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Julian looked back at Jacobs with obvious surprise. “Why?”
Jacobs’ gaze shifted over to Ellie. “Call it a feeling.”
At his words, a chill slipped over her skin.
“Though perhaps if you shoot a few of them, the rest will fall into line. And there isn’t much movement needed for that.” Jacobs’ eyes remained locked on Ellie as a low buzz of fear rose in her ears. “Start with the Egyptians. There’s less likely to be much bother about them.”
Adam’s stillness took on a new, ready edge. Ellie could feel the silent fury simmering off of him—along with a sense of dangerous calculation.
Julian’s gaze ping-ponged between Jacobs and Constance. “Surely we can come tosomesort of compromise without resorting to shooting anyone,” he offered hopefully.
Ellie wondered whether all of their fates actually rested on Julian Foster-Mowbray’s lack of spine.
Constance’s foot shifted back as she slipped into one of her jiu jitsu poses. With a look of mingled terror and determination, Sayyid’s eyes dropped to the iron crowbar that rested against the sarcophagus beside him.
Adam glanced incongruously at a nearby leopard-footed Eighteenth Dynasty chair.
Neil inched away from the sarcophagus, backing toward a cabinet stuffed with bolts of ancient linen that stood before the jagged crack in the chamber wall.
Ellie studied the fracture more closely. It actually started on the ceiling of the chamber—a thin black line that zigzagged across the stone, thickening as it descended the wall until it disappeared behind the cabinet.
She recalled the way the stairs had given out during their descent through the tomb. Unease itched at the back of her mind.
The Al-Saboors cast their leader questioning looks, their weapons held loosely in their hands. The elder Al-Saboor shrugged.
“Amir?” he prompted uneasily.
“I am thinking!” Julian protested.
Jacobs’ lip curled with contempt.
Ellie glanced down. A thin, dark line snaked out from between her brother’s boots as he lifted them to take another step.
The itch in her mind coalesced into certainty.
“Neil,no!” she called out.
He set down his foot, and the ground collapsed beneath him.
The wall fell with it. Bundles of linen and delicate palm-leaf fans crashed into chairs and a mummified crocodile, all of it spilling through the black hole that had just opened in the floor of the tomb. Neil teetered at the edge of the precipice, waving his arms wildly for balance.
“Not again!” he groaned—and tipped backward into darkness.
??
Thirty-Seven
Neil plummeted downa near-vertical face of rock at a speed only slightly short of a free-fall.
Artifacts tumbled around him. He smashed into an Eighteenth Dynasty table, bursting it into splinters. He scrabbled for some sort of foothold, his boots kicking out against nothing but sheer stone that scraped his back through his waistcoat.
Neil had just enough time to wonder if he would die instantly when he hit the ground or only mortally injure himself—and then one of his flailing hands snagged a grip. He jerked to a painful stop against a ridge of rock no wider than his fingertips, his arm wrenching against his shoulder.
Muscle screamed. His fingers were raw. He very much did not want to look down. Instead, he turned his face up to where a ragged opening glowed with lamplight from the burial chamber.
It looked uncomfortably far away.
Sayyid rushed into the center of the gap with an expression of quick, potent worry, holding the crowbar in his hand.
