Safra nodded. “It explains a lot. It is why you were targeted. It makes more sense to me now.”
“What if they still think I have it?” Dallas asked. At the same time, she said it, she wondered just who “they” was. “I just had an envelope show up at my desk at school with cyanide on it.”
Safra nodded sagely. “I’ve made sure that now know it is my possession.”
Dallas stared at her. She wanted to ask questions about that simple statement, but bit her tongue.
Safra continued. “It will be safe. We will make sure it never falls into the wrong hands. It is what I was born to do.”
It took Dallas a moment to realize the enormity of what Safra had just said: “born to do.”
“Yes,” Safra said, noticing Dallas’s reaction. “It is my destiny.”
A woman in a blue dress and braids poked her head in the kitchen and mimicked holding a phone to her ear.
Safra nodded at the woman and then stood.
“I would love to spend more time with you. But in light of your gift, I have some pressing business.”
“What do I do now?” Dallas felt unmoored but it also felt like freedom.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Safra said. “Your job is done. For now.”
“Done?”
Safra burst into laughter. “I said for now. But Dallas, your destiny is even larger than mine.”
I frowned. “I thought you said it was your destiny and I was done.”
“Oh no,” Safra said. “Your role in this has only just begun. Go have fun. Be in love. Be young. Dream. Enjoy your life. You have earned some down time.”
Then Safra’s smile faded and her voice grew stern. “But don’t let your guard down completely. You must always be alert. Not everyone wishes the best for you. However, you don’t have to sit and worry. Enjoy yourself. If anything ever seems amiss, you know how to reach me.”
She walked Dallas outside to the car and gave her a warm hug.
“Relax now,” she said. “Prepare yourself for battle. I will be in touch.”
As she drew back from the hug, she reached for Dallas’s hand. She pressed something into Dallas’s palm and closed Dallas’s fingers around it before she turned and walked away, toward the front porch.
Before Dallas got into her car, she opened her palm, and her mouth dropped open.
It was one of the golden coins from Taposiris Magna. The one with the likeness of Cleopatra on it. At that moment, Safra turned to look at her from the doorway of the house.
Dallas gasped.
Looking down at the coin and then up at Safra, it suddenly became clear.
Safra was the spitting image of Cleopatra.
Twenty-Four
A month later, back in Minnesota and caught up in the demands of teaching, Dallas finally had to admit she was restless, chomping at the bit to go off on another dig, to find another adventure.
Safra had told her to wait and relax.
She’d done both. She was sick of it. She wanted to be going after Cleopatra’s tomb.
She’d turned the scroll over to the Daughters of Isis. They were the best ones to have it. They had the resources and manpower to decipher it and find the tomb—and the book.
Safra told her they were locating experts from around the world and sending them various portions of the scroll so that no one person would have the entire picture—or story in this case.
It was best that way, Safra said. And Dallas agreed.
“We will let you know as soon as we have a definitive answer,” Safra said. “You are, of course, our number one choice to lead an exhibition.”
Dallas wouldn’t be able to stay away.
It was hard enough to even live her day-to-day life knowing that answers could come to her in the form of a phone call or visit any second.
She shared a little bit with Colton, but not everything. She’d said there had been a parchment scroll with clues to Cleopatra’s tomb that she’d turned over to the Daughters of Isis. They were going to hire experts and get back to her, she’d told him.
“Do you trust them?” Colton had asked.
When she had nodded, he’d let it go, saying, “You do what’s best for you. I know all of this has been hard on you.”
Safra had called one day shortly after Dallas had turned over the scroll to give her a progress report. The first person they’d hired as an interpreter had apparently had a big mouth. He’d bragged about his new assignment in a bar in India and had been found the next day burned to death in bed after a mysterious fire struck the hostel he was staying in.
Dallas thought about the curse. Better to keep all of the details as far away from Colton as possible.
For weeks, she did a good job keeping it secret, but Colton sensed a restlessness about her, she was sure of it.
If only she hadn’t realized what the hieroglyphs meant.
Then one day, the call came. They had found a possible site for the tomb. It was a long shot, and it might be a dead-end, but they’d arranged for Dallas to be in charge of the dig.
“Get packed,” Safra had said. “It’s time.”
To be continued …
