The old man inserted the prescribed key into the hole and twisted it. The lock clicked, and the door inched open. A damp, musty smell wafted out and the scent became stronger as the gap widened. Beyond, a darkened staircase spiraled down into the bowels of the cathedral, the general uncertain as to what awaited them. At this point, he was beyond what he'd learned about this place and was in the full trust of Jean-Antoine.
The knight reached over to the wall and took a candle from a sconce. With the wax stick still fixed to its housing, he passed it to the general and then took his own from across the hall.
"You may proceed," the knight said to the priest. His tone was kind, reverent, and it bore no ill intent.
Perhaps the knight's demeanor set the priest's mind at ease because he gave a long nod and stepped onto the dark staircase.
The three ventured downward for a few minutes, carefully navigating the damp steps, aware that one wrong step could result in broken bones, gashed skin, or potentially a far worse injury.
It didn't take long for the three men to reach the bottom. They stopped at the base of the spiral staircase and found themselves in a crypt and surrounded by stone tombs, each marked with the names and titles of those buried within, their likenesses carved onto the lids, emulating the way the deceased might have looked when they were alive or newly dead.
In the back of the crypt, the three men glimpsed something flashing as the candlelight flickered.
"There it is," the General said, staring into the darkness. He raised his candle to the level of his right shoulder and the dim illumination widened, carrying all the way to the other side of the room.
He took the lead, walking across the length of the crypt before stopping short of the shrine. The table was made of pure marble, surrounded by an altar made of gold and silver with intricate carvings and reliefs adorning every inch of it. On the table was the prize Napoléon had been set on the moment he announced his plan to invade Alexandria.
The ancient Egyptian city was certainly the target. It would weaken his British enemies in that region and would also give him claim to a vast new land, passing titles and acreage to his men.
Alexandria, however, was only part of Napoléon's grand scheme, merely a piece of the puzzle. What lay hidden in this golden shroud would give him the ability and the power to bring all the other pieces together.
He set the candle reverently on the marble surface. His eyes fixed on the item next to the candelabra. It was a golden glove with a matching metallic sleeve extending all the way up to the elbow. One finger was bent awkwardly toward the palm, the others remained straight and extended outward. A flap built into the backhand of the glove displayed a fragment of bone within.
Napoléon discarded his temporary reverence and picked up the object.
The priest gasped and instinctively stepped backward, afraid he might be struck down by the Almighty for such sacrilege.
"What are you doing?" the old man asked with a quiver in his voice.
Napoléon didn't look back at him. "You know exactly what I am doing."
"That is the hand of Saint John the Baptist!" the priest exclaimed. "You are not permitted to touch such a holy relic. Only those ordained by God may do so." The man crossed himself multiple times, probably whispering a prayer for forgiveness at the same time.
"I know who it is." The general slid the forearm out of the golden glove. The hand followed, grinding along the inside of the relic's housing until the fingers came free. There, on the ring finger of the skeletal hand, was what he'd come for. He reached out his left hand and with thumb and forefinger plucked a golden ring from the bone. Napoléon admired the jewelry for a moment, taking in its shimmer in the candlelight. There were no precious gems set into the metal, only words carved in Aramaic. He couldn't read them and didn't care to learn. He was here for the ring not a language lesson. He removed his leather gloves and slipped the ring onto his own finger.
It was a perfect fit.
"My God, forgive us!" The priest prayed out loud this time, crossing himself again. "Put that back or be forever cursed."
The warning slid off the general's shoulders.
"You keep the hand of the Baptist," Napoléon groused. "The ring belongs to me now."
1
INLET BEACH, FLORIDA - PRESENT DAY
Sean Wyatt wished he had one of those little plastic grocery baskets. No matter how many times he went shopping, he still made the same mental miscalculation from time to time. He'd pass by the grocery carts and the stack of baskets thinking all he needed was his two paws since his list of items was relatively short.
Almost every time, he ended up in this exact situation.
Well, not this exact situation.
Usually he was in a grocery store, this time it was a convenience store. He'd come in to get some drinks before he and his wife, Adriana, walked down to the beach.
And it wasn't just the store that was different, it was also the fact that there was a gunman standing at the register and holding a pistol in the face of the cashier.
The terrified young woman was unable to move or even process what was happening. Her red hair wasn't natural, but colored the shade of faded cherries and cut just below the chin at an angle so it grew shorter toward the back. There was a streak of white in it that dangled in front of her left ear. She was pale, almost as if she'd never been in the sun before, which would make her a unique citizen in this part of the world. Most people who lived along the Emerald Coast worshiped the sun, hitting the sand of the Gulf of Mexico as often as they could.
She couldn't have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two years old. She had a nose ring in her right nostril and several other pieces of metal dangling from her ears. There was also a butterfly tattoo on her neck. Now she was being threatened by a thief.
Sean stayed quiet and instinctively bent his knees to crouch down a little, partially blocking his view of the criminal.
"I said open the safe and the register!" The masked man was yelling again. It was his initial command to the cashier that had caught Sean's attention.
Sean had just grabbed four Cokes from the refrigerator at the back of the store to take to the beach and was heading toward the register when the shouting began.
The gun wagged back and forth in front of the girl's face. Sean wished he had his pistol with him. That was his second regret. He almost never left home without his Springfield .40-caliber XD, but he was on vacation—at the beach no less. Surely he could take a little time off without having to go all cowboy on someone.
Yet here he was, standing in a gas station with a clutch of Cokes in his hands and no weapon. If he’d had a basket, he could have easily set down the drinks and moved around to a better vantage point to get the thief's attention–or something like that. As long as the thief pointed the gun away from the cashier, that was all that mattered. He knew there would be a panic button behind the counter. Probably a gun, too.
Most convenience stores operated on similar systems, where they would take the money out of the register and deposit it in a safe. Less frequently, a manager—or in some instances, an armed guard—would come and collect the money to take to the bank or to a deposit drop-off. The thief was obviously aware of this, and of the safe wedged into the wall behind the counter.
"I…I don't have access to the safe," the cashier stammered. It was the first time Sean had heard her speak since the robbery began.
The man swore at her, calling her some unsavory names in the process. "I know you're lying. I've seen you open it before."
There was one little clue. This guy was a regular customer. He'd been here before and watched her as she went about her tasks, probably during down times when there weren't many customers. Right now was one of those times, and Sean found himself to be the lone consumer in the store. Sure, some cars drove by outside, but none of the drivers stopped for gas or snacks. It wasn't exactly a prime location for travelers, though it was perfect for him since it was within walking distance o
f the IAA beach house.
Sean could tell by the sound of the man's voice that he was nearing the end of his proverbial rope. When that happened, bad things would follow. There was a desperation in the man's voice that Sean easily recognized. His training in psychology and with the federal government had taught him not only to read body language but to interpret vocal intonation as a means of predicting a target's true aims.
There was no question in Sean's mind: if he didn't act soon, the girl behind the counter was going to die.
He quietly maneuvered backward, careful to mind that he didn't brush up against a rack of crackers and potato chips; effectively giving away his position. He was fine with that since taking the thief's eyes off the cashier was going to be his number one priority. Doing so before he was ready, however, would not be acceptable.
Once he was at the end of the row, he stepped to the side and crouched down carefully. As he'd grown older, Sean noticed that his knees cracked more often when he bent them. Thankfully, this time they didn't make a sound.
He set two of the Cokes down on the floor and kept two in his hand. The cold cans were frosty against his skin, but now they were no longer refreshments for a day at the beach. In his hands, they were deadly projectiles that could save a young woman's life.
Sean stepped back into full view.
The young woman saw him and her eyes grew wide.
Sean knew that she would express some form of surprise. That was fine. In fact, he'd planned on that. He would much rather the robber turn around as a result of something he knew she was seeing than from hearing a sudden sound from behind. That tended to startle most people, criminals especially.
This one seemed especially jumpy, and if Sean were to say anything or make the slightest sound, the guy's itchy trigger finger was apt to twitch and put a bullet through the poor girl's skull.
Sean's awareness of the situation and his prediction of the robber's reaction were spot on.
The second he saw the young woman's eyebrows rise slightly, he spun around with the gun leveled, ready to take out whatever threat was there.
Except there was no threat. No one was there. Behind him, something slammed shut. The gunman spun around again, only to realize that the cashier had disappeared. She wouldn't be hidden long since there was only one place she could be hiding at that point. He started for the counter, probably to vault over it to pursue the girl, but a voice halted him in midstride.
"I wouldn't do that," Sean said. He spoke loudly and clearly enough that there would be no mistaking his commands, or that someone else was in the building.
He assumed, which he rarely did, that this thief hadn't considered there might be someone else in the store. Thieves, while often intelligent in regard to their work, tended to be careless about other things, such as social awareness. A smart person would have assumed that there could be someone else in the store who'd walked over from the nearby beach community of Rosemary.
This thief, however, hadn't considered that. Now he found himself alone in the convenience store facing a ghost.
Just like before, when he turned around to find where the voice was coming from, he was presented with two empty rows. He couldn't see down the length of the other three rows, which presented a problem. Clearly, there was someone else in the building, and they were meddling with his plans.
"Where are you?" he snarled. "Come out or I shoot the girl."
The man was playing on society’s chivalrous instincts. Despite how little of that seemed to be present in the modern day, it was still ingrained in many people, and criminals often sought to exploit that weakness. Some called it a savior complex. Others decried it as a Good Samaritan complex. Either way, criminals knew that when faced with harm to others, people would run, either to help or to get to safety.
This robber was clearly okay with either.
If Sean were to run, which wasn't even remotely in his bank of options, he would expose his position to the thief and make for an easy target. At the moment, Sean knew that he still had the element of surprise and the element of evasion.
The thief was too focused on where he believed the sound had come from to notice the reflections on the glass doors of the refrigerators. Sean had shifted to his left and quickly made his way down the last row until he could get a clear view of the gunman's reflection in the last door. The guy was still pointing his gun toward the end of the row where Sean had been only a moment before.
"I'm going to give you to the count of three to show your face, or I start shooting."
For a moment, Sean wondered what the girl was doing behind the counter. Surely there was a gun back there, though he doubted she knew how to use it. Maybe if she had been a few years older she might have had some kind of training, even if it was as simple as a basic firearm safety course. He didn't blame her, though. This was a difficult situation, terrifying for someone who'd probably never had a gun pointed in their direction before, much less in such a threatening manner and at such close range.
Sean plucked a stick of beef jerky from a rack in front of him and waited for a second.
"One!" The gunman shouted with a grunt. His accent was local, probably from one of the farms or small towns a little north of there between the Florida and Alabama border, perhaps a few miles across said border.
Where he was from didn't matter to Sean. All that mattered was taking him down.
He flicked the jerky through the air and watched it sail over three rows before it disappeared from view just a moment before striking what he assumed was a bag of chips.
The crinkling sound may as well have been a grenade going off in the otherwise suddenly quiet convenience store. The man twisted slightly to his right and fired the weapon twice. Bags of tortilla chips exploded, sending corn fragments into the air and spilling into the next row.
The sound was deafening in the confined space, but Sean remained calm. He’d been in more gunfights than he could count and figured himself fortunate not to have a bad case of hearing loss at this point in his life. Those two reports probably wouldn't help with that, but there was nothing he could do about it. The situation was what it was, and he'd have to make the best of it.
He picked out another stick of jerky and waited, watching the man's reflection in the refrigerator as the criminal stepped toward the second row. Sean flung the second stick through the air, this time letting it sail higher and farther than before, but his trajectory was different. Noticing the gunman was near the end of the row, Sean had thrown this one toward the counter. It struck a rack of chewing gum in front of the register and rattled to the floor. Again, the gunman turned, though this time he didn't fire any shots.
Sean was thankful for that. There would be no sleep for the rest of his life if the young girl behind the counter was somehow accidentally shot.
By the time the man had spun around to see where the second noise came from, Sean had already taken a third stick of jerky. He threw it hard toward the front-right corner of the store and listened as it struck something plastic, probably the stack of bottled water in that section of the store.
The man fired the gun again, this time charging back to his left and nearer to the exit where the first row came to an end.
That was Sean's chance. He rose as the guy reached the end of the row and, clutching one of the Coke cans in his right hand, reared back. He'd never had a great arm in baseball. He'd pitched some, but only because he could throw strikes. It had little to do with his ability to generate velocity. In this instance, accuracy was also paramount. If he missed, he had one projectile left, and there would be little time to take a second try.
He took a step as if throwing a baseball from third base to first, and whipped his arm forward. The can was out of his grip by the time the gunman saw movement out of the corner of his eye. The Coke flew through the air, streaking straight for the guy's head. He fired his weapon, probably out of fear, and the bullet bounced harmlessly off the ground and struck a quart of oil on the nearest row. The
thick golden liquid immediately began leaking, but the thief never saw it.
Sean's aim had been true, and the base of the can struck the guy square in the right eye.
The gunman had been both lucky and unfortunate. Getting hit in the eye by an aluminum cylinder full of cola was excruciating. As the base of the can hit his face, the hardened rim crunched the bone, fracturing it and causing the eye to droop within a second. That was the unlucky part.
The fortunate part was that he could have been hit in the temple and died right there. Then again, that might have been preferable.
The man howled in agony, dropping his weapon to the ground as he grasped at the wounded eye.
Sean didn't wait for an invitation. He leaped from his hiding place and sprinted across the room, plowing his shoulder into the man's ribs even as the guy was still moaning from the wound to his eye.
A loud "oof" escaped his lips as Sean tackled the gunman and drove him into a metal frame between the huge windows that made up the store's façade. The left side of the guy's face hit the metal column with an audible crunch, no doubt shattering more bones on that side.
Sean felt the body go limp in his arms and he slowly lowered the thief to the ground. Blood was oozing down the side of the guy’s face where the Coke can had struck his flesh, cutting a deep gash into the cheek.
Sean instinctively turned to where he'd heard the weapon fall from the guy's hand a moment before and scooped it up. He rapidly pulled the slide several times until no more shells came out of the weapon's ejection port. Then he released the magazine, tossed it on the floor, and rapidly removed the slide from the gun, dumping some of its parts on the tile next to the unconscious man.
"He's out," Sean said in a casual tone, hoping the girl wouldn't pop up with a shotgun thinking he was the robber. "My hands are up," he added, stuck on that last potential issue.
The girl hesitated, but she realized quickly that the man speaking didn’t match the voice from before. "Okay," she said. "I'm coming up."
The Napoleon Affair Page 2
