“You left something out,” the armed man said, continuing their conversation. “I have three people you want to save.”
One far more than the others, Donovan thought. He glanced at Jess, trying not to show the sharp pang of anger that gripped him at seeing her like that. Her bindings looked painfully tight with her arms pulled behind her back and the rag that silenced her pulling at her mouth like a bit on a runaway horse.
“Drop your weapons, or I begin shooting, starting with the woman on the end.”
Jess. He steeled himself against the panic that surged in his chest, not wanting the man to see how much she meant to him. Still, he was staggered by the fear, the sense of loss, at the idea of Jess being killed. He might not be the right man for her, but he would die before letting this man harm her.
He drew on an icy calm he didn’t feel. “If your finger twitches, you’re a dead man. I guarantee it.”
From the corner of his eyes he saw Jess shake her head frantically, about the only motion she could make. Urgent, muffled screams came from her throat. Her obvious distress tore at his heart, but he couldn’t let it show. He’d put her in this situation, and he’d damn sure get her out.
The woman hostage suddenly jumped to her feet, trembling visibly. “Please, don’t let him shoot us. He will! He’s horribly cruel. Please do as he says.”
The man with her rose to his knees, cowering from the gunman as he gingerly got to his feet with his fellow hostage. He kept his weight off one leg as if he were lame. “She’s right,” he said. “He beat us and killed the man who worked with us, a man who posed no threat. Don’t let him kill again.”
He understood now why the two students weren’t tied—there was no need. They were completely submissive, too scared of their captor to be a danger. “Alicia,” he said, deliberately using her name so she’d understand that he knew who they were. “My team is here to free you and Jeffery. You’re going to be okay.”
She cowered a mere four feet from the gunman, well within his line of sight. He watched to see if she relaxed when an incongruous sound distracted him—Jess sneezed violently. It was high-pitched and wheezy with her mouth gagged, coming only from her nose, but it startled him. The student hostages must have disturbed the dust of eons when they stood. Seated on the floor, Jess couldn’t escape inhaling it.
No one else seemed to notice it. Rather than calming down, Alicia was becoming more agitated by the second. She took a step toward him. “Please, whoever you are. I don’t care why you’re here. Don’t get us all killed. Drop the gun before he kills us. He’ll do it.”
Donovan didn’t think he would. He hadn’t killed them in over two weeks. He obviously had a use for two archeology students. But not for their rescuers—they’d be killed in an instant, just as he’d apparently killed a man who’d been with the students when they found the tomb. The poor, unlucky guy hadn’t even been reported missing. But Donovan didn’t intend to join him and his Egyptian ancestors in a lost grave in the wadi. He wouldn’t let Jess die, either.
The woman made him nervous, though. She was too frightened, and he worried about what she’d do next. “Calm down, Alicia, he’s not going to hurt you. We’ll get you out of here.”
Another violent sneeze came from Jess. Then two more.
A horrible possibility occurred to him—could there be something especially nasty in the dust of the tomb? Maybe an ancient bacteria for which modern people had no immunity? It would even give credence to a mummy’s curse. He spared Jess a worried glance, half expecting to see her lying on the floor gasping for breath.
She wasn’t. She sat stiffly, staring at him. She sneezed again as he watched, never taking her eyes off his.
He frowned. It had looked deliberate, almost like communication.
The instant he thought it, he remembered: Omega headquarters. That first night when they’d questioned her long past midnight, nerves frazzled, sleep long overdue. They’d tried to explain that Wally might have communicated to her in code and asked her to remember every little thing he’d done, like scratch his ear or drop his napkin. Or sneeze. He’d used that as an example, telling her a sneeze would indicate that his words were not to be believed, that things weren’t as they seemed. That they were, in fact, the opposite.
Jess knew that. And in the light that Kyle had trained on her, he saw no dust in the air. She was fine. But she wanted him to know there was danger here he wasn’t aware of.
His gaze darted back to Alicia, who had taken another step toward him, pleading and babbling. Her words blurred into a meaningless noise that he tuned out. Jeffery’s nervous voice joined hers, whining about the danger they were in. The gunman tried to watch them all, seeming a bit confused but still confident that he and his gun were in control of the standoff.