She looks to be around forty-years-old, with slight creases around her hazel eyes and along her forehead, a scar cutting through the left side of her thin lips. Her gaze sharpens above her button nose, larger ears framing her heart-shaped face. Her shock of red hair is shaved on one side, while the other boasts waves of crimson locks that reach down to brush her shoulder.
She doesn’t offer me her hand to shake, so I don’t offer mine.
“Yer shorter than I thought ye’d be,” she muses.
My brow furrows. “I’m five-foot-six and above-average, thank you very much.”
She stares at me.
Oh right, I realize,she likely knows the metric system.
“Or over one-hundred and sixty-seven centimeters,or…” I do a quick calculation in my head of the unit of measurement they used in ancient Egypt. “Approximately three-point-three royal cubits, give or take. Either way, still above-average.”
Her lips turn into a thin line. “Ye gentlemen certainly ‘ave yer hands full. Bu’ we’d best be off.”
The woman hurries along the dock back the way I came without waiting for a response. Cec follows after her first, Bes pausing to wait for me.
Walking past him, I refuse to meet his gaze. I’m having trouble accepting that Bes was right: my fate is now tied to these men. And I nearly got myself killed proving it.
Peering into the enveloping dark, I recognize a long luxury vessel poised on the edge of the dock, not far from where I started walking in the opposite direction. Black waves break gently against the white underbelly, stark against the starry night.Looks like we won’t have to worry about boarding a commercial vessel.That’s something at least.
“Why did you run from us?” Bes finally asks as we come upon it. “After all we spoke about in the car, after all that’s happened, why try to escape on your own?”
Hurt and anger draw down his brow when I glance over. Guilt niggles at my stomach.
Despite expecting the question, I pause, embarrassed by the answer. In truth, some part of me didn’t fully believe I was in as much trouble as they claimed. Not after we escaped Cairo. I thought we—I—could be free of the God Men on my own terms.
I was wrong—and I hate being wrong.
I sigh. “I wanted to get as far away from all this—the Amulet of Amun, the God Men, the Third Reich, everything—before I got in too deep. I thought if I could escape without your assistance, I’d make it. It was an idiotic plan.”One I won’t be repeating.
“And the amulet?” Bes says after some time, quieter than I expect. “I thought you wanted it to stay in Egypt. Why would you try to escape with it?”
I worry at the end of loose braid. “I realized from our conversation in the car that it can’t stay here and risk falling into the hands of the Third Reich. So, I slipped it into Cec’s pocket in the graveyard before I broke off from you.”
“And here I thought you were looking for somethingelse,” Cec quips in front of us, grinning as he pulls it from his pocket, as if he knew it was there all along.
Slowing down and allowing us to catch up, he surprises me by offering it to me. I eye him with confoundment. Why the hell would he place any sort of faith in me when I just tried to run off?Their uncle must’ve told them to trust me.
Cautiously, I place it back over my head and tuck it beneath my shirt.
Bes turns to me as Ailsa boards the boat and immediately ducks into the helm. “If we’ve learned anything in the past twelve hours, it’s that the God Men are everywhere, Miss Hawkins. You’re a wanted woman now, whether or not you possess the amulet.”
“Why?” I ask, trying not to sound desperate. “What could the German Third Reich want with me?”
“Possibly retribution,” he says simply. “The God Men will have gotten to Williams by now, if not before they came for us at the museum. There’s very little chance they didn’t convince him to admit thatyouwere the one who killed one of their own, not him, and they believe in a swift justice. Coupled with the fact that you recovered a relic that the Third Reich spent resources toobtain, without knowing if you were under orders to do so and by whom, means you’ve no doubt been branded their enemy.”
Who could possibly be givingmeorders?I’m only a history student and part-time archaeologist.
“But then why not just kill me and take it?” I ask, hoping he can come up with an answer when I haven’t been able to.
Confusion wrinkles his brow and he doesn’t answer right away.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “Perhaps they believe you carry more than the amulet with you.”
He eyes me warily, as if he wonders the same.
I look ahead, trying and failing not to be unnerved by his words. At this point, I have no other option: I need to take my chances with Bes, Cec, and now this woman Ailsa, who have already proven to have some interest in keeping me alive, as well as the resources to make that happen.
