Relentless Read Online Free

her, even if he was thinking about getting the oil in his car changed.
    The energy humming off him was almost tangible, even though he was perfectly still. His eyes looked quite green as he steadily watched her. Observed her. “And?” he prodded not all that patiently as she considered the best way to bounce outside light to reflect off his face.
    Right. The point. “Prior to that, he’d spent a year in Egypt with Dylan Brengard—that’s his assistant—searching and confirming. To make sure that when he published again, he had all his t ’s crossed and his i ’s dotted.” Because she’d threatened her beloved father with dismemberment if he was once more touting his find without sufficient proof—the actual tomb, ready to be opened and photographed.
    “Miss Magee—” He caught himself. “Isis. I know you want to believe that he really did find the tomb this time,but the reality is that he’d ‘found’ it a half-dozen times before. And each time his peers and the international press became less and less gullible. He has Alzheimer’s—wouldn’t it be best for everyone if you allowed the media to forget as well? Surely in his condition, he can’t be as bothered by this as you seem to be?”
    Not acceptable. She’d heard the same song and dance a dozen times, and she wasn’t having any of it. Not when she’d paid, and paid well, for his services. “There were fourteen of them on the dig. Some he’d rehired from various other expeditions. Half of them were new, fresh, eager to prove what he believed. He phoned me on the afternoon of the nineteenth day. He was almost incoherent with excitement.”
    She put up her hand as he started to tip back his hand in the drink salute again. “No, he wasn’t drunk, Mr. Thorne. He was happy, jubilantly so. He told me they’d found the tomb. Really found the tomb. In the Valley of the Scorpions.” Not strictly true, but that had been her conclusion after he’d returned home.
    “Not the Valley of the Queens ?” When she shook her head, he continued with a hint of skepticism, his tone Sahara dry: “That’s an area of more than a hundred square miles. Was he more specific?”
    “No. He felt strongly that if the information got into the wrong hands, someone with more resources would try to scoop him before he could get inside and document what he found.” She wrapped her fingers around the amulet her father had had made for her in a bazaar inLuxor in the good old days, when he’d been riding fame and glory for all he was worth. “ Everyone on the team saw the entrance; a couple of them dug far enough inside to retrieve some small artifacts. He had all the tools and supplies they needed. They were going to start digging the next morning.”
    “And did they?”
    Isis hesitated, because this was the tricky part. “The team returned to their camp for the night. They’d gone just far enough inside the tomb to ascertain that it was Cleopatra’s. My father assured me he had some small artifacts to show he was right—”
    “Why do I hear a giant but coming?”
    “He was found the next afternoon, dehydrated and disoriented and with a scalp laceration, indicating he’d been hit with a blunt instrument and left for dead. The entire team had been brutally murdered.” The thought of it still gave her goose bumps. “The authorities said by local tribesmen.”
    “It didn’t strike you as odd that out of all those strong, able-bodied members of his crew, he was the only one left alive?”
    Not at the time. “I was just happy that he was alive,” she admitted. “I had no reason to question it then. At first, after I brought him home, he remembered absolutely nothing. He’d suffered blunt head trauma. He didn’t even recall that he’d gone back to Egypt. It took several months for the memories to start coming back. He remembered leaving the group at dusk while theywere preparing the evening meal. He said he wanted to go back to the tomb to take more pictures.