Reckless

by Shannon Drake

  “I’ll be there in a week or so myself,” he said.

  “Will you?” she inquired with a complete lack of interest, moving her hand.

  “Kat, this is necessary.”

  “No, it is not.”

  “Well, then, my love, take care, and good journey.”

  He didn’t try to kiss her goodbye, and merely signaled Ali. The caravan set off.

  As the last of the horses disappeared from sight, Brian came to stand by his side. “This cult is serious,” he said. “Not something that we only have to wonder about. People are being openly slain.”

  “Do you really believe that these people think that an ancient priest is calling to them?”

  “No, do you?”

  “Absolutely not. I think that it’s organized. And I think that…” He hesitated.

  “That what?”

  “That someone British has created this Egyptian cult.”

  “Yes, perhaps, but what bothers me is this… How does it connect with what has been happening in our journey? The stone at the Colosseum, the snake in the room in Rome…even what took place before?”

  “I don’t know. Pity Arthur left with the others. His powers of deduction might have been of tremendous use!”

  “YOU MUSTN’T BE ANGRY,” Margaret said, riding alongside Kat. “This is for the best.”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “Oh, but you are! You’re absolutely furious.”

  “There’s no reason for this.”

  “There is. Hunter believes that you’re in real danger.”

  Kat shook her head. She started to speak, then closed her mouth. Margaret just didn’t really understand the truth of any of it.

  Ali was riding at the front, and each time they neared a dune or the smallest obstruction in their path, even so much as a tree, he called a halt, sending out riders. Kat was certain that it would make the endless ride even longer, but Margaret had told her that it was not nearly as far as she had thought—when she had ridden out, she had done so with camels carrying tons of supplies. They were just a group on horseback now, and they were moving much more quickly.

  “Well, I think the fellows, with the possible exception of Allan, will be glad to be back for a night,” Margaret mused. “I think they far prefer the nightlife in Cairo to the loneliness of the sands.”

  “I’m sure,” Kat murmured, wishing she wanted to take part in a conversation. Margaret was truly nice. And she was trying very hard to make Kat feel better.

  She had just turned toward Margaret, ready to smile, when she heard the high-pitched cries from across the sand. There was a dune to their left, and it must have been higher than it appeared, for suddenly, there were riders coming over it.

  They were dressed completely in black, turbans loosened to shield their faces. Nothing but their eyes were visible as they swooped down on the caravan. For a moment, Kat was stunned and frozen by the awful majesty of the attack, the thunderous horsemen, perfect in their precision, bearing down on them.

  Ali roared out some kind of an order. His men began to circle around Margaret, Arthur and herself.

  “Dear God!” David breathed from behind her. He was fumbling to draw his weapon, a pistol. He had a second weapon, that one strapped to his saddle. Kat urged her horse closer to his.

  “Give me the gun.”

  “No, no. I will shoot. I will protect us. I am the man.”

  “Give me the gun!” she shouted, and reaching over, she snatched it from the holster on his saddle.

  But by then, though she was surrounded by Ali’s men, the fighting was upon them. The sand blinded her. She heard Margaret scream, and she turned her horse in that direction.

  She was stunned when a noose came around her, dragging her from the mare and depositing her hard on the sand. The stuff filled her eyes and mouth, and she coughed and rolled, entangled in the rope. It jerked, and she rolled again, and saw the fellow encased in black as he walked menacingly toward her, ready to collect what he had snared.

  She raised the pistol and fired.

  The man fell.

  For a moment, she stared at him, shocked that she’d had the presence of mind to shoot, and also, that she had killed a man. But she didn’t dare linger in the sand. She would die by being trodden to pieces by one of the horses, which now were everywhere, if she didn’t move quickly.

  She staggered to her feet, trying to see through the terrible fog of sand. Out of it all a man came rushing at her, his sword raised.

  She screamed and tried to shoot again.

  Her gun had jammed.

  She looked up. The fellow had lowered the sword and was coming toward her. In his free hand, he carried a rope.

  She turned to run.

  For the second time, a noose flew.

  And she stumbled into the sand. Rolled. And he was there, all in black, reaching down for her.

  Chapter 17

  CAMILLE SAT IN THE DOORWAY of the camp area, studying the sketches that Kat had done. She thought that the girl might do excellent satires in any magazine, for her quick portraits certainly captured very apt little essences about people. She was glad to see that both she and Brian had been seen as nothing more than kind and gentle, and she was touched at the way that Kat had somehow managed to put onto the page the depth of their relationship.

  She had to smile. The fellows, the students! Rich, elite young men all. And that so evident. She paused, frowning, something about the sketch of Alfred Daws nagging at her. She frowned, trying to fathom what it was. It didn’t register. It would prey on her mind, she thought, for quite some time. She sighed, ready to go on to the next.

  “Camille, what on earth are you scowling at?”

  She looked up. Hunter and Brian, both looking tired and dusty, were coming in. “Oh, maybe you can help! See this, that Kat has done?”

  “Interesting. Amazing likenesses,” Brian said.

  “Strange,” Hunter murmured.

  “What?” Camille asked quickly.

  “I…don’t know exactly,” he said, then shrugged. “There’s something about the sketch of Alfred Daws.”

  “I agree!” Camille said. “But what?”

  “Something familiar…” Hunter shook his head. “Of course, it’s familiar. The fellow just left.”

  “Yes, yes, but that’s not it,” Camille said. She looked at Hunter. “It bothers you, too.”

  “We’ll think of it, whatever it is,” he said. “May I?”

  He took the pile of sketches from her. She noted that he studied the sketches of the students just as she had. “There is the touch of the quixotic about David,” he said.

  “She’s caught that rather weak chin admirably,” Camille said a bit tartly.

  “Mmm,” Hunter allowed. He turned the page. “That’s really beautiful,” he said, indicating the likenesses of Camille and Brian.

  “I thought so, too.”

  “Go on. She’s done one of you.”

  “Oh?”

  She thought that he turned the next page with some trepidation. And that he was startled to see the excellent and compelling portrait she had done of him.

  “Maybe she doesn’t hate me so very much,” he murmured. “Or didn’t.” He tensed, realizing that he had spoken aloud.

  “Oh, she’s just angry that you’ve sent her back,” Camille said.

  “Mmm.” He snapped the book shut and handed it back to Camille. “We thought we might do a bit of exploring in here,” he told her, gesturing within.

  “This place, whatever it was,” Brian explained, “might be part of a complex. We’ve found all these room and hallways, so we’re going to go about tapping walls and see if we can’t find where there might be a false wall.”

  “Excellent idea!” Camille said, rising, dropping the sketchbook, forgetting it for the moment. “Since there has been another something discovered just yards away, it’s more than possible that they all connect!”

  “Let’s get to it,” Brian said.

 
KAT FELT THE SAND BENEATH her fingers. She grasped a handful of it and threw it into the eyes of her attacker.

  He cried out, staggering back.

  She fought the rope that entangled her. Struggling, she rolled onto a dead man. The fingers of the corpse still clutched a sword. Without the least hesitation, she wrenched it free. When her attacker stumbled toward her again, she lashed out with the weapon. She might not have known just how to use it, but it had a deadly blade that found its mark.

  She heard a cry and spun around. There was a rider bearing down on David. She swung the blade again. Perhaps her opponent didn’t dare chance the fact that she had no idea what she was doing. He veered away.

  A moment later, there was someone behind her. She spun around, swinging the blade. She heard a scream.

  She had been lucky again.

  But the next mounted man who came racing at her caught the blade with his own; hers went flying over the sand.

  She was defenseless. A man on foot let out a cry and rushed toward her.

  She heard someone riding hard behind her and then strong arms snatched her up. A gun exploded. The fellow who had been rushing toward her fell, and she realized that she had been saved.

  Ali had come for her. His horse reared; he was turning back.

  But already, horses were thundering away. Their attackers had struck with lightning speed; now they were departing with equal haste. In seconds, they had disappeared. It was as if they had never been.

  Except for the chaos left behind. Bodies littered the sand. Ali eased Kat down, and she rushed to a man who lay groaning in the sand. Allan. He pushed up, wincing. She saw that blood was oozing from a wound at his side.

  “My God, Allan!” she murmured. She wished then for a petticoat, but a piece of her trousers would have to do. She ripped the hem out and hastily fashioned a bandage to tie around his midriff.

  “I’m all right. I think,” he said.

  Someone was at her side. She looked up. It was Ali. “Two of my men are dead. This fellow is wounded. We’ve got to move, get to Cairo, and quickly.”

  Arthur Doyle, a sword still gripped tightly in his hand, walked up. “Lady Margaret! Where is Lady Margaret?”

  “Oh, no!” Kat cried, jumping to her feet. Around her, those who could were rising. Margaret’s name was shouted over and over. Kat, losing all thought of squeamishness, began running from fallen body to fallen body, desperately searching the sand.

  There was no sign of Margaret.

  “We must find her!” Kat told Ali. Yet she knew, even as she stared at him and he looked back at her, that they would not. Allan was bleeding. Others were injured. Their pathetic little party would not make it.

  “In Cairo, we will get help,” he told her.

  She lowered her head but nodded. She tried to take hope. They had kidnapped Margaret; they hadn’t killed her. They must have known that she was worth a good deal of money—a far greater sum than might be brought from the sale of a trinket. There would be a ransom demand, and Lord Avery would pay it.

  She had to believe that! She had to.

  There was a sudden wailing sound. “Margaret!”

  David. And the wail was pathetic.

  Kat looked at him with no feeling. And wondered how she had ever been so hopelessly attracted to the man.

  “Come,” Ali told her softly.

  She nodded.

  HUNTER USED ONE OF THE HUGE cast-iron frying pans as he methodically knocked on the stone, searching for a hollow sound. It was important that he keep moving, that he keep doing something. For his thoughts were making him quite insane.

  Perhaps there had been no reason to send her home. She had been right; if ever there was a group that might have formed something of a bastion against attack, it had been here. But she was so stubborn. She might have walked off in quest of something one day. She might have found a tunnel, or good God, she might have fallen into a hole.

  Had he been wrong? And why couldn’t he figure out if there was a menace among them, a viper within their own nest….

  He slammed the pan against the stone.

  He could not forget her, could not get her out of his mind now for even a minute. Last night…a man could live a thousand lifetimes, and not have a night such as that. The feel of silk about him, the silk of her hair, the whisper of her breath against his flesh, the way she touched him…

  Slam!

  Clunk.

  He stood still, listening. He slammed again. The sound that sprang back at him definitely suggested that there was air beyond the stone.

  Brian and Camille both came running. Brian walked up, took the frying pan from him and tried again.

  They stared at one another.

  Then Camille let out a cry of joy and triumph. “I’ll call the workers!” she said.

  “Picks, we need picks!” Brian declared.

  “We’ve found something, old chap, we’ve done it!” Brian said, shaking his shoulder. At best, Hunter could manage a nod.

  They had found something. Indeed, perhaps a great discovery.

  But what had he lost in the finding?

  LORD AVERY COULD NOT to be consoled. Yes, perhaps the men who had seized Margaret were keeping her alive, for she was worth a small fortune. Perhaps they were. But perhaps they were not.

  Kat tried to help him, to think of something to say. But there was nothing. Emma kept crying, believing she had failed. Ethan, who had been wounded, was stitched up and put to bed. Allan, too, had been patched up and put to bed. Professor Atworthy had received the worst of the wounds, and the doctor was with him, staying at his side.

  There were so many tears, such wild remonstrances, and yet, it seemed to Kat, that though the police had been brought in, no one was really doing anything. At least, with Ethan put to bed, she was not being followed about every second. Ali was heading back to the camp, the only one who seemed determined to do something.

  The following morning Kat quickly bathed, found appropriate clothing and determined that there must be something that she could do. She hurried down to the desk, thinking that she would ask to see the girl Françoise. She was also determined, although she hadn’t asked Hunter, to offer the girl a job back in the United Kingdom.

  It had to be better than being slapped about!

  The young man at the desk looked stricken when she asked about Françoise.

  He cleared his throat. “You haven’t heard?” he asked, not unkindly.

  “Heard what?”

  “She…she is dead. Slain. Left in the desert,” he said sadly.

  She gaped at him, stunned.

  “I saw her…there was a man…he slapped her!” she managed at last. “Did she have a husband…a lover, someone who would do such a thing?”

  The desk clerk shook his head and his face reddened. “She had…customers,” he said at last. “The management had threatened to let her go. Here, well, our people our respectable!”

  “So, you believe that she was a prostitute, and that one of her clients killed her?”

  “I don’t believe anything, Lady MacDonald. I don’t know.”

  Kat turned away from the desk, deeply hurt and troubled by the murder of one so young, beautiful and sweet.

  She wandered toward the patio café, not really thinking at all, not sure where she was going. But as she passed the bar, she saw that David was there alone, drinking. As she stared at him, his head fell flat on the bar.

  She shook her head and walked in, tapping him on the shoulder. “David.”

  He jerked up and winced, apparently having twisted his neck. “Katherine…Kat, Kat, Kat! Ah, what a fool I have been!” His head plopped down again.

  “David, you’re drunk. What’s the matter with you? You need to clean up and get it together, and get out with the men who are searching for Margaret!”

  He started to laugh, and his laughter scared her. “They have her. Don’t you see that yet? They have her. I’ll die, I’ll die. Haven’t you realized that yet?”

&nbs
p; “David, what are talking about?”

  “Kat, help me, take me to bed.” He gave her a foolish grin. “Oh, that’s right. You don’t want to take me to bed. You have him. The all powerful. Tell me, Kat, he’s legendary. Is he really that good?”

  “David, if you weren’t so pathetic, I’d blacken your eye. Please, tell me what you’re talking about. Who has Margaret? Do you know?”

  “Over the dunes!” he muttered. “How did they know? How did they know that they should come over the dunes?”

  He was making no sense. She motioned to one of the waiters, gave him some coins and asked that he see the Englishman up to his room. That done, she returned to her own for a moment.

  Over the dunes.

  Whoever the horsemen had been, she was suddenly certain that their headquarters, or whatever they might call their base, had to be just on the other side of the sand dune over which they had come to make their vicious attack.

  There was a noise in the hall. She hesitated, then cracked open her door slightly. Someone, a man, was walking along the hall dressed in European attire, but carrying a bundle of cloth in his hand.

  A burnoose?

  She watched the way he moved, noted his height and frowned.

  Then she froze. She realized just what she had seen in the picture she had drawn that had so teased at her mind.

  The sound of Princess Lavinia’s words slipped in and out of her memory.

  Scandal…

  She knew him before…

  Kat flew into action. If she didn’t, he would be gone. And if she didn’t find a way to stop him…well, who knew? The pieces weren’t all together yet, but as Arthur Conan Doyle had said, Eliminate the impossible. Whatever is left, however improbable, must be true.

  There were too many coincidences. And then there was what they had seen, what they knew.

  She was out the door and following him. She couldn’t simply try to explain what she believed for that would take too long. Margaret might be lost!

  He was just disappearing down the stairs.

  She hastened her steps.

  THE WALL BROKEN, HUNTER and Brian entered the shaft, lanterns held high. Camille tried to scurry behind her husband.