Rowan stood holding the punctured water bag and stared at the wet puddle that had soaked into the desert floor hours before. They had a smaller bag but it wasn’t going to last long.
“How could this happen?” Rowan said, his voice shaking with anger as he held the bag in his hands. He wanted very badly to punch something.
“Son of a bitch!” Spenser strode across the few yards that separated them and snatched the bag out of Rowan’s hands. He stared at the darkening stain on the ground. “It’s been cut with a knife!”
“I say, chaps,” Digby said. “I fear I am the unwitting and totally unfortunate perpetrator of this terrible—”
He didn’t finish his sentence before Spenser socked him in the jaw, knocking him flat.
“Are you trying to kill us, you idiot?” Spenser shouted. “Slashing our water in the desert?”
“It…it was an accident!” Digby said, spitting blood into his hand. “I was using my knife to get to the beef jerky I keep in my saddle bag and in the dark I failed to…I had difficulty distinguishing between the—”
“Shut up!” Spenser said, throwing the water bag at Digby on the ground. “Just. Shut. Up.” In an attempt to get his anger under control, Spenser stomped over to the campfire and scooped up his own water bag. He looked bleakly at Rowan.
“There’s not enough water to go forward,” Rowan said, interpreting Spenser’s look.
“There’s barely enough to make it back,” Spenser growled.
Rowan remembered Abdullah slinking off into the night.
“I say, chaps,” Digby said, picking himself up off the ground. “I am frightfully sorry. Nobody more so. Am I to deduce that this means we will have to return to camp?”
“Something like that,” Spenser said with disgust as he began to kick the fire out.
“I’m going on,” Rowan said.
“You can’t,” Spenser said with exasperation. “Even if you did find them, you’d have no water to give them and none for yourself. How would any of you get back? You would only find them in time to die with them.”
“Every hour they’re out there weakens their chances of surviving,” Rowan said.
“That’s true,” Spenser said, more calmly now, “if they are out here. They might be in a village. They may well have doubled back to the camp by now. They could be sitting in a chair at camp drinking lemonade and waiting for us. And if they are, gentlemen, I’m warning you now I’ll likely take a switch to them myself.”
“That’s true,” Digby said, still rubbing his jaw. “They’re probably back at camp.”
Rowan looked out at the forbidding desert. Unless the women found shelter or help soon, they would die. That was clear. His only hope now was that they never made it this far.
“Okay,” he said with resignation. “We head back.”
Somewhere in the Egyptian Desert
The leader of the Bedouins rode stiff and rigid on his Arabian mare at the head of his miscreant gaggle of thugs. Ella sat in front of him, her legs to one side as he cradled her between his arms as he held the reins. At one point, she twisted around to try to see Julia. Julia’s billowing skirts flounced obscenely against the front of her captor’s saddle as she leaned against his chest. There were five men in total, each more malodorant and filthy than the other. Each rode their mounts aggressively, punishingly.
Whether Julia had fainted or just succumbed to general discomfort when the men found them, she revived quickly enough when the first man began ripping her clothes off. Ella watched in horror, herself held in the iron-vise grip of one of the men, as they attempted to find an opening into Julia’s tangle of textiles. Ella realized she must have been screaming because when the man holding her slapped her, she slid to her knees in the sand and the volume of the night reduced to just the crude laughter and talk of the men.
Before the men were able to gain entry into Julia’s fortress of clothing, a tall man wrapped in flowing robes and wearing a dark hijab around his head and neck, came from out of the darkness. He spoke a quiet word and they dropped Julia in the sand like a broken doll. Ella jerked away from her captor and ran to her. Before reaching her, the tall man grabbed Ella around the middle and swung her over his shoulder. Ella didn’t struggle. It would have been futile. The man held her as if she were no more an armful than a squirming kitten. He spoke to his men who grabbed Julia and dragged her to the horses that Ella could see stood just a few yards away. The leader dropped Ella on the ground and swung up into his saddle. Before she could react, he pulled her up and set her in front of him.
One thing was becoming quickly clear: fighting these men would do no good. Ella had no idea if there was a code of conduct in these wild bands that would relate to the treatment of women. She didn’t have a good feeling about that. She assumed rape was a given at some point. She prayed murder wasn’t also.
Howard Carter’s Camp in the Valley of the Kings
Digby stood at the front of his tent smoking a large cigar. He watched Pierce come and go from Miss Steven’s tent all morning. The man was a nuisance. Constantly barging into people’s conversations, demanding answers, insisting on fresh provisions to mount another expedition.
The women had not come back to the camp.
He watched Pierce as he carried a saddle to the front of his wife’s tent and began tying a series of empty goat skin water bags to it. His boy, a thief from the Cairo streets from the look of him, complete with lupine hungry eyes, was ever at his side to fetch, carry, and run his master’s errands.
While Digby had to admit that an actual body would have made him feel much better about proceeding with his plans, it was a fortuitous and tidy turn of events to have dear Julia expire in the desert all on her own. Actually, once he got past the part where he didn’t have any actual proof of her death, it was a jolly nice story to tell at all the house parties whose lists of preferred and esteemed guests he had no doubt he would now belong to. It was all very well to be widowed so soon—especially with a large fortune from the dead wife to help assuage his grief—but to do it hand in glove with a story as tragic and colorful as lost in the desert while excavating with Howard Carter? Digby smiled. Yes, if it only weren’t for the blasted no-body situation—and really, it was no more than a gnat’s sting, that—it was clear that providence had smiled upon Viscount Edward Digsby.
He turned his thoughts back to Pierce, who was dragging more provisions into his tent. Clearly, another tedious venture into the desert was in the offing. Digby, of all people, saw the sense in that. The desert dried everything with the inevitable result that the bodies, when found, would be mummified, well-preserved husks. And a husk was as good as flesh and bone for proving death, especially one that could not possibly be laid at his feet. But what was not as good was the chance—even the infinitesimally small one—that the passionate search of two desperate husbands, for of course, he would be required to go—might actually rescue the women.
And that would not do at all. Not at all.
He glanced over at Abdullah who sat in the full beating sun, watching Digby, waiting for his master’s orders. Finding this creature in Cairo had been the one stroke of luck that had helped make much of the rest of it possible. He’d been told by school chums who’d done it before him that baksheesh would open any door if there was enough of it. He’d been warned not to try to save money by underbidding for the types of specialty services he needed. These people had no loyalties—or qualms—save what enough money would dissolve. Although it had sickened him to do it, his generosity had been worth the cost. Abdullah was his to command. Without any effort beyond tapping the ash off his cigar, Digby signaled to the man to join him in his tent.
It was time for him to earn his money.
Rowan knew it was a long shot. But short of returning to Cairo, there was nothing else he could think to do. His mind ran over the unanswered questions. Why did Ella leave? Where would she be heading? Did she really just go the wrong way or was she heading to someplace specific?
He looked around her tent and wondered if it was too much to hope that she might have left him a note or a clue of some kind.
Shouldn’t she have assumed he’d come after her? Did she think he’d let her fly off to Cairo and just not come back? While he knew she hadn’t deliberately traveled to 1922 as he had, once she was here and knew it was possible, surely she’d realize Rowan would follow her trail and come after her?
Did she not want to be found?
Pushing the worry from his mind, he made a quick survey of the provisions he’d need for going back into the desert. His plan was to leave Ra at Carter’s camp in case Ella found her way back. Josh Spenser had agreed to send three men with Rowan. He gave orders for Rowan to be given whatever supplies he needed.
Rowan was glad to leave Spenser behind. He wasn’t needed and he had already abandoned his job here at Carter’s camp for long enough. If Rowan had his way, he’d leave Digby behind, too. He had every reason to believe that Digby had intentionally sabotaged the water supply in order to force their early return to camp. When he had suggested to Digby that he stay back in camp, Digby had been downright aggressive in his insistence that he go too.
“Effendi! Effendi!” Ra called to him from outside the tent.
Rowan took a step out to see that Ra was pointing in the direction of Howard Carter’s tent.
“The chief has returned to his tent,” Ra said, his eyebrows shooting up under his dark shaggy mop of hair. Rowan had put him on the lookout for Carter on the off chance Rowan would be able to speak with him before he left.
Rowan threw down the bandages he had been packing inside his bedroll and strode to the center of camp where several village men were milling about, their long robes dusting the ground as they fidgeted.
“Where, Ra?” he asked as he squinted into the distant crowd of men.
Ra indicated that Rowan was to follow him. “He is coming up the trail from the dig site,” he said, pointing toward the trailhead on the other side of the Egyptian men. “They said he was coming back to camp for lunch today.”
“Who said?” Rowan strode down the camp pathway toward Carter’s tent.
Ra looked up at him, his eyes wide and then looked back toward the empty trailhead. He shrugged. “One of the other boys,” he said. “He works with Effendi Carter in the tombs. He has a very important job!”
“Okay, Ra. Never mind.” Rowan placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’ll see the great man when I return. I need to get going. You remember what I told you?”
“I will wait in camp for Madaam Pierce to return.”
“Good boy.” Rowan turned impatiently toward where the horses were tethered.
Every minute they delayed could mean the difference between the women surviving and not.
“Pierce!”
Rowan turned at the sound of Spenser’s voice. The foreman was coming from the direction of Rowan’s tent.
“A word, please.”
“Make it fast,” Rowan said, turning back to the horses and not slowing his pace. “I’m already hours later than I’d like to be.”
Spenser caught up with him and clapped a hard hand down on Rowan’s shoulder. He swung him around to face him and, to Rowan’s astonishment, pulled out his service revolver from his belt. “I don’t think you’re going anywhere today,” Spenser said, his face grim.
A very rare and expensive faience cup had been found wrapped in the folds of Rowan’s bedroll.
“Little rushed to get gone, weren’t you, Pierce?”
“And you know why, Spenser,” Rowan said between his teeth for the twentieth time. “My wife is lost in the desert. Of course I was in a hurry.”
“Pretty happy not to have me along, too, I noticed.”
“You made it clear you had other things you’d rather be doing.” That was a cheap shot but if the man didn’t dissolve into defensiveness, he might feel bad enough about it to stand down a little.
No such luck.
“But now we got us a situation, Pierce. Fact is, I don’t have any proof at all that you are who you say you are. I don’t know if you even know Miss Stevens, let alone are married to her. Could be it was all a lie to get close to what every American newspaper in the country is saying is the richest treasure hunt in the world.”
“I’m here to find my wife,” Rowan said firmly from where he sat on his camp bed.
“Maybe. But married or not, stealing antiquities is a minimum prison term in Egypt of twenty years,” Spenser said.
“I told you, I never saw that cup before. Someone must have planted it.”
“Why would someone do that?”
Good question. “Probably to stop me from searching for the women.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” Spenser settled his pith helmet on his head as he prepared to take his leave. “Look, Pierce, I don’t like Digby any more than you do, but even he’s not that lowdown a scoundrel. You think he wants his wife to die out there in the desert?”
“Don’t you?”
“No. I think he’s a weak-chinned little limey who likes his comfort and who hated having to sleep outside without his morning tea served to him on a silver tray.” Spenser shrugged and moved to the open flap of the tent. There were three guards posted outside Rowan’s tent.
“So now what?” Rowan said fiercely. He was so frustrated as he watched the light die through the tent opening—knowing it was just as dark and cold wherever Ella was tonight—he could barely speak.
“You’ll stay here until we find out a little more about who you are. Digby’s heading out for Cairo at first light to get some answers.”
“And the women?” Rowan blurted out. “Are you just giving up on them?”
“There’s a good chance they’re in Cairo,” Spenser said.
“Like the good chance that they’d be back at camp sipping lemonade?”
Spenser gave him a dark look. “Wherever they are,” he said, “you’re out of it, Pierce. Might as well accept that. You’re not going anywhere.”
Rowan slept badly that night. The light floral fragrance of the soap Ella had used—combined with that indescribable and undeniable scent of herself—lingered on her pillow and kept him awake.
So close. So very close that her scent still remained!
He was up before dawn and had his sentry escort him to a nearby bush to relieve himself. Although he was pretty sure he could disable all three of the guards, he was not at all convinced it would help. Even he had to admit, wherever Ella was, if she had not found help or shelter, she was probably dead. Hurting innocent people in order to steal a horse and run into the desert would not help at this point.
It was too late. Maybe Spenser was right. Maybe the answer was in Cairo. But if so, Digby was the last person who should be sent to uncover it. Was the man just tired of being married? Or was something else going on? Clearly, he or his man had planted the cup to prevent Rowan from going out after the two women. Did Digby want them dead as part of some bigger scheme involving Carter and his dig site? How did Ella fit into all this? Was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
The sentry had left the tent open and Rowan watched the early rays of the sun slowly illuminate the camp. A young Egyptian boy arrived with a tray holding a teapot, teacup, and a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. Rowan found himself shaking his head at the idiocy of providing a prisoner with so many opportunities to fashion a weapon. He picked up one of the toast pieces and realized that it had been over twenty-four hours since he’d last eaten. He devoured the contents of the entire tray and poured every drop of tea into his little china cup.
So civilized, he thought, reaching for the linen napkin on the tray and wiping the toast butter from his fingers. It really is a different world.
“Effendi?” A small voice spoke from the tent opening.
Well, well. The kid’s got guts, Rowan had to admit.
Ra poked his head into the tent. He looked nervous.
As well he should, Rowan thought.
“I am to take the tray, effendi,” Ra said, still not entering the tent.
“So come in and take it,” Rowan said gruffly.
“Is…is effendi angry with Ra?”
“What do you think?”
“It was not me! I knew nothing of what they were doing in your tent!”
“You just knew to get me out of the way.”
“I am but a poor Egyptian,” Ra said, sidling into the tent and eyeing the empty tray. “I must do as my white masters command.”
“Especially if they pay well enough. Cut the crap, Ra. I’m just glad to know where we stand with each other. And for that, I thank you.”
Unsure of how to react to Rowan’s thanks, Ra stood blinking at him from the tent entrance.
“Take the tray,” Rowan said, “and go find me a pen and paper. Can you do that?”
“Yes, effendi!” Ra snatched up the tray, his face breaking into beams of the freshly-forgiven.
“I’m a little short on cash at the moment, being a damn prisoner in my own tent, but keep an account and we’ll settle up later.”
“Very good, effendi! Thank you, effendi!” Ra scurried away.
Rowan sighed and leaned back onto the bed. He wasn’t absolutely sure of how he was going to work any of this out, but at least he had the barest outline of a plan. At least that.
The Bedouin Camp
His name was Ammon. When he wasn’t slapping her for reacting too slowly to whatever command he had given that she was having trouble understanding, he largely ignored her, for which Ella was grateful. They rode most of the night and arrived at a rudimentary campsite of tents and camels, goats, dogs, women and children. A traveling village, Ella thought as she saw how the tents were lined up as if to create a sort of Main Street. When she also saw the piles of garbage and smelled what could only be the camp toilets, she began to understand why it was that Bedouins were a traveling people.
Regardless of where the sun was or wasn’t in the sky, Ella knew she had no idea where they were or which way the river was. She had ridden the last few miles leaning against Ammon, her fear and desperation slowly eroding to a hopelessness that she had never experienced before. She didn’t know what awaited her at the Bedouin camp, but she was one hundred percent sure it wasn’t going to be good.
When they finally arrived, Julia and Ella were both ushered into a tent with an older woman inside. The woman looked at them and frowned fiercely at Ammon who sent the other men away. At one point, as he spoke to the woman, he nodded his head at Ella, but his face gave no indication as to what he might be saying.
Julia looked like the closest thing Ella could imagine to a bona fide zombie. Her hair was down and badly tangled around her shoulders. Her face was pocked with bright red splotches where she had obviously been slapped by her riding partner, and her eyes were dull and lifeless.
Ella noted that Ammon was taller than the others. His hair was black and he had flashing cocoa-brown eyes that missed nothing. Ella couldn’t help but also notice that his lips were full and well-shaped and his face, when not continually gnarled into a frown, was pleasing. In fact, if he hadn’t just kidnapped her and dragged her to his nomad encampment to do God knows what with, she would have had to admit that he was in fact gorgeous. Even to privately register the assessment made her blush. Meanwhile, she kept her eyes on the old woman who was clearly taking her orders from the Bedouin leader.
When he finished talking, Ammon turned and left the tent without a word or a glance at Ella and Julia. The old woman wore a hijab and a long black robe. Her hands were withered and freckled. She tossed down the piece of cloth she seemed to have been in the process of mending and looked at Ella. Without touching her, she looked at Ella’s clothes, her scratched and bruised face, her hair wild about her shoulders.
Ella got the distinct impression that this was a camp elder. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she thought she could detect some sense of order or etiquette happening. This gave Ella a glimmer of hope that they wouldn’t be killed outright. She could see the shadows of a few men standing outside. They were laughing, spitting in the dirt. Waiting.
The woman put her hand on Ella’s chin and examined her face from side to side. Suddenly, she grabbed the front of Ella’s blouse and ripped it open, popping the buttons everywhere around the tent. Ella gasped and grabbed her blouse to pull it close again when the old woman slapped her hard across the face, knocking Ella down. Before Ella could get back to her feet, the old woman crouched over her, and grasped Ella’s bare breasts. Ella’s first instinct was to fight back but she forced herself to resist. She took a long breath and waited. After a moment the woman pulled away and stood back, looking at Ella on the floor of the tent. Ella carefully covered herself with the shreds of her ripped blouse. Her heart was pounding hard in her ears.
Without warning, the woman grabbed Julia’s sleeve and with one hard jerk flung her out of the tent into the group of waiting men.
Ella heard Julia shriek and the men’s laughter. The old woman did not stop Ella from bolting from the tent. Outside, she saw Julia surrounded by five filthy thugs who were in the process of stripping her naked.
Ella pushed into the center of the throng, elbowed one man in the nose and neatly disabled another with a sharp knee to the groin. As she grabbed the head cloth of a third, wildly kicking and punching, she felt a strong arm grab her around the middle and lift her away. Ammon gave her a shake but spoke firmly to the crowd. When Ella squirmed out of his grasp, she watched the men stop to listen to their leader. Julia’s small breasts were bared for all to see, the slope of her slim hips covered only by her thin cotton petticoat. She was breathing hard, but seemed to be in a trance. Ella wrapped the thick head cloth that she still held in her hand around Julia’s shoulders.
The old woman pushed her way into the group and pointed at Julia. When she did, the crowd of men began muttering again and looking at Julia like she was a big fat T-bone and they were a pack of hungry dogs. Ammon snarled at them, and at the old woman, at which time she pointed at Ella and shouted: “Ana hamel!” When she said the words, she put her hands against her flat little stomach and mimicked the roundness of a pregnant woman. “Ana Hamel,” she said again, staring indictingly at Ella.
Ammon turned to Ella and frowned. He looked at her abdomen and then at Julia, still quivering and half nude in the circle of men. He gave an abrupt order and the men backed away from both Julia and Ella. Without another word, the old woman ushered them back into the tent, where they remained undisturbed for the rest of the day.
The evening was filled with terror for Ella. Convinced they were about to be raped and murdered, it was all she could do to talk reassuringly to the increasingly distant Julia. They had been served plates of fried goat on a stick and given blankets but otherwise no one visited them. Her attempts to engage Julia had come to nothing but Ella kept up the patter for her own spirits if nothing else.
“I think they will ask for a ransom for us,” she said as Julia stared unseeing at the wall of the tent. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.” She patted Julia’s shoulder. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of Carter’s people doesn’t come for us very soon. We are of no real benefit to these poor people except for the ransom they can get for us. Well, for you. I guess they could use me to pull a plow or something.” Ella chuckled and then became sober in the face of Julia’s blank response.
“Wasn’t that odd how the head jerk-off made everything stop this afternoon? He just stood up and made them all back off? I wonder why.”
Ella was silent as she remembered the old woman’s mimicking of a pregnant woman’s stomach.
How did she know? How could she know? The thing was probably only the size of an eraser at this point. Did Ella look different? Her hand dropped to her stomach and she thought how, no matter what happened to her, short of her death, this little one would be safe and oblivious through it all.
After they had eaten and Ella could tell that the light had gone from the sky, she was encouraged that they’d been provided with blankets. You don’t keep your victims warm if you intend to slit their throats, surely? It did occur to her that the same logic didn’t apply if you intended to gang rape them a few hundred times before dawn but she put that thought out of her head. The fact was, she was helpless to stop whatever was heading their way.
It happened a few minutes after she dozed off, nestled with Julia on the floor of the tent. More than the sound of his entrance, Ella was awakened by the smell of him—strong, rank, gamey. Before she had a chance to understand what was happening, Ammon reached down and grabbed Julia by both arms and tossed her over his shoulder. He looked briefly at Ella, almost longingly, before turning and disappearing into the night. When she ran after him, a pair of strong arms outside the tent prevented her. She stood shivering in the night, watching Ammon under the full moon stride purposefully to his own tent.
Within moments she heard a long scream that seemed to go on and on. The guard at her tent giggled and then squatted down to finish a plate of fried goat.
Ella stood a moment longer, her heart breaking for her friend. But there were no more sounds that night.