As Baahir came up on Kasr Al Nile Street, he was bumped again. This time, he was forced off the road, clipping a concrete telephone pole as he passed. The passenger side window exploded into a million pieces, bathing Baahir in more shrapnel. The bedlam was too much for Baahir to navigate. The SUV flipped onto its side and skidded sideways across the sidewalk in a shriek of protesting metal. Sparks flew, and so did a flurry of nonsensical obscenities. The latter originated from Baahir’s shouts as he and the vehicle flipped onto the roof. Baahir braced himself with his hands, gluing them to the ceiling above his head. The vehicle spun and careened into a storefront before finally coming to a stop.
Though groggy and a bit lightheaded, Baahir was still aware enough to unbuckle his seatbelt. He fell to the roof, landing on something that felt like a steel pipe. In the chaos of it all, Baahir’s eyes snapped open when he figured out what it was.
He wiped away the blood running down the left side of his face and crawled out of the totaled vehicle with the artifact and his cellphone tucked against his chest in his left hand. He pushed aside the sting of the small shards of glass, forcing themselves deeper into his right palm as he moved.
Sirens wailed in the distance, but Baahir had a feeling that the authorities wouldn’t get there in time to save his life. So, he ran, aiming for a nearby alleyway. Automatic gunfire pursued Baahir. Bullets pinged all around him, impacting the walls of the surrounding buildings and shattering the business’ windows. The barrage made Baahir flinch, and he reflexively closed his eyes and turned his head away. He clipped his shoulder on the alley entrance, clumsily bouncing off it and into the opposite wall. The accidental change of direction had saved his life. A single bullet impacted the wall right where his head should have been.
Baahir didn’t stop to thank his lucky stars. He pushed himself off the wall, gathered his footing, and ran as fast as his battered and bruised body would allow him. It was amazing what adrenaline could do.
Baahir, an accomplished collegiate long-distance runner, had never run so fast.
Zahra’s phone vibrated noisily across her desk, startling her. She snapped her head up, tossing her disheveled hair back over her shoulders. Blinking awake, she smacked her dry, parched lips together, looking for her bottle of water. Not finding it, Zahra groaned and checked the time on her laptop’s screen and saw that she had been out cold for nearly thirty minutes. Grant should have been by to find her, but he had been engrossed in his own work all night, same as Zahra.
Grant Upton had recently been assigned to Zahra as her assistant. She didn’t want one, yet here he was, at the behest of her superiors. Grant was a spectacled, athletic college kid — an intern — studying archaeology at Oxford under the institute’s top professor, Zahra’s father, George Kane. The whole thing felt like an attempt by her father to keep an eye on her. Zahra knew her “old man” was aware of her off-the-books excursions, and he worried deeply for her safety.
Currently, Zahra and Grant were sorting through artifacts and photos she had taken while she was down in the Amazon. She had successfully retrieved her pack and the rest of her gear from outside the quaint plunge pool — the same pool she had used to enter the underground realm of
The mission, as a whole, had been a bust. While she
The museum’s restoration department was now doing its best to save the heavily soiled book. Its torn and waterlogged pages were nearly indiscernible by the time she had made it back to London. It was a long shot, but if they could repair even a fraction of the journal’s guts, her travels would have been worth it. The Fawcetts were important to the people of England. Anything relating to them would surely draw more visitors to the museum.
Zahra had almost died several times, too — that had to count for something.
She wiped the sleep from her eyes and snagged her phone, and saw that it was Dina who was calling. Zahra checked the time again.
Zahra rolled her eyes. She knew why…
“Hey, Dina,” she said, yawning as she answered.
The Brit was yelling at the top of her lungs, speaking over a voluminous, bassy beat. If Zahra had to guess, the woman was at a club and was utterly trashed.
“Yeah, Dina… it’s me.”
“Dina!” she yelled. “
