by Fiona Quinn
Time seemed to blur. She had been hyperventilating in the airport parking lot and now they were pulling up in front of the Iniquus compound. They stopped and showed their ID at the guard tower. The gates opened, and they powered in. Sophia turned to see the other vehicles following suit. She was thoroughly confused. At least Brian and their other Panther Force liaisons would be here, they’d help figure this mess out. But why come here to Iniquus and not the police station or FBI headquarters? Maybe this wasn’t about Mr. Rochester—that was a police matter. Maybe this had to do with Marla, she had been arrested by the FBI.
Sophia was hustled into the building and moved into a room. There were mirrors lined along parallel walls, and Sophia thought, having watched her fair share of cop shows, that there were likely people watching her from the other side. The room was white. There was no other color except the silver of her handcuffs, which were laced through a hook on the table. It was freezing cold. The goose flesh on her bare arms was as much about the overabundance of air conditioning as it was about fear.
A woman and a man walked into the room. They moved to the other side of her table and sat in the two empty white seats waiting for them. Sophia noted that they were both dressed warmly for the nearly ninety-degree day. They must have known it was going to be a refrigerator in here. This must be a tactic.
“My name is Special Agent Alandria Andersson. I work for the FBI in their Arts division. This is my colleague, Special Agent Steve Finley with Terror.”
Sophia nodded. It made sense that they’d want to talk to her, since she had expertise in both. The cuffs still didn’t make a lot of sense, though.
“We’d like to talk to you about a tablet that was delivered to Joshua Gilchrest, CEO of Crafts&More.”
“All right,” Sophia said.
“Do you recognize the provenance that was attached to the customs forms?” Alandria laid the paper in front of Sophia.
Sophia’s scanned down the paper to her signature. She swallowed and looked up. “Yes. I wrote this.”
“It’s illegal to bring antiquities from their country of origin into the United States, but you already know this, given your job,” Special Agent Finley said.
“That’s true. But it’s not illegal to bring in copies of antiquities, and you will see that I very plainly described the piece as such. Since I’m handcuffed and here against my will, I’m assuming I’m under arrest. I think it would be best if I had a lawyer here representing my interests. If you would please get in touch with my employer, AACP, they can arrange for someone to come.”
“You misunderstand your standing in this meeting, Dr. Abadi,” the female special agent said. “You are being investigated as a terrorist. As such, we will not be calling a lawyer for you. A different set of rules applies.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Brian
Monday p.m.
Brian shut his eyes and willed Sophia to be cooperative. To bend and fold. To do whatever she had to do to save herself. He imagined her at intake with a prison jumpsuit and shower shoes, shuffling to her cell with her month’s supply of toilet tissue and toothpaste. His stomach churned. He tried to play this calm, but he noticed Nutsbe and Thorn were riled too. The only one who was cool about this was Titus Kane. He sat with his hands folded on his stomach, his normal scowl across his face.
There was a knock at the door, and Lynx poked her head in. Titus nodded in her direction. She gave the team a finger wave as she made her way in and took her place in one of the captain’s chairs that lined the small room facing the two-way mirror. “Titus asked me to be here to give my opinion on Sophia’s body language. He also wants a heads up if I think she’s starting a seizure. None of us wants that.”
Brian agreed with that. Sophia needed her wits about her, and getting her brain scrambled with a seizure would be problematic on several fronts. She’d need a good rest afterwards to get her wiring back in place, for one. Brian wondered what would happen if Sophia short-circuited and the FBI kept pressing her. The thought tightened his jaw. Lynx caught his eye and read him like a book. She sent him a warning look then turned her attention to what was happening in the interrogation room.
“Fine. What do you need to know?” Sophia asked. To his eye, she looked calm for someone who was being accused of terrorist acts. Aside from her shaking with cold.
“Titus, did the special agents require Sophia to be put on ice?” Lynx asked.
“Standard operating procedure,” Titus said.
“It seems to me that putting her in a physical and mental state of discomfort, while normally effective, might be counterproductive in this situation. Would you please bring the temperature up to something that would be comfortably cool for her?”
Thank you, Lynx. Brian sent the message mentally, but refused to catch her eye.
Alandria Andersson moved to the door and brought in a trolley with a tablet resting on it. She placed the trolley next to Sophia. “Tell me what you know about this piece.”
Sophia licked her lips and turned her head toward the stone. “Sure. This is about a point-one-eight square meter marble slab that weighs approximately fifty-three kilograms. It is inscribed with a script called Samaritan, which was an early form of Hebrew. It is believed that the original slab adorned a Samaritan synagogue or perhaps a private home in Jabneel, Palestine. That area is now called Yavneh in modern Israel. The original tablet would be significant to the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths, in that it lists nine of the Ten Commandments from the Book of Exodus.”
“Why not ten?” Andersson asked.
“There are ten listed on the tablet in total, but only nine that are familiar. My professional guess would be that they wanted to keep the number at ten so they omitted one and replaced it with another. This tablet does not say, ‘You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.’ Instead, it commands people to worship on Mount Gerizim, which is in the West Bank.”
“Tell me more about the slab,” Andersson pushed.
“It was uncovered in 1913 during excavation for a Yavneh railroad station in Israel. It is believed to be the only tablet version of the Ten Commandments to have survived intact into the modern age. The workers who dug it up had no idea what they’d found. They sold it to an Arab man who used it to form the threshold that lead to his inner courtyard. When the man placed the stone, he did so with the inscription facing up. That’s why the letters of the central part of the inscription are all but obliterated. They can be made out under the right lighting, and with the right technology.”
Finley stood and moved over to the stone. “This is smooth because some guy let people trod on the oldest known version of the Ten Commandments?”
“This, no,” Sophia said. “This is a copy of the original.”
“Made at a later date?” Andersson asked. “How old is the original?”
“The Samaritan Decalogue is one of five Roman-Byzantine era stone inscriptions that we know about. The dates for the piece are thought to be between 300 and 640 CE—around the time of the seventh century CE Muslim invasion. A man named Kaplan bought the original in 1943. He was a municipal archaeologist at the time. Kaplan and Ben-Ziv wrote papers on it and worked to develop a provenance.”
“And so what date would you assign to this artifact?” Finley asked.
Sophia shot him a strange look. “I don’t know, sometime in the last year, maybe?”
Andersson rolled her eyes. “It says on the provenance that you sent along with the piece that it is a copy of the original.”
“That’s right.”
Lynx moved to the edge of her seat.
The air in the observation room shifted perceptibly. Everyone was feeling the strain of the unfolding drama.
Finley handed her a photograph. “We have Jael Cohen’s computer. He showed you a bank statement for eight-hundred-and-fifty-thousand American dollars that was transferred from one offshore account to another.”
“Yes,” Sophia said.
“That money came fr
om…”
“My understanding is that it came from the Gilchrest family.”
“And the other bank account belongs to you,” Finley said with authority.
Sophia swung her head toward Finley. “How…” She didn’t finish her sentence, just looked down at her hands, her body going still. Even from this angle, the team could see the thoughts racing through her mind.
Brian’s phone vibrated against his thigh. He checked the app that monitored Sophia’s place, thinking the police were knocking on her door again. But it was Lana tapping in her new code and going into the house. “Have any of you noticed that Lana likes to go over to Sophia’s house when she’s not there?”
Nutsbe turned his way. “What’s she doing?” He leaned over to look at the screen.
“Looks like she’s sending a text again.”
“Why’d she walk over there to send it?” Lynx asked, leaning in from the other side.
“The hall light shines down on that spot, and you can read the screen without turning on the living room or office lights. She’s normally at Sophia’s to pick up something for Sophia’s boys. Toys, clothes, what have you.” Brian flipped to his newly placed camera, the one that captured that corner of the room. “Son of a bitch.” He tapped the phone to take a picture. He used his fingers to make the image large enough that they could read the nine-digit alphanumeric code on the screen. “You guys got this?”
He pointed to Sophia. “I’m going to her house to see what the mice are doing when the cats away.”
“I’ll head back to the war room.” Nutsbe stood. “See if I can figure out a correlation between Miss Lana’s visits and anything interesting.”
***
Brian made the twenty-minute drive in fifteen minutes flat. Still, he missed Lana. Mr. Rochester’s body had been removed from Sophia’s gardens. The police must have finished up their crime scene investigation. The yellow tape was gone. So were the patrol cars. They’d left a pile of dirt sitting to one side. Brian would try to shovel it back in place, maybe put the rest of the flowers in before Sophia came home. A cold buzz crawled over his scalp as he realized that very probably wouldn’t be happening. It didn’t feel to him like Sophia was being forthcoming and compliant with the FBI. It seemed to him she was too measured and calculating about her word choices. He could see in the special agents’ body posture that they were making up their minds about her future—and it was looking bleak.
Brian had put his own code into the security system during the installation. It allowed him to disengage everything from his phone. That way, if he ever needed to sneak into her house, there would be no alarm or image of him being telegraphed to Sophia or the computer. He tapped the button, waited for the lights on the lock to turn green then went up the steps and into the house.
His first stop was the curio cabinet. He’d already given it a quick shake. Time to be more thorough. He pulled up the picture of Lana and positioned himself exactly as he had seen her, then lowered himself from his six foot two height to her diminutive five feet. He squatted until his head was exactly in line with where her head appeared in the image and looked in the direction she looked when she was texting. At exactly this spot, a beam of light hit his phone screen, making it much easier to text. Also true, when he was at this angle he could see a slot that held the PIN code developer. He took pictures of what he saw.
He moved to Sophia’s desk, facing the coder, and slid down in the chair until he had a good visual. This would be about Sophia and Nadia’s height, when seated. They were both about five foot five. They could turn, read it, and enter it into the computer without moving it from its hiding spot. He waited for the code to change, and then typed it into the computer. Bam, he was in.
He pulled his phone out and dialed Nutsbe. “The code’s for the computer, not a phone code like Sophia was using.”
“Yeah, I came to that conclusion too. I wish we had Lana’s phone bill. I’d like to see where the codes went. I’m looking at her on video. She texts, waits, texts again. Seems like the calls Sophia was getting on her house phone. A check to see that she was there, then a follow up call. Could be Lana texted to get someone’s attention, waited for the number to change and typed it in quick. They only have forty-five seconds to make that turn around once the coder puts up the new number.”
“With the spyware we installed, can we check the computer for other malware? Something that would let someone in behind a blank screen?”
“No can do until we get a warrant and get the hard drive into forensics. I’m sure I can get Finley to hand me one before you leave, so you can pack everything up and bring it in with you.” Nutsbe’s voice had the hollow sound of someone on speakerphone. “But I can tell you this, looking at the texting times that we have on video, and comparing it to the computer history, there’s a direct pattern of log-ons. And I can also tell you that, off the top of my head, I know some of these were times when Nadia and Sophia were with either you or Thorn. I’m not sure how this information is going to pop Sophia out of the trap she’s in though. Short of chewing off her own foot, I think she’s been bagged.” There was a pause before he added, “Sorry, man.”
The phone rang on Sophia’s desk. Brian picked up the receiver and listened as the beeps sounded once, twice, three times. “Sophia Abadi is in FBI custody at Iniquus Headquarters in Washington DC. She is being interrogated as I speak.”
There was a pause and then, “Do you know the names of the special agents conducting the interrogation?” It was the same woman’s voice that Panther Force had picked up over surveillance.
“Stephen Finley and Alandria Andersson.”
“I’ll take care of it.” The woman hung up.
“Dude, what did you just do? We don’t know who that woman is, and we certainly don’t know what she means by take care of it.” The incredulity in Nutsbe’s voice coming over the speaker on Brian’s cellphone perfectly matched Brian’s disbelief.
What the heck had he just done?
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sophia
Monday Afternoon
Finley’s cellphone rang, and he ignored it. Andersson’s phone rang, and she ignored it. Both phones rang simultaneously, and they moved out of the room. Sophia assumed that they were finally taking the calls.
Sophia was glad that her hands were cuffed in front of her rather than behind. She was glad that someone had adjusted the temperature of the room and her nose wasn’t running anymore. And she sent up a prayer of absolute thanksgiving for Lana. No matter what happened to her, no matter how long she was going to be away, Sophia knew her boys were safe. Okay, that wasn’t a good path for her thoughts to wander down. The metal cage around her ribs tightened and her breathing came in short little puffs. Sophia blinked her eyes as the white walls began to oscillate in and out, each time pushing a little closer, boxing her in. There was no sound. Nothing to focus on. Nothing to distract her brain from its downward slide.
The door behind her slammed open and a sharp, “Sophia,” echoed somewhere behind her. Sophia couldn’t turn her head. Her muscles were locked.
A voice murmured beside her. A fairy godmother voice that spun magic in pink swirls around her. Sophia felt warmth on her back, it crackled through her icy cocoon.
“Sophia, stay with me,” the fairy queen whispered in her ear.
Like a spell, the voice whirled through her consciousness, pulling the gray mist away, and flicking it to the side. Warmth pulsed over her back, up and down, side to side. “This is my hand on you, Sophia. Focus. Can you feel my hand on your back?”
Sophia could feel the heaviness of her lids as they stayed open and tears slid down her cheeks. They were gently wiped away. Sophia could feel the texture of the tissue. She could see the red fingernail polish on a distinctly feminine hand. After a long moment, she could shift her head and see Lynx sitting beside her.
“That wasn’t bad,” Lynx said. “You were gone less than a minute. Come on. You need to be completely settled in your
body. Rub your feet on the floor.” Lynx tilted her head up and spoke to the air. “Let’s dim the lights a bit to lower the glare, please. And can someone bring in some color and texture for her to focus on?”
Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, the lights immediately dimmed, and the shiny white lost its overpowering glow. The door opened, and Thorn came in. He had a large potted plant in one hand and a red mug in the other. He set them on the table in front of her. It was jarring to have this sudden influx of color. It was just what she needed.
Thorn must have been on the other side of the mirrors for him to have reacted so quickly. He must have grabbed the first things he saw. Sophia tried to send him a look of gratitude but had a sudden thought. Thorn was in on this? Did that mean Brian was too?
“You were supposed to protect me.” Sophia’s words had a weird ringing to them.
Thorn focused on Lynx. “What else?”
“How about a cup of tea? Something with a lot of taste. And a pillow.”
Thorn left. Sophia wasn’t trusting herself or the environment. She’d been told no lawyers. That meant she needed to wait for someone to figure out that something was wrong. Nadia had been taken. Jael had been taken. Red? No. Lana? Yes. Lana would freak out when neither she nor her sister checked in. She’d start making calls. She’d probably start with Thorn and Brian. Would they tell her the truth? Would Lana think to call AACP so they could get them some help? Maybe. Her brain was foggy and her thoughts came mostly as animated pictures and not words.
Sophia drank the tea Thorn set in front of her. She rested her head on the pillow he provided. Lynx, who had kept her hands on her the whole time with that magical touch of hers, encouraged her to close her eyes and rest. It was a cramped kind of nap with her arms and hands forced into an odd configuration by the handcuffs holding her to the table. But it felt good to shut her eyes. Sleep stole over her.
When she woke up, Lynx was still by her side, murmuring, “Sophia, you need to wake up now. Slowly. Slowly.”
