James Rollins - Innocent Blood

She looked toward the door that had slammed.

A welcome figure stood at the back of the hall. Noting her attention, Nate Highsmith lifted up a large envelope and waved it at her. He smiled apologetically, then headed down the classroom in cowboy boots, a hitch in his step a reminder of the torture he had endured last fall.

She tightened her lips. She should have protected him better. And Heinrich. And most especially Amy. If Erin hadn’t exposed the young woman to danger, she might still be alive today. Amy’s parents wouldn’t be spending their first Christmas without their daughter. They had never wanted Amy to be an archaeologist. It was Erin who finally convinced them to let her come along on the dig in Israel. As the senior field researcher, Erin had assured them their daughter would be safe.

In the end, she had been terribly, horribly wrong.

She tilted her boot to feel the reassuring bulge of the gun against her ankle. She wouldn’t get caught flat-footed again. No more innocents would die on her watch.

She cleared her throat and returned her attention to the class. “That wraps it up, folks. You’re all dismissed. Enjoy your winter holidays.”

While the room emptied, she forced herself to stare out the window at the bright sky, trying to chase away the darkness left from her vision a moment ago.

Nate finally reached her as the class cleared out. “Professor.” He sounded worried. “I have a message for you.”

“What message?”

“Two of them, actually. The first one is from the Israeli government. They’ve finally released our data from the dig site in Caesarea.”

“That’s terrific.” She tried to fuel her words with enthusiasm, but failed. If nothing else, Amy and Heinrich would get some credit for their last work, an epitaph for their short lives. “What’s the second message?”

“It’s from Cardinal Bernard.”

Surprised, she faced Nate more fully. For weeks, she had attempted to reach the cardinal, the head of the Order of Sanguines in Rome. She’d even considered flying to Italy and staking out his apartments in Vatican City.

“About time he returned my calls,” she muttered.

“He wanted you to phone him at once,” Nate said. “Sounded like an emergency.”

Erin sighed in exasperation. Bernard had ignored her for two months, but now he needed something from her. She had a thousand questions for him — concerns and thoughts that had built up over the past weeks since returning from Rome. She glanced to the whiteboard, eyeing the half-erased line. She had questions about those visions, too.

Were these episodes secondary to posttraumatic stress? Was she reliving the times that she spent trapped under Masada?

But if so, why do I keep tasting wine?

She shook her head to clear it and pointed to his hand. “What’s in the envelope?”

“It’s addressed to you.” He handed it to her.

It weighed too much to contain just a letter. Erin scanned the return address.

Israel.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she slit open the top with her pen.

Nate noted how her hand quivered and looked concerned. She knew he was talking to a counselor about his own PTSD. They were two wounded survivors with secrets that could not be fully spoken aloud.

Shaking the envelope, she slid out a single sheet of typewritten paper and an object about the size and shape of a quail’s egg. Her heart sank as she recognized the object.

Even Nate let out a small gasp and took a step back.

She didn’t have that luxury. She read the enclosed page quickly. It was from the Israeli security forces. They had determined that the enclosed artifact was no longer relevant to the closed investigation of their case, and they hoped that she would give it to its rightful owner.

She cradled the polished chunk of amber in her palm, as if it were the most precious object in the world. Under the dull fluorescent light, it looked like little more than a shiny brown rock, but it felt warmer to the touch. Light reflected off its surface, and in the very center, a tiny dark feather hung motionless, preserved across thousands of years, a moment of time frozen forever in amber.

“Amy’s good luck charm,” Nate mumbled, swallowing hard. He had been there when Amy was murdered. He kept his eyes averted from the tiny egg of amber.

Erin placed a hand on Nate’s elbow in sympathy. In fact, the talisman was more than Amy’s good luck charm. One day out at the dig, Amy had explained to Erin that she had found the amber on a beach as a little girl, and she’d been fascinated by the feather imprisoned inside, wondering where it had come from, picturing the wing from which it might have fallen. The amber captured her imagination as fully as it had the feather. It was what sparked Amy’s desire to study archaeology.

Erin gazed at the amber in her palm, knowing that this tiny object had led not only to Amy’s field of study — but also to her death.

Her fingers closed tightly over the smooth stone, squeezing her determination, making herself a promise.

Never again…

Sergeant Jordan Stone felt like a fraud as he marched in his dress blues. Today he would bury the last member of his former team — a young man named Corporal Sanderson. Like his other teammates, Sanderson’s body had never been found.

After a couple of months of searching through the tons of rubble that had once been the mountain of Masada, the military gave up. Sanderson’s empty coffin pressed hard against Jordan’s hip as he marched in step with the other pallbearers.

A December snowstorm had blanketed the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, covering brown grass and gathering atop the branches of leafless trees. Snow mounded across the arched tops of marble grave markers, more markers than he could count. Each grave was numbered, most bore names, and all these soldiers had been laid to rest with honor and dignity.

One of them was his wife, Karen, killed in action more than a year before. There hadn’t been enough of her to bury, just her dog tags. Her coffin was as empty as Sanderson’s. Some days Jordan couldn’t believe that she was gone, that he would never bring her flowers again and get a long slow kiss of thanks. Instead, the only flowers he would ever give her would go on her grave. He had placed red roses there before he headed to Sanderson’s funeral.

He pictured Sanderson’s freckled face. His young teammate had been eager to please, taken his job seriously, and done his best. In return, he got a lonely death on a mountaintop in Israel. Jordan tightened his grip on the cold casket handle, wishing that the mission had ended differently.

A few more steps past the bare trees and he and his companions carried the casket into a frigid chapel. He felt more at home within these simple white walls than he had in the lavish churches of Europe. Sanderson would have been more comfortable here, too.

Sanderson’s mother and sister waited for them inside. They wore nearly identical black dresses and thin formal shoes despite the snow and cold. Both had Sanderson’s fair complexion, with faces freckled brown even in winter. Their noses and eyes were red.

They missed him.

He wished they didn’t have to.

Beside them, his commanding officer, Captain Stanley, stood at attention. The captain had been at Jordan’s left hand for all the funerals, his lips compressed in a thin line as coffins went into the ground. Good soldiers, every one.

He was a by-the-book commander and had handled Jordan’s debriefing faultlessly. In turn, Jordan did his best to stick to the lie that the Vatican had prepared: the mountain had collapsed in an earthquake, and everyone died. He and Erin had been in a corner that hadn’t collapsed and were rescued three days later by a Vatican search party.