The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Read Online Free PDF Page B

contemplated whether she’d used the word the too many times in one sentence. She wondered whether it might be better: Sunset painted the Nile as red as blood. Or perhaps: Sunset painted the Nile blood red.
    These last two attempts, unlike the dozen or so crumpled sheets in her overflowing wastebasket, did not even make it onto paper. And this sheet soon joined the other wadded-up ones in (and around) the basket.
    The problem was, whether the Nile was red or blue or purple wasn’t the point. The point was, she had no story, and no experiences from which to create or even embellish one. The only decent idea she had involved the work she and Rick had done for the intelligence people during the war, exciting stuff, rivaling anything from the Imhotep days, or darn near.
    Only that was classified, all of it.
    That left her with only her imagination, and when it came to being imaginative, Evelyn Carnahan O’Connell was about as imaginative as your average scholar or museum curator, both of which she was.
    She glanced up, hoping for inspiration, and her eyes landed on the Carnahan family shield on the wall—she had positioned this, with its two crossed swords, as another means of sparking her creativity. She stood and plucked a sword from its perch, savored its grip, then sliced the air with enthusiasm and skill.
    Soon she was capering around the room like Tyrone Power in The Mark of Zorro, grinning as she parried an invisible foe across the wood-paneled library, her face flushed with excitement. Inspired, finally inspired, she leaped across a table, swung off a curtain, and decapitated a candle off the chandelier, yelling, “Take that!”
    A cough behind her brought her down to earth, or at least to the parquet floor, and she tucked the sword behind her back, too late, because Jameson had obviously been standing in the doorway for a while now.
    He said, “If there isn’t anything else, madam, I should like to retire for the evening.”
    “Of course,” a blushing Evelyn said. “Good night, Jameson. Sweet dreams.”
    “And you, madam.”
    She put things right, then returned to the desk and, rather than make another attempt, she straightened up her work area and took her leave of the library.
    Upstairs, in her bathroom, she bathed and powdered herself and spritzed perfume in all the right places, and when she entered their bedroom in her sexiest robe, she was ready to be inspired.
    But her husband wasn’t in bed.
    She slipped into the hallway and padded on bare feet to the staircase. From there she could see down into the study, where he sat in his favorite chair, its back to her as he faced the windows onto the garden. She tiptoed down and came up behind him and said, “Rick . . . is that offer still good? For a little inspiration?”
    She dropped the robe and it pooled at her feet. She had bought the now-revealed sheer, silk negligee at Harrods and it had cost a small fortune; she’d been saving it for their anniversary, but some things just couldn’t wait . . .
    She edged alongside the big comfy leather chair and touched his shoulder, rubbed his neck where it was always sore. “That time the mummy had me tied down, about to plunge his dagger into me . . . my heart was pounding. It’s pounding like that now. Want to feel . . . ?”
    His answer was a loud, abrupt, snort of a snore.
    The great adventurer was asleep in his chair, his mouth open, a trickle of drool at one corner, the latest issue of a magazine devoted to guns and ammunition on his lap.
    Guns could kill anything, she thought. Even a mood.
    And she left him there.
    The next afternoon, after a morning phone call requested a short-notice visit, the O’Connells received a valued colleague of the recent past in their sitting room. Jameson finished the tea service, and the couple, seated on a sofa, made small talk with their guest, who lounged across from them in a comfortable chair. Still, there was an air of near formality, Rick O’Connell in a gray suit