My lower lip wobbles and my eyes burn. A single tear spills over and carves down my cheek. I wipe it away angrily. Something sticky replaces it, likely the blood from Bes’s wound.
The young man in question glances at me in the rearview mirror. Worry crinkles the skin between his dark eyebrows. “Are you alright, Miss Hawkins?”
“I’m fine,” I snap. “Mind your damned business.”
Bes clicks his tongue. “Your tita must have her hands full.”
Unchecked frustration rises inside me, and I lock my blood-stained hand onto his shoulder before I can stop myself. “Stop talking about my nonna.”
“Bloody hell!” Bes swerves from the unexpected contact, only narrowly avoiding the thick trunk of a palm tree. Dust and sand kick up around us, floating inside the car.
He rights the wheel hastily, the car wobbling on for a bit longer. “What’s your problem? You could’ve flipped the bloody car!”
My anger simmers. “Oh, I’m sorry, did my decision ruin your day? Like your decision to be late ruined mine?”
Williams moans and shifts restlessly in his seat.
The edge in Bes’s voice softens. “Let’s discuss this later, when we’re out of danger.”
I release my fingers from his shoulder. “I think we’re well out of danger now, with our Nazi pal dead. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Thank you,” he says after a moment, sounding sincere.
It doesn’t make me feel any better.
“I take it you haven’t been to Egypt before,” he says after a moment.
My grip tightens on the edge of my own seat beside either thigh to distract myself from what I’ve done. Try as I might, though, I can’t let go of my indignation at Bes. I know I’m being unreasonable, but I’m not ready to face my sins, and berating this stranger is distraction enough.
“Oh, you’re just a glorified errand boy. What do you know?”
His scarred hands flex around the steering wheel. “Enough to know that you’re in shock. And you’re making it terribly difficult to concentrate on the road that’s going to take us out of here alive. Therefore, respectfully, sit back and be quiet.”
Respectfully?I grit my teeth and cross my arms over my still-dampened chest, choosing silence. Because I realize he’s right, and Ihateit. I don’t like being told what to do by anyone, much less a complete stranger who could abandon me in the desert if he were so inclined. He hasn’t so far, but that doesn’t mean something I say won’t push him over the edge.
I also don’t want to be the reason we’re left with no way back to civilization.
“Fine.”
Slumping back into my seat, I decide I’m done: I’ve had a long day, and the need to slip into oblivion beckons me.
I uncinch my bag and rifle through the soggy contents for one of the stoppered plastic vials of Veronal I brought for this very occasion. Hopefully Claude didn’t destroy them in his haste to find the gun.
First, my fingers brush a roll of gauze I packed for when I inevitably hurt myself. I sigh internally. It’s soaking wet with stagnant aquifer water.Great.I’m sure the museum will have something I can use to wrap my scraped-up hands and injured knee. Maybe some alcohol to act as an antiseptic. Drinkable alcohol, preferably—two birds, one stone, as it were.
Finally, my hand closes around one of the vials and I breathe a sigh of relief. Nonna has been importing this miracle drug fromNew Zealand since before my mother was born, for when she couldn’t sleep from her night terrors. The same night terrors she haplessly passed onto her granddaughter.
Ah family, the gift which keeps on giving.
I pull out the cork and down the tasteless powder, knowing there’s no other way I’m going to survive the trek back to Cairo with Bes and Tommy-boy without it.
“Wake me up when we get there, Skippy.”
Bes says something in reply, but I only hear garbled, nonsensical words strung together as the drugs drag me under into blissful nothingness.
Sitting on the opposite side of the large desk in the curator’s office at the Egyptian Museum, I grasp the hot, brimming cup of Earl Grey tea Bes handed me moments ago with newly-bandaged hands.
“How do you not have coffee?” I demand, taking a sip and grimacing at the watery, flavorless texture that slides down my throat. “Honestly, it should be a crime.”
