by Lori Wilde
Tom Grayfield smiled. “She’s going to be Kiya’s standin.”
“Good idea, Boss.” Demitri snickered.
Cassie didn’t even want to imagine what that meant.
The driver pressed the button on the garage door opener and the thick double-rollered doors on the warehouse rumbled open. The man moved into the warehouse and flicked on the overhead lights. Demitri strong-armed Cassie, shoving her inside. Tom Grayfield followed and closed the door behind him.
Locked in.
Trapped.
No way out.
Shades of living with Duane Armstrong.
Cassie was trying hard not to flip out when she spied what was sitting in the middle of the vacant, foul-smelling warehouse.
At first she thought it was just an ordinary coffin.
Her coffin.
But when Demitri pushed her deeper into the room, she realized it was Solen’s sarcophagus.
Harrison didn’t even think to call the police. That’s how insane with fear he was. He was a man without a plan, acting from gut instinct. Feeling and reacting instead of analyzing and evaluating. There wasn’t time to think. If there was ever a time for action, it was now.
He goosed the Volvo, exceeding the speed limit. He looked down at the instrument panel. The gas gauge needle had dropped past half-empty. But in spite of his deeply ingrained habit of filling up at the halfway mark, the idea never even entered his mind.
Only one thought existed.
Cassie.
He didn’t know if he was headed to the right place or what he would do when he got there. All he knew was that he was going to rescue his woman.
He had to find her.
Because if anything happened to her, he would die. He would cease breathing, his heart would literally stop beating, and he would leave this world a much better man for having known her.
Cassie sat on a stack of cold sheet metal, her hands and feet bound with duct tape. There was sheet metal to the left of her. Sheet metal to the right of her. And sheet metal behind her.
What was with all the sheet metal? Then she finally got it. Alchemy. That’s how Tom Grayfield had gotten rich. So if he already had the formula for turning base metal into gold, why was he after Kiya and Solen’s amulet?
Ahead of her, Demitri, the froggy-voiced limo driver, and Tom Grayfield donned Minotaur masks, black-hooded robes, and started performing some kind of bizarre ritual dance around Solen’s sarcophagus.
What a lot of bull-loney.
After several minutes, Grayfield positioned himself at the head of the coffin, pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of his robe, and began to chant something in a very strange language.
Outside, the wind kicked up. It howled through a hole in the broken glass of the window above her.
So this was the Texas contingent of the Minoan Order? Frankly, she wasn’t impressed. She had expected more. More people. More action. Something more Eyes Wide Shut.
Grayfield went on and on and on.
Lightning momentarily illuminated the warehouse in a hot blue flash. Thunder grumbled. Rain spattered the tin ceiling. Funny, the storm had gusted in awfully fast. The midnight sky had been cloudless when they’d hauled her into the warehouse. Must be an unexpected norther.
The chanting continued.
“Good grief,” Cassie called out. “How long is this gonna take? I hafta pee.”
“Silence!” Tom Grayfield yelled, and pointed a finger at her like the grim reaper on a really bad PMS day with no Midol in the house.
“Excuse me for living.” She wondered if Adam knew his dad was such a huge jackass.
“Gag her,” Grayfield said to Demitri. “We will have no more interruptions.”
There was a brief time-out while Demitri came over, peeled a strip of duct tape from the same roll he’d used to tie her up, and slapped it over her mouth.
That was gonna hurt coming off.
“Anthony,” Grayfield barked to the limo driver. “Help Demitri drag her over here.”
Good grief, what now? Wasn’t it bad enough she was trussed up like a Christmas goose, forced to watch a really bad floor show with the piquant taste of duct tape on her tongue?
Anthony trotted over and eyed her speculatively from beneath his mask. He tried to slip his hands underneath her armpits, but because she was bound he kept having trouble. He squatted, his chest pressing against the back of her head, his fingers brushing along her rib cage.
Dude, stop tickling me or I’ll pee on you.
Finally he got his arms underneath hers. “You grab her legs,” he said to Demitri in his froggy voice.
“No fair; her bottom half is a lot heavier than her top half,” Demitri complained.
“Obviously,” Anthony croaked, “you have not noticed the size of her bazoombas.”
Okay, you bozos, nix the sexual comments. She glared at them, hoping to get her point across.
Grumbling under his breath, Demitri grasped her feet and they hoisted her off the floor.
Cassie considered wriggling around and making them work for it, but they would probably just drop her, and it wasn’t like she had much chance of getting away with her ankles hobbled.
“She’s heavy,” Anthony grunted.
Ha! I’ll have you know I have big bones. One sixty is not considered overweight for a woman who’s five foot eight.
“You could drop a few pounds, sister,” Demitri concurred.
What? She should be stick-thin and make it easier for these nimrods to lug her around? They were damned lucky she was gagged, or she’d have given them a protracted lecture about the unrealistic body images modern society projected onto women.
But she soon got over her pique when she realized Grayfield was standing directly over her, his eyes glowing darkly from behind the bull head mask. He raised the sarcophagus lid.
“Put her inside.”
The Volvo screamed like a constipated banshee for a good three minutes before Harrison figured out that somehow he’d managed to bump the shifter into second gear while driving seventy-five miles an hour through pouring rain in Fort Worth’s warehouse district, running one stoplight after another.
What if Cassie was already dead?
No. He couldn’t afford to think like that. He wouldn’t. He would make it in time to stop Grayfield from carrying out his ritualistic human sacrifice.
On Cassie.
Harrison cringed, imagining the man he’d once considered a surrogate father doing something so unthinkably heinous. But the Minoan hieroglyphics told the truth. He’d found the answer lurking in the occult scroll.
Ambassador Tom Grayfield had named both his sheet metal business and the tavern in Greece after the Minotaur, the symbol of the Minoan Order. His interest in the order had not been strictly academic. Tom had financed Adam’s excavation for the first time. Not because he wanted to see Adam best Harrison in competition, as he claimed, but because he wanted Solen found after Harrison had excavated Kiya. He wanted his hands on both pieces of the amulet. The rings themselves were the last step in an earth-shattering prescription.
Because the papyrus Adam had found in Solen’s tomb had been the formula for immortality.
The last few cryptic lines of the translation were burned indelibly into Harrison’s brain:
Whosoever commands the double circle holds the key. Believe it is true and it is. The one element that transmutes all others? Blood.
He rounded the corner. Drawing closer. Almost there.
Please, God, let me be there in time to save Cassie.
He squinted as the road narrowed. In the mistiness of a damp dawn, without his glasses, with one eye swollen shut, he could barely see where he was going.
From out of the fog a sudden shadow loomed.
The mummy!
Stepping right into his path.
He twisted the steering wheel hard. The Volvo swerved, tires screeching. He slammed headlong into a deep pothole.
His front tires blew. The noise exp
loded in his ears. He felt the jolt to his teeth. He went for the brakes, but his foot slipped and he hit the accelerator.
On busted tires the Volvo shot forward and plowed into a stop sign.
CHAPTER 21
No, no, don’t put me in a dark, cramped, airless space with a three-thousand-year-old dead guy! Shoot me, stab me, run me over with a car. Anything but this!
Cassie fought against them, arching her body, bucking hard, trying to crack Anthony, the froggy-voiced limo driver, in the face with the back of her head. She cocked her knees and aimed to kick Demitri in the gut but only ended up squirming like a helpless worm unearthed by torrential rains.
They swung her up and over the side of the coffin.
And she came down hard on top of poor old Solen. He crunched louder than a sack of Cheetos. He had an old, dusty, dirty-feet smell to him.
Eew, grotty.
But she really didn’t have time to get grossed out,
because Tom Grayfield slammed the lid and she was trapped.
Shut in.
Closed off.
Sealed.
Her wrists were bound in front of her, her ankles taped. She was powerless, at the mercy of her captors. She was, as Harry would say, royally screwed.
She rapidly sucked in the fetid air through her nose, unable to expel it in her panic. A scream gurgled up to her lips, but the duct tape held it back. Terror lodged inside her mouth, knotted down her throat to her sore, aching lungs.
Ice sheathed her body.
No, no. What were they going to do? They couldn’t bury her alive. She couldn’t tolerate that. Never, ever.
She flashed back. To being restricted, restrained, controlled. To the time Duane locked her inside the storm cellar and left her for two days. She did not want to go back to that awful place. She’d come too far. She would not go back into the darkness.
But she was already there, and the coffin was even smaller and tighter than the cellar had been.
Cassie gagged on her hysteria and it was rough and chalky and sour.
No, no.
You have to calm down. You have to stop freaking out.
Tom Grayfield was talking to his henchmen, but the sarcophagus was thickly constructed. His voice was muffled. She could not make out his instructions.
What were they going to do to her?
Oh, Harry, where are you?
In her heart, she knew she couldn’t count on him for rescue. He had no way of knowing his half brother’s father was an evil, twisted monster. He thought she was safe. He thought he’d done well by turning her over to Grayfield.
Believe in yourself, Cassie. Maddie and David can’t help you. Harry can’t help you. It’s up to you.
But how was she going to get out of this? She was bathed in darkness, unable to move, unable to shout. And some part of Solen’s ancient anatomy was poking hard into her upper back.
Were they just going to leave her here, slowly suffocating to death on the bitter flavor of her own fear?
Frantically, she shifted from side to side.
Let me out of here. Desperately she heaved in more air. In her panic, she hyperventilated. Her heart thumped heavily. Her head ached. Her lungs felt twisted, drained of breath.
The sarcophagus moved.
Cassie realized she was being hoisted and carried. Breathe, breathe; she could not breathe.
You’re hyperventilating. You’re not running out of oxygen this soon. Get hold of yourself.
But she could not. She was too excitable, too manic, too hyperactive for her own good. If only Harry were here. He was good for her. He kept her grounded. Calmed her down.
Harry, I’m sorry I failed you. I was supposed to keep the amulet safe.
Hot tears wet her cheeks. She would never see her dear, steadfast Harry. She wouldn’t kiss his tender, inquisitive lips again. Nor would she ever make love to him fully, completely, the way she longed to make love with him.
Oh, Harry. It could have been so good.
And that was the last thought that slipped through her mind just before Cassie blacked out and embraced sweet oblivion.
*
“Adam?” Dazed, Harrison staggered out of the crumpled Volvo. The mummy was up ahead of him in the fog. Harrison could barely see where he was going. “Adam, come back.”
But Adam did not heed his call. Was the mummy not Adam after all?
The mummy stopped at the corner. Harrison squinted, desperate to see where he was going. He motioned for Harrison to follow.
He wanted to shout, “I don’t have time for delays. Cassie could already be dead.” But he didn’t want to think about that, even though he knew it deep in his bones. Cassie was in trouble. The worst kind of trouble, and he was to blame.
“Where are you going? What is it?” he called as he trailed after the mummy.
He rounded the corner, in the darkness, in the fog, felt an arm slip around him and draw him flat against the cold brick of the warehouse.
“Shh,” said the mummy, pressing a finger to his lips. “They’ve got Kiya, but if they don’t know we’re out here, we can take them by surprise.”
“Kiya?” Harrison stared deeply into the mummy’s eyes. It was Adam all right, but he seemed different, sort of dazed and out of it. His mummy linen looked like hell, grimy with dirt and blood. Plus he smelled a bit gamey. “Don’t you mean Cassie?”
“Kiya,” he said quarrelsomely. “Are you going to help me save her or not?”
Kiya it is then. Harrison nodded.
“Come on.”
They crept toward the double-rollered doors of the warehouse. They whirred open.
“Don’t let them see you,” Adam murmured and pressed himself against the building, hiding in the swirling fog. Lightning flickered and thunder growled. Harrison imitated his brother, pressing his body against the wall and narrowing his eyes as two men in black hooded robes and bull masks exited the warehouse carrying a sarcophagus.
“It’s Wing Tips and Nike with my sarcophagus,” Adam whispered. “Where are they going with it?”
Wing Tips and Nike? Had his brother gone completely mental?
The men hauled the ancient Egyptian coffin to the car parked at the curb. That’s when Harrison realized it was Tom Grayfield’s limo.
His pulse leaped. What to do? He had no weapon. If the men had guns, they would just pull them out and shoot him if he tried anything heroic at this juncture.
More important, where was Cassie? Was she inside the warehouse? Inside the limo? Or—and the fear that blasted through his veins was blistering and thick—was she in the sarcophagus?
From out of the warehouse stalked Tom Grayfield, also wearing a black robe. He carried in one hand a bull’s head like the one a college football team mascot might wear, a derringer in the other.
“Nebamun.” Adam spit out the word.
Huh?
“I will kill him,” Adam said.
Harrison had to grab his brother by the scruff of his swaddling linen and hold him back. “He’s got a weapon; you don’t. He’ll kill you, and then where will Kiya be?”
He understood Adam’s anger. His vehemence. It took everything he had inside him not to succumb to his rage and charge Grayfield. But he could not afford to act on impulse. Cassie’s life was at stake.
What was his weakness was also his strength. While his ability to detach from his emotions might cause him problems in intimate relationships, in instances like this it was a valuable talent. He needed a plan and he needed it fast. Wing Tips, who was really Grayfield’s driver, Anthony Korba, unlocked the trunk.
“My sarcophagus,” Adam whimpered as the men loaded it into the trunk.
Don’t just stand there, do something. Harrison froze. His brain froze. He couldn’t react. Do something, do something.
Korba got behind the wheel. The other guy held the back door open for Grayfield to slide in, and then he hopped into the passenger seat.
They were going to get away. And his Volvo was smashed in
to a stop sign half a block over with two flat tires.
Adam took off running in the opposite direction just as the limo started.
“Where are you going?” Harrison called out.
“To the chariot. We must catch them.”
The chariot? Something very weird was going on with his brother.
Adam disappeared into the fog, and Harrison had to sprint to keep up with him. He heard a car engine roar to life. From out of the mist drove a delivery van, the mummy at the wheel. He screeched to a halt beside Harrison.
Harrison jumped in, and Adam floored it before he even had the door closed. The delivery van leaped forward, in hot pursuit of the limousine.
It was only after they spied the limo’s taillights glinting through the drizzling fog that it occurred to Harrison that Cassie might still be in the warehouse. No time for second-guessing, although it was his instinct to question, question, question. He was committed to this course of action. Cassie had to be in the sarcophagus.
A loud thumping noise came from the back of the van. Startled, he looked over at Adam. “What’s that?”
Adam shrugged. “Boreas. Ignore him. He’s been doing that all day.”
“Boreas? The leader of the group of warriors who sold Solen into slavery?”
“Yes,” Adam hissed. “That traitor Boreas.”
Thump, thump, thump. Who was really in the back?
“Adam, you have to stop the car. You have to let Boreas out.”
“Can’t,” Adam said grimly, bandaged hands clamped on the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the car ahead of them. “Nebamun’s got Kiya.”
He had a good argument.
Thump, thump, thump. What in the hell was going on back there?
They were approaching a railroad crossing. Harrison could hear the warning bells of an oncoming train. He saw the flashing lights glaring against the fog. In the distance, the train blew a long, mournful whistle.
The limo scooted across the tracks just as the signal arm started to descend.
Thump, thump, thump.
The train whistle blew again, louder, closer. The headlights cut through the rain and fog.
