Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) Read online

  No way Rowan was dead. No effing way.

  Halima hurried back to kneel before Ella. “Dearest?”

  Ella looked into her eyes. “He’s not gone, Halima,” she said. “I know I’d feel it if he were.”

  “We’ll find him,” Halima said simply, taking both of Ella’s hands in hers. “We’ll start from the beginning and go step-by-step to the end.”

  Ella nodded slowly. “And we’ll find him.”

  The next several days were solemn ones in the townhouse except for the occasional squeal of laughter from a fully recovered two-year-old. Rowan’s boss came to visit on the second day, but because Ella knew he didn’t have new information to give her on what might have happened to Rowan on the ship, she asked Halima to tell him she wasn’t feeling up to a visit.

  The Ambassador sent a personal note of condolence.

  On the third day, Ella sat in the screened lanai in the back garden of the townhouse. Tall and spiky papyrus stalks with their pale flowers grew in thickets along the north wall. Ella knew the Egyptians considered the papyrus plant to be the symbol of life itself.

  It was all very well, she thought, to say she’d find him—but how? What possible first steps were there? Where was the beginning, as Halima had so optimistically alluded to three days earlier?

  And meanwhile, where was Rowan? If he wasn’t really gone—and Ella refused to even form the words in her head—then where was he? Whether he’d fallen or jumped or been thrown overboard, he had to be somewhere right now, didn’t he? Was he in the sea? Was he on another boat?

  It couldn’t be voluntary. Ella simply couldn’t believe anything would have deflected Rowan from his aim to get to London to deliver his speech. And it couldn’t be accidental. Even falling-down drunk—as many ship passengers often were—there was no easy way for anyone to fall into the ocean from the ship.

  So it was deliberate. Somebody threw Rowan overboard. The only real question that remained then—and this one was even bigger than why—was Rowan dead or alive when dumped into the sea?

  Ella shivered and pulled her cotton cardigan closer around her shoulders. She knew she shouldn’t be cold in the heat of Cairo’s summer. The temperature still hovered at hundred degrees. The problem was, a tiny part of her was starting to believe, was starting to make friends with the idea by bits and pieces, that perhaps Rowan really wasn’t coming back. That Rowan really was…

  “Ella?”

  Halima popped her head out the doorway and made a face. “Can you be comfortable out here?”

  “What is it, Halima?” Ella asked turning her face away. Unless it was news of Rowan she wasn’t interested.

  “I thought we could read the mail together,” Halima said, coming out to the lanai and seating herself next to Ella on the outdoor divan.

  “What are you talking about? I don’t give a damn about the mail.”

  “I know, dearest,” Halima said. “Let’s just get through it, yes?”

  Something in Halima’s voice nudged Ella out of her comfortable misery long enough to look at her friend. “Something’s come in the mail?”

  Halima placed an opened envelope in Ella’s lap. “I have read everything,” Halima said in a solemn, steady voice. “I hoped you wouldn’t mind.”

  “I don’t, of course,” Ella said, picking up the letter to glance at it. The first thing she saw was the golden embossed stamp of the US Embassy. The two lines in the middle of the page formally notified Ella that Professor Rowan Pierce, US Citizen, of late residence in Cairo, Egypt, had been officially declared dead.

  Ella sucked in a breath and sat up straight. “They can’t do this! They don’t even have a body. It’s only been…. Why would they do this? Have they found something?” She looked at Halima, who handed her another letter, also opened.

  Ella snatched it and quickly read the single paragraph of typewritten copy. She looked at Halima in disbelief. “They’re throwing us out of the country?”

  “They’re revoking your visa,” Halima said.

  “Same thing.” Ella looked at the letter again and then stared into the depths of the townhouse’s garden. Blood red geraniums grew in thick hedges around the perimeter. Marvel’s gardener kept the wide patch of sod in the center vibrant green for all that Cairo was essentially a desert. “I can’t believe it,” she said, nearly to herself. “Without Rowan and his job, I can’t stay.” She looked at Halima. “And there’s nowhere back in the States we can go either. Not in 1925 anyway.”

  “I know.”

  “What are we going to do, Halima?” Ella looked at the two letters again, and then at her friend.

  “First, we shall have lunch. And then we will take the little one to the park because he loves it so and it will help clear our heads.”

  “I can’t believe any of this is happening.”

  That afternoon, Ella allowed Halima to take full control of both her and Tater. She waited in the salon, her purse in her lap, while Halima clucked around the baby, tucking him into his carriage, packing his bottle and preferred lovies into his blankets with him. When she pushed the carriage to the door, she called to Ella, who walked behind Halima and the butler as they carried the carriage down the front steps of the townhouse.

  Halima strode ahead of Ella, pushing the carriage and leading the way to the park. It was the first time Ella had stepped outside the townhouse since word of Rowan’s disappearance. The sun was bright and the sky painfully blue.

  It made everything seem all that much worse.

  She saw that Halima had gone to the same bench they always sat at, which overlooked a wide expanse of unnaturally green lawn and a fountain. The pigeons that flocked to the fountain were a never-ending source of delight for little Tater.

  When Ella caught up with them she slumped onto the bench. “How the hell is a walk in the park helping?” she asked querulously. “How in the hell is it going to help me stay in Egypt? Or find Rowan? Or not want to feel like I could die?”

  Halima tucked in a corner of Tater’s blanket and handed him a cookie, which he gobbled up immediately. She pulled him from the carriage and set him down on his sturdy, short little legs. A silken rope was tied to the front of his jumper. He instantly ran to scatter the pigeons.

  Halima smiled at him but spoke to Ella. “First things first, dearest.”

  “That’s all very well but what is the first thing?” Ella’s face was creased in frowns.

  Halima turned to her. “It seems to me that before you can make any decisions about what to do, you must find the truth about Effendi.”

  “The truth,” Ella said, her eye caught by Tater’s exuberant pouncing amongst the pigeons. “You mean the truth about whether he lives. Or…not.”

  “Yes, dear one. I’m afraid that must be answered first.”

  “But they want to throw me out of the country,” Ella said. “I don’t have time to look into the mysterious surroundings of Rowan’s disappearance.”

  “Is not time the one thing you have more of than anyone else?”

  Ella looked at Tater and spoke slowly, carefully choosing her words. “You’re talking about the time travel thing.”

  Halima clapped her hands. “Very good, little man!” she called to Tater. “You have protected us from the evil flying dwarves! Now come claim your reward.”

  Tater trotted back over to the two of them and went straight to Ella. She pulled him into her lap and kissed him soundly. It occurred to her that she hadn’t spent much time with him since she got word of Rowan. Her arms tightened around him just when he began struggling to be released to chase more pigeons.

  As Tater ran back toward the birds, Ella closed her eyes and let the sun’s rays caress her face. She felt the breeze from the trees lift the strands of her hair. “Alright, Halima,” she said, her eyes still closed and feeling just the tiniest bit better in three days. “I know you have a plan. Let’s hear it.”

  They went to Olna’s shop in the bazaar that very day. It was almost as if Halima had planned it
all along. She sat outside the shop with little Tater on her lap—his eyes round with wonder and alarm at all the strange things to see and smell and hear—while Ella went inside.

  Olna’s shop didn’t smell any nicer than the last time Ella had visited it two years earlier, she noted. She supposed part of that was from the burning incense, but the rest of it was due to whatever it was the incense was intended to cover up. Olna, herself, didn’t look five minutes older, although Ella admitted it would be hard to tell. As it was she looked to be anywhere between eighty and death.

  “I was wondering when you would come,” Olna said when Ella stepped through the door of her shop.

  “Oh?” Ella said, walking boldly in, glancing around the shop—its shelves still crammed with every kind of dusty, useless knickknack one could find in an illegal antiquities shop in 1925 Cairo. “And why is that?”

  “Because I had a dream about your husband.”

  Ella felt her stomach lurch at the old woman’s words and she recognized the feeling as hope. “Tell me about your dream,” she said as she stood in the middle of the shop.

  “Tea first,” Olna said, then turned and hobbled to the back of the shop. Ella knew the way. She’d come to see Olna with Rowan—and newborn baby Tater—to hear the expected news that trying to return to their own time would be too dangerous for the baby. Ella knew she owed Olna a special debt of gratitude. If it wasn’t for the old seer, Rowan would never have found Ella in the desert in 1922.

  And now it was Ella looking to Olna to help her find Rowan.

  She pushed back the beaded curtain that divided the back room from the shop and saw that Olna was already seated at the little table with a boiling kettle at her elbow and two cups in front of her.

  Ella looked over her shoulder to where Halima and Tater sat outside the shop.

  “They will be fine,” Olna said, her smile revealing gaps in her teeth. “It is your husband who needs you now.”

  Ella snapped her head back to Olna and quickly sat at the table. “He’s alive?” she asked breathlessly, her heart pounding. “I knew it! I knew he was alive!” She reached out to grab the old woman’s gnarled hands. “Where? Where is he?”

  Olna nodded her head and slowly removed her hands from Ella’s. She poured their teacups and Ella watched the tea leaves bob to the surface of the water. He was alive!

  “Where he is, I do not know,” Olna said, handing Ella’s cup to her. “That will be for you to find.”

  Ella nodded. It didn’t matter. She could do anything now that she knew he still lived. Everything else was just details to be worked out, schedules to be arranged, resources to be mounted. She smiled broadly and brought the cup to her lips.

  “And I will,” she said. “Thank you, Olna. Again. Thank you.”

  The old woman shrugged. “The dream came to me. Then you came to me. I did nothing.”

  God bless Halima, Ella thought. She insisted I come. If it weren’t for her, I’d still be depressed and sleeping ‘til noon and getting ready to be kicked out of Egypt. The last thought reminded Ella that she was on a tight leash time-wise.

  She drank down her tea and stood. “Thank you again, Olna. So much. But I must start looking for him straightaway.”

  “Of course. My dream indicated he was in much…distress.”

  Ella stopped. Of course he would be hurt. That made sense. But how badly? She sat back down. “Can you tell me a little about your dream?”

  Olna picked up her cup and sipped gingerly, then settled the cup back in its saucer. “He is hurt, but in my dream I saw him walking.”

  That’s good, Ella thought.

  “He’s afraid.”

  That’s not good. Very little made Rowan afraid. Ella felt her hopes sinking. “Did your dream show why Rowan is afraid?”

  Olna shook her head. “No.”

  Ella took in a long breath, preparing to leave. Somehow she’d have to convince the American Embassy that she had information that Rowan was alive. She’d have to get hold of Marvel—who was in Dubai, she thought—to put together a team of people to….to what? Search the Mediterranean?

  She chewed her bottom lip. “Did your dream show Rowan on, like, a beach or in a city?”

  “A beach.”

  “Okay, that’s good. And is he alone?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Okay, well, that’s cryptic. Not alone?”

  “Mostly alone.”

  “Well, Olna, is he…did your dream indicate he’ll starve to death or something if he’d not reached soon? I mean, I know that’s sort of specific but you said he’s in distress.”

  “He is in immediate danger.”

  “I see.” Ella ran her hands through her hair in frustration, knocking bobby pins out onto the floor. “Is there anything else you can tell me, Olna, about this dream of yours that might help me find Rowan? Anything at all?”

  Olna looked into her teacup as if in deep thought and then looked back up at Ella. “Did I tell you he’s no longer in 1925?”

  4

  Off the coast of Libya, 1825

  In the end, it had been the screams of the seabirds more than the sun’s oppressive battering ram that forced him out of his stupor. Even before he opened his eyes Rowan realized he was lying on his back in the bottom of a small wooden dinghy. He lifted his head and grabbed the sides of the little boat, straining to sit up.

  Struggling to understand.

  He craned his neck but could see nothing but ocean all the way to the horizon. The blinding sun created dancing, twinkling diamonds of light that made him blink and tuck his chin to evade the glare. His head clanged with a steady throbbing pain and he shifted uncomfortably in the bottom of the lifeboat.

  He remembered boarding the ship but nothing else. Had the ship sunk? Were there other survivors? As he pulled himself up to look over the side of the boat he was assailed with a ferocious nausea and a glimpse of a memory flash.

  His hand went to his throat but came away clean. Yeah, he remembered that bit. Whoever he was, the guy who cut him must have been nervous. The wound was long but shallow and had stopped bleeding hours ago.

  What the fuck happened?

  He shielded his eyes from the sun’s onslaught, and when he did he saw there was actually an object to focus on besides the endless blue-green horizon that surrounded him.

  An island.

  He looked in the bottom of the boat but could find no oar, no life vest. Nothing.

  The waves were pushing him away from the land mass. He looked back at the island, further away now.

  He got to his knees, groaning as he did, and after a quick inspection he thought one of his ribs was bruised. His face was a mess. Whatever had happened to him, he’d been on the raw end of it. One eye was swollen shut, his lip was split and a cut that felt like it could use a stitch or two was opened over his left eye.

  Decision time, Pierce. Figure it out later. Right now it’s do or die.

  Maybe literally.

  He yanked off his shoes and tied the laces together. Then, tossing them over his shoulder, and without hesitating, he plunged over the side of the boat in the direction of the island.

  Immediately it became clear that he’d seriously underestimated his injuries. The powerful sidestroke he’d intended to take him to shore dissolved into a cramped sidestroke. Focusing on the land—now looking much further away than it had from the boat—he willed himself to power toward it. He knew that once he was past where the waves were breaking, he could just let the sea bodysurf him onto the beach.

  He just had to make it that far and then let the island draw him home like a spider’s web to a house fly.

  A sudden wave slapped him when he wasn’t ready and he drank in more salt water than he knew was good for him. By the time his knee hit the island’s first shoal, his body was already in convulsions, throwing up all that he’d drunk.

  But he was on land.

  He crawled to the line of palmettos and mangrove that hugged the beginning of the ju
ngle interior and collapsed on the sand. He heard the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears and the steady burn of his injuries, stretched to their limit against the ocean swim.

  I made it, he thought, as he fought the numbing sensation of aches that threatened to overwhelm his consciousness. For good or ill, I’m here.

  That night, he didn’t bother trying to find water or food. He slept, wet and shivering, huddled under a palmetto bush, grateful to be alive and on solid ground. He pictured Ella’s face—laughing, kissing their baby, kissing him—and was able to drift off to sleep in spite of the creaking, cawing sounds coming from the jungle behind him.

  The next morning he took stock. He had no memory of how he’d ended up in the lifeboat but it was pretty obviously done to him. Why or by whom was lost to him.

  All he knew now was that he was alive and relatively sound. He looked around the beach where he’d spent the night. First things first. He’d find something to eat and then explore a bit to see if there was anyone else with him in paradise.

  Less than a half-mile inland he discovered the lagoon. It looked to be a natural harbor, deep and leading out to sea. But he could see by the color of the water at the edges that it was shallow enough in spots to fish in. He took the morning to tiptoe the perimeter of the lagoon in a wide arc to ensure he was truly alone. Along the way, he found tree branches that he quickly stripped and sharpened into spears using his pocketknife.

  The fishing was plentiful and easy, and he had no fewer than six fat mullets before he stopped for the day. During his reconnaissance he’d discovered a cave on a bluff that appeared hidden but was just a few steps from a lookout point that would give him a clear view of the beach below. He’d already decided to move in.

  The next step took a leap of faith—and Rowan knew he had everything to lose—but he decided it was worth the chance. Grateful that he still carried the lighter Ella had given him for their first wedding anniversary, he’d left it out in the sun all day to dry out so that now he gathered twigs and bits of moss together and created a small fire. He set a flat rock inside the fire to serve as his frying pan.