The Midas Trap

by Sharron McClellan

  As for Deacon, there was no sign of him, either.

  Still, that didn’t mean Deacon wouldn’t come or that Michael would take the warning seriously for long. There was no way either man would let her and Simon keep the Eye of Artemis without a struggle. Michael was too greedy. Deacon was just too damned mean.

  They’d be hunting them down in the next day or so.

  She took a halfhearted stab at the pontica on her plate, then set the fork aside. The orange cake was good, but her appetite was almost nonexistent. Cautiously and so no one else could see, she took the Eye back out and searched, again, for any clue on its use.

  But any hint was as elusive now as it was an hour ago, and at the rate she was going, it would be as elusive tomorrow as it was today. She dug an ice cube from her glass and rubbed it over her forehead to try to offset her growing tension headache, then slid the Eye across the table to Simon. “Here, you take a shot. If it’s a key of some sort, I have no idea what it might fit. There’s nothing to even vaguely describe the location of the Temple of Light or what to do once we find it.”

  Simon ran a thumb over the Eye, then slid it back to her. “You’re the one who reads ancient Greek. What does the writing say?”

  Trying to ignore the increasing pain, Veronica set the ice cube on her napkin and picked the artifact back up, tracing the letters with a fingernail. “This side is a dedication to Artemis, Goddess of the Moon, and an acknowledgement of the Sea and its role. The Greeks knew a lot about tides and associated the Moon with them, so that’s not a shock.”

  “Nothing about the island or the temple’s location in reference to the sea?” Simon asked.

  “No. Praise for the virgin goddess and her birthplace—which was why Michael came here in the first place, but that’s all.”

  “We could always take another look at the codex,” Simon suggested.

  They’d been over the ancient text repeatedly, and while it was written that the Eye of Artemis was needed to find the Midas Stone, it didn’t say how.

  Either they were missing a page or the author was completely paranoid. Maybe both.

  “Frankly, I don’t care if I ever see the codex again,” she muttered. Flipping the Eye over, she pointed to a selection of letters that bordered the crystal. “Now, here is the interesting bit. It talks about The One Most Favored lying in the womb of Artemis waiting for rebirth.”

  “The priestess who stole the Stone in the first place?” Simon asked, pushing bits of cake around on his plate.

  “That would be my first guess. As for womb?” Veronica flinched as her head gave a particularly hard throb. “Perhaps a roundabout way of saying a tomb? Waiting to be reborn into the afterlife?”

  “Does it matter?” Simon replied. “It all comes down to the fact that we think we have all the pieces of the puzzle, but we can’t put them together.” Simon pushed his plate aside, his dessert in pieces, but virtually untouched. “One. We know a priestess guards the Stone.” He ticked the points off on his fingers. “Two. The Stone is on Delos. Three. The womb or tomb, whatever, is associated with the Eye. Four. The Eye is the Key to finding the Stone. And five—” he clenched his hand into a fist “—we are missing the connection between these four elements.”

  “God, you’re right,” Veronica groaned and rested her head on the table.

  His hand gently stroked her hair. “Turn around.”

  “What?” she said crossly.

  He took her by the shoulders and turned her so her back was to him. “I can’t stand watching you like this.” Unbraiding her hair, he placed the long strands so they cascaded over her shoulder. His strong hands caressed her shoulders for a brief moment then dug in, giving her a deep massage.

  She groaned in ecstasy as her trapezius muscle released and, beneath it, the serratus posterior superior. “Oh, God, I knew you had spectacular hands, but you didn’t tell me you were a masseuse.”

  His thumbs concentrated on her spine, working their way down the cervical vertebrae to the thoracic and stopping at the top of her lumbar before he reversed direction. “I like to save some things for later,” he chuckled. His hands continued upward until he was cupping her head. The tension in her cranial muscles released as well, and she slumped in the seat.

  “Feeling better?” Simon asked, hands slowing.

  “Much.” And she did. “But I didn’t say you could stop.”

  Again, he chuckled and she settled in, enjoying his amazing therapeutic touch. But her concerns and frustrations with the Eye remained at the forefront of her thoughts. “Simon?”

  “Yes?”

  “Hand me the Eye. I want to take another stab at it.”

  “No.” His hands dropped to her shoulders and worked her trapezius again, and then her shoulders and arms, massaging her deltoids and triceps as he went to her elbow. “We need to solve the puzzle, I’m not denying that, but you’re tired. Whether you want to admit it or not, that little encounter with Michael drained you.”

  She stiffened and he squeezed her neck.

  “Ow,” she growled.

  “Anyway,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “it’s been a really long two weeks, and neither of us is going to figure it out if we’re stressed. Let’s forget the codex, the Eye, Michael, Deacon, the whole thing. For tonight, we’ll relax. Eat good food. Drink good wine. Maybe even dance.”

  “It’s too hot to dance.” She didn’t want to wait. She wanted to figure it out. Now.

  Simon slid his arms around her, linking his fingers to enclose her in his arms. “I know you’re impatient” he said, his voice in her ear. “And wanted to have this solved two days ago.”

  Was he reading her mind now or was she that obvious?

  “But you’re never going to figure it out if you can’t think straight,” he finished. He kissed the side of her neck. “Trust me on this. I’m as anxious as you are to find the Stone, but I think it would do us both good to relax.”

  “It would help if you at least looked stressed,” she said.

  “Not my style or my nature, but I’ll try,” he said, chuckling. “If I promise to at least look stressed, will you take the night off?

  She leaned over so she could see him. “Show me.”

  He twisted his face into an exaggerated grimace.

  Despite the pressure of finding the Stone, she laughed and leaned back into him again. “One night. I’ll give you one night. But I hope it’s not a mistake.”

  He squeezed her shoulders.

  And then, she promised herself, it was back to business, before Deacon came after them and tried to finish the job he began in Istanbul.

  The sun was rising when Veronica poured another cup of coffee. She and Simon had spent the evening drinking wine, making love, and then he’d fallen asleep.

  How like a man.

  Unable to keep her promise to relax, she’d risen, lit a candle and despite her comment about never wanting to see the ancient text again, she read the codex by the flickering yellow light. She went back over the Greek, hoping that she’d missed a vital part. A passage that contained a hint of the Stone’s location and how to use the Eye of Artemis to find it.

  There was a lot about Thalassa, the priestess who’d killed herself to keep the Midas Stone from falling into the wrong hands. According to the codex, she guarded it, waiting for her rebirth into Paradise.

  But otherwise, nothing to help her resolve the riddle. Just gut instinct that came from years of experience.

  Veronica rubbed her eyes. She’d managed to put together written facts into somewhat coherent information, but it wasn’t as exciting as physically finding an artifact. And it wasn’t enough. They only knew that Thalassa guarded the stone—not the location of her tomb or how the Eye figured into the mix.

  She pushed the codex away.

  If whoever wrote the book wasn’t already dead by a thousand years, she’d be tempted to kill him herself. The pages were a mishmash of facts with nothing to pull it all together.

  Why had
n’t they at least made it coherent? Given her a clue to the tomb’s location? A picture? Map? Something?

  She picked up the Eye again. This was the key. She knew it. She turned it over, taking what felt like the hundredth look at the inscription, hoping she’d missed something. A clue. A hint. Something that would provide her an “aha!” moment when she finally discovered it.

  But it looked the same as when she’d looked at it ten minutes ago. The dedication to Artemis and the Sea on one side. She flipped it over. The Favored One on the other.

  Veronica rested her forehead against the gold metal. They’d come so far. Knew who the favored one was and knew the Stone was on Delos—the birthplace of Artemis. But Delos was more than a square mile in size, and neither she nor Simon had the time or funding to search one of the biggest archaeological sites in the Mediterranean. If they tried to find the Stone with a normal excavation, it would take years.

  The secret was the Eye.

  And she was at a standstill.

  Another sigh and she leaned back in her chair, letting her thoughts wander while her fingers rubbed the Eye as if it was a worry stone. Funny, it was so easy to be caught up in what it meant, she’d forgotten what a beautiful artifact it was in its own right. Silver crystal. Gold. Inscribed.

  Blowing out the candle, she held the artifact up to the early morning light that filtered in through the window. The natural flaws found in the center crystal made rainbows on the wall.

  She polished the stone on her shirt. When she returned to New York, she’d have to ask Alyssa what the crystal was made of. She didn’t think it was a diamond, but she’d also never seen anything like it. Although it was as smooth as glass on the outside, it had interior flaws. Otherwise, it was so clear it could be used as an eyeglass.

  An eyeglass? The Eye of Artemis?

  The connection hit her with the force of an epiphany. Veronica smacked herself in the forehead.

  She held the Eye of Artemis up and peered through it. It offered nothing but a distorted view of the room.

  But that didn’t dissuade her. She was right. This was it. Her gut told her so.

  She opened the codex and started flipping through the pages one by one while looking through the Eye. Still nothing. Just words marred by black spots and lines. Another page and she was at the original sketch of the Eye.

  It wasn’t a blur.

  “Oh, my God,” she murmured, running her hands carefully over the ancient page. “Oh, my God. I’m an idiot.”

  Both she and Simon had thought the picture smudged. Damaged by someone who wanted to hide the true words and to keep would-be treasure-seekers away from the crystal.

  It wasn’t destroyed. It was exactly what it was supposed to be—a map to the location of the Midas Stone. A map that could only be used if one had the right tool to view it.

  The Eye of Artemis.

  She didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Scared the map would disappear.

  “Simon.” He didn’t make a sound. Reaching under the table with her foot, she kicked the bed. “Simon!”

  He sat up. “What?” he asked, stifling a yawn.

  She held the Eye up. “I found something.”

  In an instant, he was at her side, wide awake. “Show me,” he demanded.

  She set the Eye in his palm. “Look.” She pointed to the picture. “Through this.”

  He held it up and squinted, staring through the lens. “I’ll be damned.”

  “Probably,” she replied, ripe with self-satisfaction. “But what a way to go.”

  The defects in the crystal lined up with the smudged picture, creating an outline of the Island of Delos. There were inlets, a darker smudge for the tiny mountain in the center of the island and even the coast of Mykonos, the sister island they were standing on, at the outer edge was represented. More important was what was on the southern coastline. Here, a single flaw resembled a silver arrow—the symbol of Artemis—overlying a circular fleck of gold.

  The location of the Midas Stone.

  “Aha,” she whispered.

  Chapter 15

  Dressed in fresh shorts and a clean top, and almost inhaling another cup of coffee, Veronica climbed off the small ferry, her sneakered feet sinking in the damp sand of the Delos shoreline.

  The coffee in one hand and a guidebook in the other, she surveyed the almost flat island. Ahead of her and the other tourists were the archaeological ruins of Delos. Rubble that was once homes for the wealthy, a temple to Artemis and even a shrine to Isis, the Egyptian goddess.

  At one time a great city, Delos was now nothing but a reminder of the precariousness of civilization. Was it the search for the Midas Stone that caused the demise of Delos? Did Menophaneses destroy the town and kill the population in a fit of anger at its loss? It was possible.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Simon asked.

  “What?” Did she look that pensive?

  “You were glazing over.”

  Veronica followed his gaze to her travel mug. “I’m fine.” Taking a last sip, she rinsed the container out in seawater and shoved it into her backpack. “I’ve gone a lot longer without sleep.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Their ferry captain shouted over the surf, catching their attention. “The last ferry is at three this afternoon. Please be here. No one is allowed to stay on Delos overnight. If you miss the ferry, we will come back for you, but be assured it will be at triple the cost.”

  Turning the boat around, he sped back across the small stretch of sea that separated Mykonos and Delos to pick up another batch of tourists.

  There were murmurs among the other tourists: a few snide remarks about how triple the pay was outrageous, that eight hours wasn’t enough time, and a short blond woman telling her even shorter husband that a bunch of old rocks was boring and she wanted to leave now.

  “Let’s go,” said Veronica, trekking across the almost desertlike landscape.

  Quickly, she and Simon distanced themselves from the rest of the crowd as they made their way to the south end of the island to search for the Stone. If they were lucky, there would be some indication of Thalassa’s burial tomb—an unexpected rise in the landscape indicating that the earth had eroded around a stone sarcophagus or an indentation if Thalassa and the Stone were buried in something less resilient.

  Anything out of the ordinary only an archaeologist would notice.

  When they found the tomb, they’d have to survey the area as best they could without attracting the attention of their fellow tourists or the archaeologists who were already working on the island, excavating the ruins for the museums on both Delos and Mykonos. Then she and Simon would return tonight, under the cover of darkness, and excavate the Stone.

  Walking through what was once the Theater Quarter, she stumbled as she stepped over a short wall, catching herself with a little hop. She’d told Simon that she was fine, but her legs felt as if there were twenty-pound bricks tied to her feet. Her lack of sleep was beginning to catch up to her.

  “Any plans on what to do if we have to make a full excavation?” Simon asked, having the same concerns as they trod through the once-great city.

  “C4?” Veronica replied. “Think you can get some?”

  He hesitated, then chuckled. “I thought you were into preserving sites, not destroying them.”

  “I am,” Veronica replied. “Unless I have Deacon Gilchrist and Michael Grey on my tail. Then I’m into preserving my butt and getting the artifact before they do.”

  “Point taken. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Simon said.

  “What do we do if Michael or Deacon shows up?” Veronica mused. The thought had crossed her mind more than once over the last twelve hours. “We can’t have them interfering.”

  Simon didn’t answer, but his hand clenched into a fist and she knew the thought had crossed his mind as well.

  It wasn’t long before they cleared the ruins and left the tourists behind. The land rose as they continued southeast. Despite the morning bree
ze blowing over them, Veronica’s heart thumped harder the closer they got to the coastline, and she was beginning to sweat.

  The problem of Michael and Deacon nagged at her. She and Simon needed a diversion. Something to throw their adversaries off their trail. Make them think that she and Simon weren’t going after the Midas Stone.

  At least not here.

  “That’s it!” she cried, her voice carrying away in the strong breeze.

  “What’s ‘it’?” Simon asked, not slowing his pace.

  She grabbed his arm and stopped him. “We set up a false trail. Make Michael and Deacon think we’re going somewhere else to find the Stone. I’ll contact Rebecca. Tell her to purchase us tickets to Ephesus.”

  “What if they’re already on our trail?” Simon countered.

  “Even better,” Veronica replied. “This would really throw them off.”

  He gave a thoughtful nod, the beginning of a smile turning his mouth. “The big temple to Artemis?”

  “Maybe the Eye brought him to Delos, but would the Midas Stone be on a scrubby island or at the mondo, glitzy temple?” It might not make sense to an archaeologist, but to two men who lived in a world where wealth counted more than symbolism and tradition, it made perfect sense.

  The beginning smile turned into a full-fledged grin. “I like it. Simple. Effective. Believable.” He kissed her hard and swift before they began walking again.

  Veronica snuck a peek at Simon out of the corner of her eye. Their relationship was beyond weird. He was a mystery. He’d hurt her by destroying her reputation. And now he was her partner on this amazing journey and she couldn’t fathom undertaking it with anyone but him.

  Her straying thoughts were interrupted when they crested a short rise in the land and reached the coast. A small segment was indented, just like on the map.

  Veronica cried out, grabbing Simon’s arm, adrenaline running through her, giving her the energy that caffeine couldn’t. Please be there. Please be there.

  They sprinted to the edge of the cliff and her hormone-fueled high came to a crashing halt as they turned in a circle. There was nothing but flat land. Scrub. Stone. Not even a hint of a potential tomb.