He gripped her waist with one hand and helped her down. He touched his ear with the other hand. “I copy, Logan. We’re fine. Made a discovery. We’ll be up in a minute.”
Layne was watching him. “We can’t go up now, I have too much work to do—”
“Sun will be setting soon, Rush.”
“Dammit, can’t you relax the rules?”
“No. Anders attacked you at night. You need the right equipment down here, and besides, I need time to work out how to contain the news of this find. Because once it gets out—”
“Anders will be back.” Her face paled a little. “Okay, so for now, we keep it quiet.”
He nodded. “Logan and I will watch the excavation site tonight.”
She tossed her head back, rubbing at a streak of dust on her cheek. “What happened before…”
Dec, still feeling the edge of desire riding him hard, cocked his head. “What was that?”
“Oh, don’t make this difficult, Declan.”
“You mean that moment when you had your hands clamped in my hair, your legs wrapped around my hips, and your tongue down my throat?”
She hissed out a breath. “You are so infuriating sometimes. The kiss.”
He leaned in close, his nose brushing hers. “That was more than a kiss, Rush.”
Her gaze dropped and he knew she couldn’t miss his erection straining against his pants. She jerked her eyes up.
“Adrenaline, excitement…look, it isn’t going to happen again.” She shook her head. “It was a lapse. You have a job to do, and I have a job to do.”
Yeah, she had a point. And Dec didn’t mess around with women like Layne. She was made for the whole shebang—career, family, kids. All the stuff Dec knew he couldn’t do. All the stuff he knew he didn’t deserve.
“You got it, Rush. Let’s write it off as temporary insanity.” His gut turned over. Damn, he hated just saying the words.
He expected to see relief on her face, but some other strange mix of emotions crossed her features. “Good. Right.”
“Now let’s get out of here, before Logan storms in looking to rescue us.”
She pressed her palm to the stone. “I can’t wait to get back here tomorrow.”
A loud click echoed in the tomb. Dec tensed. When he saw the stone lid of the sarcophagus start to retract, he quickly pulled Layne closer to him.
“What the hell?” She watched, mouth open, as the entire lid disappeared into the wall. “I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this before. There must be some sort of mechanism—”
They both peered over the edge.
The smaller golden sarcophagus inside was shaped vaguely like a man. The bottom half of it was smooth but covered in hieroglyphs. A large, elaborate necklace covered the chest, and it was decorated in layers of bright-blue, semi-precious stone, and another translucent stone of startling gold-yellow color. In the center was a huge, oval-shaped pendant in the same gold stone.
The face on the sarcophagus wasn’t human. It looked like a dog.
“Set-animal again?” Dec asked.
Layne was staring at the artifact, drinking in all the details. “Maybe. It could be Anubis. He was also depicted with a canine head, and was the god of mummification and the afterlife.” She pulled some thin gloves out of her pocket and pulled them on. Then she reached over to touch the stone amulet in the center of the chest.
“I’ve never seen a rock that color,” Dec said.
“It…my God, I think it’s Libyan desert glass.”
“Which is?”
She looked over her shoulder. “A mysterious yellow glass found strewn across a portion of the Western Desert bordering Libya. It’s suspected it was created when a meteor crashed into the sand. King Tutankhamun had some of this in his treasures, but it was a long and dangerous journey to collect it.”
“Western Desert again.” Everything seemed to be pointing in one direction.
She touched the desert glass again before she snatched her hand back. “Oh.”
The yellow glass started to sink into the sarcophagus.
Suddenly, the chest of the sarcophagus started to open.
“My God. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Rush said. “Oh, no, what if the mummy is exposed?” Panic filled her voice. “It’ll deteriorate.”
The chest plates opened out, like petals on a flower. But no bandage-wrapped mummy was below. “Looks like it’s only a compartment in the gold. It doesn’t go all the way through,” he said.
And inside the space rested a small gold cylinder.
“God.” Rush reached in and carefully lifted the artifact out. “It’s a scroll. Made entirely of gold!”