“But you are so close,” her dad said. “I bet it won’t take much longer!”
“But it’s taking forever!” Dallas protested, scowling at the bike. “I’m tired. Why isn’t it easy for me? It was easy for Matt.”
Her next-door neighbor had learned how to ride without training wheels in thirty minutes the summer before.
“Honey,” her father said, leaning over her after she fell and scraped her knee for the umpteenth time. “Anything worth having in life is worth working for.”
Dallas thought about it and said, “Keep trying?”
“Exactly!”
It didn’t happen right then, but two hours later, at least an hour after her mother had called them in to dinner and then thrown up her hands when they didn’t come—that’s when it happened. The magic. She did it. Even when she wanted to quit.
Now, remembering this Dallas smiled.
It wasn’t until she looked up, that she realized she’d been crying.
She dried her tears, stood up and brushed herself off.
“I’m not a quitter.” She mumbled the words to herself. “I’m not giving up. I’m going to come back here every week until they tell me yes. I don’t care if it takes the rest of my life, I’m not going to give up.”
As she replayed the conversation with the minister in her head, one word stuck out and she clung to that one word with everything she had: Usually.
“Those who are approved usually have …”
She smiled. Because that one word was all she needed to keep going.
If Sam were there, she would’ve spouted off a quote from Dumb & Dumber, “So, you’re telling me there’s a chance?”
Back in her hotel room, Dallas dialed Colton, but it went straight to voice mail. She realized it was the middle of the night so she left a quick message.
“Meeting didn’t exactly go as planned, but I was given two weeks at the dig site to find evidence to make my case. I’m so glad you’re coming because I’m going to really need your help, Colton.”
Eight
Dallas dozed off in her train seat as the countryside flashed by out the window. She had slept poorly the night before. The chair in front of the door wouldn’t stop anyone. Not really.
When she arrived at the train station, she’d hovered in the shadows for most of the wait for her train, watching to see if anyone who seemed suspicious paid attention to her. But people mainly ignored her. An older man did a double take but then quickly looked away. She’d worn a headscarf to blend in and her clothes were fairly inconspicuous—loose linen pants and blouse.
Still she felt conspicuous as a woman traveling alone.
Abet was going to meet her in Alexandria the next morning. He had a family obligation today. Colton had texted her a quick reply that they’d talk more in person.
Now, reassured that she was safe on the train, her lack of sleep hit her and Dallas drifted off to sleep.
She woke two hours later when they were nearly to Alexandria.
As she began to gather her things, Dallas froze.
Her cross-body bag that had been stolen was now sitting on the train seat beside her. She jumped up, whirled and looked around. The few people seated nearby quickly looked away.
Excuse me?” she said to a man across the aisle. He shifted uncomfortably but met her eyes. She held up the bag. “Did you see anyone leave this in this seat?”
He shook his head. Dallas wondered if he understood what she asked or was just trying to get rid of her and stop her from talking to him.
She asked a few more people and was met with silence or heads shaking no.
Peering at the door to the other train compartments, she wondered if it would be worth asking other people, but just then there was an announcement that they were pulling into the train station.
It was only after she disembarked and had sat on a bench with a map to get her bearings, that Dallas examined the cross-body bag. It had been cut off her body when the woman had stolen it, but now when she looked at the strap, the leather had been repaired, sewn back together with neat, careful stitches. Looking around first to see if anyone was watching, Dallas unzipped the top of the bag and began withdrawing the contents, placing them on the bench seat beside her.
Her sunglasses. Her lip balm and hand lotion. Her camera. A protein bar. A pack of gum. Everything was there. Even the twenty dollars. Huh.
And then, as Dallas reached inside the deep depths of the bag, her fingers felt something else lodged at the bottom. She pulled out a small, thick piece of round canvas the size of a silver dollar. It was an embroidered patch. A small gasp erupted when Dallas saw the image. She whipped her head around to see if anyone noticed, clutching the patch in her palm with her fingers tightly closed around it. When she that saw nobody who was walking by was paying her any attention, Dallas unfurled her fingers. The patch was embroidered with an image of the head of Isis—her profile with a golden curved rod underneath, symbolizing a snake. The goddess had the traditional cow’s horn and sun disk on her headdress and colorful beaded hair. Her nose was regal and her lips voluptuous.
Dallas stared at the patch and then felt a prickling at the back of her neck. People bustled by her at the busy train station, caught up in their own lives and yet somebody on the train had followed her from Cairo. The woman who took her bag? Whomever it was, it was somebody who apparently knew why Dallas was in Egypt.
Dallas carefully examined the tiny neat stitches where someone had taken the time to fix the ripped spot on the leather strap. It didn’t seem like the same work as the thieves in Minneapolis. Whoever broke into her office and house hadn’t cared about what they damaged. When she cleaned up, she’d found a broken candy dish and a shattered picture frame.
What had the woman hoped to find in the bag? Not the money. The camera?
Dallas flicked the cover for the SD card on the camera. It was gone. It had contained pictures she’d taken of all her maps and research about the Egyptian temples in case her actual documents were lost in her travels. She’d already loaded the images to her laptop so nothing truly was lost. But the fact remained that now somebody else had them.
Shoving her belongings back into the cross-body bag, she slung it over her shoulder, grabbed her backpack and set off for her hotel on foot. It was less than a mile away and she wanted to get a feel for the city. Tomorrow, she’d be up early and visit Taposiris Magna in person.
Walking through the streets of Alexandria, Dallas felt a frisson of excitement. On these very streets, the queen of the Nile had walked. Or maybe been carried by young men fanning her with palm leaves? And this, Dallas thought, is where Cleopatra’s younger brother’s devious plan to win over Caesar had famously backfired when the teenage boy had produced the head of Caesar’s enemy, Pompey, to the Roman ruler as a gift. Rather than be grateful, Caesar had been disgusted and saddened shortly after aligned himself with Cleopatra after she snuck into his chambers and seduced him.
Dallas inhaled deeply. The air had the briny scent of the nearby Mediterranean Sea combined with cardamom, coffee, and falafel. The scent of food made Dallas’s stomach grumble. She veered off to a small sidewalk cart and thrust her money at the older man in exchange for a falafel and fava bean sandwich that she ate as she walked.
In her excitement, she dialed Colton. It went straight to voice mail. He was most likely on his transatlantic flight right then.
“Colton? I wish you were here. I’m in Alexandria. I’m freaking out a little. Cairo was great, of course, but this was Cleopatra’s home! Did you know it was once one of the greatest cities in the world? The only city bigger and richer was Rome.” She paused for breath. “Yes, I am fully nerding out—oh my God! I can see the fort where the lighthouse was. I can’t believe I’m seeing one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. O.M.G. And the water, it’s so blue. Better go now. This call might be costing me a fortune. Hurry up and get here already, McCloud!”
She hung up and continued, walking wide-eyed through the
city centre. She’d wished she’d brought a better scarf instead of the flimsy pink one on her head so she could fit in with the local Muslim women and not stand out like the tourist she was. She stopped and bought a giant scarf and wrapped it around her head and then felt more incognito, which was how she wanted to feel after being targeted in her home town and in Egypt. Dragging a suitcase behind her with it clunking along on the street behind her didn’t help her case, either.
When she reached her hotel, she realized it was basically a hostel. A tiny room with a bunk bed. The bathroom had mismatched tiles and exposed green piping sticking out of rough patches of plaster in the wall, but it was clean and didn’t appear to have bugs. And frankly, she’d slept in worse in North Dakota as a kid. After a long day of driving and then visiting Mt. Rushmore her parents found the hotel they’d booked online. The online description failed to mention the dead cockroaches brushed behind the bathroom door, nor the flimsy lock or broken down full-size refrigerator with the door hanging off it that stood ominously at the end of the beds. (They’d slept in sleeping bags until about two in the morning when her mother couldn’t take anymore and packed them up to start driving home.)
She was glad she hadn’t been fooled by the fancy name of this Egyptian hotel. The Alexander the Great House, was a steal for $20 a night in her book. Especially when she drew the curtains. Holy smokes. There it was—the Mediterranean Sea. Blue for as far as she could see. Awesome.
Dallas set up her laptop while perched on the edge of the bottom bunk bed and searched through her bag for the small embroidered patch. Propping it up on the pillow so she could see it as she typed, Dallas searched for information on it.
Twenty minutes later, she’d discovered that an identical image that was on the patch was the symbol of the Daughters of Isis.
Dallas thought back to the women in Tahrir Square who had taken her bag.
She had to assume the older woman was a decoy and accomplice in the robbery.
Maybe the two women had felt bad when they realized Dallas wasn’t some rich tourist and that’s why they returned her bag and money. But it still didn’t explain why they left that patch inside and took the SIM card. They hadn’t seemed to wish her harm. The patch clearly had to be some sort of message. But what had they been looking for in the first place?
Dallas was nearly certain that the crimes—the two burglaries back home and the robbery in Cairo—were not connected. That meant two people—or two groups—were after something she had. But what?
It had to be connected to her hunt for Cleopatra. Were they interested in her findings, her research, her theories on Cleopatra’s tomb? Or something else?
The sun was growing low, and although she wasn’t super hungry after her falafel and fava sandwich Dallas also didn’t think it would be wise to go hunting for food in the dark of a new city—not after her Cairo experience—so she headed out to look for some food to bring back to her room for a late dinner.
Outside her hotel, Dallas paused, trying to decide which direction to head. But then decided to head toward the waterfront. It was a good call.
She was soon armed with a large, fragrant, paper-wrapped bundle containing a fava bean dip, baladi bread, and a squid dish with tomato, onion, chili, and cilantro.
Dallas settled into her room and scarfed down the food while she read over the notes and documents and maps, she’d uploaded from her camera, trying to figure out just what the women now knew.
Well, at this point, all they knew was that Dallas had a theory that Cleopatra was buried in one of seven nearby temples and why. That was it.
Nothing on that SD card revealed that she’d narrowed it down to Taposiris Magna.
After a while, Dallas turned off the lights and crawled into bed, sleepy. But sleep eluded her. Instead, she lay awake in the dark feeling suddenly lonely and a little apprehensive for another two hours before falling asleep.
Colton couldn’t get here soon enough.
Nine
The next morning Dallas was waiting at the train station with two large coffees and a bag of Egyptian pastries when Colton stepped off the train.
Dallas couldn’t hide her smile and rushed over to kiss him on the cheek.
She drew back, her cheeks getting hot, but before she could speak Colton leaned in and kissed her long and hard full on the lips. Dallas forgot about the cups of coffee and the bag mashed between them until Colton pulled away and searched her eyes.
“I …” he began, but she interrupted him by handing him one of the coffees and the bag. “Here you go. I’m pretty sure I found the only donuts in Alexandria.
Dallas turned before he could see her flushed cheeks. Holy smokes. He’d just kissed her and boy, was it some kiss. Like fireworks-exploding-kiss. She was completely disoriented and felt a little weak. She needed time to compose herself. By the time, they exited the train station, she felt normal again and turned to him with a broad smile.
“I’m so happy to see you.”
Every word was true.
“Me, too.” His voice was quiet.
She quickly gulped some coffee and then scanned the streets.
“We can go straight to your hotel to dump your gear or I can give you a quick tour of the waterfront,” she said.
“Um, I don’t really have a hotel. In my rush, I …”
Awkward. “Oh.”
She thought for a minute. “Let’s go to my room, dump your gear and then we’ll grab some real food,” She gave the half-eaten pastry in his hand a smirk. “We have some time before we have to meet Abet. He’s our interpreter. He said he’s hired a car to take us to the site this afternoon. I can hardly wait.”
Over a lunch at a seaside café with the table overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Dallas and Colton ate a cheesy meat fondue with baguette-type bread she while she explained her theory about Taposiris Magna and how she’d come to that conclusion after seeing the stele in the Cairo museum.
“You’re onto something, Jones,” Colton said shaking his head. “It all makes so much sense.”
“We just need to find something, anything, to place Cleopatra at Taposiris during her lifetime and I think we can convince the minister to grant us an excavation permit.”
Colton broke off another piece of bread, dipped it into the fondue and smiled. “That sounds great.”
Colton and Abet hit it off like old college buddies reunited. Apparently, Abet had family in Minnesota and seeing Colton’s Twins baseball cap made them instant BFFs. Dallas rolled her eyes as they talked about baseball.
Abet only carried a backpack and said they should go straight to meet their driver at the city centre.
A man in a—dress—Dallas didn’t know what else to call it—leaned against a beat-up old white Volvo.
He grunted at Abet. They stood speaking for a few seconds while Colton and Dallas waited nearby. He cast a few suspicious glances at the couple waiting nearby and then spit on the ground. Dallas gave Abet an alarmed look but he winked at her.
As they got settled into the car, Dallas tried to make conversation, introducing herself to the driver and asking how he was. The man, however, ignored her or grunted so Dallas leaned back in her seat while he fiddled with something on the dashboard. She didn’t want to be the annoying dumb American tourist, but this dude clearly didn’t want to talk
As Colton and Abet settled in, reaching for seatbelts, they continued chattering away agreeably, talking football now. As they discussed the merits of zone defense and tight ends, or something that Dallas tuned out, her thoughts drifted to their destination. The only thing about Colton she couldn’t tune out was the pressure of his leg pressed against hers. The backseat of the car was small. Dallas had offered to sit in the middle when Abet had climbed into the back instead of taking the empty passenger seat. Dallas didn’t question why. Maybe he knew the driver was grumpy and stand offish.
But now the pressure of Colton’s thigh against hers was threatening to drive her mad. So instead of thinking about Col
ton naked, she turned her thoughts to the temple.
Then the car jerked to a start and Dallas flew back against her seat.
The quiet driver was suddenly a madman behind the wheel, cursing and banging on the steering wheel and honking.
Dallas clutched Colton’s knee so hard he yelped.
“What the?” he said.
Abet was leaning casually against his door facing them and continuing to talk about the Dallas Cowboy quarterback’s injured wrist. Dallas cringed as they came up on a car in front of them that was going at least twenty miles per hour slower than they were. More honking and yelling from the driver and then she was thrown against the window as he swerved quickly into the opposing lane and then swooped back into his lane second before smacking into a honking car coming at them.
Dallas felt the blood drain from her face.
Then, to her astonishment, the driver came to a screeching halt at a stoplight when they had a green light. Dallas whipped her head behind her and sure enough a car was barreling toward them and most likely going to rear end them.
“The light is green!” The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop them. The driver met her eyes in the rearview mirror. There was no mistaking the dirty look he gave her.
At the same time, a car flew in the intersection before them obviously running the red light it had.
The driver gave her a smug look and then punched the gas, propelling them through the intersection just in time to avoid the car behind them. That driver had slammed on his brakes and came skidding to a stop right at the spot where they had just been.
Dallas’s heart was racing and she found she was clutching Colton’s hand, her fingernails digging into his palm. He looked ashen, as well and his other hand was clutching the arm rest on the door.
Meanwhile, Abet was still talking as if nothing had happened.
“Holy smokes, Abet. What’s up with our psycho, dress-wearing driver?”
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