish.

She forced herself to speak calmly as she gave the only answer she could to a man who could sense every falsehood. “I am trying to distract you from whatever is happening on the ridge.”

Jacobs’ face flattened with surprise. He whirled to the crown of stone that rose around them, dropping the knife from Constance’s throat.

The mountain bloomed gold with fire.

??

Forty

Hair askew, waistcoatopen, and spectacles in place, Neil gazed at the entrance to the tomb of Neferneferuaten in the eerie glow of the sock-obscured firebird bone. The plaster that covered the doors was unbroken, still stamped with the pharaoh’s royal seal and the seal of the Amarna necropolis.

Whoever had entered the tomb three thousand years earlier to return the staff had not come this way. The only ones using this portal were the scarabs.

The alabaster that lay on the other side of the plaster was visible here and there where the ancient compound had crumbled away. The stone glowed softly in the light from the bone. Instead of the portraits of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, the outside of the rosy slabs was covered in tiny columns of hieroglyphs.

“The seals are intact,” Neil noted uncomfortably. “I’m not sure anyone has ever found a completely intact royal tomb entrance before.”

“No.” Sayyid stared at the doors, his shoulders slumped morosely. The crowbar dangled limply at his side.

“This is… this is an extraordinary find.” Neil’s stomach twisted. “Couldn’t we just… Might there not be another…”

Sayyid didn’t answer.

They should have been removing the plaster carefully, scoring through the unmarked portions and delicately lifting it from the door. He and Sayyid should have been arguing about the right methodology, possibly over a matter of days and many cups of sweet, minty tea.

“It is us or the seals,” Sayyid reasoned with a pained wince.

“Not just us,” Neil added, rubbing a hand over his exhausted features. Worry for his sister and friends was a growing, nagging buzz at the back of his mind.

He closed his eyes as two opposing forms of guilt fought wretchedly inside his chest.

Sayyid gave a long, eloquent sigh—then jammed the crowbar into the doors.

He wrenched back on the iron, and ancient plaster popped and burst into the air around them. Neil turned his face to avoid being peppered by it, coughing against the dust that suddenly filled the air.

Sayyid yanked again, and the massive panel of alabaster scraped against the stone of the quarry floor until Neil could see a dark gap opening into the interior.

A trio of scarabs raced through it, scurrying across the ground. Sayyid danced back from them with a strangled yelp, nearly dropping the crowbar.

Neil’s nerves jangled against the silence that followed. “Do you think anyone heard that?” he asked in a whisper.

Sayyid flashed him an uneasy look, and by silent consensus, the two men eased up to listen at the finger-thin opening.