institution. She wondered if he preferred dawn or sunset, classical music or rock, and what he thought about before falling asleep at night.
Most of all, she wanted to know what he thought of her, and if he had really wanted to kiss her earlier. She was almost sure he had. But just because she’d helped save his life didn’t mean he owed her answers to the highly personal questions buzzing in her brain, so Nora let him steer the talk back to safer shores.
It was better this way. Nora knew how to handle herself professionally. She relaxed as they discussed the dig. The quarry they were headed for had supplied copper to one of the dawn kingdoms of the Bronze Age—Egypt’s Old Kingdom—over four thousand years ago. The period fascinated Nora, and was her particular specialty. In many ways, civilization had been invented then, with all its banes and blessings.
They weren’t here to excavate the quarry itself, however. That had been done long ago. Recently, a cave had been discovered after being blocked by a rockfall for many years, and preliminary investigation indicated that it had been used as temporary living quarters by the overseers and slaves sent to work the quarry. That cave was Nora’s objective.
Or it had been—until she found the second cave. And the tunnel leading off it.
“An unlooted burial,” she said now. “Think of it! Admittedly, it won’t be a rich find—the provincial governors were still being interred near the pharaoh at the time the tunnel was blocked, so whoever ended up here couldn’t be terribly important.”
“Are you sure it is a burial?” he asked. “I’ve never heard of a tomb so far from the central kingdom.”
“What else could it be? The tunnel started out as a natural one, but it’s been shaped. No mistake about that. The marks from the tools are easy to read. And the debris used to block it is typical of the fill used in burials for later Dynasties of the period.”
He grinned suddenly. “I hope you’re right. I’d love to be part of a dig that uncovers an unlooted burial, even if it does belong to some minor official. The puzzle of why anyone would have been entombed so far from the Nile is enough to get your blood pumping all by itself, isn’t it?”
“If only I could get Ibrahim’s blood pumping, too. Without his backing, the Ministry won’t approve bringing in more equipment or workers. We’re doing the best we can, but we’re damnably limited.”
They’d reached the quarry. It wasn’t deep at this end, and the side was sandy and sloping. Nora automatically started to take her usual headlong route down, stopping in mid-stride when she realized she ought to at least point out the easier path to Alex.
She looked back up at him. “Most everyone goes down over there.” She gestured at a more gradual slope, where the tramping of many feet had formed a discernible trail.
“You don’t, though.”
Something about the way he stood, with the morning sky behind him gathering brightness as the fleeting colors of dawn faded into day, made her breath catch.
He looked so very solid. Strong. It was hard to believe he’d nearly died—actually had died, for a few minutes—just a month ago. “I don’t see much point in taking the long way around if I don’t have to.” Oddly flustered, she turned away and took the slope in long, sliding strides.
He came down right behind her. “Are you impatient,” he said when he reached the bottom, “or just fond of taking the most difficult route to your goal?”
“I save my patience for when it matters—like over there.” She nodded at the other end of the small quarry, where scaffolding had been erected to make it easier to reach the cave she’d discovered last month. The cave’s entry was a narrow crevice nearly twenty feet above the floor of the quarry. “Do you want to go inside?”
“Definitely.” He started walking, and she fell in step beside him. “I don’t see how you spotted it. The entry is almost invisible from down here. Unless you’re a caver?” He gave her another of those charming smiles he seemed well-stocked with. A personal sort of smile that invited her to move closer, to share space and thoughts. “I have a friend who climbs, walks or crawls into every hole in the ground he can find. He considers it great fun.”
“Not me.” Small, dark spaces spooked her, they always had. There was no particular reason for it. Nora hadn’t mentioned her minor phobia to anyone on her crew, and didn’t intend to. As long as she had light and something to occupy her mind, she was okay. “But I think my brain was permanently warped towards spotting them the last time I was in the Sinai.”
“That must be when you learned to like goat cheese.”
She grinned. “As a matter of fact, it was.”
“What were you doing here?”
“I wasn’t here, exactly. I was farther south, at Gebel Musa. That’s Mount Sinai—but you know that, of course.” She kept her attention on where they were going. It was easier than looking at him to see if he was smiling in that personal way again.
“How did working at Gebel Musa warp your brain?”
“I spent the summer before my senior year in college mapping and cataloging the tiny caves used as cells by religious hermits in the Byzantine period. One of my professors was keen on tying some theories of his about the period to the hermitage movement.”
“Students do make good cheap labor.”
“Exactly. Let me tell you, I got very good at spotting caves. Put me anywhere near a good-sized heap of rock and dirt, and I automatically look for caves.”
“What made you decide to investigate this one, once you spotted it? Especially if you aren’t into caving. It would have been a difficult climb.”
“A dream.” She laughed at the faint skepticism that crossed his face. “I’m not claiming psychic powers, but the unconscious mind does notice things the waking mind misses. See along here?”
They’d reached the scaffolding at the base of the cliff. She pointed up at the cave’s entrance. “There used to be a path along there, a ledge. It came down recently—maybe only two or three hundred years ago. You can see that the edges of the rock where it broke away aren’t worn, and there’s a lot of the rubble here at the base. I didn’t notice all of this consciously, but some corner of my mind did. I dreamed about finding a cave here, so naturally the next day I checked to see if my dream had any basis in reality.”
“Not everyone has such confidence in their dreams.”
She shrugged. “It made me curious, that’s all. We knew they’d used one cave as living quarters, so it seemed possible they might have used this one for something, too.”
“I should have known you’d be a dreamer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Aren’t all archaeologists dreamers?” His eyes were opaque now, the light blocked. It made them unreadable. “Caught in the romance of the past, more fascinated by the traces left by people who lived and died long ago than by the lives being lived around them in the present.”
“That sounds more like criticism than a compliment. I could have sworn you were an archaeologist yourself.”
“I
