Sandstorm by James Rollins Read Free Book Online Page A

museum, supposedly to help coordinate the various investigative teams of the fire and police. It seemed a few billion in sterling garnered some authority.
    Kara waved the men and women into the gallery. “Get to work!” She turned to Safia. “I’ve hired my own forensic team.”
    Safia stared after the group as they tromped like a small army into the rooms. Instead of weapons, they carried all manner of scientific tools. “What’s going on? Why are you doing this?”
    “To find out what happened.” Kara watched her team set to work. Her eyes had a feverish shine, a fiery determination.
    Safia had not seen such a look on her face in a long time. Somethinghad sparked an intensity in Kara that had been missing for years. Only one thing could bring about such fervor.
    Her father.
    Safia remembered the look in Kara’s eyes as she had surveyed the videotape of the explosion. The strange relief. Her one spoken word. Finally…
    Kara stepped out into the gallery. Already her team had commenced digging samples from various surfaces: plastics, glass, wood, stone. Kara crossed to a pair of men carrying metal detectors, sweeping them along the floor. One pulled a bit of a melted bronze from some debris. He set it aside.
    “I want every fragment of that meteorite found,” Kara ordered.
    The men nodded, continuing the search.
    Safia joined Kara. “What are you really seeking here?”
    Kara turned to her, eyes ablaze with determination. “Answers.”
    Safia read the hope behind the set in her friend’s lips. “About your father?”
    “About his death.”
    4:20 P.M.
    K ARA SAT in the hall on a folding chair. The work continued in the galleries. Fans whirred and rattled. The mumble and chatter of workers in the wing barely reached her. She had come out to smoke a cigarette. She had long given up the habit, but she needed something to do with her hands. Her fingers trembled.
    Did she have the strength for this? The strength to hope.
    Safia appeared at the entryway, spotted her, and stepped in her direction.
    Kara waved her off, pointed to the cigarette. “I just need a moment.”
    Safia paused, staring at her, then nodded and headed back into the gallery.
    Kara took another drag, filling her chest with cool smoke, but it did little to settle her. She was too unbalanced, the adrenaline of the night wearing thin. She stared at the plaque beside the gallery. It bore a bronze likeness of her father, the founder of the gallery.
    Kara sighed out a stream of smoke, blurring the sight. Papa…
    Somewhere out in the gallery, something fell with a loud bang, sounding like a gunshot, a reminder of a past, of a hunt across the sands.
    Kara drifted into the past.
    It had been her sixteenth birthday.
    The hunt had been her father’s gift.

    The Arabian oryx fled up the slope of the dune. The antelope’s white coat stood out starkly against the red sands. The only two blemishes to its snowy hide were a black swatch on the tip of its tail and a matching mask around its eyes and nose. A wet crimson trail dripped down its wounded haunch.
    As it fought to escape the hunters, the oryx’s hooves drove deep into the loose sand. Blood flowed more thickly as it kicked toward the ridgeline. A pair of tapered horns sliced through the still air as the muscles of its neck wrenched with each painful yard gained.
    A quarter mile back, Kara heard its echoing cry over the growl of her sand cycle, a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle with thick knobby tires. In frustration, she gripped the handles of her bike as it flew over the summit of a monstrous dune. For a breathless moment, she lifted out of her seat, airborne, as the cycle bucked over the ridge.
    The angry set to her lips remained hidden behind a sand scarf, a match to her khaki safari suit. Her blond hair, braided to the middle of her back, flagged behind her like a wild mare’s tail.
    Her father kept pace on another cycle, rifle carried across his back. He had his own scarf dropped around his neck.