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But if he were putting money on it, he would bet that Kazemde was located in the Valley of the Queens.
Either way, they had a direction. He just needed to get his hands on a survey team and equipment. Oh, shit. And government permits. They weren’t going to let him begin crawling through this region of Luxor without all the legal documents properly prepared.
This was it!
He honestly didn’t care if the damn tomb had been raided thousands of years ago. It was very likely to be empty if Kazemde was linked to the conspiracy that killed the pharaoh. Both the tombs of the pharaoh’s wife, Tiye, and her son, Pentawer, were emptied after they were found guilty of the plot. However, there was a very good chance the hieroglyphs and paintings on the walls would still be in pristine condition after all this time. The tombs that came out of the reign of Ramesses III were the most remarkable. The historical stories were the only things that mattered to him.
And finding the tomb.
Yes. He wanted to be the first to find the Tomb of Kazemde.
A little squeak of excitement escaped him as he jumped to his feet and bolted for the door. He needed to find Ed. The merc was going to be so excited to hear about this. Since he’d gotten his journal notes back and started working on this puzzle in earnest, Ed had been right there, asking questions and doing everything he could to learn about this process.
He bounded down the stairs and flew through the house, trying to find anyone. Usually the place was crowded with at least three or four other people. When they weren’t making plans, they were sitting around bullshitting or possibly cooking up any number of strange meals. They might be in Egypt, but these guys had traveled the world. As a result, when they cooked, it was a strange hodgepodge of things that filled the house with a variety of rich scents.
The living room and kitchen were empty. He was heading for the dining room where Kairo was typically set up, following the sound of low, rushed voices. As he reached the doorway, he nearly collided with Kairo. The man just barely managed to stop in time, but it was too fast for Izzie, who slammed into his back.
“Sorry, my darling,” Izzie instantly murmured.
“Max!” Kairo shouted, sounding surprised. And he shouldn’t have. Something was going on. Something bad.
“What happened?” Max demanded. His eyes skimmed the room to find Alexei seated at the table, still glaring at the computer screen. That was it. No Will, Charlie, West, or Soren. And no Edison. “What’s going on? Did the guys go out to follow up on some new information?”
“I’ve got my supplies,” Will announced as he came down the stairs. “But if this keeps up, we’re going to need to make a run. Knowing Ed, he’s worse than he stated and he’s going to use up all my surgical thread and gauze. I—” Will stopped midsentence when he finally spotted Max standing in front of Kairo and Izzie. He sighed. “Fuck.”
Max sucked in a harsh breath. It was as though someone had kicked him in the center of his chest. “I don’t understand. What happened to Ed? How did he get hurt?”
“They had a meeting today, and things—” Kairo’s halting explanation was stopped when the front door was jerked open and Soren walked in, followed by Ed.
Max instantly abandoned Kairo in favor of getting some real answers directly from the man involved. And then Max would decide whether to kick the shit out of him.
“Ed!”
The mercenary’s head instantly popped up and his eyes widened in a sort of panic the second they fell on him. “Max! Hey, you!”
“Don’t you dare ‘hey you’ me! What the fuck happened? How did you get…are you fucking shot?” Max shouted as he took in the blood-soaked towel he was holding pressed to his left biceps.
“No! I’m not shot!” Ed quickly said, but Max wasn’t buying it.
“Someone stabbed you, then?”
“What? No! I—”
“What? You got bitten by an Egyptian vampire? What happened? Most people don’t suffer from spontaneous blood loss.”
“I—”
Will crossed in between them, catching Ed’s uninjured right arm to drag him from the hallway. “And this is where I step in and move your fun game of twenty questions along to the dining room where I’ve got some proper light in which to work.” Max fell into step behind them, not letting Ed out of his sight for another second. Will called out. “Speaking of twenty questions, where are Charlie and West?”
“Ten minutes behind us,” Soren answered.
“They’re making sure Ed and Soren weren’t followed back here,” Kairo filled in some more blanks but not nearly enough.
Will pulled out a chair and directed Ed to sit while Izzie brought over the doctor’s supplies. Max hovered near Ed, unable to tear his eyes away from the bloody towel that had been awkwardly tied around his arm to staunch the flow. His heart was racing and the room felt like it was starting to sway a little. He didn’t have trouble with the sight of blood. It was a common enough sight on a dig. Accidents always happened from a variety of mishaps. Not a big deal.
