by Steve Berry
Which he seemed to like.
She drew back and said, “I want you to remember what you just said about cheating fate.”
“Same for you.”
“Deal.”
“I’ll take the rental car to the airport,” he said. “The Justice Department plane is waiting for me.”
The same jet that had brought them to Arkansas.
“Pick up the rental car tomorrow to use. I’ll leave the keys in the glove compartment. We’ll worry about getting you out of here later.”
She nodded. “I’ll make do.”
“Of that I have no doubt.”
She watched as he headed back to his room. “Cotton.”
He stopped and turned.
She caught the look of consternation on his face.
“Call Danny Daniels. He needs to know.”
* * *
She reentered her room to find Lea awake in bed.
“Are you two a thing?” the younger girl asked.
“Were you spying through the peephole?”
“I heard voices and looked out to see who it was. That was quite a kiss.”
She nodded and smiled. “We have a thing.”
“He’s handsome.”
“He’s headed back to Washington, DC. Some things there have to be handled. I’m going to stay here and make sure you two are okay.”
“We don’t need a babysitter. Me and Grandpa have gotten along real fine on our own.”
She noted that the declaration did not carry any anger or resentment, more just a statement of fact. “I realize that. But this is a little above and beyond what the two of you are accustomed to handling.”
“Where are you from?”
She decided to go with the abrupt change of subject. “I live in France, but I was born and raised in Spain. My father’s ancestry goes back to the Moors, my mother was European.”
“You have nice clothes. Are you rich?”
She was impressed with the girl’s powers of observation. “I’m not poor. My father left me a company that makes a great deal of money.”
“I look at the fashion sites online. I like fashion, though I don’t get to wear much of it.”
Walls were definitely cracking so she decided to see if she could break them down further. She grabbed her laptop and accessed the website for her castle reconstruction project. Lea came close and they scanned through the pages, which were loaded with photos and information.
“This is my passion,” she told Lea.
“We have one of those here.”
Which she knew about, as her project had been its inspiration. The Ozark Medieval Fortress. Like her own, it was to be a reproduction of a French castle. Unlike her own, which she personally funded, that project had closed for lack of money.
“It’s up in the northern part of the state,” Lea said. “I heard about it from some people who went and saw it.”
She’d already sensed that this girl had too few female influences in her life. She loved her grandfather, but sometimes that wasn’t enough. So she kept the conversation going and they talked more about each other.
“If you’re rich and buildin’ a castle, why are you workin’ with the feds?”
“Cotton and I help them out sometimes. Of course, we had no idea it was going to turn into all this. It was supposed to be a simple fact-finding mission.”
“I’m ashamed of what Grandpa did with those men,” she said. “Trickin’ you. He was actin’ stupid.”
“I think he knows that.”
“Can I tell you somethin’? Between you and me?”
She nodded.
“I have a special fella.”
She smiled. “Like Cotton is to me?”
“Yep. We like each other. But I know how Grandpa feels about that. He says boys are bad.”
“He’s just looking after you.”
“I guess. But he really thinks all boys are bad. I get it. He just wants me to be careful and sure, and I am.”
There was a lot of maturity in this young woman, evidenced by how she’d earlier handled a gun to her neck.
“My fella’s uncle was a sentinel, too, who guarded some important stuff, like the stone. We’ve talked about it, tryin’ to figure things out.”
“And what did you decide?”
“That my grandpa and his uncle were not crazy.”
She could sense there was more.
“I can show you somethin’, if you want.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
TENNESSEE
Diane could not sleep. She’d lain down after Vance had left, switching off all the lights in the house and enveloping herself in a welcomed darkness. Her brother’s missing notebook weighed heavy on her mind. Somebody had taken it from the study, of that she was sure. But who? And why? Tops on her list was Danny Daniels, especially since he’d possessed the cross-and-circle necklace. He’d acted as though he knew nothing of its significance, but that was coming from a man who knew how to lie. Did he know what the cross and circle meant? Were all the questions about Alex’s death just curiosity or something else?
She had to stop.
Damn this paranoia.
Danny Daniels could not care less about what she was doing. Why would he? He was nothing more than Alex’s friend and had returned the necklace. So she asked herself once again, who could have taken the notebook? It was there two days ago after Grant delivered it, when she’d read every word. Luckily, most of it was shorthand reflections, bullet points and legal citations, meaningless to almost everyone and certainly not threatening. The cross and circle on the front would probably not even be noticed. Just some manufacturer’s decoration. She’d debated whether to tell Vance about Kenneth’s breach of secrecy with Alex and the notebook being gone, but decided to keep that to herself.
Like everything else.
“You can’t do this,” Alex said to her, his voice rising.
They were sitting alone in the great room.
“I won’t allow you to do any of this,” he said.
That, she resented. “I don’t require your permission.”
“No, you don’t. But I am the senior senator from this state, and I can stop you, Kenneth, and Lucius Vance.”
She shook her head. “What a hypocrite. All your preaching about changing the government. All your complaining. Here you have a way to fix it, and you don’t want to take it.”
“This is not a fix. It’s a revolution. One the people should decide for themselves.”
“They will, through their duly elected representatives. If they don’t like it, they can un-elect them. They get that opportunity, in the House of Representatives, every two years.”
“It’s not that simple and you know it. Once done, this will be tough to undo. And once power is tasted, people have a tendency to keep on eating it. Even the minority in the House, who will oppose the change by the majority, will see the political advantages.”
“What’s the matter, Alex? Afraid you and your Senate cronies will lose your clout? Right now you take every molecule of oxygen from the room. Senators get the local party money, the local party support. House candidates fight for the scraps, and most times they don’t even get those. They have to go out and raise every dime for their campaigns, while you prima donnas in the Senate have everything handed to you. That will all change, won’t it?”
“You don’t have a clue what you’re about to unleash. Lucius Vance is no benign statesman. He’s ambitious and arrogant and wanted to be president. Now he will essentially become an autocrat. More powerful than any president. That kind of concentration was never meant for one man. This country was not founded on that principle.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Alex. This plan is exactly how this country was governed for its first thirty years. The House dominated, and the Senate followed. And we survived. We’re just going back to our roots.”
“We were a tiny nation, with a tiny central government that did little to nothing. The world has changed. Th
is plan, as you call it, was designed by men to strip the North of its ability to hold the South in check. It was meant to be a declaration of political war—which by the way was never implemented. Perhaps they realized, as I do, it’s a risk too great to take.”
“Where is Kenneth’s notebook?”
“I left it in DC. It will make for good evidence, if needed.”
“You can’t stop this, Alex. If you don’t agree, then just stay out of the way. Let Vance do what he has to do.”
“There’ll be strong opposition to what he proposes.”
“Of course there will. But that’s far different from you, a sitting senator, my husband, screaming conspiracy. Leave it be.”
“You should have told me about this. Not Kenneth. You.”
“The way you told me about your girlfriend?”
He stared at her. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. I only suspected. Until this moment.”
He shook his head and chuckled bitterly. “That’s one for you. You ran that bluff like a pro.”
“I am a pro. Who is she?”
“A woman I met in DC. But whether you believe me or not, I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of.”
“Except, maybe, fall in love with her.”
“I won’t deny that we enjoy our time together.”
“Which actually hurts worse.”
“And what about you, Diane? Have you been a saint?”
“Actually, no. I’ve been with two other men.”
She said it to hurt him. Not a lie, either. Strange how love so quickly evolved into hate.
“I didn’t realize,” Alex said, surprise in his voice. “But we’ve been strangers a long time.”
“So leave this alone. Let me have this moment. My father would be so proud. He studied the Order all his life, learned its secret language, found what documents he could, and searched for what was lost. He passed that passion on to me. Alex, let me do this, without your interference.”
“I wish I could, but I can’t.”
He’d left the house, heading out for a midafternoon walk. She knew where he went, up the path at the rear of the property, into the foothills, to his thinking place. He would stay a couple of hours, smoke his pipe, then return, ready for supper and bed. That night, though, they were scheduled to have dinner in Knoxville with some supporters. One thing she would not miss was the constant pandering for money and votes.
She’d sat there that day in the great room, alone, and thought about what to do. Everything seemed to hinge on her. First with Kenneth recruiting her assistance, then her finding Grant, then the moves at the Smithsonian with Martin Thomas, and finally Alex.
A wheel with many spokes, her at the center.
And she had indeed slept with two men.
Lucius Vance and Grant Breckinridge.
One was part of the moment, an intoxicating reaction to power and influence. The other stemmed from a deep longing. Kenneth thought Grant reckless. She considered him passionate. He’d seemed so lost that day when she’d visited with his father. He worked as a paralegal for a DC firm. He’d thought about law school, but considered the profession more word pushing than anything else. Grant craved excitement. Which explained his many job moves among the DC firms, eking out a living until she came along.
How much gold was out there? Many billions of dollars’ worth, for sure. Just waiting for a new set of revolutionaries to claim it in the name of freedom. Long ago passionate men had tried to alter the course of the United States by violently dividing it. They’d been wrong. Instead, the smarter path was to simply use what the Constitution itself provided. Work within its parameters. People tended to follow that which seemed to make the most sense. And what she and Lucius Vance were planning certainly fit into that category.
It almost seemed too perfect. But that was its beauty. The men who conceived the original idea had marveled at its simplicity. They just hadn’t been able to stave off the waves of radicalism that eventually consumed the South. It had taken hundreds of thousands of deaths and the total destruction of a way of life to show the error of their ways.
But a few of those visionaries had been right about one thing.
Change things from within.
She lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.
A part of her missed Alex. He’d brought comfort to her life. Never had he raised a hand to her. Rarely had they argued. She’d lived a life of privilege and importance. He’d always treated her with courtesy and respect, and there was something to be said for that. But she’d come to resent the pained politeness between them, and realized there was something wrong with never daring, never risking, never being willing to take a blind leap with no safety net.
Never living.
She’d finally done that.
By sleeping with two men. Then she went a step further and showed one of them how to create a new United States of America. For the other, she pointed him down a path that could make him rich. She was proud of both endeavors, the results of which would soon be known.
Alex would have denied her all that.
Thank God he was dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Cassiopeia was not pleased with having to bring Lea along, but the price of directions had been her inclusion. They’d left the lodge quietly, a note slipped under the door telling Terry Morse they’d be back soon. Neither one of them had wanted to wait around until morning. She’d learned that Lea’s special friend lived about twenty miles away. They’d get together when she went into town, or to the store, or running errands. Most of their relationship was electronic—text, emails, FaceTime—which seemed the way of the modern world. Her grandfather was not all that tech-savvy, so a measure of privacy existed there, something Lea seemed to like.
They’d taken Terry Morse’s truck, which Lea and her grandfather had brought from the house earlier. Luckily, Lea had driven and had the keys. The time was approaching 3:30 in the morning, a half-moon illuminating a landscape of forested hills and dark valleys. Their route took them deep into the woods northwest of the lodge. Lea explained that she’d visited the location a few times with her special friend. His uncle had died years ago, leaving behind a trunk full of maps and papers, many in code. Her friend had spent a few years trying to decipher them, especially after Lea explained to him about sentinels. Apparently his uncle had never volunteered anything on that subject, and allowed the duty to die with him.
“We came up here one night,” Lea said as she drove. “Grandpa was gone. There was nobody around, so we had things to ourselves.”
That she could see, since there was not a light in sight. “And what did you do, up here, with things to yourselves?”
Lea did not immediately reply. Finally the girl said, “Nothing all that bad.”
“I was your age once. I get it.”
“I really like him.”
“And that’s fine. But be careful how far you go. If he truly likes you, too, that won’t matter.”
“He does really like me, ’cause it didn’t matter.”
“Good girl. Your grandpa would be proud.”
“No. Grandpa would have shot him.”
Lea turned off the highway and followed a rutted path, wood fences on either side, most nearly hidden by a jungle of weeds and wildflowers springing from the ditches.
“All this land belongs to his family,” Lea said. “Like us, they’ve owned it a long, long time.”
They bucked down the narrow track, headlights swaying and jolting. The road ended at a rocky incline protected by a heavy ring of pine and elm. A gate blocked the path ahead, but Cassiopeia saw that it was not locked shut. Instead, a short length of chain lay in the dirt, the gate half open. Lea eased the front of the truck forward and pushed the panel out of the way.
“It’s usually locked,” Lea said, “and you have to walk from here.”
“How far?”
“About a quarter mile.”
She didn’t like the feel of things.
&nb
sp; Why? She wasn’t sure. But her internal alarms were chiming.
“Shut the lights off and park up in the trees.”
* * *
She led, with Lea behind her, the road dry as a desert. A flashlight found under the front seat illuminated the path. Tall trees and dense underbrush lined the way, the terrain more mountainous than yesterday, loose shale crunching beneath their soles. Ragged clouds scuttled across gaps of stars. The buzz of a cicada masked their steps.
Shadowy hulks appeared ahead.
She counted the remnants of six derelict buildings, all in a state of ruin, every window smashed, walls collapsed, roofs swaybacked with neglect. There was also what looked like a collapsed conveyer.
“What is this?” she asked.
“An old silver mine. There are lots of ’em around here. This one’s been closed a long time.”
“Your special friend’s family owns this?”
“They leased it out once. But nobody comes up here now except his family to hunt.”
“All right. Show me what’s here.”
The camp sat among a chain of tree-covered hills that ran from west to east, dipping and tapering into a trough-shaped hollow that stretched black into the night. She could hear a fast-moving stream. Which made sense. Any mining operation would need a water source.
They entered one of the collapsed buildings. The flashlight beam wove through a yard of battered blocks, slabs of rock, and rusted metal, all piled onto one another in a solid mass. Time had clamped the debris down, flowering weeds springing up among the rubble. Little remained of the structure besides three partial walls and patches of roof. The building had once abutted the base of the mound, and at its far end she saw an opening into the earth.
“That’s not the same,” Lea said.
An archway rose three meters and stretched nearly the same distance wide. Loose rock packed its confines, as if a landslide had sealed it long ago. But a neat hole had been dug through its center, big enough to walk through.
“Always before that was closed off,” Lea said. “Once, we picked out some of the larger boulders and made a squeeze point. It was tight to get through, but we could make it. I was going to show you what’s on the other side. There’s never been an opening like that.”
