I was suddenly calm. âWhat else did he tell you? That heâs going to arrest me?â
âHe said he was going to view the tape before he does anything, but because thereâs a foreign connection, heâs coming to ask you to hand over your passport.â
âWhat? Is he crazy? Iâm not giving him my passport. Let him get a court order.â
âItâs standard procedure. If he arrested you, a judge wouldnât set bail unless you surrendered your passport because you do work that takes you out of the country.â
Good God. Being arrested. Stuck in jail. Iâd be homeless for sure when I got out if that bastard did that.
âThis is insane. I didnât do anything. Some crazy woman tries to stab me with a letter opener and then jumps in front of a train. I didnât even know her name, never saw her before.â
I hid my face in my hands.
âI donât know even know who I am at the moment. I should have stayed in bed this morning.â
He squeezed my arm. âDonât worry, Iâll help you. The forensics tech may not even know who you are on the tape. Iâll take a look at it. In the meantime, donât talk to Gerdy without a lawyer present.â
âUh-huh.â
âI donât like the sound of that, Maddy.⦠Promise me you wonât do anything stupid.â
âWould I do something stupid?â
âDo chickens have lips?â
19
I didnât do anything stupid until after I let him know I wasnât in the mood for any sex that night and went home just long enough to pack a carry-on and give Morty a hug and extra food and water.
I was on board a red-eye to London and the plane was starting to taxi on the runway before I called Mike and told him I left my apartment door unlocked and needed him to feed Morty until I got back.
âYou have to take care of my pussy,â I reminded him, deliberately loud enough so the guy next to me who was already trying to get friendly would hear that I had a man in my life.
When he asked me where Iâd skipped off to, I told him the truth only because it would be so easy for the police to find out.
âLondon.â
I cut off his questions. âThatâs where Iâve been paid to go, where the woman flew in from, and where Iâll find the answers.â
âDetective Gerdy will consider it an admission of guilt.â
âLook at the security tape. If I gave that woman a shove, Iâll put the rope around my neck myself.â
I hung up and turned off the phone to end his rebuttals and recriminations.
I smiled sweetly at the flight attendant who had told me twice to turn off my phone.
âSorry. My babyâs sick.â
A little lie was better than getting caught offending a flight attendant nowadays because their job had gone from being nice to people to tyrants who order the captain to slam on the brakes and call airport security whenever a passenger looked cross-eyed at one of them.
Britain is a civilized country, I reminded myself again as the plane lifted off.
I shouldnât have a problem unless someone checks and finds out that the last time I was there I left in a hurry with a burning art gallery and dead bodies behind me.
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CURSE OF THE PHARAOHS
After visiting Howard Carter and the tomb of King Tut, anthropologist Henry Field wrote that Sir Bruce Ingham, a friend of Carterâs, had been given a mummified hand to use as a paperweight.
A scarab on a bracelet attached to the hand said, âCursed be who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water, and pestilence.â
Not long after receiving the scarab bracelet, Inghamâs house burned down and then flooded after it was rebuilt.
20
Salisbury Plain, England
Fuad Hassan squeezed his cell phone tightly and whispered to himself, âFatima, where are you?â
He snapped the phone closed and stuck it in his pocket when he got her voice mail recording again.
Fuad had
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