“Not from you,” Xander muttered, scowling.
Leila glowered, arms crossed, tempted to call after Neal as he continued on his way, shovel on his shoulder. She’d rather spend hours explaining the basics of archaeology to him than have to stand here and have some awkward conversation with Xander.
Neal stopped when he came to a device situated on a tripod with a stout, yellow telescope settled between two vertical axes. With one eye closed, he bent forward to peek through the eyepiece.
Seeing an opportunity, Leila wheeled around to Xander.
“Hey.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder toward Neal. “You might want to help him with the theodolite.”
Xander cursed under his breath and jogged off. “Don’t touch anything!” he yelled.
She released a sigh of relief and her shoulders relaxed, although her hands shook. Was this how the dig would continue? With constant tension between them, with her always fighting the urge to throw up at the sight of him? No, she was going to find Soliman and talk to him, or she didn’t think she could survive the next five months.
Ready to clean up and call it a day, she glanced down at the plastic bag full of rocks they had been fighting over. Large, angular letters spelled out “rubbish.” She tossed the bag onto the discard pile.
Chapter Four
Leila marched to the lab in downtown Saqqara, located a few blocks from their dorm. Soliman should be there giving a lecture to some of the students on archaeological dating methods. If she was lucky, he would be wrapping up for the day.
There just had to be an explanation for Xander being here. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
Not giving the dirty walls with dry, shriveled vines creeping up them a second glance, she approached the building. Using her key, she let herself into the hallway, the yellow tile and walls that greeted her stained with age.
She entered the lab situated at the end of the hall. The room had two shelving units full of thick three-ring binders and boxes of various sizes, multiple desks outfitted with computer monitors and towers, and cables slithering in every direction. A table stood in front of each shelving unit, covered in test tubes, brown glass bottles containing various chemicals, microscopes, and a wooden drawer holding pottery shards and bone splinters that had been taken from the storage room. The storage room was connected to the lab, although at this point in the excavation, it was empty, save for a few samples left over from previous digs.
Soliman stood at the center of the room, surrounded by students, including Karl who was assisting, all wearing white lab coats. They seemed to have just finished up for the evening and were shutting things down.
“How’d it go?” Leila asked the nearest student as he peeled off his gloves.
“It was interesting,” he said, turning off a computer, which hummed softly as it shut down. He nudged his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “We were doing some practice—amino acid dating with bone fragments. The samples have to sit overnight as we have to do different combinations of varying time lengths. I didn’t even know there were other methods than carbon dating.”
“Yeah, carbon dating only works on organic material, so there have to be different ways for different elements. Thermoluminescence, archaeomagnetic, rehydroxylation…” Leila ticked off her fingers as she recalled a few of the different methodologies she learned when she took the class last spring.
“Even for organic material,” Soliman added as they headed toward the door together, “it’s important to try other techniques besides radiocarbon. It’s not always reliable due to the possibility of contamination or atmospheric changes. However, with a combination of spot dating on-site using our brains, plus chemical and carbon dating methods, we usually end up with a precise answer. Besides, carbon dating is expensive. We only go that route when we have the funds and are certain it will give us an acceptable result.”
The group stopped at the door to take off their lab coats and hang them up. Karl and the other students continued out of the lab and headed down the street while Soliman locked up.
Leila lingered behind, clutching the strap of her bag with a sweaty hand as she waited. Once he finished with the door, she blurted, “I need to talk to you about Xan—”
“Yes, yes, I knew this was coming.” Soliman shook his head and waved a hand in the air.
Leila watched his hand. Would he hear her out or was he about to dismiss the issue? “Why couldn’t you warn me?”
A donkey cart rattled past on the street. Soliman faced her, silent, then removed his jingling collection of keys from his pocket. “Let’s step into my office for a moment. I will explain everything the best I can.”
Heart pounding, Leila followed him back into the building and entered a room at the far end of the hall. Soliman would explain everything. So she was right to think there was more to this than an unfortunate coincidence.
As the scent of old books filled her nose, her eyes fell on the bookshelves lining the walls of Soliman’s study. Reproductions of artifacts were displayed in front of and on top of books on the overflowing shelving. On his desk stood more statuettes of Egyptian gods and goddesses among the stacks of papers and books.
Soliman sat behind his desk then waved for her to take a seat. She lowered herself into a chair as he glanced down at his workspace, his glasses slipping to the tip of his nose. After a moment of shuffling papers around, he removed a folder and set it on top of his desk then stared at her pointedly.
“Would you have come if you knew he would be here?”
Leila paused. She hadn’t considered that. “I don’t know.”
“I didn’t want it to be a deciding factor for you. Or for him.” Soliman slipped off his spectacles and leaned back in his seat. “You see, we worked together on a few digs while he was in university. He has excavated with me for the last two years. I saw no reason not to take him on again.”
Soliman’s voice softened, his face compassionate. “I’m aware of his… involvement, for lack of a better word. And I’m sorry if you’re offended he is here now. But as adults, we are often faced with uncomfortable circumstances. We can’t always avoid the things that make us unhappy.”
Leila stared at her hands in her lap. There was no way around it. She could either stick it out or go home. But that’s the last thing she wanted to do. Get on a plane back to the States and let Xander have a jolly good time at her dig?
“Be strong,” Soliman continued. “Nothing is perfect, and to everything, there is a solution. If we kept running away from the things we didn’t like, our world would never progress. If you’re afraid of candles, that doesn’t mean you have to sit in the dark. You invent a light bulb.” Leila couldn’t return his smile, even though he was right. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she would try to take his words to heart.
Dad would probably tell me the same thing. Moving on didn’t mean she had to be friends with him. And she could live with that. At least, she thought she could.
“I do hope this is the end of that discussion. Now, I’d like for you to take a look at this.” Soliman held out the folder.
Leila leaned over the desk and took it, flipping it open as she settled back into her seat. She scanned the first sheet of paper, a list that swiftly took her mind off Xander. The list noted the goals of their excavation and included some of the obvious things: clear the build-up of dirt around monuments and restoration, create a photographic archive of all artifacts and ruins, clear and begin excavations of the southeast corner—that’s when something caught her eye.
“Locate Neferkheri’s tomb?” she gasped. “As in the first wife of Pharaoh Amunhotep of the Twelfth Dynasty? You’re funny.” She couldn’t stop herself. She laughed. He had to be kidding. The search for the tomb of Neferkheri had been ongoing for centuries. The legends said she died giving birth to the son and heir of Pharaoh Amunhotep. Although he grieved for her, he was also grateful for their only son. As a reward for the afterlife, her tomb was filled with unimaginable treasures, sealed, hidden, but never forgotten. And Soliman had included it in the list as if it was as trivial as cleaning dry mud off a trowel.
Soliman smiled slyly. “Yes, that’s the one. I have reason to believe there’s an uncovered tomb in Saqqara, though I’m not one hundred percent certain it is Neferkheri’s. More research must be done, so I’m selecting a small team to help. After seeing you work at field school in Giza, I think you do this job well and take it seriously. And you can be trusted with the information.”
“So have you told the others? Emma, and Karl, and—”
Soliman waved a hand. “Absolutely not. I am being tight-lipped about it. A robbery in Dahshur last night has proven this to be a wise decision. Many artifacts there were stolen or destroyed completely. And to think they had uncovered some remarkable glasswork and pottery.”
“That’s horrible,” Leila said as a fist clenched around her heart. Dahshur was only a few miles south, so the news hit close to home. Way too close. “Are there going to be any extra precautions for Saqqara?”
