Full Circle. Shannon Hollis

He threw down his trump card. “Don’t forget we’re surrounded. If these photos are something really extraordinary, we don’t want to give anyone the jump on it, so to speak, by overhearing our discussions.”

      Despite her reluctance, he could see her acknowledge the truth of that. “All right. Breakfast at my place.”

      Internally, he was grinning, though it didn’t show on his face. “Race you to the coffee,” was all he said.

      He let her win.

      For now.

      5

      I’LL HAVE MY COFFEE, SHOW HIM the photos, and get out of here. I can be back in NewYork in time for The Late Show.

      It had been a mistake to come to the conference. Cate realized that now, standing in the breakfast line in front of tables heaped with freshly cut strawberries, melon and orange, along with trays of steaming eggs and plates artistically arranged with bagels and pastries. She chose fruit, carbs and protein with a careful eye to the food pyramid, and filled her tall travel mug with coffee and cream. That part wasn’t on the food pyramid, but we were talking the bare necessities for survival, here.

      Daniel took two of everything. How he hung on to that narrow-waisted frame feeding it things like that was a mystery.

      Back in her room, she cleared off the round worktable, pulled up two chairs and waved him into one.

      “Isn’t this cozy.” Fruit, eggs, sausage and biscuits disappeared with methodical rapidity. He glanced up. “Aren’t you eating?”

      “Yes, of course.” It had been a long time since she’d seen a man eat with such gusto. Did he do everything that way—charge into it with such focus and concentration? Maybe that was why he was so good at what he did. Maybe people like her stayed in the office and wrote the papers and people like him went out into the field and gave them something to write about.

      He gave the magazines something to write about, too. One of the things he also enjoyed with gusto was women, and as much as she’d determined not to think about it, it was hard not to with him right here in the room. He had that quality that made female heads turn. It wasn’t the dark eyes, or the sensual mouth or the stubbled jaw. It wasn’t the way his hair fell on his forehead or the long-fingered hands holding knife and fork.

      It was the way they all went together, creating a whole that was much more than the sum of its parts. She’d sensed that quality in him years ago—that sexual quality, that magnetic thing that tugged a woman deep inside and said, “Yum. Must have that for mate.”

      Maybe that was why she’d run. She’d been as green as a bean at a lot of things—sex, life, men, you name it. Maybe some instinct deep inside had perceived that she’d be engulfed in him and lose a self that wasn’t completely formed yet, and that had prodded her out of the cavern and out of his life.

      Was it that same instinct that was telling her now she’d better pack her bags—or else?

       Or else what, exactly?

      “So tell me what I’m going to be looking at,” he suggested as he finished the last of his breakfast. He took their empty plates and set them outside in the hall, though technically this wasn’t a hotel and she had every reason to believe the staff wouldn’t be impressed.

      But then, he’d probably charmed the support hose right off the staff and there was an entire fleet of them waiting in the nearest linen closet to take his dishes away.

      She took a fortifying slug of coffee and pulled the manila envelope out of her briefcase. “A woman named Morgan Shaw came to my office last week to ask if I could tell her anything about a wooden box she’d found in her antique shop in Connecticut. The only thing I could say for sure was that it was made of bubinga and it was possible the carvings are contemporary with Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty.”

      He spread the photos on the table and leaned on his elbows, studying them.

      “As you know,” she went on a little diffidently, “a number of desert cultures were engulfed by Egypt’s expansion during that period. I wondered if this was one of them.”

      For five silent minutes he turned the force of his concentration on the eight-by-ten color photographs, looking from one to the other, putting one or two side by side, then separating them and pairing different ones.

      Finally he sat back and reached for his coffee cup without looking at it, his gaze fixed on the pictures.

      “Wow,” he said.

      “Photos don’t do it justice,” she offered. “When you actually hold the box, you see just how the carved images re-form and flow into one another. Every angle gives you a different perspective. It’s eerie.”

      “What’s inside?”

      “That’s just it. There doesn’t seem to be a way to open it. But Morgan says there’s a compartment—she ran it through an X-ray machine.”

      “If there’s a compartment, there must be a key.” He glanced up. “You know how tricky the Egyptians were with secret entrances and doors in their pyramids and gravesites. It was a common practice that could have been part of this culture, too, though clearly it’s not Egyptian.”

      “Any guesses as to who might have made it?”

      “The symbology has elements of Egyptian art, so I’m thinking there might have been a bit of culture bleed before they were taken over completely. Which would mean a neighboring kingdom, and given the difficulty of agriculture deep in the desert away from the Nile, those are limited to the Manassites and the El Gibi.”

      “The Manassite symbology doesn’t include rivers or river animals, like this crocodile.” She pointed to a figure on the photo closest to her. “They were a herd-based culture.”

      “That leaves the El Gibi, about which we know hardly anything. Not even what they really called themselves. Kind of like the Navajo naming the Anasazi.”

      Cate nodded. “I’m sure they didn’t call themselves the Old Ones.” She picked up a photo and Daniel took the one beneath it, a shot of the box’s lid. “But what I’d like to know most is—”

      “Cate.”

      “What?” She looked up.

      “Look at this.”

      Obediently, she looked at the shot of the top of the box. There was a bird and some river symbols and the harp she’d seen before when—

      Wait a minute.

      “They lock together,” she said. “Like those Escher drawings, only more complicated.”

      “Look at the edges. They form the shape of a star.” His tanned finger traced the outline, an area about the size of a fifty-cent piece. “And the middle is hollow. Or maybe, given the cultural bleed, it’s a Ra symbol.”

      Cate remembered running her fingers along the channels made by that awl all those centuries ago. Someone had held the awl with strong, powerful hands. Hands like Daniel’s.

      No, no. Do not think about that.

      “Who do you think the artist was?” She didn’t expect him to have an answer, but talking about the box kept her focused on work instead of…other things.

      “Impossible to say.” He tapped the photos together and handed them to her. “But he—or she—had an unusual talent. And the person was no stranger to geometry, the way those pictograms fit together to form the star. So, probably an educated person. More than that, I couldn’t tell you.”

      She slid the photos back into their envelope and replaced it in her briefcase. “Thanks for the help, Daniel. It’s not much to go on, but at least it’s something to give Morgan. She was pretty passionate about it.”

      “You know antique people. They get that way.”