Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2)

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  That was the moment she felt a small needle of hope.

  Ella had only taken one basic health class in college and that had been a long time ago but the textbook’s colored photo of the human body—with the exact placement of the femoral artery—had remained vivid in her mind. As Horus tore at her gown, his arrogance and lust blinding him to any resistance on her part—and she was careful to give none—Ella flexed her wrist to allow the small, sharp knife fall into her hand. The point of the blade pierced her palm but she didn’t care, nor did she register how slippery her blood made her grip on the handle now in her grasp. She called up a picture in her mind of where the artery must be across the top of his thigh, and then, forcing herself to ignore how close he was to actually penetrating her, she poised the tip of the blade on his left thigh and plunged it straight in with all her strength.

  Horus gave a grunt of surprise and she felt him loosen his hold on her for just a moment but it was enough. She scrambled out from under him, leaving half her torn tunic in his grasping hands. Even in the half moonlight, she could see the ground was already becoming wet with his blood. The stunned look on his face as he looked down at the small fountain of gore gushing from his thigh gave her another second to do what he would never have expected any of his victims to do: she wrenched his sword from his hand.

  She rested the heavy hilt of the weapon on her pregnant belly to get a better grip. Their eyes met and she took a step toward him as he sank into a weak, seated position in the puddle of his own blood. “Hey, dipshit,” she said, pointing the sword at him. “I want you to remember me for the two seconds you have left before you bleed out.” He looked at her, his face a mask of confusion and pain. “Better yet,” she said fiercely. “Remember Halima.”

  At the mention of Halima’ name, he groaned and slowly lowered his shoulders to the ground.

  Ella waited until his breathing had stopped and his eyes no longer blinked. Then she tossed down his sword and turned in the direction the pony had gone.

  This time, she knew which direction to go. With Horus and Zimmerman both dead, she wasn’t sure who there was yet to come after her—except for the Shah. And not knowing his resources, she wasn’t about to go back to the palace and just hope he wouldn’t try to take her.

  The night turned quickly cold but Ella was grateful for the relief from the sun.

  If I can only have two prayers, do I pray that Halima lives or that I find the pony? She touched the long series of incantations tattooed on her arm and decided to pray for both. She walked slowly, not wanting to jar the baby any more than was necessary, and felt herself listing from side to side as she moved, like a tubby penguin trudging over the sands. With every dune she came to, she focused on seeing the pony at the crest and with every disappointment, she allowed herself to run down the other side before she came upon another dune and then she did it all over again.

  She tried to imagine how far the little horse would run in its panic. Ella had experience with horses. She had ridden competitively as a teenager. Once she’d been unseated in a big pasture near the house her father and stepmother had rented in Cumming, Georgia. Her horse, an older model with a barn fixation, had bolted for the barn at full speed after being badly startled by an inquisitive butterfly who came too close for the animal’s comfort. Well, it was hard to say exactly what had frightened the horse. But the point was when he shied and dumped her in the pasture, he didn’t stop running until he was back at the barn. Unfortunately, the experience was unhelpful at the moment. This pony had bolted in the opposite direction of his stable so there was no easy guess when or where he might stop.

  The longer Ella walked, the calmer and more purposeful she became. She had no control over whether or not Horus had hurt Halima. She had no control over whether or not she found the pony. She had no control over whether or not the Shah would send men out looking for her in the desert. The only thing she could do to save herself and her baby, she was doing. So she put one foot in front of the other and focused on Rowan’s face and the feel of his arms tight around her. She pictured his laughing brown eyes and the way he ran his fingers through his hair when he was thinking. She called to mind the way he looked when he wanted her. And she let that image draw her deeper and deeper into the desert over one dune and down another.

  Just before dawn she found the pony. He stood at the top of a high dune as if waiting for her. He stood quietly until she reached him. When she grabbed his bridle, she realized that she had been only seconds from collapsing in an exhausted heap on the sand. With trembling legs, she positioned her foot in his stirrup and managed to haul herself up into the saddle. She reached into the saddlebag to pull out a small goatskin of water but her fingers felt something small and hard and when she withdrew the object, she was again overwhelmed with the feeling of Halima and her loving care. It was a compass.

  Ella drank deeply from the water bag before checking the compass and turning the pony’s head north. The morning got quickly hot and Ella regretted that she had spent the long cool night on foot. Now was when she should be resting somewhere. If she could just make it through the long sizzling day—without being recaptured or expiring in the heat—she would use the night to travel faster. She stopped at midday and created a water bowl out of part of the pony’s saddlebag. She knew it wouldn’t do her any good to kill another horse—not when her life depended on him living. She let him drink as much as he would, which left her with less than half a cup of water for herself for the rest of the journey.

  It would have to do.

  She rested for a quarter of an hour and then fear that the Shah’s men were right behind her—and a new, insistent ache in her abdomen that hadn’t been there before—made her press on. She walked the rest of the afternoon. Ella longed to soak the hem of her tunic in what water she had left and press it to her face and neck but she knew she didn’t dare. She had stopped sweating hours ago and that scared her. Just before sunset, she wet her lips with the water, forcing herself to take only a few sips. She was so exhausted, and her stomach so badly cramping, she had no idea of how she was going to utilize the cooler evening to go faster. Plus, the pony, for all that she’d given him nearly her last bit of water, was fading. With every step he took, she was terrified he would buckle beneath her at any moment.

  Once the heat of the day was finally behind her, she only had to deal with her intense weariness, her growing easiness about the baby’s nearly constant movements…

  …and the relentless thirst.

  When the time came to take advantage of the lack of blistering heat, Ella realized she no longer had the strength to go on. Nor did the pony. The very idea of trotting the poor animal after the day he had endured was ludicrous. He was nearly done and so was she. Just before the darkest part of the night, somewhere around midnight, she stopped him and slipped out of the saddle to the sandy ground. He wandered away, his nose down as if looking for grass or anything to nibble. She had eaten all the goat jerky and the dried raisins she’d found in the saddlebag hours earlier.

  And now it was time to rest and to know she had done her best. She had done everything she could possibly do, including murder, to save herself and her baby. She pulled the tattered remnant of her tunic up around her shoulders and shivered in the desert night and watched the pony move further and further from her.

  She held her stomach with both hands and murmured to her unborn child, telling him stories about his father, about America, about all the things he would never live to see or do. And she told him how much she loved him and would always love him. She touched the tattoo on her arm and thought of Halima and when she did she smiled and her eyes lifted from the sand, the endless sand, and saw the final apparition as it moved toward her across the desert.

  Two men on horseback. Either the Shah’s men or a dream. And which ever it was, the sight of it brought her an immense sense of peace because she knew it meant, one way or the other, the trial was over. She watched with interest and a muted sense of wellbeing as the
horsemen approached. And it wasn’t until she saw one figure dismount and run to her pony that the thought crept into her consciousness that it might not be a dream. Tater was kicking her so hard in the ribs, she had to get on her knees to be free of him. And that was when she saw the figure was a man and he was running toward her.

  And he was calling her name.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was when he saw the pony that Rowan knew she was near. It was like a telepathic beam had led him from Carter’s camp in a direct line to where she now sat huddled on the ground in the middle of the night in the middle of the desert. He was at her side in two strides and then she was in his arms.

  “I knew you would come,” were the first words out of her mouth and he nearly wept to hear them because he very nearly hadn’t.

  “Ella, my sweet girl,” he said cradling her beautiful face in his hands and hungrily devouring every inch of her with his eyes. His hands moved swiftly over her body to see if she were hurt but also to reassure himself, to feel her familiar form in his hands again, to feel the life they had created together. She stopped his hands on her belly and held him there. Her eyes held his.

  “Tell me it’s really you,” she said in a whisper. He stroked her cheek, realizing that she thought she was dreaming.

  “It’s me, babe,” he said, kissing her face, her neck, her cheek. “It’s really me.”

  She clutched at his shirt and made a terrible hacking sobbing noise without tears and began to shake so hard he was suddenly afraid he had found her only to lose her in his arms. He turned to Ra who was still mounted.

  “Throw me the water,” he barked.

  He shifted her in his arms, feeling her weight and worried she should weight more. A lot more.

  Ra jumped down and handed him the water pouch. Rowan saturated his handkerchief with the water and wiped Ella’s face. He held the pouch to her lips while she drank. When she finished she looked at him.

  “My pony,” she said.

  “Ra,” Rowan said, without looking at him. “Water her horse.”

  Ella sat limply in his lap and he could feel her trembling. He pulled his jacket off and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “Don’t let go of me, Rowan,” she said.

  “I won’t, beautiful,” he said. “Never again.”

  After he had given her a little food and more water and Ra had built a small campfire, she lay in his arms and he told her how he had found his way to Carter’s camp the day before and been told of a rumor of a pregnant white woman being held at an Austrian’s duke’s palace deep in the Sahara. Carter had given him two horses and provisions and he had left immediately.

  “But how did you know where to find me?”

  “I didn’t, sweetheart,” he said. “I was on my way to the Austrian’s palace. I found you first.”

  “Then I was going the right way,” Ella said in wonder. “I was finally headed in the right direction.”

  “Right to me,” Rowan said, touching a long strand of her hair.

  She closed her eyes and felt his arms tighten around her. “I wanted you to come so bad,” she murmured into his shirt. “I was so afraid and half the time I was lost.”

  “I know, babe,” he said hoarsely into her ear. He turned her face to him and kissed her. “I’m here now. I’m here now for good and forever.”

  “I am so sorry, Rowan,” she said.

  “Nothing to be sorry about.”

  “There is. Your mother was right. I didn’t deserve you.”

  “You’re wrong about that. So was she.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter any more. Through the whole time we were apart, I always found you in my dreams.”

  “I found you, too, babe.”

  “I knew it. I knew you did.”

  He touched her belly. “How far along are you?”

  “I think a little over eight months. It’s a boy, Rowan.”

  He laughed. “And how do you know that?”

  “It’s a long story and trust me, you’ll hear every bit of it,” she said. “But I know.”

  Ella slept after that and Rowan never moved his arms from around her. There was a change in her, she was right about that. It wasn’t just the baby. There was a maturity and a strength—beyond even what she had shown in Heidelberg. He gazed at her face and wondered what she had experienced, what she had done. What had been done to her. But he knew, somehow without knowing how, that her new strength had come from a source he never would have guessed. He kissed her sleeping face and she moaned lightly.

  It had come from sacrifice.

  The next day, they were up and mounted before daylight. Rowan was concerned about Ella riding this late in her pregnancy but there was no help for it. He had an extra pith helmet that he affixed a long veil to that would shield her from the worst of the sun. She didn’t want to wait another day to travel by night and he agreed. Ra rode ahead of them.

  She looked rested and more herself this morning, Rowan noted. While she could hardly take her eyes off him, she smiled more. He noticed she rode with her hand resting lightly on her pregnant belly.

  For awhile, they talked of nothing serious. But he could tell there was something bothering her. He also knew she would tell him when she was ready.

  “You okay, El?” He frowned at her as they rode side by side. “Need water?”

  She shook her head and then took a long breath. “Rowan, you know I never killed anyone in Heidelberg.”

  “I guess that’s right.”

  “I mean, I only ever used a Taser, you know?”

  “Ella, you had to do it,” he said. “You know that, right? If you hadn’t killed Zimmerman and his goon, you and Tater both would’ve died.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself.”

  “And that’s the truth of it, darlin’.” Rowan leaned over from his horse and smoothed her hair out of her eyes. “Because I couldn’t be there, you had to do it. You saved our child and yourself.”

  “But Rowan, I thought about it first. I pre-meditated it.”

  “And thank God for it,” he said. “Those men were evil, Ella. I’m sorry you had to do it but the fact is…” He looked at her meaningfully. “…you had to do it. There was no way I was going to get to you in time.”

  They rode in silence for a while before she spoke again. “This is the second time you’ve traveled through time to find me.”

  “Yeah, about that.” He removed his hat and scratched his head. “I gotta say I’m getting a little tired of always needing to do that.”

  “I’ll never leave you again, Rowan. Ever.”

  Josh Spenser sat opposite Marvel at the breakfast table set in the shade of one of the few Egyptian balsam trees. He never stayed for breakfast. He always grabbed a roll and chugged down a cup of joe and was at the dig site long before now. He knew Carter didn’t care. The man was in his own private world. Barring every bit of scaffolding coming crashing down on his head, he didn’t take notice of much around him. Josh assumed that that kind of fanatical focus was probably required to get to where he had gotten in his profession. He, himself, was a big believer in not letting things distract him from the job at hand.

  Which is why he was so surprised to find himself sitting at a breakfast table at eight in the morning drinking tea and chewing cold toast. He watched his dining companion whenever she shifted her gaze to the horizon or some other object of interest to her other than himself.

  By God, she was gorgeous. How did she keep that skin looking like that out here in all this dry heat? She looked like a flower that just stepped out of a garden. He flushed at the thought. He sounded like an idiot even to himself.

  “I wanted to thank you again, Mr. Spenser,” she said reaching for the milk pitcher to add to her teacup, “for allowing Mr. Pierce and myself to join your society. I very much hope we are not interrupting your work.”

  There it was again. That whole “we” thing she had going with Pierce. What was the story with that? Wasn’t Pierce
off looking for his wife?

  He cleared his throat. “Not a problem,” he said. “Remind me again of your connection with Pierce? He a relative by marriage or something?”

  He watched her squirm then and suddenly the pieces of their situation begin to shape up to create a picture.

  “No, no,” she said, stirring her tea. “He works for me.” She paused and then blushed darkly which Spenser noted he did not like at all. “But we are friends.”

  “And you met over here?”

  “We did. He has been of service to me while I was living in Cairo.”

  “In between him looking for his wife.”

  “That’s right.”

  He had to admit she was cool. If there was something going on between those two, she wasn’t about to admit it. Not yet anyway. Not with Pierce off making a fool of himself racing around the damn Sahara trying to find someone who had probably died and been eaten by jackals months ago.

  “But I am an amateur student of archaeology,” she said, obviously trying to change the subject. “So when Mr. Pierce told me he had an entre into Mr. Carter’s operation here at KV62, well, I jumped at the opportunity.”

  “Yeah, there’s been a lot of interest from the outside,” Spenser said, nodding in the direction of the perimeter of the camp where Carter had posted guards to keep the media and tourists away.

  “Five months ago, that was me you were keeping off the dig site,” Marvel pointed out to him.

  He vaguely remembered her from that first visit. At the time, he’d been in a lather about the two women who had just run off. If he’d taken the time to actually look at Marvel, he knew he would’ve reacted differently. Then she was just a pest to be gotten rid of. Now…