Page 48 of The Death
Then he smiled recklessly. “I repeat, what does it matter? You have to give me what I want regardless of your thoughts or opinions.” He paused. “Folashade had discovered that the council had been helping themselves to the treasures in the tombs of several pharaohs. Well, why shouldn’t they? It should have been my ancestors who were honored in that fashion. They should have been the ones to live in those palaces. They were just a little ahead of their time.” Eve could see his cheeks flushed with anger as he gestured to himself. “So I decided to take it all back and use her to do it. This will bring attention from all over the globe. Your participation will help ensure it. My power will reach farther than this small pocket, to the entire planet. It’s how world religions are born, can’t you see?” His eyes were glittering as he stared at Eve. “And I’ll use you to do it. Do you understand, Eve Duncan? Are you going to give me what I want?”
“I’m going to give you exactly what I promised,” she said quietly. “You’ve told me everything I need to start my work. I believe I can give you and the rest of the world a true picture of your queen. I think you might find her… riveting.” She gestured toward the door. “Now if you’ll let me get to work, I need to check to see that the prep work your experts did is in order.”
He started for the door. “It will be in order. They realized what would happen if they displeased me. Just as you do.”
The door swung shut behind him.
She was glad to be rid of him. This entire day had been a terrible time of stress and just trying to keep both herself and Michael in some kind of balance. It had been helpful to concentrate on Folashade and her story. She closed her eyes for a moment, thinking about the queen who had lived thousands of years ago—and yet, while Zakira had been talking about her, Eve had felt as if she had known Folashade. Still, she had been a complicated person. Well, then it was her job to find out more about the woman who had controlled a country and perhaps had held the dogs of war at bay for her people for at least a short while.
Eve opened her eyes and stared for a moment at the gold sarcophagus across the room. So stately and beautiful that it seemed impossible that it had been hidden in the mountains for all those thousands of years.
She started to move slowly across the room toward the sarcophagus. “Hello, Folashade,” she whispered. “My name is Eve, and I hope we’re going to become good friends. Because I think perhaps you’re a person that I’d want to know if we could have met at another time and place. If you don’t mind, I have a lot of questions I’d like to ask you. If the answers don’t come to me, I might have to guess, and that’s okay, too. But the first thing you should know is that I’m one of the good guys and I’m on your side. And I promise I always will be…”
But she needed to finish this initial examination and then get back to Michael and try to sleep so that she could start working on Folashade as soon as possible. It was the only sure way she could keep her son safe.
“Mom! Wake up!”
Michael’s voice. Michael’s hand on her shoulder shaking her. He needed her!
Eve jerked upright on her cot, instinctively reaching for him. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“No! You scared me. You screamed. I guess you were dreaming.” His hand was touching the tears on her cheek. “You’re crying.”
“Am I?” She covered his hand with her own. “It must have been a really bad dream. A nightmare. It’s a good thing you woke me.”
He nodded. “But you don’t usually have nightmares.”
“No, I don’t. But it’s been a kind of worrisome day, hasn’t it? But now that we’re together, everything is going to be better.” She gave him a hug. “Now go back to your cot and we’ll both try to sleep. We’ll have to start work on the queen early.”
“Okay.” He got to his feet. But she could tell he was still troubled. “You didn’t tell me the queen’s name. Was it Nieva?”
Eve froze. “Nieva? No. It’s much more unusual. It’s Folashade. She named herself when she took the throne. It’s an interesting story, and I’ll tell you about her while we’re working. Why did you think it might be Nieva?”
“Because that was what you were screaming when you were having the nightmare,” Michael said simply. “I thought maybe what the priest had told you about the queen had scared you.”
“Not at all. I have an idea she was a good and extraordinary person.” But she knew she couldn’t just leave it at that. Not with Michael. “But I did also meet a Nieva, and sometime I’ll tell you about her, too. But not right away. Because she wasn’t scary either. She was only very, very sad. And we’ve got enough sad things to think about right now, haven’t we? So when we think about Nieva, we’ll just hope that she’s not sad any longer.”
He nodded though he was still frowning. “And you’ll try not to be sad, either?”
“You’re worried about me having any more bad dreams? I’ll work on it.” She smiled. “And we’ll probably be so busy working on the queen that we’ll both collapse at the end of the day.”
He smiled back at her. “Sounds good to me.”
“I thought it would.” She added thoughtfully, “Maybe somewhere in that master plan we’re going to concoct, we’ll manage to find a way to heal some of the sadness and make any nightmares vanish into the great beyond…”
CHAPTER
13
ROXANNE FALLS
TWO DAYS LATER
It’s beautiful…” Celine jumped out of the jeep, strode over to the edge of the cliff, and breathed in the mist as she gazed out over the thundering falls that cascaded down to the rocks below. The roar of the water was so intense, she had to raise her voice to speak to Dominic, who was coming forward to stand beside her. “It’s perfectly gorgeous, isn’t it?”
“I had a reason to stop here, but I thought you’d like it. That’s why I gave the order to set up tents and overnight here. Two days on the road is enough, and I need to connect with Quinn before I go any farther into this damn jungle.”
“That’s fine with me. This is the first waterfall that had a name in those maps that you gave me to study.” She was looking at the map again. “It’s Roxanne Falls. And there’s some historical reference…”
