Sands of Time (Out of Time #6) (12 page)

Elizabeth mumbled something in her sleep and then smiled. He hoped whatever was happening in her dream, he was the reason for that smile.

Since their arrival in Egypt, smiles had been few and far between for him. Somehow hers had always made up for it though. And as he felt the tightening in his chest ease, they still did.

Resigned now to being awake, Simon walked over to the front door. Gently, he unlocked it and eased it open. The day’s newspaper and his freshly polished shoes sat waiting for him. As he leaned over to pick them up, a door down the hallway opened and a woman tiptoed out of a room. Jack’s room.

The woman shifted her shoes into her other hand and eased the door shut. Simon sighed and she turned at the sound.

Diana. That was quick work even by Jack’s standards.

Instead of being embarrassed at being caught in what Elizabeth called the walk of shame, Diana smiled pleasantly and nodded her head in greeting. Too surprised to do anything else, Simon reciprocated and Diana took a few steps down the hall before slipping on her shoes and tucking in her blouse.

He was going to have to have a talk with Mr. Wells. The last time Jack had traveled back in time with them, he’d nearly let his feelings for a woman destroy the bloody timeline. Simon’s mood curdled again as he picked up the paper and his shoes and went back inside.

He spent the better part of the next hour reading the news and brooding only to be leavened again by a sleepy-headed Elizabeth as she walked drowsily over to him. He pulled her onto his lap, and much to his disappointment, she picked up the paper.

“Anything interesting?” she asked, blinking her eyes to try to focus.

“Yes.”

She turned to ask him what and Simon gently pulled the paper from her hands.

“Oh,” she said with a smile as he leaned in to kiss her.

An hour later, they were dressed and ready for breakfast with Whiteside and, hopefully, a clue as to why Mason was so interested in his bit of papyrus.

Simon locked the door behind them and they started down the long, wide corridor to the stairs.

They’d nearly reached them, when Elizabeth stopped. “I forgot my purse.”

Simon sighed as she turned back. “I have money.”

“It has my lipstick and things.”

It was a pointless argument and one they’d had many times. She claimed she couldn’t live without it, and yet, was forever forgetting it. In the end, he’d learned simply acquiescing was easier than explaining her faulty logic to her. And so, he lengthened his stride to catch up with her.

Opening the door for her, he let her precede him into their room. He nearly crashed into her as she’d come to an abrupt halt barely a few paces inside the door. It didn’t take him long to see why.

The French doors to their balcony were open, the sheers blowing in the breeze. Standing in front of one of their trunks, a drawer left open, was a man in black robes.

They all stared at each other in equal shock.

Simon reached out for Elizabeth and tried to ease her behind him. The movement broke the man out of his fugue and he ran toward the balcony. Simon gave chase, but the man flung himself over the railing. For a brief moment Simon thought he’d plunged to his death. They were on the third floor after all. But as soon as he leaned over, he saw that the man had swung himself to a lower balcony and was scrambling down to the ground with frightening agility.

Elizabeth arrived at his side and they watched the man jump the last ten feet to the ground and run off into the garden. He easily leapt up and flipped himself over the eight foot back wall and disappeared.

“Okay, that was impressive,” Elizabeth said.

Simon grunted and went back inside. He quickly surveyed their belongings, pausing as the reality of what could have happened here sunk in. He’d nearly let her come back to the room alone. It was damn lucky he hadn’t. Who knows what Elizabeth might have done on her own.

He glanced back and saw her leaning over the balcony, gauging how hard it would be to duplicate what she’d seen.

Simon let out a breath and shook his head. She probably would have followed him.

And if he’d been armed? It didn’t bear thinking about. They’d been damned lucky. One day that luck would run out though.

“I don’t know how he did that in those robes,” Elizabeth said.

Simon nodded and tried to refocus. Nothing seemed to be missing, but then he hadn’t had long to go through things.

“I was kind of hoping we wouldn’t see him again,” Elizabeth said as she joined him and closed the open drawer.

“Again?”

“The man from the train.”

It suddenly clicked. He’d sensed it, but his mind had been too busy trying to find something to use as a weapon that it hadn’t gelled yet. Although, they hadn’t seen the man’s face, his body shape, his height, his eyes, and a thousand other tiny pieces of information were indelibly etched in Simon’s memory. And the marking on the inside of his wrist. Simon hadn’t been sure he’d seen it on the train. It could have been a shadow, a trick of light. But as he replayed the last few minutes in his head, he forced himself to slow down the images that had raced past in a panic. He could see the marking again. The long sleeves of the man’s robe obscured most of it, but there was something there. All he could make out or remember were two curved lines.

“Dammit,” Simon said. He couldn’t get a clear image in his mind. He looked around their room helplessly.

It had been foolish of them to think even for a moment that their presence at Mason’s murder would go unnoticed or neglected. He should have seen this coming. Despite Elizabeth’s feelings on the matter, they were too vulnerable and every moment spent here was more dangerous than the next. Still, he knew his wife and there was no possible way of convincing her to return home. Despite his misgivings, they were there for the duration.

“Everything’s here, I think,” Elizabeth said as she took a quick inventory.

Simon walked over to the French doors and closed them. The lock was entirely inadequate. If they were to stay in this room, hell, if they were going to stay in this city, this would have to change.

“What do you think he was looking for?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Simon said. “Maybe that envelope we took from Mason. Or his watch.”

Elizabeth’s eyes went wide. “Jack!”

She hurried to the door and ran down the hallway. Simon caught up to her just as she was pounding on Jack’s door.

There was no answer, but Simon thought he heard something coming from inside.

Elizabeth shrugged. “Maybe he’s already gone down—”

Simon held up a finger to silence her. There he heard it again, the muffled sounds of a struggle.

“Jack!” Simon pounded on the door. He stopped only long enough to hear a crashing sound inside. Simon thrust his shoulder against the door, but it didn’t move.

“Jack!” Elizabeth cried.

A few people came out of their suites and she told them to get help.

Simon took a step back and kicked at the door as hard as he could. He felt the door frame give a little. He kicked again and again. On the third try the frame splintered and the door crashed open.

Simon hurried inside. Jack was on the floor near the balcony, the remnants of a coffee table crushed beneath him. Above him loomed another man in black robes. He’d been startled by the door flying open, enough to give Jack a small window through which he threw a solid punch. The man staggered off him, turned toward Simon and ran for the balcony.

The French doors were already open and like his partner, the man leapt over the railing and scaled down the building with frightening ease. Simon watched the assailant run through the garden and disappear. When he turned back, Elizabeth was kneeling at Jack’s side.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Jack grunted and, with her help, pushed himself into a sitting position. Bits of table clung to his bare back and the knee of his pajama bottoms was torn.

“I’m all right,” Jack said, shaking his head and working his jaw. He jerked his head toward the door and the growing gathering of onlookers.

“It’s under control now,” Simon said as he strode over to the door. “Thank you for your concern.”

The shocked expressions of the crowd disappeared behind the door as he unceremoniously closed it in their faces.

Elizabeth helped Jack stand.

“Thanks,” Jack said. “Good timing.”

The room was a shambles. Chairs were overturned and what had been a coffee table was only kindling now.

“We had a visitor ourselves,” Simon said.

“You what?” Jack exclaimed, his senses fully returned. “Are you all right?”

Elizabeth smiled. “We’re fine.”

Jack nodded and smiled. He paced over to the balcony and ran a hand through his hair. “I was half asleep, and I heard something.”

He shook his head, trying to get the contents of his memory to settle. “He was already inside…I didn’t even hear him come in.”

Simon nodded. These were hardly amateurs.

Abruptly, Jack hurried over to the table and picked up his jacket. He rifled through the pockets and closed his eyes. “Damn it.”

Simon knew what he was going to say and steeled himself for the news.

“The watch,” Jack bit out. “He got it.”

Simon and Elizabeth shared a nervous glance, both thinking the same thing. If the intruders got his, they could have easily gotten theirs.

Elizabeth pushed out a breath. “At least you’re okay.”

Jack clenched his jaw and shook his head, ignoring her comforting words. “I’m sorry.”

Simon wanted to be angry with him, but he knew their roles could easily have been reversed. Under the same circumstances, there was no guarantee Simon could have done any better to protect the watch than Jack had.

Simon nodded, accepting Jack’s apology and accepting his own portion of blame for the situation. “I should have anticipated something like this.”

“
We
should have,” Jack said.

“Did he get the letter too?” Elizabeth asked.

Jack looked surprised, like he’d briefly forgotten about that. He moved over to the end table by the bed and opened the drawer. “No,” he said, pulling out the letter. “Thank God for that anyway.”

“The sooner we can find out what’s in that, the better,” Simon said. “I don’t like being one step behind.”

A tentative knock on the door came. “Hello?”

The door slowly opened and one of the hotel staff poked his head through the gap. His eyes went wide at the state of things. “Oh my goodness.”

“Yes,” Simon said. “As you can see we’ve had a bit of a problem.”

The man nodded, his eyes still wide and taking in the extent of the damage as he hesitantly entered the room. “Yes.”

“I’d like to speak to the management about it,” Simon said. When the man remained fixated on the broken table, Simon added a firm, “Now.”

~ ~ ~

After speaking with the management about the break-ins and receiving their assurance that not only would the locks to their rooms be upgraded, but security for the grounds would be as well, they’d met Whiteside for breakfast in the smaller, casual dining room. Simon tried to shed his frustration and anger over his inexcusable lapse in preparedness and focus on Whiteside and what they could learn about his mysterious papyrus.

While Whiteside spoke excitedly about his collection back home in England, which was quite impressive, it was clear to Simon that the man was bothered by his daughter’s mood. Jack had told Simon and Elizabeth about the poor girl’s heartbreak.

She’d stayed in their rooms last night and remained there this morning. And she hadn’t told him why she was upset, but it was easy to see that her hurt bothered him deeply.

Simon did his best to keep Whiteside’s mind off his daughter and his sadness over Mason’s death. It wasn’t easy. Uncommonly for an Englishman, Whiteside’s emotions were readily expressed. Although, Simon was hard pressed to blame him under the circumstances.

Elizabeth came to both their rescues and kept them entertained with outrageously preposterous stories Simon was fairly certain were the plots of one of the Indiana Jones movies and a few episodes of
Dr. Who
.

As the meal came to a close, both Whiteside and Simon were both eager to head back upstairs and take a look at the papyrus. Only Elizabeth lingered as she made her way through an enormous omelette. For such a small, slim thing, she ate like a rugby player. If she ever were eating for two, she’d eat them right out of house and home.

The thought caught him by surprise. Ever since their discussion about having children and Old Nan’s portentous prophecy, the idea of children wriggled its way into his mind with increasing frequency. He’d done his best to shove it away. Neither of them were quite ready to start a family just yet. The thought, however, had been planted and surfaced in the unlikeliest of moments.

Elizabeth caught him staring at her. “Do I…?” she asked as she held her napkin near her face.

Simon hadn’t even realized he’d been staring. “No,” he said, recovering. “Nearly finished?”

Finally, she was, and the three of them made their way up to Whiteside’s suite.

“It’s really quite remarkable,” Whiteside said as he retrieved the leather tube and carefully removed the ancient scroll onto a table. The lower half of the papyrus was ragged and torn. “Some fascinating details and a few inconsistencies that are delicious little mysteries.”

He gently placed four stones at the corners to keep it flat. Simon stared down at it. While he recognized some of the symbols, he had no idea what any of it meant.

Whiteside put on a pair of glasses and leaned over the table.

“Hieroglyphics is a terribly clever and complex language. It uses phonetic glyphs, logograms, where the whole word is in the symbol, and something called derivatives. They’re sort of signposts that tell you what the word you’ve just read really means.”

“That does sound complicated,” Elizabeth said, looking over Whiteside’s shoulder with a sinking expression.

“You see, most of the symbols are phonetic, “ Whiteside said pointing to what looked like a leg. “This might represent a single sound. The ‘bah’ sound in B words. Barge, banana and so on. Sometimes they represent two or even three letters together. And of course, with no vowels to speak of…”