Danger in the Desert. Merline Lovelace

      Prologue

      If she hadn’t tripped over her own feet while gawking at the tombs in Cairo’s City of the Dead, Jaci would never have spotted the tiny bit of green. It was almost buried in the dirt, tramped down by the centuries of mourners who’d brought their dead to be buried in the jam-packed maze of tombs that stretched for miles along the west bank of the Nile.

      “Be careful, dear!” Susan Grimes, the seventy-something retired schoolteacher who sat next to Jaci on their tour bus, stretched out a quick hand to keep her from falling.

      She didn’t go down, thank goodness. She still had a nasty bruise on her hip from the tumble she’d taken a week ago. Wishing to heck she was a little less klutzy, Jaci righted herself. That’s when she spotted the bit of green. She thought at first it was a shard of glass or broken piece of plastic. Curious, she nudged it with the toe of her sneaker.

      Mrs. Grimes leaned closer and squinted under the brim of her University of Florida visor.

      “What is it?”

      “I’m not sure.” Jaci dug a little deeper with her toe. “Hey! It looks like a scarab.”

      It wasn’t the first scarab she and her fellow tourists had spotted since arriving in Egypt early this morning. Cairo’s souvenir shops were crammed with cheap plastic imitations of the beetle that ancient Egyptians associated with the creator god Aten.

      This one, Jaci saw when she pried it out of the dirt, looked different from the fat little good luck charms hawked by souvenir sellers. Its body was longer, leaner. And it had lost one of its antennae. When she turned it over, the hieroglyphics on its belly were so worn they were barely distinguishable.

      “Looks like a cheap fake,” silver-haired Mrs. Grimes commented.

      “Feels like it, too,” Jaci confirmed. “Probably dropped by some other gawking tourist.”

      But a nice souvenir just the same. A keepsake of the trip she’d scrimped and saved so long for. If she could keep it.

      She wasn’t about to get crosswise of Egypt’s stringent antiquities laws. Their tour group leader had cautioned them repeatedly about picking anything up at the pyramids or purchasing “stolen treasures” from supposed grave robbers.

      And she was in the City of the Dead, with Saladin’s massive fortress and the great mosque of Mohammed Ali looming above the jumble of tombs. The scarab Jaci had dug out of the dirt looked and felt like a modern-day, mass-produced version, but it wouldn’t hurt to get the opinion of someone more knowledgeable about these things.

      The tour leader had moved ahead, guiding her flock to the next intricately carved tomb, but the Uzi-toting guard who’d accompanied the group from the moment they’d boarded their bus was only a few paces behind.

      “Hanif?”

      “Yes, miss?”

      “I found this buried in the dirt.” Jaci uncurled her palm to reveal the little green beetle. “Do you think it’s of any value?”

      The curly haired Egyptian gave it a casual glance. Then he frowned and looked more closely.

      “You found this?” he said slowly. “Here?”

      “Yes.”

      When he took the scarab and turned it over, the crease between his dark brows deepened. The guard studied the markings for so long that Jaci was convinced she would have to forfeit her find.

      “This is …”

      He stopped, shook his head and dropped the beetle into her palm.

      “This is nothing to worry you, miss. You may keep it.”

      “Are you sure? I don’t want to get thrown in jail for pilfering an antiquity.”

      “No, no. Trust me, miss. You found it. It is yours. You must keep it with you.”

      “Well