A/N: Thank you, thank you, thank you to every one of my fantastic reviewers! Your feedback and encouragement is greatly appreciated. Now for a longer one; enjoy!
She smiled into the kiss, bringing her arms up to wrap around him, meeting his lips eagerly with her own. She was the one who pulled away first, this time, for air. "Hey."
"Hey." he rasped back.
"Cole Addison?" A uniformed police officer was striding down the main aisle.
"That's me." Frank stood, offering a hand to help Nancy up. "The bomb is back here, but it's deactivated. We think."
The officer's eyes widened and he spoke into his radio quickly in Arabic before turning back to Frank. "Our bomb experts will be here shortly, in the meantime, you will please come with us."
Frank kept a firm hold on Nancy's hand as they followed the officer out of the hotel and into the chaos of the streets, which were filled with panicked partygoers, interested bystanders, press, and police all trying to get a handle on the situation. The officer led them to the edge of the police perimeter, where Susannah was waiting with sparkling eyes. "We got them!" she squealed. Sure enough, the flashing lights of the police SUV illuminated the figures of John Krieger and Mahfouz, pressed against the vehicle, hands secured behind their backs.
"How—?!" Nancy exclaimed.
"They were running out just as I got back with the police!" Susannah said gleefully. "I just pointed them out!"
"These are the men responsible for this bomb?" asked the police officer who'd found them in the hotel. "You can identify them."
Both Nancy and Frank verified the men's identities. As Susannah clarified their story with the police in Arabic, Krieger made eye contact with Frank, his face twisting into a grin.
"You may have gotten me for now, but we'll see how well your case sticks with no witnesses."
Frank took a step closer to him, keeping Nancy tucked protectively behind him. "What are you saying, Krieger?"
"Just that I doubt they'll hold me for long on the word of a single American senator." Krieger said in an oily voice. "In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Nasser refused to say a word, the gutless slime. Might mean admitting he knew about something he shouldn't."
"Even if he won't testify, Darius will." Frank reminded him.
"Oh, I don't think so..." Krieger said, exchanging a glance with Mahfouz. They both grinned.
A cold wave of dread broke over Frank. "What did you do? Is Darius dead?" Then a truly heart-wrenching thought stuck him. "My brother?"
Krieger gave an unctuous shrug, hampered by his restraints. "I honestly don't know."
"But if they are, they're in the right place for it." Mahfouz added, to Krieger's apparent amusement.
Frank saw red. He dropped Nancy's hand and shoved Krieger against the car, hard. "You tell me where my brother is."
The young officer from the hotel pulled Frank off the prisoner. "Stay back! Mr. Addison!"
"Yes, Mr. Addison." Krieger taunted. "Mind your temper!"
Before Frank could do anything more, Krieger and Mahfouz were loaded into the back of the vehicle bound for police headquarters. Frank was having trouble breathing, like there was a weight on his chest. Krieger had done something to Joe. Joe, Bess, Darius, Leila... in danger? Dying somewhere? Dead already?
"Cole. Cole." Now it was Nancy's turn to hold him, but the repetition of his undercover alias wasn't particularly soothing. "We'll find Cooper and Nikki. We found Krieger, remember? Where were they going today?"
Frank blinked, trying to get his head together, trying to think. "Uh... um, the Luxor Museum. The Temple of Karnak. The Valley of the Kings."
"The Valley of the Kings." Nancy repeated slowly. "That's where King Tut is buried?"
Frank nodded absently. "It's a—" The realization hit him suddenly. "Burial ground. It's an ancient burial ground." If they are dead, they're in the right place for it. "Oh, god."
Nancy read his mind with her usual efficiency and turned to the young policeman. "Excuse me? Officer...?"
"Bassili. Call me Cal." said the dark-skinned young man.
"Cal." Nancy said. "Is there any way you can give us a ride out to the Valley of the Kings tonight?"
Cal looked at her like she was crazy.
"Please, it's urgent, and it relates to Krieger. Our friends may be in danger." Nancy pleaded. "We'll explain everything to you on the way."
Frank wasn't sure if it was the plea for help or the promise of information that decided Cal, but he finally nodded. "I must first inform my captain." he said, leading them over to his own police SUV. Nancy climbed in the back and then reached out a hand to Frank.
"We'll find them." she said softly.
Somehow, he believed her.
Forty minutes later, he, Nancy, and Susannah were huddled in the back of Officer Cal's SUV in the near-empty parking area at the Valley of the Kings. The tourist attraction was closed for the evening, and only the handful of Antiquities police that made up the security team were there.
"They say that they did a sweep of the open tombs after closing just an hour ago, and found no one." Cal reported back to them after conferencing with the head of security.
"And what about the tombs that aren't open to the public?" Frank pressed anxiously. "The unexcavated ones?"
Cal shook his head. "There are dozens..." he began.
"Then we'd better start looking." Frank bailed out of the car and strode into the darkness, ignoring Cal's calls after him. The desert night was chilly, and not all the tombs were well-lit. If Joe and Bess were stashed in one of the closed tombs, it could take hours to locate them.
Gravel crunched behind him and Nancy jogged up to him, looking endearingly strange in her evening gown paired with the borrowed sneakers and oversized windbreaker from the gym bag Cal kept in his backseat. "I promised Cal that I wouldn't let you damage any of the artifacts." she said. "He and Susannah are going to start looking over in the west section, and some of the security guards are going to look around in the south."
Frank nodded tersely, not slowing his pace.
The tombs were haunting in the dark, windswept relics of ages past with their echoing corridors and stark paintings and hieroglyphs. Any other time Frank would have spent hours studying the elaborate artwork and architecture, but tonight all he could focus on was any sign of Joe. Something brightly colored lying on the ground caught his eye and he ducked to pick it up. It was a Barbie doll with tangled blonde hair, dressed in an eye-poppingly pink ball gown.
"Leila's, you think?" Nancy asked, coming up behind him and taking the doll gently.
"Could be." Frank said, looking around as though the little girl might just be lying around too. "This area's supposed to be closed to tourists."
Nancy tucked the doll into her purse and they both looked thoughtfully around at the surrounding crumbling sandstone structures.
Then, they heard it.
A faint grinding sound. Repeating, but not exactly periodic. Frowning, Frank followed the sound through the arching doorway of a tomb that was marked closed to the public. Nancy followed.
The tomb was stiflingly dark, the sound seeming to echo from everywhere at once. "Hang on." Nancy said, reaching into her purse once more and extracting a small flashlight, which she clicked on triumphantly. "I wondered why I carry all this stuff around."
Frank could have kissed her. "You are beautiful, you know that?"
"I was beginning to wonder..." she said dryly, but she tucked her hand into his arm as they navigated the narrow corridors of the tomb. After a few dead ends, they found themselves in a wider, more ornate room. A pile of dusty excavation ropes and tools lay forgotten in a corner under a massive painting of some sort of pharaonic funeral scene. In the center of the room were four closed stone coffins.
The grinding noise had stopped.
"Hello?" Frank called into the darkness.
The grinding came again, and Nancy jumped. "Oh god," she said, clutching his arm. "It's coming from the coffins."
Sure enough, when he looked closely he could see that with each sound one of the coffin lids was moving almost imperceptibly. "Joe." Frank said, running to the coffin. He tapped one hand on the stone lid. "Hang on in there. We're going to get you out. Come on, Rebecca."
Nancy came over to help him shift the stone slab. "Just letting you know, if a cursed mummy pops out of here, I may faint."
Frank laughed, mostly in relief. It had never occurred to him that the coffins might contain anyone but their missing friends. "I think you and Coop watch the same kind of movies." Slowly, the heavy slab shifted, revealing Joe, filthy and bound hand and foot, but mercifully alive.
They helped him sit up and work the gag out of his mouth. He coughed for several seconds before nodding his head at the adjacent coffin. "That one next," he rasped. "Leila's in that one."
Oh, god. That poor little girl. His thoughts were clearly echoed in the expression on Nancy's face as her miniature scissors proved their worth twice in as many hours by making short work of Joe's bonds.
Joe rubbed his raw wrists and allowed Frank to help him out of the coffin and into a hug. "What took you guys so long?" he complained.
"Give us a break." Frank said as he and Joe each took a side of the next stone slab and shifted it. "We've had a long night."
"Jeez! The bomb!" Joe remembered with a stricken look.
"We took care of it." Nancy said, squeezing Joe's arm. "Got Krieger and Mahfouz too."
Frank felt a pain somewhere in his chest as the next coffin yielded a tiny, shivering bound figure, her face scrunched up in terror around the silk tie gagging her mouth. He watched as, with infinite tenderness, Nancy reached in and released the girl from her bonds, scooping her up into her arms.
"Leila? You're safe now, honey. You're safe."
Leila's eyes opened wide. "It was too dark." she whispered. "The bad men..."
"They're not coming back." Nancy promised. "They're going to jail and they'll never hurt you again." She handed the flashlight to Leila, which seemed to ease the girl's fears a little bit. "There's some light for you, sweetheart. You think you can hold that for me for a minute?" she rummaged in her purse. "I got something else for you."
"For me?"
Nancy produced the Barbie doll. "Is this yours?"
"My dolly!"
Leila was in good hands with Nancy, so Frank and Joe moved on to the next two coffins. Darius was next, accepting his daughter from Nancy with shaking hands. "Thank you," he said to Nancy and Frank. "Thank you." Frank had a hunch that Leila would be okay—kids had the tendency to bounce back. It was Darius who'd be reliving this nightmare for a long time.
"How long?" Frank asked his brother softly as they started on the final coffin.
"What time is it?" Joe asked, not making eye contact.
Frank squinted at his watch in the darkness. "A little after eight."
"A little more than three hours, then." Joe responded.
Three hours alone, tied up, in the dark, in a tiny stone coffin. Frank tasted claustrophobic panic in the back of his throat at the very idea. "God, Joe." was all he could say.
"Hey," Joe gifted him with the ghost of a smile. "At least they weren't airtight. We weren't sure."
A pale Bess emerged calmly from the last coffin, only the dried tracks of running mascara betraying the fear she'd felt. She pulled Nancy into a tight clinch before, to Frank's surprise, taking refuge under Joe's arm. Joe pulled her close, murmuring into her ear, "You did great today, babe."
As they all made their way out of the tomb, Nancy leading the way with the flashlight, Frank heard Joe and Bess' continued whispering behind him. It twisted his heart, but he was familiar with the phenomenon: they'd been through something so horrifying today that they were the only ones who understood it; the only ones they could lean on. All the bickering of the past few weeks had been forgotten.
They met up with Cal and a tearful Susannah back at the parking lot. Nancy's hand worked its way into his as they watched the joyful reunion between mother and daughter. "You were right," she said. "We make a good team."
Darius and Susannah accepted a ride to the hospital from one of the security guards, wanting to make sure Leila wouldn't be suffering any ill effects from her ordeal. The four 'Addisons' opted to let Officer Cal return them to their hotel.
"Don't leave the country," Cal warned them at the door. "We are going to have some more questions for you in the morning. A lot of questions. I mean it."
After assuring him they weren't going anywhere, the exhausted teens trudged up to their hotel rooms. Joe and Bess retreated to the balcony together... Frank suspected the open night sky was pretty appealing after the cramped coffins. He sank down on the couch, letting his head rest in his hands.
A pair of men's sneakers came to a stop in front of him as Nancy sat down beside him. "Hey."
"Hey." Under the bruises and old makeup and tomb dust she was pale, and Frank felt disgusted with himself as he realized that however difficult this day had been for him, it had been ten times as overwhelming for her. He mustered the courage to take her hand. "How are you holding up?"
She just shook her head helplessly. "Today was... unbelievable. We almost died, all of us, and... and I haven't remembered a thing."
Her eyes welled up and Frank pulled her close, offering strength. "When would you have had a chance?" he reminded her. "You've been under so much stress, and you still handled everything that got thrown at you—a conspiracy, a bomb, a kidnapping."
She shuddered against him. "It all could have gone so wrong. I don't know what I'm doing out there, I could have gotten someone killed."
The adrenaline crash. Frank had experienced the post-adventure fear and regret plenty of times, and he was sure Nancy had too, but Rebecca was experiencing it for the first time. "It's over now, and everyone is safe, and it's mostly thanks to you. I don't know what I would have done without you today."
She pulled back slightly, resting her hand on the side of his neck in an intimate touch. "You would have been all right. That bomb was all you."
"I would have fallen apart if you hadn't been beside me. I know things aren't easy for you right now, but I wanted you to know that." he said, and it was true. He knew her memory loss left her feeling confused, frustrated, and helpless, but her instincts and fearlessness had taken over to carry the day. "I know I kind of lost it when J-Cooper went missing. You kept me grounded, helped me figure it out."
"You and Cooper are close." Nancy said. "No one could blame you for losing it a little."
She was so much like Nancy. "How can you understand me so well when you don't even remember me?"
She smiled. "I'm a fast learner. Now come here." She gently guided his head forward until their lips met.
Frank was tired of fighting it. He was damned if he did, damned if he didn't. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, deepening the kiss. The whole case had been something out of a dream—exotic locales, bombs, kidnappings... Nancy, as his wife. It was crazy to let himself imagine that this relationship was real, futile to want it.
But he did.
Somehow he'd fallen in love with Rebecca Addison.
She made a soft murmur in her throat, and he was lost.
A sharp knock on the door startled them apart, gasping and blushing. Their eyes met in alarm at the voice from the other side.
"Police! Open up, Addison. You're wanted for aiding and abetting in the escape of a fugitive—John Krieger."