Robert Browne - The Paradise Prophecy

The second bag held pairs of neatly folded jeans and cutoffs, along with several printed T-shirts carrying messages like Faith Inside and Pray It Like You Mean It and Property of God.

One well-worn shirt carried a phrase that Callahan vaguely recognized:

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n

True enough, but she’d be damned if she could remember where she’d heard it.

Continuing through the bag, she found more of the same, then did a quick check of all the pants pockets, hoping to come up with something interesting.

All she managed was a pack of spearmint gum and a few balls of lint.

Oh well, it had been worth a try.

As she closed the suitcases, her attention was drawn to the walk-in closet. She saw a tiny sliver of light in the darkness there, coming from the very back-like the light from beneath a door.

Was there another room back there?

Curious, she got to her feet, moved into the closet doorway and flicked on the light. The closet was paneled in bleached maple, with built-in shelves, drawers and shoe racks, but surprisingly few clothes hanging from the rods. Judging by the contents of the suitcases, Gabriela hadn’t cared much about her offstage attire.

Callahan had expected to see a door along the back wall, but instead found more built-in shelves, divided into three columns.

So where had the light come from?

She certainly hadn’t imagined it.

Flicking off the overhead, she crouched in the darkness for a different angle, and sure enough, a thin crack of light ran along the bottom of the center column, just about the width of a door.

A hidden door.

Getting to her feet again, Callahan crossed to the shelf, put her palms against it and pushed. She’d seen these types of doors before and wasn’t surprised when it swung inward, a swath of sunlight spilling into the closet from the room beyond.

A small, private sanctuary. Not much bigger than your average bathroom.

The sunlight came from a solar tube high in the ceiling, and fell directly across an old wooden prie-dieu-or prayer desk-at the center of the room, which was essentially a narrow table with a padded kneeler in front.

A couple of half-melted altar candles flanked a small wooden cross atop the desk, and on the wall facing it was another symbol, this one far more elaborate than the one at the crime scene. It had been hand-painted in a deep cobalt blue, possibly by Gabriela herself:

Another occult sign?

Callahan had no idea what it meant, but seeing as this was a prayer room, there was obviously religious significance to the symbol, a notion bolstered by the lines of verse written directly below it in bold black letters:

Darkness ere Dayes mid-course, and Morning light

More orient in you Western Cloud that draws

O’re the blew Firmament a radiant white

And slow descends,with somthing heav’nly fraught..

11:204-07

A biblical verse?

Callahan didn’t think so.

She was reminded of the quote on Gabriela’s T-shirt and again had that vague sense that she knew it from somewhere. Not so much the words themselves, but the sound of the language. Its rhythm and tone.

Pulling out her phone, she took several shots of the room, including close-ups of the symbol and the lines of verse, and added them to Gabriela’s dossier.

Section would undoubtedly want to see them, so she immediately uploaded the additions to the server and flagged them a priority. Since she was obviously operating in need-to-know territory, she wondered if she’d get any kind of reaction.

With Section you could never tell.

Moving to the prayer desk, she studied the altar atop it. A thin leather strap hung from the cross, a small, circular medallion attached, about the size of a quarter.

Feeling a small stab of pain in her chest, Callahan took hold of the medallion and rubbed it between her fingers. Her father had given her a necklace very similar to this one for her fifth birthday. She’d worn it almost every day that year, until about three months after Dad died, when her stepmother had tossed it out, along with half of everything Callahan had owned.

This one was old, however, and probably a lot more valuable-monetarily, at least. Etched into its surface was the figure of a man carrying a child on his shoulders.

Saint Christopher. Patron of safe travel.

Turning it over, Callahan found another etching on the back-a beetle with the intials CSP engraved beneath it.

So who or what was CSP? Was this just another artifact Gabriela had procured, or was it more personal than that?

Making a mental note to check into the initials, Callahan released the medallion and shifted her gaze to a shelf beneath the top of the prayer desk.

There was a small stack of books there, their spines jumping out at her: The Lesser Key of Solomon , Forbidden Rites , Angels, Incantations and Revelation . . .

All of these seemed like unusual choices-especially in a prayer room-but it was the book at the very top of the stack that most caught Callahan’s attention. A battered, well-thumbed paperback she remembered from one of her college literature classes. And all at once she knew where the lines of verse on the wall-and the quotation on Gabriela’s T-shirt-had come from.

Paradise Lost .

Callahan’s memory of the book was spotty. It was considered a classic and had something to do with God and Satan, but in college she had found it extremely difficult to read, its language so impenetrable that she’d been forced to seek out the CliffNotes version just to make sense of it all.

Picking it up, she stared at the cover, which featured the same Gustave Dore etching that hung above the piano. She leafed through the pages and toward the end of the book she found that several of the numbered passages had been carefully highlighted, notes scribbled in its margins.

Shifting her gaze to the verse on the wall, she checked the citation- 11:204-07 -then quickly found the passage.

Sure enough, those same lines were highlighted in blue. And in the margin next to them, written in black ink, were two words:

Defende eam .

Callahan’s Latin was a bit lacking, and the best translation she could come up with was . . . “protect her.”

A curious little notation, but what did it mean? Who did Gabriela think needed protection? Was she concerned about someone she knew, or-

“That book was her obsession,” a voice said.

Startled, Callahan turned to find a young man with bloodshot eyes standing in the doorway. He wore a robe, cinched at the waist.

Alejandro Ruiz.

“She took it everywhere we went,” he said. “Every country, every city. Was always telling me what a work of genius it is. A gift from God, second only to the Bible.” His eyes shifted, staring at nothing. “A lot of good it did her.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Ruiz.” She offered a hand to shake. “I’m Agent Callahan.”

Ruiz didn’t seem to notice the offer. He was looking around the room, taking it in. “She didn’t know I knew about this place. Thought she could hide it from me, but she didn’t even bother to put on a lock on the door.” He paused. “The knowledge always felt like a betrayal, yet here you stand, exposing her secrets.”

Callahan ignored the jab. “Maybe she trusted you.”

He smiled. “Gabriela had high hopes for humanity, and a lot of big plans, but her trust was reserved for the voices inside her head.”