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“What sort of abject coward uses threats against an innocent woman to get what he wants?” Neil burst out, pushing up from his chair to stand toe-to-toe with Jacobs. “You won’t bloody touch her! And even if you wanted to—you can’t,” he added with a burst of angry inspiration. “Your boss has an interest in her. He won’tletyou.”
Jacobs had not stepped back by so much as a breath when Neil rose—which left him very close indeed. Neil quailed a bit at the realization as the rest of his brain had a moment to catch up with what the angry part was doing.
Jacobs’ near-black eyes flashed with dark frustration.
Riling up a man like Jacobs was a terrible idea. Neil’s more prudent instincts screamed for him to sit back down—or cower abjectly under the desk—but his anger refused to give way to it. He was angry at Jacobs for threatening to hurt Constance. He was angry at Julian Forster-Mowbray for turning Neil’s comfortable existence into an entirely unwelcome adventure. He was angry at the self-important professor currently gaping at him with a look of surprised horror for… well, just being an utter prat, really.
As he faced off against Jacobs, he knew he was doing something irrevocably stupid, but he couldn’t bring himself to care the way he ought to. The words kept spilling out of him regardless.
“But if youweregoing to threaten to hurt innocent people to compel me to assist you, shouldn’t you be starting with my sister?” he demanded. “She’s the most obvious choice, after all. But you haven’t—which makes me wonder if perhaps she and my friends got the better of you after all!”
Frustration and rage flickered across Jacobs’ features, breaking his air of unrelenting competence. The look lasted only a moment before Jacobs pulled it back behind a veil of icy control.
“Or maybe I’ve already killed her,” he replied, continuing to stand just a few claustrophobic inches away, “along with all the rest of them.”
The words clenched around Neil’s heart like a vise.
A wave of guilt and grief threatened to overwhelm him. He fought back against it, scrambling for a lifeline—something,anything,that would keep him from falling apart.
Curious hazel eyes peering over the edge of his desk. A spray of freckles over a delighted grin. A head of chestnut hair drooping against his shoulder as his baby sister dozed off over her Cicero.
His hand reaching out to brush warm fingers over the little crease between her brows.
What are you doing?
Just rubbing the worry out.
“No,” Neil burst out wildly. “Youcan’thave!”
A new emotion flashed through Jacobs’ expression at Neil’s words—one that looked oddly of both surprise… andfear.
Jacobs grabbed the front of Neil’s shirt, hauling him closer as his eyes blazed with threat. “How could you possibly know—” he began.
“Hold on!” Dawson piped in, blinking with surprised excitement. “The tablet isn’t talking about Siwa. The Horizon of the Sun—that’s Akhetaten! It is quite an obscure connection to make, of course,” Dawson rattled on. “One could hardly expect it of a young fellow barely out of Cambridge. I have always said the Cantabrigian education is sadly—”
“And where is this Akhetaten?” Jacobs pressed with tired patience.
His fist remained suspended in front of Neil’s face.
“Oh! Right.” Dawson startled as if just remembering that he was sitting beside an imminent pummeling. “The ruins are at Tell al-Amarna, about two hundred and fifty miles north of here along the river.”
Jacobs lowered his hand—though he continued to fix Neil with a gaze that simmered with threat. “Do keep at it, then,” he ordered calmly.
He finally released his grip on Neil’s shirt and left, the door snapping shut behind him.
Neil heard the soft click of the lock turning and slumped back into his chair. His hands were shaking even as his mind whirled with panicked confusion.
How could you possibly know…
Know what?Neil wondered frantically. What had Jacobs thought he had known?
Dawson scribbled beside him, the light scratch of his pencil on the paper the only sound in the room. “It’s best not to lie to him.”
The quiet, awkward words snapped Neil from the maelstrom of his thoughts and back to where he was—locked in a room with an arrogant professor and three-thousand-year-old clue while a murderer stalked outside the door.
The pencil scratched a little more, then paused.
“He always knows,” Dawson added without looking up.
