Mummy by Caroline B. Cooney

Author:Caroline B. Cooney [Cooney, Caroline B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-6425-6
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-07-13T02:45:00+00:00

Twelve

“HOUSTON!” YELLED JACK, Á la space launches. “We have a mummy!”

They rested the mummy flat on the floor, her head behind the front passenger seat and her feet pressed up against the rear bench.

Jack threw his arms around Emlyn, no mean feat in the cramped van with the floor occupied. He hugged her exuberantly.

“Tell us everything!” demanded Donovan. He kissed her on the forehead and then on the cheek.

“Open the bag,” said Jack.

“We thought you’d never get here!” said Donovan.

“We’ve been crazy with worry,” said Jack “We’ve been on the phone every ten minutes with Maris and Lovell for advice.”

“Get going,” said Emlyn. “Now. I had to open the automatic garage door to get out. They know somebody was there who shouldn’t have been there. They just don’t know yet what I did. But they will. In one minute.”

“Right,” said Jack. “Right.”

He was so excited he ground the gears and the car sounded like wounded lions.

The cars ahead and behind had parked so tightly that he had to maneuver back and forth and back and forth to get out, with Donovan yelling, “Don’t hit them! We can’t have an accident right now! Watch what you’re doing! Can’t you drive?”

“Shut up, Donovan! Whose van is this, anyway?”

Emlyn curled up on the floor next to Amaral. The van had thick carpeting, which on her orders Jack had vacuumed thoroughly. She hadn’t wanted the mummy to pick up mud and grit from their shoes.

She peeled back some tape and gently folded up the black plastic.

A square of woven linen was exposed in the middle of black plastic, as if Amaral were a patient going in for surgery. The bandages had been woven log-cabin style, intricately, beautifully. Emlyn touched the linen. Then she took off her knit glove and her two disposable gloves and for the first time actually touched Amaral-Re. The cloth was harsher than she had expected, more like canvas than a handkerchief.

I stole a mummy, thought Emlyn.

A terrible, inexplicable horror seized her, and for a moment she was afraid she would begin sobbing and have to cling to the mummy for comfort.

She sat up quickly, got a Coke from the cooler, popped it open, and had a sip. Not letting herself look again, she tucked the plastic back. Then she checked her watch.

Eight fifty-one.

All that time. A lifetime, it had seemed, of fear and stupidity. And it was still early.

“Okay, here’s the interstate, we’re safe, we’re out,” Donovan told her.

Jack accelerated up the ramp. “We got so scared for you,” he said. “There’s been all this activity in the museum. There was some kind of event at the theater we didn’t know about. It wasn’t on the museum calendar, so it must have been private. Probably fifty people went into the theater long after Maris and Lovell were home from the film.”

“And,” said Donovan, “it turns out there’s a guard who walks around the outside of the museum! We saw him twice.”

Emlyn’s heart shriveled. Pure luck he wasn’t waiting for me on the other side of the garage door.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.