Relic_An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller

by Fiona Quinn

Turner pointed earnestly at his work. “We’re reading a book.”

  “I love when we read books together.” She kissed his hair. “And I love having this picture to remind me of snuggling up with you and Chance.” Sophia pushed to standing, obviously practiced at juggling the children. “This goes on the fridge so we can all enjoy it.”

  Lana turned to her sister. “I thought you were working from home today. I didn’t expect to find you here.” She peered into the office. “And Brian.” She gave him a finger wave.

  Thorn came in the back door. “Rochester’s good. They’re watching football.”

  “And Thorn too? There’s a whole crowd holding down the fort today.”

  Brian detected something nervous about Lana. She seemed overly bright. Maybe she, like Nadia and Sophia, didn’t like to be around big groups, but honestly, with only four of them there, that didn’t make much sense.

  “Are you sleepy, baby?” Sophia asked her youngest son, tipping his head back so she could peer at him, then plant a kiss on his cheek. “He’s looking better. He smells like garlic and olive oil. I could eat him up.” She nuzzled at his neck until he chuckled and squirmed.

  “Yeah, he was pulling at that ear, so I tried a home remedy. Seems to be working.” Lana moved forward to reach for Chance. Lana and Nadia were obviously sisters, but where Nadia was tall and athletic, her sister was a shorter, rounder, softer version. Their personalities differed along the same lines. Nadia was cosmopolitan and wore the polish of someone who sipped cocktails in sophisticated circles. Lana seemed like someone who preferred the comfort and intimacy of her home.

  “Let me hold him while Turner and I go hang his picture.” Sophia took Turner’s hand and moved toward the kitchen.

  “The boys missed you last night,” Lana called after her. “They need some mama time. I told them that you’d read two books and sing one song over the Internet before they go to sleep.”

  Brian took advantage of the shift in attention to pull out the flash drive that had thankfully turned green. Mission accomplished.

  ***

  Thorn had gone back to the Iniquus compound to have the Arabic notes that Sophia and Nadia had been sending all day translated, and to see if anything tied to the FBI sting came up in their work. Right now, the computer was off. The electricity had been flickering. Brian had his phone out and was watching an enormous storm inching toward them on the radar. High winds were causing power outages to the west. The skies were still clear here, though.

  He, Nadia, and Sophia had originally planned to go out to grab a bite to eat, but had decided to order a pizza. Sophia didn’t want to miss FaceTime with her children. She’d headed up the stairs to read them their books when Brian heard a car in the drive. He fished out his wallet and pulled out a couple of bills, moving toward the door. It burst open, and Lana stumbled into the room. Her eye caught on Brian, and she froze. “Hey there,” she finally said, turning and leaning her body into the door to get it to shut. “Can you believe this weather? Whew!” She pushed the hair out of her face and sent Brian a smile. “I thought you all went out to eat.”

  The doorbell rang. “Too lazy. We ordered a pizza instead.” Brian shifted around Lana to take the pizzas and pay the guy.

  Lana moved over to the corner of the room. “I’m just going to send a quick text to the hubs and let him know how bad things are getting.” She raised her voice. “Hey, Nadia,” she said without looking up from her task.

  “Tell him it looks like you might be sheltering in place.” Nadia took the pizzas from Brian and set them on the kitchen counter, pulled out some plates, and they dug in after Nadia said Sophia had told them to go ahead without her.

  The wind shook the house and bent the trees. Sophia made a short appearance, her eyes rimmed in red. Mascara streaks painted her cheeks where she’d wiped away tears. “Hey, Lana. Did you need something?”

  “The boys wanted to play with their puppy pals, so I thought I’d stop by while I ran to the store for more bananas, it’s hard to keep them in stock when there’s a troop of monkeys swinging through my house. Are you all done talking to the kids?”

  “The cable went down. I had to call the boys on the phone to finish the book and tell them good night.” She tried to force her frown into a smile.

  “Are you okay? Come and eat something.” Brian lifted the box, but forced himself to stay put and ignore how badly he wanted to pull her into his arms and comfort her.

  She shook her head as she reached into the cupboard for a mug. “What I want is to take a long hot bath, but looks like the lightning is here.” She pulled a jug of milk from the fridge. “I’m going to make some hot milk while we still have electricity.” She tapped the button and her microwave whirred. When it beeped completion, she opened the door. “I’m going to take my sleeping pills and go to bed. Today seemed to wring it out of me.”

  Lana smiled encouragement her way. “Saturday we’ll spend all day at the pool. We’ll relax. It’ll be good.”

  Sophia’s attempted smile fooled no one.

  Rain continued to hammer down. The trees scraped their branches back and forth over the windowpanes, making high-pitched otherworldly shrieks that unnerved the women. The lights wavered and dimmed. The storm sat right on top of them. The women certainly couldn’t go home in this deluge, with no visibility and no street lights or signals. Nadia had gone up to change the sheets on the guestroom bed where Lana and Nadia would both sleep. Brian planned to sleep on the couch in the den.

  Brian went to check the doors. The security lights and cameras didn’t have a backup battery. He’d have to work on that.

  With the flashlight on his phone, Brian slipped up the stairs and into Sophia’s room. He checked her breathing and pulse. She didn’t move. He picked up the bottle of sleeping pills sitting on her bedside table and counted them into his hand. Something about her mood earlier had been flat. Despondent. The vitality that he normally saw in her eyes when she spoke about her work had faded. And it worried him. Lynx’s warning that Sophia was at risk of suicide was in the forefront of his mind.

  He thought back to the hugs she gave to her kids. She was obviously a gentle and loving mother, but she’d had the same energy and look as women he’d seen in war zones. He vividly remembered talking with his translator one day, the female officer was assigned to his FAST unit to talk with women and do the female pat downs. He had wanted to understand the melancholy look in the mothers’ eyes as they sent their children off to get water at the well or to sell the bread the women had made that morning. They’d put their hands on their children’s heads and held their gaze for a long moment before shooing them off.

  “These mothers see no tomorrow, no future for their children. They’re waiting for the next bomb to drop. The next strafe of gunfire. One way or another, this is a land of bad outcomes. There’s no expectation for a better tomorrow. How else should these women behave? What else could they feel but despair?”

  Brian had no idea. He was from America, where tomorrow held promise, options and opportunities. But the look in Sophia’s eyes told him that she was just like those women in the war zone. He examined Sophia, curled into a ball, her brow furrowed, the blanket held in a fist beneath her chin, as though the act of sleeping took immense physical concentration and effort. He wanted to reach out and stroke his hand over her hair. To comfort her. To tell her he was going to protect her. But that was a lie. He was the one tasked with taking her down. Brian replaced the pills, tightened the child-proof cap and moved the vial away from her reach, hiding it from sight behind her lamp.

  He jogged down the stairs to find Lana texting in her usual spot. She glanced up when he held the flashlight on her. “The children are sleeping right through this, hubby says. How? I have no idea. It’s probably because he’s piled them all in bed with him and the dogs.” Her voice was tight.

  “This is eerie,” Nadia said, carrying a candle into the room and moving over to stand near Lana. “I can’t remember ever being so unnerv
ed by a storm.”

  Lightning reached out and touched the top of a nearby pine, exploding it in a fireworks display of golden sparks in the neighbor’s yard. Lana slapped a hand over her mouth to buffer her shriek. Thunder clapped immediately—long and low, rumbling across the sky and shaking the house on its foundation. The crystal on the curio shelf clattered. Spinning, Lana reached out reflexively as a goblet slipped from the shelf. It slid through her fingers, and hit the floor hard, shattering.

  Nadia, the candle still in her hand, moaned as she crouched. “No!” She exhaled. “No. No. No.” She lifted the stem. It was the largest piece still intact. Lana hovered over the shards, her hands on her head, her eyes wide. Brian waited for some explanation about what upset them so much.

  Nadia let the crystal shard fall and came upright. The sisters stood, still as statues, staring into each other’s eyes. Cold brushed over Brian as the fine hairs on his arms stood up. A howl of wind made Lana jump closer to her sister.

  “What just happened?” Brian asked.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Brian

  Thursday Night

  Lana was fixated on the starburst of crystal on the wooden floor. “When she finds out it’s broken, it’s going to be bad,” she whispered.

  “This was special to Sophia?” Brian tried again to get details.

  Nadia sent Lana a questioning look, and Lana responded with the smallest of nods. Brian knew they had decided to break a bond and share a confidence. He steeled himself for what was coming.

  “Sophia’s great-great-grandmother Adeline brought that goblet with her from Limerick when she immigrated to America. It has been passed down through the generations. It dates back to the early 1800s. Dated back.” Nadia cleared her throat. “When Adeline got married, they gave a wedding toast with that glass, then her grandmother, then her mother, and eventually Sophia did the same. In their family tradition, taking a sip of wine on your wedding day from that goblet connected the new bride to the wisdom of the women who had come before.” Nadia used the hushed tones of a storyteller, as if they were around a campfire deep in the woods.

  “Sophia had just moved in to this house, her mother-in-law Jane hadn’t been released from the hospital yet after the car accident. Sophia was out of her mind. She had been crying for days. She had been through so much for so long, and now she had to make decisions for a woman she barely knew. So Lana suggested we ask her grandmothers.” Nadia’s voice faltered, and she looked away, bending her head.

  Brian took the candle from her hands and set it at their feet. It left eerie shadows on their faces. He shifted the jar to the side with the toe of his boot. He didn’t need to add to the atmosphere, the women were already shivering, their nerves were pulled so tight.

  “I had no idea.” Lana shook her head. “I was half-joking.”

  “We fashioned a kind of Ouija board. I filled out slips of paper with the alphabet, the numbers zero to nine, a card for yes, and a card for no. Sophia turned the goblet upside down, and we all sat around the table and rested our fingers on the base.”

  Lana’s shivers became trembles. Brian knew that what happened next was the stuff of nightmares and horror stories. A chant had begun in his brain behind the melody of his other thoughts. Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name... As the prayer cycled forward, he felt as if each phrase was building the next layer of a wall that would separate and protect him from whatever it was that was frightening these women. “What happened?” he urged.

  “As soon as we put our fingers on the goblet, the room started to hum. I expected that we’d be waiting… I thought it would… I had no idea what I was doing. But it happened incredibly fast. The room filled with electricity.”

  “Static,” Lana said. “Our hair floated out to the sides like we’d rubbed our heads with a balloon. Our clothes zapped us as we shifted. Nadia asked, ‘who’s here?’ and the goblet immediately spelled out Bambi.”

  “Who’s Bambi?” Brian asked.

  “We didn’t know,” Nadia said. “I mean, we figured it out in context. Sophia told us later that she called Hunter Bambi as a pet name. Hunter, her husband, had these beautiful golden-brown eyes. All the girls fell in love with him because of his eyes.”

  “Sophia, she looked like she was in a trance. She asked Hunter if he was okay. The goblet slid to yes.

  “Hunter tried to commit suicide when he found out that Sophia was in premature labor. She was alone in the hospital giving birth to Chance. Christopher John Campbell was the name they had chosen for him. Sophia changed the name to Chance when she filled out the papers. She never talked about why—but it’s easy to guess. They gave her husband and son the same chance of survival that day. Ten percent.” Nadia paused for a long moment. “The second question Sophia asked was if Hunter’s dad was with him and the goblet slid over to yes. Then she asked if he was in Heaven and the goblet went back to the side that had the no.”

  “Was there a reason why Sophia asked about his father?”

  Nadia shifted her weight. “Hunter was in a coma, braindead after his overdose, but his parents couldn’t bring themselves to remove him from life support. Sophia was dealing with life and death decisions for her new baby, and she felt very strongly that Hunter’s parents should have whatever control she could give them over their son’s life. At first, they decided to keep Hunter on life support while they looked for alternative treatments. But there’s nothing that brings someone back from being braindead. In late spring of that same year, Hunter’s dad was diagnosed with advanced heart disease. His only chance at survival was a heart transplant.”

  A low note slipped between Lana’s lips.

  Nadia reached out and pulled Lana to her side. “Jane begged her husband to take their son’s heart. If he didn’t, she was sure to lose both of them. If he did, then she could keep them both alive in some way. So that was the plan. They’d try to save both the father and some part of the son with the operation. They had started the surgery to remove Hunter’s heart, and were prepping his father—Matthew was his name—for surgery. But Matthew had a massive heart attack and died. Sophia had already said goodbye to Hunter, but now she was mourning her father-in-law. And Jane, to be perfectly honest, went crazy. She had to be institutionalized for a time. Sophia had to make the funeral arrangements for her husband and father-in-law all by herself.”

  Nadia released a jagged breath. “There we were, using the goblet to talk with the dead. Sophia asked, ‘Where are you?’ The goblet spelled out, ‘Waiting for mom. Let her come.’ Now, all of us were barely touching the goblet. Sophia couldn’t possibly move the glass on her own. Lana and I didn’t know that the doctor was talking to Sophia about palliative care versus aggressive choices in treating Jane. We had no idea that Jane might die.”

  “Holy crap,” he said under his breath. Brian tried to imagine the women, sitting around the table having this otherworldly experience.

  Nadia pursed her lips, waiting for the thunder to finish rolling across the sky. “It gets worse. The next thing it spelled out was, ‘I love you. I’m so sorry.’ I thought that now that we had answers we’d stop. Sophia needed to know what to do and now she knew. But Sophia—I have never seen a human look like that. She was white to the point of being…gone. Her lips were colorless.”

  “She was translucent,” Lana said. “It was as if I could see right through her, like she had become vapor. I wanted to magnetize her particles back into a solid whole, but I couldn’t pick my fingers up off the glass. I was stuck. Powerless. It felt like Hunter had gone and something evil had slipped through a door he had left open.”

  “It was as if I was on a spinning ride where you’re held in place by centrifugal force and the bottom drops out,” Nadia explained. “Lana’s right, I couldn’t get my fingers off that goblet. I knew that I’d only be allowed to let go when whatever it was that came in the room was satisfied.”

  Brian began to wonder if this was a performance. If the sister’s story was something
they heard or saw or came up with. If that were true, they were damned good actors. “What happened next?”

  Nadia bit at her lips. It seemed to Brian that she was having trouble forming the next words. “It spelled out ‘Your fault.’ Sophia’s body vibrated, her whole body shook. But her hands were steady on the goblet. I was getting angry at Hunter, I didn’t realize had that he’d switched. I was thinking, how dare he blame Sophia when his depression and suicide were caused by a head injury? I yelled at the goblet to stop.”

  “The goblet spelled, ‘My grave,’” Lana whispered then whipped her head around to look across the ceiling and into the corners. “Sophia was shaking so hard the rim of the glass bounced on the table, then it spelled, ‘You desecrated my grave.’”

  Brian shook his head. This was so farfetched that they had to be pulling his leg.

  “Sophia screamed the highest pitched scream—held it inhumanly long. The dishes were rattling in the cupboards. I’m going to be disgustingly honest here.” Nadia turned to look him in the eye. “I peed myself. I was so terrified.”

  Brian thought she’d burst out laughing and let him in on the joke, but she didn’t.

  “When the scream ended, Sophia collapsed. The static electricity left.”

  The quiet that followed was one Brian experienced after a bomb blast when everyone in the area was in shock. Unsure, unclear, unable. He stood quietly until one and then the other sister seemed to come back to themselves. In his mind, Brian heard the prayer that had continued this whole time, say one last time, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, followed by an amen. The weird feeling of being watched or eavesdropped on vanished.

  “Lana, what are we going to do about the goblet?” Nadia whispered. “She’ll lose her mind. She’s already terrified for the boys.”

  “I’m not following. Why is she worried for the boys?” Brian asked, wondering if he was going to find yet another stressor that might make Sophia desperate.