A Deal with the Devil

The next morning, Hattie awoke to the sun glimmering through her window and the heavy, dank smell of river water. They were on Day Two of a three-day journey down the Nile, and she felt an urgent compulsion to get her brother in to talk with Ardeth. If his plan was going to work, she would need to arrange their meeting, and soon.

She hurriedly got out of bed and got dressed, freshening her face with a little lipstick and pinning some of her hair back away from her face. She gave herself a final look in the mirror before tugging on a pair of shoes and rushing down the hall to Rick's room. She knocked on the door, but he didn't answer. Breathing an anxious sigh, she turned and jogged up the stairs and onto the deck, looking frantically about for her brother. Her gaze collided instead with Campbell's hard, strange gaze, staring at her from one of the tables.

"Howdy there, sugar," she said pointedly. "Have a seat."

"I can't," Hattie started to say. "I'm looking for - "

"I said sit your little ass down."

Hattie swallowed hard and did as she was told, the notion suddenly dawning on her that Campbell was also one of the guides. She'd completely forgotten about Campbell last night, and now the prospect of putting Ardeth's plan into action seemed more hopeless than ever.

"I been hearin' some things about you," she said mysteriously, pulling out a box of cigarettes from somewhere on her person and delicately removing one. "Smoke?"

"No thanks."

Campbell eyed her suspiciously. "Don't you smoke?"

Hattie shook her head. "It makes me sick."

Campbell's bright, orangey eyebrows jumped up her forehead incredulously. "Hmph. Ain't sure I can trust a gal who don't smoke. I always said there's no trustin' a body who don't start the day with a cup 'a coffee and end it with a drink. Know what I mean?"

Hattie stared back at her and tried to hide her puzzlement. "I drink coffee and liquor, if that's what you're wanting to know."

Campbell tapped her cigarette on the table before fixing it between her teeth and lighting it up. Her strange, off-kilter eyes fixated themselves on Hattie again.

"I been hearin' things. I think you know what things I might be talkin' about."

Hattie let out an impatient sigh. "I don't, actually."

Campbell breathed in a deep drag and let it out. "Things about you and our darling Mr. Gabor."

Hattie gritted her teeth, and fought the instinctive urge to dispell the rumor immediately. It was the only way she'd be able to visit Ardeth unnoticed, so she might as wel play along.

"Oh, um, yeah..."

Campbell pulled her cigarette from her mouth and used it to point at Hattie accusingly. "Now don't think I don't know what you see in that slummy little som'bitch. Been there, done that."

Hattie couldn't help but be genuinely interested in what, exactly, Campbell claimed she saw in Beni Gabor.

"He's with you to pick at me. He thinks he'll really get my goat, knockin' boots with a pretty little feather of a thing like you. But he don't know I moved on. I found me somethin' better. And you best do the same. That man can't love you. He don't love nothin'."

The grim intensity of Campbell's stare left Hattie at a loss for words. When she'd contrived this plot with Beni, her only real goal was being able to visit Ardeth as often as she needed to...or wanted to...over the next couple days. She hadn't even thought to consider how she was supposed to explain the relationship. Her mouth gaped with a want for words that, fortunately, she never had to find. Suddenly, her brother's voice broke through the air and bellowed:

"Oh, Hattie!"

His cynical, impatient tone wasn't terribly promising, but it was better than having to fumble her way through this intended intervention by Campbell. Hattie gave her a strained, polite smile, and started to mumble something about having to go as she jumped out of her seat. But Campbell took her hard by the wrist and pulled her close enough to whisper:

"You don't wanna listen to me, that's fine. Some things a body has to learn for itself. But don't believe a word he says about it - he's had the drip enough to know what in tarnation it is."

Hattie swallowed hard, and it was all she could do to nod her head and try not to look startled. She was in over her head and she couldn't afford to show it. Without another word, she hurried away from Campbell and down the deck to where her brother sat at a table with the other Americans and Jonathan.

"Good morning," she said with a cautious smile, her whole body tightening at the snickering expressions of the Americans, and the awestruck and disappointed look in Jonathan's eyes.

"Yeah, hey," Rick said irritably. "Sit down."

Hattie let out a sigh and took the only available seat.

"Settle something for us, because as much as I'm sure all these guys deserve a good ass-kicking, I'm not in the mood to do it all at once unless I have to."

Hattie braced herself for the inevitable question, unable to look for very long into her brother's earnest, desperate blue eyes.

"Is it true about you and Beni?"

The Americans started chuckling, and Hattie had half a mind to tell Rick the truth and deal with finding another reason to be in Beni's room later, but she didn't have a chance to take that leap. Just then, Beni waltzed up to the table, all toothy grins and smug, suggestive glances. He walked right over to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

"My darling, good morning!" he exclaimed, giving her an exaggerated kiss on the cheek. It was all she could do not to clock him in front of every shocked set of eyes. She bit down hard on her lip and looked at him as inconspicuously as possible, but he didn't have a care at all for the glint of a warning in her eye. "Won't you let me sit with you?"

Hattie glanced at one of the many empty tables and said, "Grab one of those chairs...um...dear."

"Oh, now you are the shy one!" he said, glancing pointedly at Rick. "But last night, she was like a wildcat!"

"Oh, God," Hattie breathed. What had she gotten herself into with this arrangement?

The Americans could barely contain their amusement. But Rick wasn't remotely amused, and in one swift motion, he was out of his seat and had Beni by the collar several inches off of the ground.

"If you've got any will to live, little buddy, you better leave my sister alone," Riick said, grim as the grave.

The laughter had stopped, and the only sound on the deck was Beni's wheezing, uneasy gasps of breath. He ran his tongue over his lips and said in a hurried, high-pitched tone:

"Oh, if only I could, O'Connell! But your sister and I are in love!"

"Bullshit," Rick retorted.

"Why don't you ask her?" Beni managed to say, looking lightheaded as he struggled for air.

Now all eyes were on Hattie. She could see a glint of cold defiance in Beni's eye, daring her to let her brother hurt him and let her whole plan fall apart. She met his gaze evenly for a brief moment before breathing a defeated sigh and looking at her brother apologetically.

"He's right," she said as convincingly as she could muster. "I love him. We're just...you know, so...in love. Crazy in love..."

Rick dropped Beni in astonishment and stared incredulously at his sister.

"Really," he said, so skeptical he couldn't even raise it to a question. "Him."

Hattie glanced at Beni, fumbling about on the floor in an effort to catch his breath and stand up. She looked back to her brother quickly.

"Yep."

Rick raised his eyebrows. " 'In love'?"

"So in love," Hattie said. But her brother's expression was as cynical as ever. He looked between her and Beni, and then glanced at his coffee on the table, heaving a sigh.

"I'm gonna have to get some scotch or something for this," he said, picking up the mug and crossing the deck to the bar.

Beni had managed to get himself on his feet, and stood over Hattie, watery-eyed and coughing from Rick's assault, but smug nonetheless. He pulled Hattie out of her seat, sat down in the chair, and then pulled her into his lap.

"See, my darling? We do not have to be afraid of your brother any more."

Daniels scoffed. "If I was you, buddy, I'd still be plenty afraid."

Rick returned with his coffee now properly spiked, shaking his head in grim bewilderment at his sister and Beni before attempting to shrug it off, and finally sat down.

"Is not this wonderful, my friend?" Beni said with exaggerated earnestness. "To think, we might one day spend Christmas, just like this!"

Rick choked on his coffee.

"The three of us..." He gazed at Hattie with a certain kind of cruel, faked adoration, and put his hand over her stomach. "Perhaps four of us..."

Hattie gritted her teeth, and Rick's wide-eyed glare jumped up to them in shock. She sucked in a little breath, meeting her brother's eyes desperately.

"Rick, could we talk privately for a minute?"

Rick nodded his head, getting up from the table quickly. Hattie was more than eager to get out of Beni's lap, too. She hurried down the deck, Rick matching her pace in long strides. When they were out of earshot, she pulled him closer and told him anxiously:

"I'm not sleeping with him. I needed an alibi to be in his room because I think that desert chieftain knows something we don't about Meela. But now I'm in over my head. I'm in way over my head."

Rick glanced down the deck, a grim, calculating smile on his face, before turning his attention back to Hattie. He let out a sigh of relief.

"Oh, thank God."

She looked up at him urgently. "You have to talk to this chieftain, Rick. We can't take Meela to Hamunaptra. It sounds crazy, but we can't."

Rick nodded his head slowly, his gaze unfaltering. "I'll talk to him."

Hattie breathed an anxious sigh, glancing down the deck before returning her desperate gaze to her brother. "Also, you have to help me with Beni. I don't knw what I'm going to do, but I can't put up with this for the whole trip."

That grim, calculating smile returned to Rick's face, and his eye twinkled.

"I can handle Beni," he said assuredly. "But first, let's talk to this chieftain."

"Ardeth," Hattie said quickly. Rick gave her a strange look, and she nearly blushed. "It's just - his name is Ardeth."