Ghosts of Karnak Read Free Page A

smell of it seemed to pinch his nose, how the water sighed longingly as the waves broke over the shore, how the gulls clacked and squabbled over the small, silvery fish he didn’t know the name of.
    As a younger man he’d often snuck out of the house during the summer to spend nights on the beach, skinny-dipping with Katherine, the closest he’d ever come to a childhood sweetheart. She’d been his girl next door—quite literally—although next door, in Gabriel’s world, was half a mile from his parent’s estate.
    They’d make clandestine arrangements to meet in the sand dunes, throwing their clothes off with gay abandon and running pell-mell into the frothy water without a single care in the world.
    He’d loved the tingle of the cool air on his flesh, the shock of the icy water, and the luxurious curve of Katherine’s back. She’d felt so soft beneath his fingers, so pure, and yet, when she bit his lip and played with the tip of his cock, she’d seemed so forward, so feminine, so vital.
    He hadn’t thought of those days for years, not since he’d returned from the war to find her gone, moved out west with her family, leaving nothing so much as a forwarding address. He hadn’t tried particularly hard to find her, either, but then—what would a girl like that have wanted with a damaged soldier like him? He supposed she was probably tearing up the West Coast these days, a riotous novelist or painter, a notorious and outspoken flapper girl, making a name for herself amongst the usual pantheon of crashing bores who presided over high society.
    The thought made him smile, but it was tinged with disconsolation.
    Of course, here at the Chelsea Piers, things were a little different to the Long Island beach he remembered; the air reeked of oil and fish, the water was filthy, and the baritone honk of the ships’ horns set him constantly on edge.
    It was early, and he wasn’t feeling his best. He’d downed two Bloody Marys with his eggs that morning, but even they’d failed to take the edge off. He was considering visiting a doctor to see about having his broken ribs strapped. He’d been meaning to have a word with Felix about that—seeing if he couldn’t figure out an arrangement with an understanding surgeon who wouldn’t ask too many questions. Although, the way things had been going lately, he’d be more likely to need an undertaker than a doctor.
    He adjusted his sunglasses, wincing as he brushed the tender flesh around the orbit of his left eye. It was already black and swollen from where the Enforcer had cracked his goggles. He consoled himself with the fact he could still see out of it, and lit a cigarette, searching for distraction.
    He was propped against the railing, facing out to sea. In the dock, the
Centurion
sat like a great leviathan, squat upon the water, casting him in its long, ominous shadow. Passengers bustled on the deck, crowding into the wedge of the ship’s prow and hanging over the side, waving down to those who had dutifully filed out here to meet them.
    Disembarkation ramps were being pulled into place, buttressing the glossy flanks of the steel beast, while wooden cargo crates were already being unloaded from one of the holds, bearing dubious bounty, he presumed, from the East.
    An exhibition was coming to town, to be held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—the resulting plunder from a recent expedition to Egypt. The newspapers were bursting with claims of wondrous finds; how the evidence from the dead queen’s tomb would forever change how the Ancient Egyptian religions were viewed. It was, apparently, the find of the century—although Gabriel took such grandstanding with a pinch of salt; the century, to his mind, had barely begun.
    No doubt Arthur, up at the museum, would be lost in paroxysms of joy at the prospect of getting his hands on the new finds, but Gabriel wasn’t here for that. In fact, all of the flashbulbs going off around him were starting to become an annoyance,