They drove through the evening and approached Alexandria in the dead of night. Alex felt a little spike of hope as he saw the modest skyline take murky shape in the moonlight. Maybe his mom’s past really was the key to her present. It made sense. In a vast, foreign country, wouldn’t she stick to the places she knew? He hoped they’d find another clue — or better yet, his mom herself.

But Alex was worried, too. The closer they got, the more the questions dogged him: Why was she running? Why didn’t she contact him? A scary thought popped into his head, fully formed: She’s given me life twice now — is she angry about what it has cost? He shook his head hard to clear it. He felt frustrated and guilty and lost as his thoughts slid by darkly, like the view outside the car windows. I need to make this right. It’s up to me. This time his head stayed as still as stone.

Alexandria was a city of millions, and the houses on the outskirts quickly gave way to bigger buildings: apartments, offices, stores. But most of them were dark now, lumbering shadows slipping silently by. Only streetlights and sparse headlights lit their way.

“I have an old colleague that we can stay with,” said Todtman. “We’ll be safe there while we follow your mom’s trail.”

Alex leaned forward to assess their surroundings. The neighborhood had changed again. The big blocky buildings had given way to smaller, sleeker ones. Shiny metal edges and wide glass windows caught the headlights as they passed, the subtle flourishes of expensive modern architecture. “Uh, these are really fancy houses,” said Alex.

“This is like the Upper East Side of Alexandria,” said Ren, and Alex laughed despite himself.

“How do you say Park Avenue in Arabic?” he said.

Ren chortled. “Is this guy rich?” she asked Todtman, leaning forward for a better look.

“This woman,” said Todtman. “And very.”

Todtman pulled into a driveway and stopped at a metal gate. He lowered his window and said something into a speaker in rapid, hushed Arabic. A few moments later, the gate slid back with a smooth mechanical hum.

There was a conspicuously expensive car in the driveway in front of them, and the gate slid shut behind them with a firm, precise SHUUNK. Alex looked up at the ultramodern cube of a house. A ring of outside lights had come on, and a few of the inside ones were now visible behind large squares of blue-tinted glass on the second floor. “What does this lady do, exactly?” he said.

“She is” — Todtman pursed his lips, considering his word choice — “a collector … Yes, a bit of a scholar, certainly, but only in a private capacity. Mostly she … collects.”

Alex didn’t like all those pauses one bit. He knew that private collections of Egyptian artifacts were put together on the black market as often as at the auction house. “And how do you know her, again?”

Todtman flashed him half a smile, but in the dim light of the car’s interior, Alex couldn’t tell if it meant “trust me” or “you don’t want to know.” He looked up at the house again and saw a shadow glide silently across one window.

The door clicked open as they approached it, and Alex gawped at the little fish-eyed camera lens as they passed. They entered the hushed, half-lit entryway and were met by a large, imposing man — who imposed himself immediately.

“Wait here,” he said gruffly, but his expression changed when he saw Todtman’s face. “Oh, hey, Doc. Just a minute.”

Alex sized up the man — extra-large — and guessed he was a live-in security guard.

“It’s all right, Bubbi,” called a woman’s voice from somewhere in the shadowy house. “I’m in the study, Doctor!”

The big man stepped aside, and Alex wondered if his bodyguard buddies knew he was called Bubbi. Todtman led the way up a flight of stairs and into a broad and brightly lit room. A woman approached them dressed in business attire despite the hour: tapered tan slacks and a crisp white blouse. She was about his mom’s age, he figured, and carried herself in a similarly professional manner.

She greeted Todtman warmly and then turned to Alex and Ren.

“My name is Safa,” she said. “You are welcome in my home.”

Alex felt tense. He didn’t know anything about this woman, and here they were boxing themselves up inside a walled compound with her. He’d planned to say something polite but measured, like “Hello” or “Thanks for letting us crash.” Instead, he found himself gawking wordlessly at the room around him. Ancient stone relief carvings lined the walls; a life-sized statue stood in a lit alcove.

“Are these all Hatshepsut?” he blurted finally.

Safa’s measured expression broke into a warm smile. “Yes, the world’s finest private collection,” she said, the pride unmistakable in her voice.

Alex took another quick look at the array of ancient artwork, all showing Egypt’s first female pharaoh. “Wow. Wasn’t most of her stuff destroyed?” he said. The Met had an entire room of carvings of Hatshepsut, but those pieces had been reconstructed.

“I see the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” said Safa. “But look closer.”

Alex took a few steps toward the statue, and now he saw it. The same light lines in the stone that the ones at the Met had, the subtle scars of expert reconstruction. And what he had initially thought was a heavy shadow on one side of the face was, in fact, all that was left of the face. One side had been chipped away, and there was a patch of rough gray stone where the left eye and cheek should have been. Her chin ended not in the symbolic beard of a pharaoh, but in chisel marks.

“This one is all in one piece,” said Ren, pointing to an elegant relief along the wall that showed the sleek, regal figure of Hatshepsut standing on one side of a bearded pharaoh as the falcon-headed sun god, Amun-Re, stood on the other.

“Good eye, child,” said Safa, turning. “Images of Hatshepsut as queen were left untouched. It was only the ones that showed her as ruler in her own right that were destroyed. The next pharaoh wanted to make sure it was his descendants and not hers who would take the throne.”

“So unfair,” said Ren.

“The world has always been a difficult place for powerful women,” said Safa with a somewhat weary smile. “I keep these here as both a tribute and a reminder.”

As she began walking out of the room, Alex remembered what he’d meant to say in the first place. “Thank you for letting us stay here,” he said. “It helps a lot.”

“And I am happy to help,” said Safa, still walking. For a moment, it seemed like that would be all, but a few steps later, she stopped and turned to face him.

“You know, it was your mother who first led me to Hatshepsut. I knew her in school.”

Alex leaned in, listening carefully. Despite everything, he found himself trusting this woman. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs for the questions he wanted to ask her about his mom, but Safa cut him short.

“Your mother had been offered a grant to study Hatshepsut — very prestigious,” she said. “But she’d just had you, you see, and she declined.”

“She had to give up her grant?” said Alex.

“You were quite sick at the time,” said Safa.

“Yeah,” said Alex, looking down at his feet. “That sounds like me.” Sick … and already causing her trouble.

Safa smiled sympathetically. “The grant did not go to waste,” she said. “I’d planned to do my postdoc work on Ramses VI. Do you know what she told me?”

Alex shook his head, still not looking up.

“She said that the world needs another paper on Ramses like Giza needs another tourist. And then she recommended me to the grant administrator, Dr. Alshuff.”

“Mahmoud Alshuff?” asked Todtman.

Safa nodded. “Alshuff had been Maggie’s doctoral adviser, as well. He trusted her recommendation. And so I found myself studying a woman who took power without apology. A woman whose legacy was too big to be erased by men. Studying Hatshepsut changed what I thought about my country, my history, myself. So, yes, Alex Sennefer, you are welcome to stay here. You and the doctor and” — she looked over at Ren — “your better half.”

Then she turned and continued out of the room. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go. Bubbi will show you to your rooms once you’re done in here. I have a videoconference to get back to.”

“But it’s the middle of the night,” said Alex.

“Not in Tokyo,” she said, giving them a small over-the-shoulder wave and closing the door behind her.

“I like her!” said Ren.

“She is an interesting woman,” said Todtman, his voice betraying his admiration.

“How do you know her?” said Ren.

“I have advised her for years on her purchases,” said Todtman, pulling up a chair as Alex and Ren collapsed on either side of a sleek modern couch. “Whether the pieces are real, how much to pay, how likely she is to get arrested for having them … It is a relationship based on trust.”

Alex leaned back into the soft black leather as he listened. A relationship based on trust — and on an opportunity he’d cost his mom. Her first sacrifice for him. He pictured a little web of connections — Todtman, Safa, the university — with his own mom at the center.

“So what next?” said Ren.

“Tomorrow we go to the university,” said Todtman. “And talk to her old adviser.”

“Dr. Alshuff,” said Alex. He was in the web, too.

Todtman nodded. “I know Mahmoud. In fact, I believe I owe him money.”

An hour later, they were all sound asleep. It had been an intense day, both physically and mentally.

Around the house, Bubbi and another man watched carefully, peering out windows and into monitors. They knew these guests brought danger with them. But neither man saw the tall regal woman in the front garden, her feet leaving no prints in the soft soil.

She was not seen for the simple reason that she did not want to be, and she left no prints for the simple reason that she was not actually touching the ground.

Instead, she hovered there among the fragrant herbs, staring up at the second floor with half a face.