The Guardians of Legacy Book 1: American Mummy

The mysteries of history are about to get a whole lot more mysterious.

A good soldier always strives to improve herself. A small improvement is better than nothing. With that in mind, US Army Captain Leah Morgan lived her life by aiming to be a better person at the end of the day.

Skills and knowledge training offered her a straightforward way to become a better soldier. Volunteering as the unit representative to attend a weekend conference in DC on the rules of engagement regarding historical artifacts and locations and the military’s related responsibilities provided a perfect opportunity. Nobody else wanted to go to what they had dismissed as “two boring nights of PowerPoint presentations from a bunch of academics.” She could help her fellow officers avoid boredom while enriching herself on a subject interesting to her.

Everything started pleasantly enough. The plan was coming together. In the opening free sessions, she chatted with other officers and academic attendees about her interest in historical artifacts and her thoughts on the best strategies in conflict zones threatening historical and heritage artifacts.

That flowed into a series of lightweight presentations and case studies by individual lecturers, including discussions of intentional and accidental destruction of historical artifacts by military forces in recent conflicts. By the time dinner arrived on the first day, Leah believed missing a couple of days of regular duty was worth the tradeoff.

She soon accepted how wrong and misguided she had been. After the lovely dinner in the converted ballroom in the conference center ended, the headlining presenter stepped onto the stage. The screen behind him offered an obvious PowerPoint template for the title page of his visuals. Her fellow officers’ prophecy was about to come true.

After all her years in the Army, like many soldiers, experience had carved a fundamental truth into her soul. Nothing edifying ever came out of a PowerPoint presentation created using a template. A civilian using PowerPoint didn’t make it better.

Her worries grew when the presenter managed an entire minute of speaking without varying the pitch of his voice. The blessed end of the presentation came far sooner than Leah feared, given the speaker’s ability to make a minute feel like an hour. She had done better than others, including a one-star general sitting a couple of tables away who looked to be on the verge of passing out.

I feel you, sir, she thought. I feel you. I hope tomorrow’s headliner will be better.

As the lecturer clicked on his final PowerPoint slide, pain spiked in Leah’s forehead. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, annoyed at the headache and wondering if the lecturer had figured out how to weaponize boredom into pain. She grimaced at the thought of having to attend another conference and sit through a PowerPoint presentation about weaponized boredom in a room full of half-asleep attendees.

The other people at her table exchanged uncomfortable looks. Leah hadn’t heard of a speech so boring it gave people headaches before. That was an impressive achievement. A skim of the room revealed other people who didn’t look comfortable, either. The lecturer had caused pain for the entire audience.

Leah massaged her temples, but the sharp pain refused to fade. It wasn’t just the boredom from the presentation. Something else gnawed at the edge of her awareness. She could have sworn the shadows in the room flickered unnaturally. For a moment, the air seemed to thicken, like there was pressure building beyond her perception.

She shook it off, blaming fatigue, but this wasn’t the first time she had felt something strange. Last year, while stationed near a crumbling fort in Virginia, she had been tasked with overseeing an archaeological dig. Leah had laughed off the odd stories from the local guides about “ghost soldiers” seen wandering the grounds at dusk. Yet, on a routine patrol one night, she had heard the distinct, rhythmic sound of footsteps behind her—marching footsteps—but when she turned around, no one had been there.

Leah had dismissed it as an overactive imagination then. But now, as she rubbed her temples, the sensation of being watched crept up her spine again, like history was alive, lurking in the present.

The presenter droned, aiming the laser pointer at the slide, “A review of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict is an excellent beginning point for developing policy, and I encourage you to do that every time you reconsider it. Thank you for your attention, and good night. I hope you found this discussion as entertaining as I was preparing it.”

Scattered pity claps broke out among the attendees sitting at the tables closest to the front of the stage. The crowd included a mix of smartly dressed academics and officers from all the branches in service dress uniforms.

The claps spread and increased. Leah started clapping and questioned her judgment on whether a good soldier needed to end each day more knowledgeable than she had started.

“That was—” Leah began to the three other people at her table, academics from political science departments. By the time she had gotten through half the sentence, they had abandoned the table and fled toward the exits as if worried the speaker would begin an encore speech, or worse, take questions.

“Maybe it’s just me.” Leah chuckled. She picked up a glass of water and took a sip in case she was dehydrated. Most of the other audience members didn’t abandon their tables. Many chatted with tablemates. A handful cast nervous glances at the stage.

Her smile faded at another headache flare. She rubbed her temples. A single drumbeat drifted through the air.

Leah looked around. Some attendees looked relieved or annoyed. Others looked uncomfortable. A handful of guests hunched over their tables, pale. They might be too nauseated to worry about the mystery drum.

“Come on,” Leah said. “I know it was boring, but was it that boring?”

Despite her reservations, she couldn’t ignore the headache. She eyed her wine glass and thought about the salmon served before the speech. A bad speech and food poisoning made for a painful combination. That might explain the sudden exit of her tablemates and her symptoms.

The drumbeat sounded again, and she jerked her head around, confused. Food poisoning didn’t make a person hear drums, but no one else seemed to have heard it.

A man at another table looked at her like she was acting strange. She ignored him to scan the room. Her eyes widened, and her breath caught. She had sat close to the stage, not caring who else was in attendance. This was only incidentally networking event for her, so she hadn’t checked the room after taking her seat.

“Jamie,” she whispered under her breath, spotting a tall, ruggedly handsome, dark-haired soldier across the room who did a great job of filling out his uniform. She hadn’t seen him in years. On most days, she could almost convince herself that was a good thing.

Jamie finished chatting with an Air Force lieutenant and then swept the room with his gaze. His eyes met hers, and he plastered on that annoyingly disarming smile she would never forget, even if they didn’t see each other for fifty years. His conversation partner chuckled and nodded as Jamie headed toward Leah’s table.

She tried to figure out the best way to handle things, but the headache did not help matters. They had been in college together. Jamie had quit one year before graduation and enlisted in the Army. They’d had a terrible fight, with her not understanding why he couldn’t wait one more year. After he joined up, she delayed her planned enlistment to attend graduate school.

She had finished a master’s in history before joining up as an officer, fulfilling her family’s tradition, and ended up as a strategic intelligence officer. With Jamie still an enlisted soldier, fraternization regulations ended any chance of picking up their relationship where they had left off.

She forced a smile as he approached. “James. It’s been a while.”

“’James?’” He echoed. “Ouch. That’s pretty impersonal. Nobody calls me James but my dad. You know that. Why not Jamie?”

Leah resisted the urge to pull rank to escape the conversation. That was cowardice and would be inappropriate. She shifted her attention to his rank insignia and stared at the gold bar, her brain catching up with the truth.

“You’re a butterbar,” Leah blurted—the nickname for second lieutenants—to stall for time. “Congratulations. I figured you’d retire enlisted. I thought… Forget what I thought. Congratulations.”

Jamie grinned at her. She hated what that smile did to her. “I finished my linguistics degree a while ago. It took longer than I’d like since I switched from intel to blood and mud fun for a while.”

Leah nodded. “You’d just switched your MOS and finished your retraining the last time we talked.”

“I wasn’t sure if you remembered. It was, what, six or seven years ago?”

“Of course I remembered.”

Jamie kept his smile. “I got tired of doing real work, so I decided to be lazy, get my commission, and become a foreign-area officer.” He shrugged.

“We could use a man like you in…” Leah began.

She looked away, not sure what she was saying. One not-so-simple action, becoming a commissioned officer, might have demolished the wall separating them. It didn’t change how time had unfolded since they had broken up in college.

“You could use a man like me?” Jamie asked, his brows lifting.

A single drumbeat sounded again. Leah frowned and looked around.

“You heard it, too?” Jamie asked, his expression darkening. “The drum.”

“Yes. A single tap on a snare drum.” Leah turned back to him. “But nobody else is reacting.” She looked around. “But a bunch of people don’t look so good.”

“You have a headache?” Jamie asked.

“How did you know?” Leah asked.

“I have one too,” Jamie replied. “I told myself that guy bored me into suffering an aneurysm.”

Leah laughed. “I did consider that he’d somehow weaponized boredom. I would not have put it the same way, but what does that have to do with the drum?” She nodded at the stage. “Is there a performance after we leave?”

Jamie eyed the crowd. “Everyone might know something we don’t.” He pulled a buzzing phone out of his pocket and frowned. “Damn it. He’s got the worst timing.” He shook the phone at Leah. “Don’t run away. I want to catch up with you, but I have to take this to avoid being chewed out by my friendly neighborhood major when I get back to my unit.”

“Go take your call.” Leah motioned at her table. “I’ll wait. I would like to catch up. It’s been far too long.”

Jamie winked and jogged into the lobby, where fewer people lingered. Leah let out a long sigh, surprised that her feelings had lingered for a decade-plus but still confused by why she had heard a random drumbeat. At least the conversation with Jamie had minimized her headache.

History is about to bite Leah in the butt, personal and world. Find out where the drumbeats are coming from and if Jamie and Leah reconnect on December 10th when The Guardians of Legacy Book 1: American Mummy is released. Until then head over to Amazon and pre-order today.