Caught. Kristin Hardy

scalpels, dental tools, glass stirrers…” Julia reached over to pull out a hollow brown rod that looked like a paintbrush without the brush. “And African porcupine quills.”

      “African porc—” Alex gave her a suspicious look. “You’re joking.”

      “Nope,” she said serenely. “They make great probing tools.”

      “And the bags of dirt?”

      “Excavation dirt. We save everything. You never know when you might need it.”

      “You’re all nuts,” he muttered, staring at a jumble of small stone and plaster blocks at the back of the desk. He stacked some books on one of the piles and reached for the laptop.

      “Oh, don’t put those there.” Adroitly, Julia shifted the books away from the wooden box Alex had set them on. “That’s an artifact box.”

      “And it’ll protect whatever’s inside. Isn’t that the point?”

      “The last thing we need is for it to fall over or something.” Julia glanced more closely at the box and made a noise of annoyance.

      “What’s wrong?” Alex asked.

      She blew out a breath. “Paul. He’s got this little problem with following procedure. This is still supposed to be in inventory storage. It’s still got the pull slip on it.” Julia cracked open the top to reveal a stone figure of Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead.

      “Maybe he’s trying to clean or do conservation stuff or whatever.”

      “He still should have done his paperwork. He didn’t even notify me.”

      “‘Your rules mean nothing to me’?”

      “More like ‘My work is too important for me to worry about your stupid bureaucracy.’”

      “Sounds like a charmer. So why don’t you lay down the law to him?”

      Julia sighed. “It’s not my place. He doesn’t report to me. And, anyway, he’s really, really talented. Last summer, we cleaned up our inventory. We get lots of bits and pieces of things in here from digs, stuff that we don’t know where it belongs. Paul found the nose of Xerxes.”

      Alex’s mouth twitched. “The nose of Xerxes?”

      “A marble bust we’ve had for forty years. For forty years, it’s been missing its nose and Paul recognized it at a glance. He’s got this amazing sense for the shape and form of things. When someone’s that good, you cut them a lot of slack.”

      “So he’s sloppy. Nobody’s good at everything,” he observed. “Except me, of course.”

      “Except you,” she said drily. “Although you might wait to congratulate yourself until you’ve gotten the job done.”

      He gave her a look that shivered into her bones. “I always get the job done, darlin’,” he drawled.

      “Big talk.”

      “It’s not just talk. You of all people should know that. Anyway, sloppy isn’t always a bad thing,” he said cheerfully. “Our boy slapped his computer shut a little too quickly, before it finished closing down.”

      “So?”

      He gestured at the e-mail application on the screen. “So everything’s still running. That means we’ll still be online.”

      Despite herself, she was impressed. “That’ll help. Good job.”

      “Feel free to shower me with all the affection you like,” he invited.

      Julia rolled her eyes. “Just send the e-mail, will you? We’ve got to get out of here and notify someone that the amulet is gone.”

      “Long gone, at this point. It’s not like the cops are going to find them.”

      “I hope they do. That amulet might be the White Star, stolen from Zoey Zander’s collection.”

      “The Stanhope heist?”

      “Yes.”

      Alex’s fingers flew over the keys. “What is it, Egyptian?”

      “I don’t think so. A neighboring kingdom. There’s some sort of a superstition about it, that it brings good luck to the pure of heart.”

      Alex made a noise of irritation at the computer. “It didn’t bring good luck to us.”

      “You’re hardly pure of heart.”

      “But I’m pure in other places.” He frowned and tapped some more keys. “So what happens with Marissa?”

      “Don’t remind me,” Julia groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “How am I going to tell her? She brings the amulet here to me, I tell her I’ll take care of it and it winds up stolen. It’s going to reflect terribly on the museum. And me.”

      “Yeah, well, we’ve got a bigger problem than that,” he said grimly.

      “What do you mean?”

      He pointed to the screen. “The network’s down.”

      5

       Friday, 7:45 p.m.

      “WHAT?” Julia stared at Alex.

      “The network’s down. Look.”

      Network not available. The black letters on the screen seemed to vibrate, taunting her. “How can it be down?” she demanded. “I don’t believe this. No phones, no cell phone, no Internet. What the hell’s going on?