Their vehicle was equally dark and built to overpower. A hundred yards up and across the river, a four-wheel drive, oversized SUV, its black exterior dusted with red sand, was parked next to Joseph’s beat-up Jeep Wrangler. The SUV’s headlights blasted the cottonwoods with light.
The stout man tipped the brim of his hat with gloved fingers. “I am the Prophet,” he said. Just the kind of nutcase her father’s eternal quest for the Breastplate attracted. “Perhaps you’ve seen my website. I have thousands of loyal followers,” he spread out his arms, “worldwide.”
Reality check time. Christa glanced around. Still in the desert wilderness, bad guy pointing a gun at her, mysterious armillary sphere feeling really heavy in her pack, poking into her shoulder blades. Who was this internet prophet? “A friend of mine,” she dared to point upriver, “he may be hurt. I think he fell from the cliff.”
The Prophet clasped his hands. “The Navajo shaman,” he said. “He’s fine, a tad bruised mind you, shoulder wound, but he didn’t fall far before catching onto a ledge and climbing down. My man is with him.”
“Thank God,” Christa said, but the fact this guy had shot at her didn’t inspire relief.
The Prophet laughed, soft, a kitten laugh. “Yes, well put, thank God,” he said. “It is my life’s goal, to save people.” He nodded to the man on his right, who raised his pistol level with her heart. “I need what you have found.”
The easy thing to do would be to tug that armillary sphere out of her pack and toss it to him. But the easy thing never came easy to her. And they had Joseph. “I need to see my friend first,” she said. Her voice actually cracked in fear. She swallowed, hard. Allow the predator to smell fear, and the prey was doomed.
He nodded approvingly. “I knew you’d be worthy,” he said. “You and I are here together for a reason. My new religion will bring peace to the people. You can be a part of it. The artifact you found will lead me to the catalyst my followers are waiting for.”
He still hadn’t said armillary sphere, nor Turquoise, nor Breastplate. He didn’t know what they’d found. Like most prophets, he spoke with authority in order to deceive with ignorance. As much as she wanted to believe Joseph was alive, belief was not reality. “Where’s Joseph?” she said. She could still try for the tunnel. Once inside, that thug was too big to pursue her. But he could shoot her.
“It all comes down to that,” he said, “what and whom you believe.”
He must have sold patent medicines in a former life.
“I know you’ve lost a loved one,” he said. “I, too, lost a parent to violence. I want redemption, like you. And we shall find redemption, working together.”
Lost a parent? Redemption? Her legs trembled. Her knees turned to rubber. He couldn’t possibly know how her mother died. Nobody knew. “You killed Joseph,” she said. She wanted to run. She wanted to fight. She wanted to kill this guy.
He clapped his hands twice. A man appeared from around the bend, dragging Joseph with him. The bad guy was massive. The old shaman looked frail. He had a gash on his left temple that looked like it was caused by a pistol butt and not a scrape against the cliff. Blood seeped through a slash in the shoulder of his plaid flannel shirt.
Joseph struggled to free himself. Christa reached towards him. He freed a hand, reached towards hers. “Run, Christa, now,” he said. “Get the artifact to your father!” He yanked back his elbow and thrust it into the thug’s gut. The thug collapsed to his knees, gripping his stomach.
The man with the pistol pivoted, aimed at Joseph. A shot rang out.
The gun flung away, splashing into the river. The thug screamed in pain and grabbed his forearm. “FBI!” a man’s voice called from across the river. The cottonwood grove. The moon glinted on the barrel of a pistol, the man holding it barely visible behind a tree. “Toss your weapon into the river!” A stand-off. Nobody moved. “Tell your men to disarm, Prophet” the voice called, “or you’re next.”
The Prophet hesitated, a calculating look narrowing his eyes, and nodded. The thug tossed his pistol. It landed with a splash. The FBI shooter emerged, pistol first, right arm straight out in front of him, forearm steadied with his left hand. He wore a black t-shirt, brown leather holster across his shoulder, faded jeans and black, army style, heavy tread boots. The moonlight accentuated his features, his chiseled face, military cut hair, sharp eyes, and muscular build.
He waded across the river with surprisingly steady footing. He circled round to the bank upriver of them.
“Agent Braydon Fox,” the Prophet said, with venom in his voice. “Your presence here is disturbingly unexpected.”
“You don’t know what I’d do,” said Fox. “Sticks in your craw, doesn’t it?”
“You can’t arrest me,” said the Prophet. “I haven’t committed any crime here.”
“That’s one. Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001, lying to a federal agent.” This agent, Fox, his eyes kept glancing at her. “And kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping?” said the Prophet. “This is an historical expedition,” he gestured toward Joseph, “with my faithful Indian guide.” The Prophet waved his hand dismissively. “Be a good lone ranger and ride back into the wilderness before you do something you’d regret.”
“Haven’t saved the damsel in distress yet,” Fox said.
“A criminal case would involve hours of questions,” he looked pointedly at Christa, “and confiscation of evidence. Nobody wants that.”
Her pack grew heavier under the weight of Fox’s probing gaze. The Prophet had a point. She and Joseph had risked their lives to secure the armillary sphere. She couldn’t let it be squirreled away in some evidence locker for months. She needed time now to unlock its secret. But she couldn’t let Samuel’s killers get away, either.
“He’s lying,” she said. She pointed at Joseph. “They shot him.”
The Prophet shrugged. “A hunting accident.”
Joseph remained silent.
“They killed a man,” she said, “an old prospector. He’s back at our campsite. You can see for yourself.”
“I have no idea what this young woman is talking about,” the Prophet said.
Joseph said nothing.
Fox gestured towards the Prophet’s men with a flick of his gun. “Get going, into the river. And keep your hands up.” He nodded his head towards the Prophet. “You, too. Get to the middle of the river, and stay there.”
The Prophet hunched his shoulders. If he were a cobra, this is when he’d strike. He waded into the river.
Fox backed away, his gun still targeting the Prophet as the man splashed deeper into the cool waters. “Get to that jeep,” he said, nodding towards Christa and Joseph.
The Prophet swore as he slipped on a stone. “My friends at the Bureau will not be pleased, Fox.” A look of pure disdain darkened his face. “I’ll see that you’re fired this time.”
“You can’t let them get away,” Christa said. Joseph grabbed her hand, pulled her towards the river. Fine, she’d show Fox Samuel’s body. Then he’d believe her.
She pushed through the frigid water. They scrambled out to the opposite bank, and hurried to the jeep. Their fire glowed weakly with the last of the embers. Moonlight splashed across their campsite. No Samuel. “He was here,” she said, “the old prospector. He was dying. They killed him. He couldn’t have just gotten up and walked into the night.” The sand had been stirred around, erasing their footprints and any telltale blood stains.
“Hard enough to prove a homicide out here,” Fox said. “Nearly impossible without a body. You don’t know the Prophet like I do.”
“Samuel was here,” she said. “I swear it.”
“The Prophet has two guys out there,” Fox said, “maybe more. We have the advantage, but not for long. They got plenty of desert to hide three more bodies.”
“I can’t let them win,” she said.
“You won’t,” said Joseph. “The only way to keep your promise to Samuel is to leave him behind.” He
swayed dizzily.
Damn it. She couldn’t abandon Samuel again, but this Prophet knew about the cliff dwelling. He might know about Dad in Morocco, which meant Dad was definitely in trouble. She had to warn him. She fished the keys from her pack and helped Joseph climb into the back. Blood streamed down from his temple to his chin and dripped onto his plaid shirt.
“Drive,” Fox said. He slid into the passenger seat.
She climbed in behind the wheel, hoisted her pack onto the floor behind Fox’s seat, and jammed the key into the ignition. The engine stuttered. It roared to life, sending a confused quail scampering for the low undergrowth. She threw the jeep into gear. Fox thrust his gun out the window, training it on the men standing in the middle of the river, their arms upraised.
As the jeep backed away, the Prophet advanced down the river, parting the tumbling waters at an angry pace. The other men dispersed. They plunged their hands into the shallows, searching for the pistol. Christa swerved the jeep around to head back upriver from where they entered the valley just a few short hours ago. A cloud of dust and gravel propelled out behind them. In the rearview mirror, the thug ran to the Prophet’s side.
“Get down!” she screamed. “He’s got the gun!” She floored the accelerator. The jeep bucked forward. She twisted back to see. The Prophet snatched the gun from the thug. The jeep made an easy target, but he didn’t shoot. He didn’t try to kill them, or even stop them. He dropped the gun to his side, and smiled.
DAY 2
CHAPTER 13
Christa tamped the brake and shifted her VW Beetle into third gear. She had to slow down. A kid could be outside playing, bundled up against this bitter cold, unseasonable even for Princeton in December. A little kid. The older ones would be in school. God, please let Lucia and Liam be in school. Priority number one—make sure they were safe.
One more block to Windsor Street. One hand gripped the steering wheel. The other clamped her cell phone to her ear. She checked the rear view mirror, again. No federal agents. No cheaply dressed thugs with guns. What she didn’t see was damn scary, worse than the nightmare that kept her from getting any sleep last night on the red-eye from Phoenix. The armillary sphere bulged against the sides of her lucky pack, heavy enough on the passenger seat to cause the seat belt reminder light to flash as if she were transporting an invisible menace.
Gabriella’s landline still wasn’t working. On her cell, her answering machine picked up, again.
“Gabriella,” Christa said, swerving around a parked minivan. “Forget about me needing to reach Dad. Just let me know you’re okay.”
She was an idiot. She should have jumped at the chance for Braydon Fox’s help, instead of ditching him at the hospital where they brought Joseph. The minute they’d gotten out of the shooting range of the Prophet, Fox had snatched her pack and yanked out the armillary sphere and demanded to know why it was worth killing for. She wouldn’t tell him why, even if she knew. Joseph had risked his life to keep the secret of the Turquoise. She didn’t trust Agent Braydon Fox with it, any more than he trusted her. He refused to identify the name of the Prophet. For her own safety, he said. She didn’t give a damn about her own safety right now.
At the Phoenix airport, she had googled Prophet and Breastplate of Aaron. The most likely website was NewWorldersforPeace.com. It featured the logo of a beast with a head of a lion, the body of a man holding a whip, and serpents as feet. It was called the Abraxas and figured heavily in the beliefs of the Gnostics. The Abraxas is with the Black Magic Woman in San Francisco, Joseph had told her, whatever that meant. The Prophet never revealed his true name to his followers, who lived in a dozen countries around the world and remained fanatically loyal despite his anonymous rants. The power to build a following through the Internet was terrifying.
If this was the “Prophet” who tried to kill her in the desert, he was a nut, but a really well-connected, powerful nut. He knew about the cliff dwelling, that she and Joseph had found something. He insinuated that he knew how Mom died. He could know about Gabriella, Percival, little Lucia and Liam. He hadn’t shot at Joseph’s jeep and hadn’t stopped her as she took off with the sphere. The Prophet had smiled, like a poker player with an inside straight.
She slowed as she caught sight of the dollhouse-cute lavender fishscale shingles and flaking yellow trim of Gabriella’s Victorian. A black Lincoln Town Car crawled by it, the kind the car services used to ferry people to the airport. Storm clouds, swirling east from the direction of the Princeton campus, reflected in the Town Car’s blackened rear window. The silhouette of the driver craned to assess the house. He wore a cap.
The Town Car pulled away. It could be nothing, a neighbor having just arrived for a family holiday. But snakes slithered in her stomach.
She eased to a stop. The wind lashed the barren maple tree branches to the point of snapping. In contrast, the house looked eerily quiet and still. Dead oak leaves skittered around and clawed at the red and yellow plastic playhouse. A string of Christmas lights, cold and unlit, clung precariously from the peeling wood gutter, chattering in the frigid gusts. The wind toppled the gaudy fiber optic tree on the porch, bullying it against the rocking chair. Gabriella, biologist and expert botanist, hadn’t been able to deny Lucia’s pleas for the most shiny, pinky tree in the world. She had bought their traditional living tree for Liam as well.
Christa gathered up her pack. She ot out of the car and followed the fieldstone walk that sliced through the pachysandra and vinca blanketing the front yard. Man, it was bitter cold. She clasped her leather jacket closer to her, the funky one she bought from that street vendor in Madrid, not exactly made for winter, or, frankly, any other weather. She should have indulged in that overpriced I LUV NY sweatshirt at the airport instead of changing in the restroom into her last clean outfit from her suitcase. The short denim skirt, the embroidered blouse from Mexico that could be washed in a hotel sink and looked good wrinkled, the brown dress boots, it was supposed to be a celebration outfit, a last stab at ridiculous optimism, thinking that her father would meet her in Arizona and she would hand him the Turquoise over mojitos.
A man’s voice shouted from inside the house. Three quick blasts. Gunfire? The squeal of tires. The Town Car careened around the corner, speeding back towards the house. Gabriella’s front door flung open. A linebacker of a man bowled through, clutching a book in the crook of one arm, a pistol in his other hand. Christa pivoted to leap out of the way. The man crashed into her, the full force of his weight lifting her off her feet. With surprising agility he swung her around, dropping to the fieldstones beneath her to cushion her fall. She landed on top of him, but the momentum flung her to the side. Her temple slammed the edge of the walk.
A popping sound. A sting in her forearm. The man scrambled to his feet. He had a black turtleneck, a crescent scar on his right cheek, and a smoking barrel on his twenty-two. He was the thug from the desert! He reached for her, as if to help. The Town Car’s horn blasted. He shoved himself up. He swiped his hands through the dense pachysandra leaves, searching. For the book. He must have dropped it. The Town Car’s tires screeched. It was pulling away, in a hurry. The man raced for the car. He yanked open the back door and dove in. The Town Car sped away.
Acrid smoke lingered from the gunshot. Her head throbbed worse than her arm. She pushed up on all fours, and rocked back onto her heels. She closed her throat to stop from puking. A hole had punched through the sleeve of her leather jacket. A bloody slash creased across her arm, halfway between her wrist and elbow.
Percival stumbled out the front door and down the stairs. He wore red and blue plaid pajamas with matching bathrobe cinched at the waist and leather slide slippers. His slender fingers clasped the butt of Dad’s Smith and Wesson pistol, the one he kept locked up. He rushed to her. The Town Car screeched around the corner. He knelt by her, grasped her arm. “By God, Christa, you’ve been shot.”
Stars floated in her eyes. It was the adrenaline; she’d soldiered through a lot worse injuries
than the bullet graze. And Percy holding a gun was more dizzying than the bash on the head. “The kids, Percy. Where’s Lucia and Liam?”
“In school, of course,” he said. “Helen took them. That is, Lucia is in school. Liam wasn’t feeling well. Helen took him to the campus clinic. They’ve been with her since yesterday. I just don’t understand, Christa. I mean, what is this all about? Your father calls, insists our children have to go to your sister’s, for their safety, he said, and it’s a good thing he did, mind you.”
“Percy,” she said, too loudly. It hurt. “Where is Gabriella?”
“Colombia. I’ve been trying to reach her. She’s left for the jungle, where she was last summer, searching for medicinal plants. I couldn’t fathom why it couldn’t wait until after the holidays. She insisted that her research was at a crucial stage, that she absolutely had to track down a new specimen. I’ve never seen her so anxious.”
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