Page 38 of What Doesn't Kill Her

“What’s astonishing?” Kellen looked down.

Rae had unwrapped the mummy’s head from its Bubble Wrap and was walking around it, looking at it from every side. “It’s the Triple Goddess!”

“Why did you—?” Kellen sighed. “Never mind.” She perched Rae’s bag in the fork of a branch and slid back onto the ground. She didn’t know whether she should react to Rae describing an ancient artifact as “astonishing,” which seemed a huge word for a seven-year-old, or ask why Rae recognized the Triple Goddess, whatever that was. She settled on the easy one. “I don’t know if you’re right, but I do know it’s definitely not a mummy’s head. It’s white marble, maybe Phoenician or Greco-Roman.”

“Uh-huh.” Rae squatted beside the head. “If you rub a statue of the Triple Goddess, it will bring you good luck.” She rubbed it gently with her palm.

“I sure hope so.” Kellen squatted down and rubbed, too. It couldn’t do any harm. “What’s a triple goddess?”

In an incredibly patient and patronizing manner, her child said, “TheTriple Goddess is Mother, Maiden, Goddess.”

Kellen turned the head around to view both sides. Yes, one side portrayed a young female on the verge of womanhood with a riot of curly hair around her youthful, hopeful face. On the opposite side, was a matron, an unsmiling woman with mature features. “Where’s the goddess?” she asked.

Rae pointed at the top of her own head.

Kellen turned the head and jumped. There was a face peering out from the curls and stylings of the mother and daughter, a cruel face that protected, warned and intimidated. “Wow, kid, you really know what you’re talking about. Where did you learn about this Triple Goddess?”

“Comics.” Rae had lost interest. “Can I go wade in the creek?”

“Okay.” Rae was halfway to the water when Kellen suddenly realized she was the parent, Rae was a child and Kellen would have to deal with any wet clothes. “Take off your shoes and socks first and roll up your pants!”

Rae waved at her as if she was being annoying. Which Kellen supposed, to a seven-year-old, she was.

She picked up the Triple Goddess head and strapped a zip tie around the base, not bothering with the Bubble Wrap. The damned thing weighed a ton, and the idea of toting it around the mountains trying to get Rae back to civilization made her—

“Miss Adams, give that to me.”

She looked. A man stood in the shadows on the edge of the clearing. He was tall, young, athletic and definitely one of Group 2. He’d tracked them. He’d found them. He was demanding the head, and he had a rifle pointed at her chest.

“Of course,” she said. “I’m not willing to die for this.” She slung her bag over one shoulder, walked toward him, plastic tie looped to the head’s base in hand, and when she was close, she swirled, swung the head and knocked him in the skull with forty pounds of carved marble.

The element of surprise always worked—once.

He went down, bleeding from the forehead, sprawled across the pine-needle-strewn ground like a broken doll.

She pulled her pistol and pointed it at him.

He didn’t move.

With her foot, she pushed his rifle out of his reach.

Still he didn’t move.

Picking it up, she slammed the barrel against a tree trunk, bending the barrel, rendering the rifle unusable. She gave him a quick search, pulled his phone out of his pocket and used the butt of the rifle to smash the screen to smithereens. She picked it up and slipped it into her bag. Behind her she heard, “Mommy, who’s that man with the gun?”

Arms outstretched, pistol ready to shoot, Kellen turned.

Rae was back from the stream. Water soaked her clothes and matted her hair; she’d fallen in.

Ten feet away from her, a second mercenary pointing a pistol at Kellen’s back swung toward Rae.

Instantly, Kellen shot.

She was good with a pistol, but the distance across the clearing was forty feet. She tried for his chest; the bullet struck his shoulder. It should have blasted his arm away. Instead, it hit, slapped him sideways, blew his weapon out of his suddenly limp hand, knocked him down. He screamed like guys do when in combat and they’re wearing body armor but the impact breaks the joint underneath. So she was a pretty good shot after all.

Kellen swung back to the guy she’d hit with the head. He was still out, his eyes rolled back in his head. She ran toward the guy writhing on the ground, picked up his weapon, set the safety and tucked it into her belt. She pointed her pistol in his face.

Abruptly, he stopped screaming and stared.

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