Buried Secrets by Kristi Belcamino (best ebook reader for surface pro TXT) 📗

Someone had been murdered on her excavation. Her dig permit had been canceled. And she was returning to the States—most likely—without a job or two nickels to rub together, as her dad used to say.

“Dallas?”

He was standing near her bed. She hadn’t heard him come in from the adjoining room.

She was staring straight at the ceiling. She didn’t turn to look at him.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Can I get you anything?”

“I’ll be fine,” she mumbled and rolled back over to face the wall with her back to him.

Once upon a time she’d dreamed of having Colton in her bed. But right then, she barely had energy to lift her head. Any love life was out of the question.

She held her breath for a minute until she heard his footsteps go back into the adjoining room. Then she closed her eyes seeking sweet oblivion until the next morning when they would fly home. All she wanted to do was sleep and not think.

The depression that blanketed her was a familiar friend.

She knew the signs. It wasn’t the first time it had happened to her.

The first time she had been a kid.

A chubby, unhappy little kid who ate too much because she missed her dad.

Now, instead of eating away her depression, she knew if she let herself wallow in it for a day or two it often got better. At least it had worked that way in the past.

But who knew this time. After all nobody had been murdered before because of something she did.

CHAPTER FIVETEEN

Two Months Later

The phone rang waking Dallas from her pill-induced slumber. It was long past noon. She’d been up most of the night before watching mindless fail videos with idiots trying to tempt fate. She finally popped more sleeping pills and fell asleep around dawn.

From the fog of her sleeping pills she saw that she’d been awaken by Colton calling. She let the call go to voicemail.

For Christ’s sakes. Couldn’t he leave her alone? Just forget about her?

Ten minutes later she sat up in bed and listened to the message.

“Dallas? I did what I could but the board of regents officially let you go at last night’s meeting.” He was quiet for a second. “I’m sorry.”

At first Dallas didn’t know what to think or say. She’d blown it big time, hadn’t she? But she’d known from that moment on the train in Egypt that her job was dust.

She’d created this. And she didn’t care. Right then all she felt was sorry for herself.

And why shouldn’t she feel sorry for herself? She was alone in the world.

An orphan. Once again, she tried not to think about her parents.

It had seemed like a dream. They had decided to get back together. Her father was going to settle down. He’d gotten a book deal with a big New York publisher. He was going to live with them in the desert and write his book. Her parents went into town to celebrate and on the way home a drunk driver T-boned them. They both died instantly.

Dallas had just turned 18 two weeks before that and was headed to college a month later.

She knew she’d never get over losing them.

And right now, she felt as sorry for herself as she did when they’d first died. She was alone in the world except for a boy, a young man, who was on the verge of giving up on her. She could tell.

A few weeks before Colton had pestered her for days about going to his mother’s house for dinner. Finally, to appease him, she’d agreed on a day. Then flaked. She’d pleaded a terrible cold. But then he showed up at her place with a plate made up by his mother. She sat in her bathrobe and avoided his eyes as she ate.

Colton’s call made it clear she couldn’t dodge him forever. Yesterday, when he’d reminded her about the regent’s meeting, he’d told her that there was this new exhibit at the science museum that he wanted to go to and hoped she could come too.

He wouldn’t stop. A small part of her was grateful that he didn’t give up, but the other part of her, the small dark, ugly part of her that felt sorry for herself thought his persistence was slightly annoying. Even thinking that filled her with guilt. He was the best thing that had ever happened to her. But she didn’t deserve him. He just didn’t realize it.

She clicked on her iPad and scrolled through YouTube videos, looking for an idiotic fail video to take her mind off her pathetic life.

As she did, she saw another video in the sidebar. It showed David Caldwell standing in front of a sphinx the size of a small car. He had a smug look on his face. At least that’s what Dallas thought.

Despite herself she clicked on the video. It was some sort of TV interview in Cairo. She looked down at the date scrolling across the bottom of the screen. It was only filmed this morning.

“It is my destiny to find Cleopatra’s tomb.”

“Blah blah blah,” she said. He went on spouting his arrogant theories and Dallas was making fun of him and tuning him out for the most part until he said something that stunned her.

“We have a new theory on where the tomb is. We now have proof that the tomb is not actually under the sea but at a temple that was close to Alexandria. We are in Cairo to apply for an excavation permit from the minister of antiquities.”

Now Dallas was sitting straight up. She threw a pillow across the room. “Son of a bitch!”

She stood up and wanted to punch something. He was stealing her theory. He was using her research. How dare him?

He must have found out she’d narrowed it down to Taposiris and had a temporary permit and now he was going to swoop in and find the tomb. She pulled back her shoulders. Not if she