C. Palov - Ark of Fire

“Look, I thought for certain the Ark would be—I mean, the gold chest would be buried with Galen.”

“What did you just say?” The beam of light drilled that much deeper.

“ Arca . I said arca . As in ‘Arca and gold ful shene he carried to the toun he was born.’ Remember the third quatrain?”

The truth revealed, Stan stared at the scholar, contempt washing over him in undulating waves.

Sensing that the winds had suddenly shifted, the Harvard scholar nervously glanced at the parked Range Rover. No doubt trying to remember if the keys had been left in the ignition.

“You can’t outrun a bullet,” Boyd Braxton jeered, having climbed out of the exhumed grave.

Judge and jury, Stan pointed an accusing finger. “ ‘And then shall the wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.’ ”

Surprisingly belligerent, the other man pointed a finger right back at him. “You’re a fucking lunatic, that’s what you are!”

“Unkind words for the man who holds your fate in his hands.”

The Harvard scholar glanced at the Israeli-made Desert Eagle negligently held in the gunnery sergeant’s right hand, belligerence now replaced with fear. Cowardly, sniveling fear.

“You’re right, dude. Heat of the moment. Sorry. And just to prove that I’m still part of the team, I think I know where the Ark is hidden.” The scholar jutted his chin toward the small church nestled on the other side of the cemetery. “When you guys did your earlier security check in the church, I caught sight of a very large marble plaque depicting the martyrdom of St. Lawrence.” Spreading his arms, the other man indicated an expanse of some four feet. “I’m guessing that if we pry that mother off the wall, we’ll find the Ark hidden behind it.”

“Pray that we do.”

CHAPTER 46

“Back in D.C.,” Edie clarified, not wanting Caedmon to think that she’d recently lied to him.

“That would certainly explain the embarrassed blush you wear.”

“Actually, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m not the least bit embarrassed that I lied. I’m thoroughly ashamed.” And, as he undoubtedly knew, shame was embarrassment on steroids.

“Did you lie about Padge’s murder?”

“What!” Edie vehemently shook her head, the image of Dr. Padgham’s sprawled, lifeless body flashing across her mind’s eye. “No, of course not. I lied about my, um, family background.”

Crossing his legs at the knee, Caedmon sat silent, waiting for her to fill in the blanks. If he was upset or disappointed by the fact that he’d been lied to, he gave no indication of it.

“Remember how I told you that my parents were killed in a boating accident off the coast of Florida? Well, that story was . . . well, it was a flat-out lie. I can’t speak for my father, but my mother never stepped foot in anything that ever floated on the water.”

She snatched a mandarin orange from the bowl on the table. Hands shaking, she began to peel the piece of fruit, if for no other reason than to give her suddenly sweaty fingers something to do. God, she felt lousy.

Unbelievably, she’d just told Caedmon Aisquith more about her childhood than she’d ever told another living soul.

“Did you tell the lie to elicit my sympathy?”

Edie stopped peeling.

“No! Absolutely not!”

Knowing why she told the lie, but not altogether certain why she suddenly wanted to tell the truth, Edie abandoned the orange and got up from the table.

Maybe she was sick and tired of going to bed with men under false pretenses.

Slowly, trying to collect her thoughts, she paced back and forth in front of the divided twin mattresses. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Caedmon finishing off the last dregs of his port wine.

She stopped pacing. Turning toward him, she said, “Were they still alive, there’s not a single member of my family that I would be proud to introduce to you. I just . . . I just wanted a normal, sane, loving family. Was I so wrong in wanting that?”

Caedmon shook his head. “It is what we all long for.” “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? But those weren’t the cards I was given.” Realizing how canned and melodramatic that sounded, she decided to just stick to the facts. No emotion. No drama-queen theatrics.

“Okay, here it is. The unedited version of the story is that my mother, Melissa, was addicted to heroin, and bad men, and playing the state lottery. And just so you don’t jump to the conclusion that she was a horrible person, it wasn’t completely her fault. She grew up in a very repressive fundamentalist household. Unfortunately, she fell in love with a Jewish boy in her geometry class. Pops didn’t approve. So he kicked her out of the house. She was sixteen years old.”

“I take it the ill-fated lover is your father?”

Edie derisively snorted. “Hmph! Don’t I wish.”

Wished because maybe her childhood would have unfolded differently had Jacob Steiner been her father.

“According to my mother, there was a freak car accident. A strong wind gust caused the vehicle to swerve into a tree. Jacob died; she survived.”

“Is that when your mother turned to drugs?”

Edie nodded. “The grief nearly did her in. At least that’s the excuse she gave for not being able to pull it together. Oh, every now and again, she’d clean up her act. In fact, she cleaned up real good. But then”—Edie snapped her fingers—“just like that, she’d start to reek of stale beer and vomit.”

Which was about the same time that strange men started to show up, the thin walls of the trailer doing little to muffle the grunts and groans.

“I suppose I should mention at this juncture that my mother had no idea who fathered me. She thought it might have been ‘the guy with the Harley.’” Using her fingers, Edie made a pair of air quotes. “But mind you, that’s mere speculation.”

Having just confessed to being illegitimate, Edie stared at the worn carpet beneath her feet. She could only imagine what Caedmon thought of her bio. He probably hailed from a snooty English household. Something straight out of The Forsyte Saga .

“It sounds as though your mother led a tragic life,” he quietly remarked.

“Try tragically flawed. Anyway, it wasn’t a long life. She overdosed on her twenty-eighth birthday. I found her sprawled on the floor of our trailer, the Allman Brothers song ‘Sweet Melissa’ playing on a secondhand tape recorder. They say that only the good die young, but—” She waved away the thought. “Never mind. I’m not really sure where I was going with that.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly very tired.

“How old were you when your mother died?”

“Hmm?” She belatedly realized that Caedmon had asked a question. “Oh, eleven.” Eleven going on forty.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to you when your mother died?”

Gnawing on her lower lip, Edie debated whether to tell him. But like a runaway train that couldn’t put on the brakes, she went ahead and answered the question put to her.

“I was put into a foster home. There were five of us. Some older, some younger. The older ones knew the drill; the younger ones were clueless.”

Caedmon’s brow furrowed. “What drill? You’ve lost me.”

“Lonny Wilkerson, my foster father, the man who signed a contract with the state of Florida agreeing to furnish me with a safe, clean, and healthy home, had a fondness for young girls.”

“Bloody bastard! Don’t tell me that he—”