Free Canyon of the Sphinx by Kathryn Le Veque

something
like that. But I’ll tell you one thing; there’s no way she’d leave a pair of
underwear in our field tent. No way in hell.”
    “So they’re not hers.”
    “No.”
    “So whose are they?”
    Marcus just rolled his eyes.
“You’re asking me? How the hell do I know?”
    “Well, how the hell do I know?”
    Marcus had absolutely no
patience. He turned back to his sarcophagus, now very close to being readied
for the conservators. “I don’t have time for this crap. So there is a pair of
panties in my tent. So what?”
    “Juliana saw Jensen leaving your
tent at dawn.”
    “I was up here in the tomb before
dawn. Way before.”
    Lynn knew Marcus wasn’t lying.
And he also knew, irrefutably, that there was nothing going on between Jensen
and Marcus. It wasn’t even in the realm of possibility.
    “I’m sorry, man,” he said,
feeling like an idiot. “I just promised Juliana I’d get to the bottom of it. I
never really thought there was any monkey business going on.”
    Marcus paused by the sarcophagus.
When he looked at Lynn, it was with eyes filled with genuine distress.
    “Well, there must have been some
question in your mind, otherwise you wouldn’t have confronted me,” he said, all
of the fire out of his voice. “Do you really think, for one brief second, that
I’d actually cheat on Kathlyn?”
    Lynn felt horrible. “No.”
    Marcus stared at him a moment
before turning back to the mummy. “She’s my whole life, Lynn. You know that.
Body and soul, I belong to that woman and she belongs to me. I don’t know if I
can put this strongly enough. She’s the spark that keeps my heart beating.”
    “I know,” Lynn said softly. He
looked at the panties in his hand. “Like I said, I'm sorry."
    Marcus waved him off. "Don't
be. I should be glad that Kathlyn has people like you to take care of
her."
    "You're not mad?"
    "No."
    "So then the question
remains; how did these get in your tent?”
    “Ask Jensen. Frankly, I’d like to
know what the hell she was doing there at dawn. Maybe she put them there.”
    “Do you get any sense from her
that she’s coming on to you?”
    Marcus frowned. “Nope. But then
again, I could care less. Maybe she is and I’m just not noticing.”
    “You two have spent a lot of time
together, going over the books.”
    “True enough. But even if I
wasn’t married to Kathlyn, she still holds no interest for me. She's just
another face in the crowd.”
    Lynn held up the panties. “You
want to ask her about this?”
    Marcus shook his head. “I’m not
even going to waste my time. You found them; why don’t you ask her.”
    Lynn nodded his head, turning to
leave the chamber. As he left the tomb, a thought occurred to him; he wasn’t
going to ask Jensen anything.
    He was going to give his wife the
satisfaction of doing it.
     

 
    CHAPTER
FIVE
     
    "You guys are liars,"
Kathlyn was visibly upset. "I want you to get the hell out of here, do you
hear me? You're costing me my credibility."
    The two photographers stood in
front of Kathlyn, hanging their heads like a couple of scolded kids. Kevin
Valentine was a hairy stump of a man, while his counterpart was taller,
thinner, and looked like a hippy. The two had worked with Kathlyn before on
legitimate World Geography matters. But this wasn’t one of them, as she had
just found out.
    “We just wanted to see if there
was something going on here,” Kevin said. “The media is aware you’re here.
It’ll just be matter of time before they descend on you.”
    Kathlyn sighed heavily; somehow,
she knew that. “So you wanted a scoop?”
    “Sort of.”
    “Okay, I’ll give you a scoop;
there is no scoop!”
    The photographers moaned. “Oh,
come on, Dr. Trent,” John said. “Can’t we have a few small pictures, just
enough to keep people satisfied on what’s going on with you?”
    “No,” Kathlyn snapped. “I just
got here myself; there’s nothing going on yet and there won’t be if you don’t
leave me alone to do my