Danger in the Desert

She would have to email him about her near disastrous camel ride and send him a digital picture of the little scarab now tucked in her tote bag. Maybe he could interpret the markings on the beetle’s back. He’d probably tell her the inscription read “Made in China,” she thought ruefully. She didn’t care. It was …

A shrill horn and the screech of tires cut into her musing. Gasping, she thrust out an arm to brace herself as a taxi shot into their lane. Her self-appointed chauffeur stood on the brakes and let loose with some Arabic. When Cairo’s unbelievable snarl of exhaust-spitting traffic had sorted out a little, Jaci gave him a sideways glance.

“You must spend a lot of time in Egypt if you’ve learned to speak the language.”

“I’ve picked up a few phrases. Not anything you’d want me to translate, though.”

There it was again—that quicksilver grin. Jaci felt its impact all the way down to her toes. She curled them inside her sneakers and barely cringed when Deke had to swerve into another lane to avoid a donkey cart filled with cabbages piled to an impossible height.

Jaci twisted around for a better look. This was Cairo at its most vivid, she thought on a rush of pure delight. Donkeys were vying for road space with exhaust-spewing vehicles. Multistory concrete buildings were decorated with Arabic arches. Old men were fishing in canals dug by their ancestors millennia ago.

“So where’s home for you, Jaci?”

The question brought her back around in her seat. “Gainesville, Florida. I’m an assistant research librarian at the university there.”

“Guess that explains the gator on your friend’s visor. The lady who took me for a white slaver.”

“That’s Mrs. Grimes,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. “She’s a former high school teacher. She takes nothing—and no one—at face value.”

“Smart lady.”

Very smart, Ace thought with a sideways glance at his target.

“Here we are.”

He dodged a stream of oncoming vehicles and pulled through an arched entry into a palm-lined courtyard. Kahil’s Egyptian-born, American-educated wife had opened her free clinic two years ago. Ace had been present at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. His company also contributed heavily to the clinic’s operation. Dr. Fahranna El Hassan was nothing if not persuasive.

She was also tall, slender, gorgeous—and iron-willed enough to have tamed Wild Man Kahil. And now that she had her husband on a short leash, she’d moved Ace to the top of her list for reform—a fact she reminded him of after an attendant had showed him and Jaci Thornton into an exam room and the doctor burst into the room.

“Deke!” She threw her arms around him, digging her stethoscope into his chest as she kissed him on both cheeks. “Why didn’t you give Kahil and me more warning of your visit? I have a cousin I want you to meet. She just might be the woman to wean you from your evil ways. Or …”

Her curious eyes swept over the female perched on the edge of an exam table.

“Have you brought one of your own for me to check out?”

“Curb your matchmaking instincts, Fahranna. I’ve brought you a patient.”

All brisk business now, the physician addressed Jaci in her usual blunt manner. “I am Dr. El Hassan. And you are?”

“Jaci Thornton. Mr. Griffin, uh, Deke and I just met.”

Fahranna lifted one delicately arched brow. “Did you?”

“We were at the pyramids. He was kind enough to bring me here after I fell off a camel.”

“Ah, yes,” she said with a wry smile. “The camels. What did you injure?”

“My knee, but it hardly hurts anymore.”

“Let’s take a look at it, shall we? You will have to remove your slacks. Deke, take yourself back to the waiting room.”

To Jaci’s relief, Dr. El Hassan’s diagnosis confirmed her own. She hadn’t broken any bones, just collected another bruise. The doctor recommended an ice pack if her knee started to swell and heavy-duty aspirin for pain.

When she walked Jaci to the waiting room, Deke tossed aside the newspaper he’d been perusing and offered his arm for support. Jaci took it with a shy smile that the physician didn’t fail to note.

“You must come for dinner,” she announced with a gleam in her dark eyes. “Kahil will want to meet the woman who moves his friend to such noble acts of chivalry.”

Jaci opened her mouth to decline the offer, but her companion preempted her.

“You know I never turn down a free dinner, Fahranna. I’ll give you a call later and set up a time that fits with your schedule and Jaci’s.”

Chapter 3

Ace waited until he had his target back in the rental car and was headed back to Giza to dig the hook in deeper.

“How long will you be in Cairo, Jaci?”

“Three more days.”

“What does your agenda look like?”

“It’s packed, morning to night. We’re doing a breakfast cruise on the Nile, a visit to the pyramids of Saqqara and a whole afternoon at the Cairo Museum.”

With its priceless gold and lapis lazuli statue of the goddess Ma’at, Ace remembered with a sudden tightening of his belly.

Coincidence? Could be. A trip to Cairo’s famed museum was on every tourist’s agenda.

“And,” his passenger added with a flush of excitement, “we’re going to the Valley of the Kings! We’ve got a whole day to explore Luxor and Karnak.”

The Valley of the Kings, where Hatshepsut had constructed the temple to Ma’at. The same temple supposedly raided by tomb robbers more than a thousand years ago, giving birth to the legend that the goddess would someday send a messenger that it was time to restore cosmic order.

Another coincidence? Once again, it could be. But Ace had spent too many years in this business to take anything on supposition.

“What evening could you have dinner with Fahranna and her husband? You need to see their home,” he added when she looked doubtful. “It’s been in Fahranna’s family for generations. The mosaic tiles in the entryway were supposedly fired in the same kiln as the tiles in the Grand Mosque.”

“Really?”

She chewed on her lower lip, obviously torn. Ace reeled her in even further.

“The garden alone will make think you’re in something right out of Arabian Nights. Moorish arches, marble fountains, swaying palms. Last time I was there, they even had a nightingale warbling away.”

“It sounds incredible.”

“It is. How about tomorrow evening?”

She’d taken the bait. Her eyes were as bright as emeralds.

“If that works for you and your friends.”