Kathlyn Trent, Marcus Burton 01 - Valley of the Shadow (3 page)

He pointed to his left.  "KV5."

Kathlyn wandered over to the big gaping hole in the side of the hill. A massive grate covered it, dirty and rough to the touch. "The tomb of Ramses' II sons." She could smell the cold dustiness of the tomb wafting through the open gate.  "Creepy."

He looked at her, his eyebrows bunched up. "You, who chases arks and grails and who knows what else, call that creepy?"

She turned away from the grate. "Sure. There are ghosts all over the place in there. Can't you smell them?"

He gave her an odd look. He couldn't say what he was thinking without superfluously offending her and, for the moment, he was doing fairly well at behaving himself. McGrath would have been proud.

"KV7 is to the right, and KV6 is directly across from it,” he continued on. “Ramses II and Ramses IX, respectively."

Kathlyn took an interested look at both. Suddenly, the pathway opened up into a wide courtyard with several tombs flanking it.  Burton pointed out KV55, Queen Tiy's tomb, KV62, Tutankhamen's tomb, and KV9, home to Ramses V and VI. Kathlyn stood in the middle of the H-shaped courtyard, feeling the ghosts she had described earlier. The warm wind blew softly in her ears and she could hear their whispers upon it. She was in a very holy, very uneasy place.

It was as if all things old and timeless had a physical impact on her, and she attenuated her physical senses to better feel what they were trying to tell her. Whereas most archaeologists used their sense of sight, touch and sound, Kathlyn reached out with her emotions and mind like a great fishing net to reel in everything she possibly could. No one understood how she did it, least of all her. But however she did it, it seemed to work.

But Burton was oblivious to her meditative state. He pointed down one branch path and rattled on about the tombs it housed, but Kathlyn didn't hear him. She could only hear her heart pounding in her ears and the distinct sensation of something flowing, like a river or a breeze, pushing her back the way they had come. She had these sensations all the time but she didn't want Burton to think she was crazy, at least not this early on. He was already teetering on the brink as it was.

"Dr. Burton, I truly appreciate the personal tour, but if you don't mind, I'm a bit tired,” she finally broke from her trance and turned to him. “We flew in from straight from Los Angeles. I don't even remember when I slept last."

He began to turn back before she even finished her sentence. "Sure."

They were silent the entire walk back to the gate. However, between KV7 and KV2, Kathlyn paused again and stared up at the sharply sloping hill. Burton waited for her by the gate. When she finally joined him, he pulled it open for her.

"What's your interest in that hill?" he asked.

She didn't answer him as she moved through the grate.  Marcus locked it and followed her across the parking lot and towards the encampment. "Well?" he pushed.

She looked at him, smiling in a forced gesture. "Nothing,” she replied. “Just getting a feel for the place."

"And what is that?"

"That it's full of ghosts."

He didn't quite know what to make of that statement. "So you're going to go look into your crystal ball and find our missing pharaoh?"

Her smile turned genuine. "No,” she made claw-like hands in a joking gesture. “I'm going to bend over my witch’s cauldron and summon forth the demons of Darkness."

He didn't say anything but his mind was working. A thought began to occur to him, too ludicrous to entertain, but he was thinking it anyway. When they reached the encampment a half-mile down the road, they parted company with hardly a word between them. Kathlyn went to the tent she shared with Debra and Juliana and fell asleep in the middle of them trying to pump her for information.

Marcus went back to his tent, lay down on the futon, and stared up at the ceiling until midnight.

***

"I'm telling you, that's exactly what she's doing," Marcus said. "She's a clairvoyant or something. You should have heard the way she said this place was haunted, and then she stood there and stared into space as if she was frozen. It was damn eerie."

It was sunrise on the great western bank of the Nile. The golden rays were just kissing the stones of the temple of Deir el-Bahri, reaching slender fingers over the hills to touch the Valley of the Kings. The Egyptian workers were up, excavating the fifty square foot area to the northwest of KV22 where Marcus had established his perimeter three seasons before.  Their sing-song chants filled the early morning air, already warming in the autumn dawn.

McGrath had been listening to Marcus' theory for a half hour. He hadn't even had his coffee yet, which would turn out to be a double shot of espresso at this rate. It was far too early for this kind of nonsense. Lounging in a canvas chair, he felt little patience for the subject of the conversation.

"She's a scientist, not a medium," he said with veiled patience. "Marcus, we've already had our discussion about her. She's staying, whether or not you like it. You can either learn to work with her or make yourself miserable by competing with her."

Marcus' jaw twitched. "There is no damn competition. This is my dig."

"I'm not saying that it isn't," McGrath said steadily. "Hell, I don't care if she does cackle over a boiling cauldron. If it locates your tomb, who cares how she does it?"

Marcus was fuming, his big body already sweating in the early heat of the day. "Most credible field archaeologists laugh at her,” he grumbled.  “Now that she's on my dig, they're going to be laughing at me as well."

"So it's your reputation that you’re ultimately concerned with?"

"I've worked hard for it."

McGrath snorted. "You're one of the very best in your field. But you’re also a bloody hypocrite."

Marcus turned to him. "Why do you say that?"

McGrath rose from his chair, plopping his Panama hat on his silver head. "If she's going to use her divine clairvoyance, as you put it, you'd rather not find the tomb,” he pointed a finger at him. “But if she's going to use by-the-book scientific methods, it's just fine if she locates the tomb.  I'm beginning to sense that finding this tomb isn't your objective; it's making sure your reputation as a reasonable scientist stays intact."

He scowled at McGrath. "That's ridiculous."

"Is it?"

Marcus rolled his eyes at him. "I'm not going to have this discussion with you.  But I'm telling you, if she starts rolling the bones out there in the middle of the parking lot, I'm going to ship her and her broomstick right on out of here."

McGrath laughed softly and moved for the tent flap. He was badly in need of caffeine.  Just as he slipped through the doorway, however, something caught his attention out in the storage area and he immediately came to a halt. He almost closed the tent flap so Marcus couldn't see what he saw, but he was too slow. He cringed when he felt Marcus come up behind him.

"What in the hell is she doing?"

Kathlyn was standing in front of a video crew in the storage area, talking into a microphone. Her long hair was down and she was dressed in white from head to toe, not exactly desert-conducive attire.  But she looked stunning, every inch the beautiful documentary archaeologist he had come to despise.

The people from the SCA were eating it up as she talked about the Valley of the Kings, the Ramesside Dynasty, and the pharaoh of the Exodus, Ramses II.  Marcus and McGrath stood there as she launched into a segue for the migration of Moses. It was very well rehearsed and very intelligent. When she was done, however, Burton pushed past McGrath.

“Dr. Trent,” he called to her, the sternness in his voice apparently. “A word, please.”

Kathlyn eyed him, not at all in a hurry to honor his request. She thanked the Egyptian camera crew and agreed to finish the majority of her taping in the early evening when the sun was going down and they could get a good shot of the sunset. When her business with them was complete, she strolled toward Burton in a casual manner that inflamed him.

He stood there, arms crossed, towering over her by a full twelve inches. She was so completely un-intimidated by him that he became even more irritated. He’d hoped to scowl her to death.

“How may I help you?” she asked as if she was a queen granting audience.

Burton struggled to control his response. That beautiful neck was becoming like a magnet for his hands. “I told you not to turn my dig into a circus,” he growled.

She looked at him as if he was crazy. “I would hardly call my recording a brief monologue a circus.”

His jaw ticked. “From now on, I want anything you do cleared with me. And I mean anything, from walking my dig to recording for the SCA. I won’t have you disrupting my camp.”

“I’m not disrupting anything.”

Burton’s cobalt blue gaze moved over her shoulder and he nodded his head sharply in that direction. “See those people?” he pointed out. “They’re supposed to be working. Instead, they’re staring at you. That, Dr. Trent, is disruption enough.”

Kathlyn caught a glimpse of a couple of dozen people, clustered on the crest of a small hill, watching the amazing world of television recording. When they noticed that Burton had spied them, they scattered like chickens. She brushed a windblown lock of hair from her face before turning back to Burton.

“Dr. Burton, I cannot be responsible for your undisciplined workers,” she said in a deliberate dig. “But I will tell you this; if you don’t allow the SCA to do as they wish, I can guarantee you that by the end of the week your permits will be pulled and you will no longer have a dig. You know it and I know it.”

The only indication of his level of anger was the constant throbbing of his jugular veins. His face remained like stone, but Kathlyn could feel his fury where she stood. He was a big man with big hands and she didn’t relish the thought of provoking him beyond reason, but she wasn’t going to let him push her around, either. He had seemed determined to do just that since the moment she arrived.

“You will clear all of your activities with me or Dr. Davis,” he repeated steadily.

She cocked an eyebrow. “Is that a polite request or a command?”

“Take it as you will, I don’t care.”

“Then I take it as a request, and all polite requests are honored. Commands are ignored. Therefore, I will have my administrator give you a schedule so you can see what the SCA has plans for. Not much, actually. In fact, what you just saw is all they need to do until sunset. At this moment, I belong to you and your dig. Would you care to go over your data with me so we can get started? I only have two weeks to figure out this puzzle, you know.”

He stood there a moment, thinking how incredibly smooth she was.  He had tried his best to bully her and she had not responded; in fact, she had gone out of her way to avoid a confrontation with him. Well, except for a dig or two, which he deserved. Overall, she had been gracious and tactful and he couldn’t decide if he was even angrier or if he was satisfied. She’d even thrown a measure of humor into it, indicating the timeline he had given her. Feeling himself slip off guard again, he uncrossed his arms and turned away.

“Come on, then,” he muttered. “I don’t want you thinking I haven’t given you every minute of your two weeks.”

“God forbid.”

He cast her a long look over his shoulder. With a lazy smile, Kathlyn followed him to the sacred cluster of Burton tents. She’d won Round One.

***

The data Burton had accumulated was substantial. Kathlyn studied the laptop display until her eyes crossed and her head began to hurt. Burton hadn't left any stone unturned; even unsubstantiated documentation was included. From her classes in Egyptology, she knew most details of the history of ancient Egypt, but Burton had spent a specific amount of time investigated Ramses VIII as a monarch and an individual. There wasn't much data on him at all but therein, he was convinced, would he find the clue to his final resting place.

It was dusk by the time Kathlyn broke from her studies.  The camera crew from the SCA had been told she would finish her monologue tomorrow and they had returned to their hotel unhappy. But she had been too involved in Burton's work to break away. Lynn had joined their crunch session mid-afternoon and offered his opinion about Ramses tomb, which was close to what Kathlyn was thinking. The man wouldn't have had himself buried away from his predecessors in the west valley as Burton was convinced; she was sure he would be in the thick of it.  In fact, she was positive.

But Burton wasn't receptive to that theory, as she had discovered. He was absolutely brilliant, a razor-sharp mind accompanying a body and face that was better suited to a movie star. The man was jaw-dropping sexy with his chiseled good looks and weight-lifter physique. But he was stubborn as hell, and his expression always held such hardness about it that it was easy to see why everyone thought he was so unapproachable. She had yet to even see him smile since her arrival.

The evening meal came and went, the smells of Middle Eastern cooking wafting on the evening breeze. Kathlyn continued to study the data with Burton sitting silently along side her, chewing on a piece of flatbread and asking question after question.  Burton finally gave her a flash drive of information for her people to study and she left his tent a couple of hours before midnight.