Buried Secrets

by Kristi Belcamino

  Buried Secrets

  Kristi Belcamino

  Copyright © 2021 by Kristi Belcamino

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Prologue

  “All strange and terrible events are welcome, but comforts we despise."

  – Cleopatra

  * * *

  Temple of Taposiris Manga

  Egypt

  * * *

  When Dallas Jones’s eyes flickered, open there was nothing to see but a deep, velvet dark. Disoriented, she took a quick inventory. Although her shoulder stung like hell and she was sprawled flat on her back, nothing felt broken.

  For a second, she was unsure where she was or why she was on the ground. Then it came back to her: the ground crumbling underneath her boots. A black chasm opening up under her feet, a frantic leap for the edge, fingernails wildly clawing for the dirt and missing.

  In flashes, Dallas remembered: She’d been lowered down a narrow, twenty-foot-deep hole from the surface of the dig site. She’d been in a tunnel when the earth underfoot collapsed.

  Exploring the tunnel was her reward. She’d earned it. Of course, she was also the only archeologist on the dig small enough to fit down the hole, but that didn’t matter. Nobody questioned that she should be the first one down.

  After all, it was her discovery. She was the one who insisted that deep under the temple rested the remains of the world’s first celebrity: Cleopatra.

  They lowered her gently and then, as soon as her feet touched the earth and she turned on her flashlight, Dallas discovered she was in a round room. And she wasn’t alone. There was a life-sized statue of Anubis, the god of the underworld. Seeing the statue meant she was close to her goal. Her excitement had drawn her deeper into the dark, down into a tunnel behind the statue that grew increasingly steeper. Her radio had crackled just as the ground had given way and sent her plummeting.

  Now, sitting in the dark, even though she’d apparently lost a chunk of time, her body was intact. Her head seemed okay, probably because she’d landed mostly on her shoulder. And it was screaming in pain because of it. But the throbbing of her shoulder faded into the background as she remembered why she was here. She’d found it. Dallas knew it deep in her soul. Soon, she’d find the tomb that contained Cleopatra. She’d solve a centuries old mystery of just where the queen was buried.

  She reached up, patting her head to check the headset with the microphone. It was bent and mangled.

  “You guys read me? Anyone there? Can you hear me?”

  Nothing. One earpiece had broken and hung useless on its cord her shoulder, but the other one was still in her ear. Dallas didn’t even hear any crackling of static.

  She was alone somewhere in the bowels of the temple.

  She needed her flashlight.

  Her good arm stretched out, her hand flailing in a wide circle around her. Her palm slapped dirt. Dallas stretched further. There. She felt plastic. She stretched and managed to hook two fingers over it. Scraping the flashlight across the dirt into her grasp, she managed to pick it up. Her thumb pressed down and a flickering weak circle of light momentarily blinded her. When she opened her eyes again, she pointed the beam of light straight up.

  The hole she’d fallen through was at least twelve feet above her. She’d need to stand on something to reach it. Several somethings.

  Pushing herself to her knees, Dallas used her good arm to propel herself into a standing position. She pointed the flashlight at the wall across from her.

  “Holy smokes.” Dallas breathed the words in a whisper and scrambled to her feet. She was in a circular chamber with walls covered in paintings of ancient Egyptian figures in royal garb. The brilliant reds, blues, golds, and greens looked as if they’d been painted that morning. It was remarkable.

  The flashlight beam wavered. No! The light couldn’t go out now.

  On one side of the room, directly in front of her, was a tunnel. A dark black yawning hole that was going to be her way out—had to be her way out.

  Dallas turned, sweeping the room with a flashlight. What she saw behind her nearly brought her to her knees. A door with a cartouche. A sign that royalty was buried there.

  Dallas recognized the cartouche immediately. It contained the two birds and lion she’d studied for so long. It was Cleopatra’s cartouche.

  Holding her breath, Dallas stepped closer. Reaching out, her palm rested on the door. She closed her eyes and pushed. Miraculously, the door shifted. She threw her good shoulder into it and it creaked open. The flashlight flickered again but didn’t go out.

  She lifted the beam of light and stepped inside.

  Her gasp echoed throughout the chamber. She stared, the flashlight shaking in her hand.

  The entire room glittered with gold. Gold coins spilled out of golden bowls. Engraved gold jewelry boxes overflowed with anklets, rings, bracelets, and earrings. A massive gold bed inlaid with brilliant colored stones was covered with more shimmering trinkets: daggers, swords, gold headpieces. Everything glinted and gleamed.

  Her heart raced as she saw a small black onyx statue of Anubis—the half man, half jackal said to usher the souls of the Egyptian dead into the underworld. It was a smaller version of the statue she’d seen in the upper chamber. And then Dallas saw the most astonishing thing of all—the door across from her was flanked by two life-sized gold statues.

  A man and a woman. Cleopatra and Antony. Dressed as Osiris and Isis.

  Just then her flashlight went out, plummeting her into darkness. Dallas swore. But she had a candle and matches in her tool belt.

  She reached for them. But before her hand lowered, she heard it.

  Breathing. Behind her.

  She was not alone.

  One

  Before

  Minneapolis Museum of Modern Art

  Heart pounding, Dallas stepped into the foyer of the museum and then stopped dead, eyes lifted to the sixteen-foot high red granite statutes of a pharaoh and queen towering above them.

  It was nearly unfathomable that another archeologist had not only found these buried under sand in the Mediterranean Sea, but had managed to transport them to Minnesota.

  It made moving to this god-forsaken freezing hinterland all worth it.

  Well, her job at the university made it worth it, but still this made it doubly worth leaving her sun-soaked home state of Arizona.

  She stood looking up in awe.

  How could something that had been hidden in the sea for hundreds of years be so perfectly preserved?

  Colton brushed her arm and Dallas jolted.

  “Can you take a picture of me?” Dallas said, reaching out to hand Colton her phone.

  She saw her hand was shaking. What was up with that? Colton had also noticed.

  “You cold?”

  “Gee, why do you ask? Because it’s negative five ou
tside,” she quipped. “I can’t believe I live here now.”

  “I don’t even wear glvoes until it’s negative twenty,” he said.

  “Just take my picture.”

  He cocked his head examining her as she backed up, into place between the two mammoth statues. The museum brochure she read said the statutes weighed 8,000 pounds each and were likely more than twenty-two centuries old.

  They’d been plucked from the seas near Alexandria. No wonder she was shaking. Dallas had dreamed of unearthing treasures in Egypt for as long as she could remember. Now she was seeing some of the most spectacular archeological treasures discovered in more than fifty years. It was okay to be shook up, she told herself.

  Ever since they’d pulled into the museum’s parking lot, Dallas had felt a surge of nervous, electric energy racing through her. She’d tripped coming up the stairs from the garage, banged her knee into the welcome desk, and dropped her ticket three times before they made it inside the museum.

  When she’d first heard—months ago— that the exhibition was coming to town, she’d become a member of the museum just so she could be one of the first to tour it and be the first to hear the team of archeologists talk about their findings. And now that day was here.

  “Smile, Dallas,” Colton said, “you look like you’re afraid.”

  Was she? No. She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head. “Just take the damn picture!”

  “Why don’t you take your hair down?” Colton asked.

  “Because,” Dallas said, slightly annoyed.

  Because the other day when she was at the gym locker room and taken her hair down to brush it, this little girl came up to her and called her Wonder Woman and asked for her autograph. Well, maybe that wasn’t the real reason. She happened to like wearing her hair in a ponytail. It was no fuss. Dallas was all about the no fuss. That’s why her self-imposed uniform was a tank top and black cargo pants most of the time. Moving to Minnesota had put a cramp in her style since she had to wear a sweater over the tank top most of the time.

  “Because why?” His voice was teasing. “I’ve never seen you without your hair in a ponytail.”

  Dallas rolled her eyes. “I can’t be bothered spending time doing things like fixing my hair. Booooring.”

  “Just this once?”

  “Sure, I’ll do it if you grow a soul patch,” she said Then she burst into laughter. The thought of clean-cut Colton a soul patch was ridiculous. But sort of sexy, she thought.

  “Deal.”

  “Shut up and take the damn picture already,” she said. She tossed her long dark ponytail in a faux modeling move. “And make sure I look cute.”

  A barely imperceptible flush spread across Colton’s cheeks. A group entered the museum right then chattering loudly but she could still make out his mumbled words: “I don’t think that’s a problem.”

  Crap. She quickly looked away.

  As Dean of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Colton was technically her boss. But they were more than that. She wasn’t sure what they were, but she knew that the electricity between them was undeniable. But he was her boss! However, something always seemed to get in the way of them taking their relationship to a different level. Not to mention: he was her boss.

  She needed to tattoo that on his forehead so every time she looked at him she wouldn’t forget.

  To hide her embarrassment, Dallas turned and started toward the huge staircase at the end of the main floor. It seemed like lately, she and Colton had one of these super awkward moments at least once a week.

  Last week it had happened when Colton had asked her to his mother’s house for Christmas.

  “Uh, what?” she had responded, scrunching up her face.

  She’d been taken aback by the offer, and unfortunately, he could tell. He made sputtering excuses, which made Dallas feel even worse for reacting the way she had.

  “Um, I just know that you’re sort of new to Minnesota, um, my mom makes a really yummy ham and …” He’d trailed off. It must have been the horrified look on her face.

  But he’d misread it. She’d been mortified that Colton thought she was such a loser she’d be spending the holiday utterly alone. One day she’d mentioned her parents were dead. And now he’d invited her to Christmas. No thank you. She didn’t want a “pity” invite.

  She plastered a huge fake smile on her face. “I do have plans but thank you.”

  “Oh. Are you going back to Arizona for the holidays?”

  “No.” She didn’t explain and he didn’t ask.

  She didn’t elaborate that her plans were to put on her sweatpants and a huge hoodie and binge-watch The Sopranos and eat copious amounts of popcorn.

  Now, in the museum, she regretted the whole conversation. It was sweet of his mother to ask her. It was even sweeter that Colton wanted her there, too. Now, she wished she’d said yes instead of letting her insecurity and pride get in the way. Same story different day. It was nothing new.

  It seemed like half of her decisions in her teen years had been guided by those two stupid things—insecurity and pride. She blamed it on being an overweight pre-teen. Despite being lean, there was always a tiny part of her deep inside that was still that little girl who wanted to fit in. But she kept it under tight wraps. Most of the time.

  Once she’d graduated from college and hit her stride—being pursued by men who obviously didn’t see her as a chubby little kid and pursuing her dream job as an archeologist—she was rarely plagued with any sort of insecurity. Pride? Yeah. Still a small problem.

  And this time it had cost her the company of a good man at Christmas. She was touched. And grateful to have Colton McCloud in her life. Thinking this, she put her hand on Colton’s arm. He looked down, surprised, and she quickly removed it. But not before she’d felt the taut muscle under her palm and thought, “Damn. Colton McCloud apparently knows his way around some barbells, too, apparently.”

  “What?” He gave her that smile. The one that always threatened to melt her into a little gooey spot on the floor.

  “Aw. Nothing. It’s just that you’re a good guy, Colton McCloud.”

  Another small red flush crawled up his neck. Too cute. He swallowed and concentrated on the images on the phone. Then he held it out to her. “This is a great shot. You standing there shows the sheer massiveness of those statues. You look so small. Incredible.”

  Small. Instantly, that chubby little girl inside perked up. It was a harmless statement, but she felt offended. She knew it was her own deal. Colton had not meant anything by it. It’s just that small was not part of her DNA. She was 5’9” and looked him right in the eye when they were standing together.

  The exhibit was in a gallery upstairs. As they climbed the two flights, Dallas shook off the lingering self-doubt. After all, she saw how Colton looked at her sometimes when he thought she wasn’t looking. She was pretty sure he didn’t have any complaints about her size. Her CrossFit classes had done their job. She wasn’t thin, but her muscles were firm. She was strong. And that’s what counted.

  Besides Dallas was no longer interested in whether someone thought she was small or skinny. All she wanted was to be a force to be reckoned with. Strong. Fast. Formidable. Maybe that’s why she had such a prickly reaction to Colton saying the statues made her seem small. Whatever.

  Right now, she was too excited about what lay before them. A mixture of anticipation and nervousness surged through her. The emotional cocktail surprised her. She’d been looking forward to this day–the first time she’d actually seen artifacts that had existed at the same time and in the same city as Cleopatra—for so long.

  Dallas’s hand rose to the broken ankh necklace dangling from its leather strap. She rubbed it absentmindedly and then tucked it inside her T-shirt, feeling a strange need to hide it.

  On the upper level, she and Colton made their way through galleries of religious icons, Chinese Qing dynasty silk textiles and Miao textiles, and then past a Georgia O’Keefe painti
ng. Dallas kept her eyes on the end of the long hall where she could make out a bright blue sign announcing the sunken treasures exhibition. Her heart began to race faster. Halfway between her and the entrance, an even larger Egyptian statue soared two stories high through the open-air rotunda.

  “Hapy,” she said in a whisper as they grew closer.

  “This is crazy,” Colton said, taking out his own phone to snap a selfie with the Egyptian god who was both male and female.

  Dallas stood at the foot of the statue, looking up in awe. The placard said the statue weighed nearly 10,000 pounds.

  A commotion at the end of the hall snapped Dallas out of her awe. A line was already forming for the exhibit. It opened in five minutes. Dallas and Colton hurried and got in line. Once inside, the crowd quickly moved through the numbered exhibits. But Dallas lingered on each one, staking snapshots for her research and because, well, because it was amazing. At one point, a man glared at her and she pointed to the sign that said photography was allowed as long as there was no flash involved.

  She was especially fascinated by the sarcophagus, the sphinx and the stele, the massive stone slab of stone engraved with hieroglyphs. Stele’s were much like today’s gravestones. This one told the story of an important businessman who died during Cleopatra’s reign. It was found near the man’s tomb. Dallas took several photos from different angles. She has a rudimentary knowledge of hieroglyphs and this one seemed to show Cleopatra and Antony, but she wasn’t sure.

  Dallas wandered on and found herself in front of a brightly lit display case where tiny coins rested on black velvet.

  The description said the coins were believed to have Cleopatra’s image on them. Dallas studied them. The queen of the Nile’s profile was not classically beautiful. In fact, some would argue it was unattractive. Nobody really knew what she looked like other than this relief on the coins she’d had made.