Singh snapped his fingers. “Wait, wait, that actually works for me. Gore, you thinkin’ what I’m thinking?”
Blinding pain exploded out from the back of Nevada’s skull. She went down on her knees, heard Candice scream her name. The world bobbed and weaved as it tried to get away from her. She fell onto her outstretched hands and felt Candice kneeling beside her, holding her close, saying her name all soft.
“Ha, I love that!” Singh enthused. “Right in the back of the head, wow. Thunk! This is how you get the Christmas bonus. You and you, goatee guys, you’re on old man duty. Bring him.”
Nevada heard two sets of boots hoofing away from her. The world swam in and out of focus. She held the back of her head; she’d have a lump there in no time. Singh was right—it was a choice pistol-whipping. She couldn’t have done it better herself.
Singh knelt down in front of her. “I actually really like you, Easy. But unfortunately, so does Candice here. So, if she doesn’t want you to be in just crazy amounts of pain, she’ll do as she’s told.”
Gore cleared his throat. “Sir, if we have the old man, we really don’t need two hostages.”
Singh pointed at him. “That is a good point. I take it you’re voting for old school? You think Easy’ll be more trouble than she’s worth?”
“When has she not been?” Gore reasoned.
Singh backed away. “Don’t get it on my suit. The humidity is bad enough for it…”
Gore clicked his tongue and a commando collected Candice, pulling her away kicking and screaming. By now, Nevada was well enough to sit up, parking herself on her ass and rubbing her aching head.
“You and I, we may be assholes, but hell if we won’t cop to it,” Gore said. His gun cleared its holster. “Business.”
“Business,” Nevada repeated. “Do I get to see it coming?”
“Least I can do.”
Nevada fixed him with a look. “Don’t miss.”
He took aim. Nevada closed her eyes. Russell. In another life, she would’ve named her son Russell.
Sounds of a scuffle. Nevada twisted her neck to see Usama breaking free of the two men who had collared him. His hands were tied, but he drove an elbow into one’s nose, kicked the other in the balls. As the man twisted away protectively, Usama threw his bound hands over the man’s head, down to his chest, grabbing the grenades hanging there.
His eyes locked with Nevada’s. “Get her out of here.”
“Shoot them both, shoot them both—!” Gore was shouting, but Usama had already pulled the pins. The grenades went off, erasing all three men from existence. The pressure wave broke over the rest of them, knocking everyone to the sand.
Adrenaline wouldn’t let Nevada stay down. She was suddenly on her feet, taking Candice by the hand, running . But Candice was pulling against her. Nevada turned her head and saw Candice stooping to grab the skull away from Singh’s limp hands. Nevada was trying to think of which obscenity to refer to her with when Candice threw it into the lava tube—a series of weighty thuds as it bounced its way down the shaft.
“Fetch!” Candice cried, and then they both were running.
They didn’t get far. Gunshots crackled overhead in less than half a minute. Nevada threw herself behind one of the rock formations, dragging Candice along with her. Unarmed, it wouldn’t take the commandos long to close in on them. The only thing slowing them down was Singh frantically demanding someone go down and get the skull while Gore was ordering them all after the women.
Nevada reached into her boot and came up with another cell phone from the boat. “Just once, I would like Plan A to work out.”
She’d programmed the number into the phone’s memory back in the dome. All it took was holding down the right number on the keypad.
The explosive she’d planted above the pyramid went off, breaking apart the lava dome, letting down hundreds of tons of sand. It had to come from somewhere, and a sinkhole opened underneath the canopy, swallowing it up along with, judging by the screams, several people. All the smoke from the burning oil was released into the atmosphere, a scale model mushroom cloud rising out of the earth.
That would have to do for a distraction. Taking Candice’s hand again, Nevada ran. She felt like she could run forever. Adrenaline gave her wings and between pissed off, terrified, and whatever the hell she felt when Candice squeezed her hand like the sky was falling, she had plenty of adrenaline.
But not enough.
It might’ve been minutes later, or hours, but the two jeeps swung in from the sides and crossed in front of them, coming to a stop. Guns pointed at them. Gore swept out of his seat with another man following behind.
There was no point in more running. No point in trying to fight. All Nevada could do was get Candice killed alongside her. Her body was rebelling against her, heart pumping hard, muscles clenching, nerves vibrating, but there was nowhere for all that energy to go. She sat down in the sand and gave her lungs the air they were begging for.
Candice still held onto her hand. “It’s fine,” she said, gasping for breath herself. “It’ll be fine. They can’t kill me, and they can’t kill you, or I won’t do what they want. I’ll do whatever they want, I just… I won’t let them…”
Nevada ran her thumb over Candice’s knuckles. “Do whatever you have to do. Stay alive. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not,” Candice giggled, sounding like she was suffering from oxygen deprivation. “I’m worried about me. If you don’t make it—who’s gonna come rescue me?”
Nevada ventured a smile. “If I do save you, does that mean I get a hood pass?”
Candice’s hand was gone then. Gore wrenched her away from Nevada and shoved her into his subordinate’s arms. The man started dragging her back to the jeeps while Gore stood over Nevada.
“How’s this hostage thing work, anyway?” Nevada asked him. “Like, what do I put down on my taxes? Employee, contractor—unpaid internship?”
Gore’s pistol appeared in his hand like a magician summoning up a playing card. “This isn’t an Indiana Jones movie. You’re not a hero. It’s noir, and you’re the dumb schmuck who gets bumped off because you got tied up with the wrong girl.”
“You need me,” Nevada said. “She won’t do shit for you unless I’m alive and well.”
“Maybe,” Gore said. “Maybe she’ll change her tune after I break a few of her fingers. Either way, not your problem anymore.”
He raised the gun.
“Wait!” Nevada cried, throwing her hand up.
Gore lowered the muzzle a degree. “Famous last words?”
“Rhetorical question,” she replied. “Why would I hide a block of plastic explosive and a prepaid cell phone somewhere you’d really rather not know about for all this time just to air out a cave full of smoke?”
Gore crouched down in front of her. “Do tell.”
Nevada shrugged. “I just figured that if, say, there were a bunch of pissed off terrorists somewhere in the vicinity, it seems like the kind of thing that would get their attention.”
Gore wagged the gun barrel at her. “Nice try.”
“I thought so.”
His finger tightened on the trigger. And as the trigger moved back, a launched RPG round rang through the air, slamming an explosion into one of the jeeps that flung it into the air and brought it back down as flaming wreckage. The airburst knocked Gore’s hand to the side as he fired. The bullet splashed into the desert next to Nevada’s head; she felt sand slashing against her cheek.
She lunged for Gore, pushing the gun up and out of the way as she tackled him to the ground, her body on top of his. He rolled over on top of her, bullets pumping impotently from the pistol, massively overshadowed by the gunfire erupting from the dunes and being returned from the surviving jeep. Nevada wrenched her elbow to the side, clocking Gore’s temple—he brought a headbutt down on her that stunned her before he rolled away. He came up in a crouch, holding the pistol on her. Nevada came up holding the clip.
He pulled the trigger anyway and the pistol clicked on an empty chamber. She pitched the clip at his face. He staggered back with the hit and she rushed him, but his arm lashed out, catching her upside the head with the unloaded gun. Nevada was flung to the ground, her brain only keeping a toehold on her skull.
She forced herself up only to see the other jeep speeding toward her, Candice in it, the grille growing in her vision like a nuclear explosion. Nevada threw herself back down and it went right over her, clearing her back by millimeters as it pulled to a stop. Bullets spat into the sand and sparked off the chassis, voices shouting hurriedly.
“Get in!”
“Go, go, go!”
The jeep rocked on its suspension as Gore threw himself inside—the engine roared and the tires tore at the earth until they were clawing forward, pulling the jeep off of Nevada. She picked herself up to see a trio of Khamsin horsemen riding for her, AKs in hand, blazing away.
Not my best plan , Nevada thought as she turned and ran, legs pumping, arms knifing at her sides, putting all her energy into catching up with the jeep. It had taken some punishment—the windshield cracked, the driver bleeding profusely, a dead body in the backseat. Only one other commando was still alive, and he was restraining Candice as she fought like hell to get free.
Gore ripped that man’s sidearm from its holster.
Nevada poured on the speed, putting everything into the next few steps. All she had to do was make the jeep, take out Gore, take out the other commando, take out the driver, and then they were home free. Bullets whistled overhead, followed by the ululations from the horsemen behind her. Their hooves sounded like thunder. Being trampled seemed like an ugly way to die.
Gore took aim. You can make it , Nevada told herself, pain ratcheting through her body as old injuries flared back to life.
Gore had the pistol aimed right at her when a salvo from the horsemen shot past, deflecting off the jeep’s armor in a shower of sparks. A ricochet caught him in the arm—the pistol was jogged from his hand. It bounced off the sand and Nevada dove for it. Landed on her belly, fit it into her hand, and twisted her body around as she skidded in the sand. The pistol roared in her hand three times before the horsemen rode by her, hooves just missing her prone body. Then, the horses still galloping, their riders slumped and fell from the saddle.
“Thanks for the help, guys,” Nevada wheezed as she picked herself up. The jeep was already receding into the distance.
She picked her way across the desert, following in its tire tracks. Her ribs were on fire. The bullet wound in her left shoulder that she’d thought had been healing so well was torn open now, weeping blood down her arm. She kept moving.
It was time enough to think. Death. Killing. She’d gotten so used to killing other people that at some point, she’d become comfortable with killing parts of herself as well. She supposed everyone did that, just by never letting them be born. She’d been Thea the soldier, Thea the college student, not Thea the investment banker or Thea the doctor. She’d even killed Thea the archaeologist, but then, she’d never really been her. Even back then, she’d been Easy Nevada.
Thea the mother. That she’d been. Then she had killed her, and Russell Quatermain along with her. She’d let him die so Harry Calhoun could live. And now he was who she had set out to save. Because Russell Quatermain hadn’t stayed in his grave. He’d come back, all responsibilities and obligations, and Nevada couldn’t kill him a second time. Not again. She wondered if that meant Easy Nevada was dying—the mercenary, the hedonist, the grave robber—going the way of the dodo so she could reanimate into Thea the mother. Like a horror movie, she wouldn’t come back right; she’d have blood on her hands and a thousand bad memories in her head, so she wasn’t really Thea either.
If she wasn’t Easy Nevada and she wasn’t Thea Quatermain, who the fuck was she?
As she’d expected, the helicopter took off long before she even got close. Easy money Candice was on it. The skull too. And Nevada was in the middle of the Sahara, surrounded by desert for hundreds of miles on all sides. No transportation. No one who knew she was out here. Khamsin looking for her and Singh leaving her for dead.
Nevada checked the gun. A Smith & Wesson 4506. Three rounds left in the magazine.
The sun set. No reason not to move.
“Round two, motherfuckers.”
Epilogue
David Pike was in perfect
darkness.
He could’ve had his eyes closed, only there were no flashes of color, no fireworks, no sparks, no reddening blushes when he squeezed his eyelids against each other. He didn’t know if he had eyes at all. There seemed no difference between trying to move his eyelids and not.
It hurt, but distantly, like it was happening to someone else. To women. To children.
“You’re awake,” a woman’s voice said. It had the slow coolness of the islands, some of the musical harmony of the African veldt, but he couldn’t place the accent.
“Yes,” Pike said. His mouth felt numb. It didn’t seem to fit the words he was saying. He didn’t think he could hear them… was he deaf? If he was deaf, how could he hear her?
Was he dead?
That was too frightening to ask.
“Do I have eyes?”
“We managed to save one,” the woman said. “But it was damaged. It needs to rest. Like you.”
“Who else?” Pike’s mouth felt like it was cracking with each word. His teeth stung like he’d bitten down too hard on something that wouldn’t break. “Who else did you save?”
“No one else. Just you. You’re a miracle.”
The darkness seemed more solid than anything Pike had ever touched, but he still couldn’t feel it. It was tantalizingly out of reach. “There are no miracles. No God. There’s just… nothingness.”
“No. Not yet. But there could be. Drink,” she said, and gave him water. “Eat,” she said, and gave him food. It was something soft, too soft to be chewed, but there was no telling what it was when he couldn’t taste it. Maybe he was eating the darkness.
“Who are you?”
“I am the Lady Tendai. Your friend Easy Nevada has made it her life’s work to find twelve crystal skulls. And you are going to help me find the thirteenth.”
The next book in this series will be published in 2020.
About Georgette Kaplan
It was never easy for Georgette Kaplan. She was born a poor child in Mississippi, where she still remembers sitting on the porch with her family, singing and dancing around her. After learning she was adopted, at the age of 21 she hitchhiked to St. Louis, where she worked at a gas station and in a traveling carnival. After a shooting incident at the gas station, she decided to quit and pursue her lifelong dream of a career in writing. She now lives back in Mississippi with her life partner Marie.
CONNECT WITH GEORGETTE
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E-Mail: [email protected]
Other Books from Ylva Publishing
www.ylva-publishing.com
Easy Nevada and the Pyrimid’s Curse
(The Cushing-Nevada Chronicles – Book 1)
Georgette Kaplan
ISBN: 978-3-96324-071-3 (mobi), 978-3-96324-072-0 (epub)
Length: 72,000 words (203 pages)
Easy Nevada is a fortune hunter with an eye on a pyramid buried for two thousand years. She’ll do anything to get her hands on its untold riches, if she can just get past the deadly traps that protect them.
Candice Cushing is an archaeologist born in Sudan and raised in Britain, who is drawn toward the mysterious pyramid that she sees as a piece of her heritage.
Farouq Al-Jabbar doesn’t see it as either history or treasure. The zealot has come to destroy anything that smells of blasphemy, and anyone who gets in his way.
In this wild adventure, as the stakes ratchet up amid the burning, shifting sands, the women fighting for their lives start to wonder if they’re really so different after all…and if that cursed pyram
id has been buried for a reason.
Primal Touch
Amber Jacobs
ISBN: 978-3-95533-859-6 (mobi), 978-3-95533-860-2 (epub)
Length: 99,000 words (255 pages)
Rumors of a rare, legendary, white tiger lure acclaimed wildlife photographer Ashley Richards deep into the Indian jungle. There, she crosses paths with a ruthless poacher and Leandra, a mysterious, feral woman with a dark past, who seems at one with the fierce felines she protects. In this charged, exotic, lesbian romance, Ashley is caught up in danger, a deadly vendetta, and the clash of two starkly different worlds. It changes everything she knows.
Candice Cushing and the Lost Tomb of Cleopatra
© 2019 by Georgette Kaplan
ISBN (mobi): 978-3-96324-305-9
ISBN (epub): 978-3-96324-306-6
Also available as paperback.
Published by Ylva Pub lishing, legal entity of Ylva Verlag, e.Kfr.
Ylva Verlag, e.Kfr.
Owner: Astrid Ohletz
Am Kirschgarten 2
65830 Kriftel
Germany
www.ylva-publishing.com
First edition: 2019
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Credits
Edited by Alissa McGown
Cover Design and Print Layout by Streetlight Graphics
Candice Cushing and the Lost Tomb of Cleopatra Page 24