The Bone Chamber

working in the sun.”

“Where this time?”

“Egypt. Valley of the Kings.”

They sat, scanned the menu, and almost in unison said, “Pizza Margherita!” A waiter approached, and Tasha ordered a bottle of cabernet to go with the pizza. “Unless you wanted something else?” she asked Sydney.

“Cab is perfect.” The waiter left, and Sydney leaned forward. “Is everything okay, Tasha?”

“Major jet lag. I’ve only been back a couple days. But trust me. A couple bottles of wine, a taxi ride home, I’ll sleep like a baby and all will be well with the world. How about you? I heard about all the mess with your father’s old case.”

“I’m fine. The case is fine,” Sydney said, not wanting to get into the particulars of what had happened to her father. Not here at dinner. “So tell me about this latest dig of yours. Bones? Pottery? Ancient treasure?”

“Is the FBI spying on me?”

“Spying?” Sydney laughed. “Yeah, we’ve got a whole wing at Quantico devoted to the pyramids. Right next to the X-Files. So give me the scoop. Find anything interesting?”

Tasha smiled. “Besides a few pottery shards? Nothing. What about you? How’s this forensic art class you’re teaching at the academy?”

“So far so good,” Sydney replied, as the waiter returned with the wine. “Two-week course. Students are a mix of police officers and civilians working for law enforcement agencies from around the country. It’s fun.”

They spent the next hour talking about everything from Sydney’s work to which fashion designer needed to die for bringing back some godforsaken style, like neon oversized flower prints that never should have seen the light of day in the first place. The closest they got to talking about Tasha’s job was when she tried to convince Sydney to put off her plane trip and work the forensic ID case with her, which struck Sydney as odd-never mind that the whole time they sat there, Tasha’s attention seemed to wander toward the entrance and the street front window. Sydney would have dismissed it as simple preoccupation, if it weren’t for the fact that Tasha was definitely jumpy. Maybe something was wrong at work. Stress, bosses, who knew? “You sure you’re okay?” Sydney asked.

Tasha started to deny it again, but suddenly stopped, leaned back in her chair and said, “You’d never believe it if I told you.”

“Told me what?”

“The tomb I was in? Supposedly anyone who entered was subject to a two-thousand-year-old curse and would be dead in a fortnight. So, call it bullshit, call it whatever. It gave me nightmares, and I haven’t been able to sleep.”

“Nightmares?”

“You know how vivid my dreams are. Like after I saw that Count Dracula movie and everyone in my dreams sprouted fangs and came after me, and I had to defang them?”

“I thought you said you were a kid when that happened?”

“I was. But I remember it like it was yesterday, and if I never see another Dracula movie again, it’ll be too soon. Now give me the real dirt. Why is Scotty helping you look for an apartment? I thought you two broke up?”

There it was again. That turn away from Tasha back to her. Maybe it was best just to let it go. Tasha was a big girl, and certainly knew Sydney was there for her. “We’re done.”

“For good?”

“For good. But we’re still friends.” Scott Ryan, her ex-fiance, was happily married to the FBI, which left no room for her. “Why? You interested in him?”

“Hardly, but there was that cute friend of his who worked in the same bureau. The one who just got divorced…” Tasha was three years divorced, and as far as Sydney knew, not in a particular hurry to settle down again.

“Carter?”

“Yeah. Too bad I’m going to Italy at the end of next week, which is why I need you to work with me on this drawing before I go,” Tasha said, tipping the last of the wine into her glass, then signaling for the waiter to bring them another bottle. “If I hadn’t already committed to this dig, I’d give him or any other eligible male some serious consideration.”

“I’m sure Carter will be there when you get back,” Sydney said, thinking that was the closest Tasha had come to talking about herself all night. “Me, I’ve sworn off Feds.”

“All Feds, or just Scotty?”

“My opinion, Scotty’s a good representative example of what they’re like.”

“He’s damned cute, if you ask me,” Tasha said, seeming more like her old self.

“And a really nice guy. But if you want a warm body sleeping in your bed each night, pick a man in the private sector.”

The waiter brought a second bottle of cabernet, and as he walked off, Tasha leaned over and whispered, “Waiters are in the private sector.”

Tasha’s laugh was vivacious, infectious, and by the time they finished their second bottle, Sydney wasn’t sure if she’d ever again look at a glass of cabernet without thinking of waiters in Italian restaurants.

The next morning Sydney wasn’t sure if she’d ever look at a glass of red wine period. A textbook hangover made her head pound, and when the phone rang, the pounding increased tenfold. She hoped like hell it wasn’t Tasha, because she had a hell of a time convincing her that she was not giving up her trip home.

“You ready to go look for apartments this afternoon?” It was Scotty, who, ever since her transfer back to Quantico, had made it his mission to get her out of her temporary apartment supplied for agents in downtown Washington, D.C. She’d done little to discourage his interest, because it gave her something to talk about with Scotty, telling him that she wanted to find a decent place to live.

It was really a smoke screen. She liked temporary. It meant she didn’t need to make a decision. “Yeah, maybe…I don’t know. I’m a little hung over.”

“From what?”

“Tasha and I went drinking last night,” she said, before she remembered the lie she’d told him about having a headache and just wanting to relax for the evening. “I started to feel better and she called. I’m sorry.”

A stretch of silence.

“I figured you’d already made other plans,” she said.

“Did I say anything?”

Did he ever? “Look, I’ve got to go take mass quantities of ibuprofen. I’ll be ready in an hour.”

“Anything in the newspapers?”

Jon Westgate lit a cigarette, glanced over at his boss. “Not yet.”

“Do not smoke in here.”

“Sorry.” But he made no move to put it out. Instead, he walked toward the window, away from the man who sat in the leather wingback chair, drinking his coffee. Politicians. He wouldn’t be working for one if the perks weren’t so damned good. “I’ve checked all the papers, and the Internet. Nothing.”

“I find that odd. A young woman so brutally murdered…One would think they’d want her identified.”

“If that were the case,” Westgate said, “maybe one shouldn’t have had her face removed.”

An icy silence seemed to fill the room, and Westgate wondered if perhaps he’d been too sarcastic to the man who was signing his checks, until his boss said, “You’re right. It seems the man Adami sent was a bit overzealous when I suggested that we didn’t want her immediately identifiable.”

“Adami is becoming a problem. He is obsessed with these Masonic symbols.”

“Most Grand Masters are.”

“Most Grand Masters don’t carve pyramids on a girl’s face. Clearly he ordered his man to do it. I think he needs to be reined in.”

“I’ll make that decision. For now, I’m curious to find out what this third key is. He insists that it’ll change the course of bioweaponry.”

“I thought you said it was nothing but a pipe dream?”