Last Breath

by Mariah Stewart

The well-trained dog did as she was told, though her posture made it clear it was with the greatest reluctance.

  “I’m sorry, but no one’s allowed in.” The guard stood with his back against the door, his eyes never leaving the dog.

  “I think this gets me in.” Connor held up his FBI credentials. The guard reached for it, and Sweet Thing lunged.

  “Sit!” Eyeing the guard curiously, Connor restrained the dog.

  After returning the ID, the guard stared at Connor, as if trying to decide what to do.

  “I have my orders,” he finally said.

  Connor held up his ID again. “I think this supersedes any orders you have from anyone else.”

  “I will escort you.” The guard began to open the door. “However, the dog-”

  “Comes with me.”

  “There are no animals permitted inside the museum.” He glanced nervously at Sweet Thing, who, though seated, continued to growl from deep inside her chest.

  Clearly there was something about the guard she did not like.

  “Sit,” Connor told the dog. “Sit, girl.”

  Connor dropped the lead and the guard stared at the dog as if expecting an attack. His hand was on the holster that hung from his belt.

  What security guard employed by a university was armed?

  The guard nodded and beckoned Connor inside. Connor followed, careful to leave the door ajar behind him.

  Connor hadn’t mentioned who or what he was looking for, or where he was headed, but the guard led him down the steps into the basement without hesitation. His suspicions aroused, Connor silently removed his Glock from its holster at the small of his back. All was quiet, all was dark as they entered the long hall leading to the storage areas. When the guard turned and motioned for Connor to go ahead of him, Connor shook his head slowly, and gestured with his gun hand. The guard stared at the weapon, then shrugged.

  Guided by the light from the far doorway, the two men proceeded through the room where the Jacobs artifacts were stored. At the sound of voices from the next room, the guard slowed, then stopped just outside the lighted door.

  “You killed all those people?” Daria’s voice drifted out to the anteroom. “You made it look as if the gallas…?”

  Connor could see over the guard’s shoulder into the room beyond, where Daria stood between Vita Landis and Stefano Korban, who held a handgun pointed directly at Daria.

  “Gallas?” Stefano Korban’s laugh was loud and brittle. “See, Vita, didn’t I tell you that was the way to go? Even the esteemed Dr. McGowan fell for that crap.”

  “Don’t be disrespectful,” Vita said softly. “You are gallas, Stefano.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know: As was my father, so am I. So are Tabib and the kid. Your father was, too, but that didn’t stop him from helping himself to the goodies, did it, Priestess?”

  Connor moved forward but the guard’s arm shot out to stop him. The look on the man’s face was pure rage. Under his breath, he was whispering in a language Connor couldn’t quite make out.

  “Priestess?” Daria looked to Vita for an explanation.

  “I suppose I should explain.” Vita sighed. “For the past two thousand years, there have been those who remained faithful to Ereshkigal and have kept watch over the place where the city once stood, believing that one day, the city would be reborn. As centuries passed, the numbers of the believers diminished until there were fewer and fewer to guard the city. Finally, Shandihar was rediscovered, but instead of being restored, the temples were stripped of the sacred objects; they were packed up and brought here. Those who still served the goddess followed, and have been keeping watch over the treasure for the past century, right here at Howe.”

  “Vita, for Christ’s sake!” Stefano’s patience had run out. “No one gives a shit about any of that.”

  “Shut up, Stefano,” Vita snapped. “You’re going to kill her. She might as well know why.”

  She turned back to Daria. “In every generation, there have been those who have served the goddess-the gallas and the priestesses. These roles can only be inherited. I inherited the title of priestess from my mother, as Stefano inherited the role of guardian from his father,” Vita said softly. “And yes, my father was also a gallas, but all those priceless treasures were too great a temptation for him to resist. He was a weak man. He stole some of the artifacts and sold them.”

  “Vita, enough.” Stefano rubbed his free hand over his face in frustration.

  She ignored him.

  “In the beginning, I only wanted to…reappropriate everything my father had taken, and return them to the crates they came in. That way, no one would ever know what he’d done. I never intended for anyone to get hurt.”

  “You are so full of shit,” Stefano said, sneering. “Once you found out how much that stuff was worth on the black market, once you heard millions, all that talk of family honor went down the tubes.” He turned to Daria. “The plan all along was to get those artifacts back and sell them to the highest bidder. It was a piece of cake to get those two losers to go after the artifacts and make it look like some act of ancient retribution.”

  Vita turned on him. “It was your idea to convince Tabib and his brother that they had a sacred obligation to avenge the goddess. You pounded that into their heads, you taught them how to kill.”

  “So much more interesting than simple thefts, don’t you think?” He laughed. “And who would suspect a respected archaeologist and the president’s assistant? Tabib and Anatole were honored to do whatever the priestess told them to do. Honored to protect your identity. After all, it was the will of the goddess…and these dumb jackasses were willing to do anything for their goddess.”

  Three rapid gunshots split the air.

  Daria screamed and covered her ears as Stefano’s head exploded and he fell face forward. Vita dropped where she stood. A blur of white flashed past the guard, jostling him before he could fire off another round. Before the shooter had a chance to recover his balance, Connor tackled him from behind and wrestled the gun from his hand.

  “Daria! Are you all right?” Connor called.

  “Yes. I’m not hit.” She had taken cover crouched behind a crate. She hugged the dog gratefully. “Sweet Thing, you did good, girl.”

  “Who else is there?” Connor lifted the guard’s head. “Who else is working with you?”

  “Just those two.” The guard spat in the direction of Stefano’s lifeless body.

  “The boy?”

  “Anatole. My brother.”

  “Daria, do you think you can call 911?”

  She nodded.

  “Tell them we need Chief Thorpe over here and we need an ambulance immediately.”

  Daria stood on unsteady legs and reached for her bag. She tried to locate her phone but her fingers felt numb.

  “Use mine.” Connor took his phone from his pocket and slid it across the floor to her.

  “Why do we need an ambulance?” Daria looked down at Vita, whose body was sprawled on the floor five feet away. “They’re dead.”

  “Korban didn’t survive that shot to the head, but I think he only winged Vita. She’s still alive,” he told her. “I want to make sure she stays that way. She has a lot to answer for.”

  26

  “H ow is she?” Daria stood outside the museum, Sweet Thing’s leash wrapped around her hand, and watched as Vita Landis was carried from the building on a stretcher. There was a lot of blood, but the older woman appeared to be alert.

  “Looks like not much more than a flesh wound, for all the blood,” Chief Thorpe replied. “The more important question is, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, really. I wasn’t injured. Just scared.” Daria sat on one of the concrete benches in the courtyard.

  “Think you’ll feel up to answering some questions later?” he asked. “I’m going to be tied up for a while at the hospital, but I’d like to stop over later today to get your statement.”

  “I’ll be home. Whenever it’s convenient f
or you will be fine with me, Chief.”

  They watched the man they knew only as Tabib being placed in the back of a patrol car.

  “What’s going to happen to the boy in the hospital now?” Daria asked.

  “If he comes out of the coma, he’ll be tried as a juvenile. At least, any lawyer they get for him is going to push for that,” Thorpe told her, “since his brother says the kid is only seventeen. But crimes like these…they may want to try him as an adult. Tabib there says he’ll give us a full confession if we let him visit the kid, so after he’s booked, that’s where we’ll take him.”

  “Ask him who his accomplice was for the Blume and Sevrenson murders,” Connor said as he joined them. “According to the information the Bureau found, the boy, Anatole, has only been in the States for the past month, so he could have only participated in the last two attacks. There had to have been two killers at the Blume home.”

  “We’ll see what he says about that, but I’ll bet big money it was Korban.” Thorpe turned back to Daria. “I get the reason why these two targeted the owners of the artifacts they wanted to steal. But why you?”

  “Apparently I asked the wrong questions when I was in Dr. Burnette’s office. When I asked about the photographs, Vita said she’d found them and taken them right to Louise, but Louise said she’d found them under some papers on Vita’s desk. There were photos in the envelopes of just about every artifact that Alistair found and brought back to Howe. Except for the ones that had been stolen.”

  “So you figured that whoever had gone after the artifacts had taken the photographs so they’d know what to steal.” Thorpe nodded.

  “I had figured out that the killers had access to the photos, and I’m pretty sure Vita gave the photos to Tabib so he’d know what he was looking for. But at the time, I didn’t know that Vita was involved. I thought that if the photos were just sitting on Vita’s desk, someone else could have found them. I didn’t put it together, especially since both Louise and Sabina had seen the photos, too.”

  “But Vita-being guilty-assumed that you figured out it was her,” Connor said.

  Daria nodded. “I guess when she heard me ask Louise if the name Dragonis was familiar, she figured I knew more than I did.”

  She looked up at Connor and asked, “How did you figure out what was going on?”

  “When our guy at the Bureau told me that Dragonis had a daughter named Vedat, the name was just too similar. Then, when I couldn’t find you and Louise didn’t know where Vita was, I thought you had to be at the museum. When I got over there, the guard gave it away.”

  “How?”

  “You know, there was a reason Cross named this dog Sweet Thing.” Connor sat next to Daria on the bench and rubbed the dog behind the ears. “She’s a very gentle, affectionate animal. But she totally snapped when she saw this guy at the museum door. She was snarling and growling, and it was pretty clear she wanted a piece of him.”

  “You think she would have attacked the guy?”

  “There’s no question in my mind. So there had to be a reason, right?”

  “She remembered him from Cross’s.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. He wouldn’t let the dog in the museum so I told her to sit while I went in. I left the door slightly ajar just in case she decided she needed to check up on things.”

  “She’s usually so obedient.” Daria frowned. “How did you know she’d follow?”

  “I didn’t tell her to stay.”

  “You’re such a clever doggie,” Daria said, and rubbed the dog’s head.

  “Hey, how about me?” Connor feigned indignation. “I’m a pretty clever guy.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re my hero,” she told him.

  “Yeah, well, I did have a little help from Tabib. When he heard Stefano talking about how the whole thing had been a ruse to recover the artifacts so that he and Vita could sell them, he realized that he and his brother had been used. Of course, he didn’t seem to have any scruples about killing in the name of the goddess, but killing for the sake of making someone else rich was apparently against his principles.”

  “You have to understand, he believed that what he’d done was honorable,” Daria explained. “He’d been taught all his life that protecting his heritage-doing the bidding of the priestess-would be his life’s work. He’d been brought up to believe he had a special role to play, just like his father, and his father’s father. For him this was a privilege. A sacred duty.”

  “Korban, having been brought up the same way, would have understood this completely,” Connor said, thinking it through. “So while he thought it was all bullshit, he knew exactly how to exploit it.”

  Daria nodded. “For Tabib and his brother, knowing that Vita was a priestess would have sealed the deal. They’d have done anything for her.”

  “He sure turned on her fast enough,” Thorpe noted.

  “Once Tabib understood what she’d done, he was obliged to kill her, or Ereshkigal would send other gallas after him,” Daria told him. “She was a heretic. She’d committed a sacrilege.”

  “Well, she’s still alive, so I guess he failed in this sacred duty of his.” Thorpe seemed to think that over for a moment. “You think there are more of these gallas out there? Think they’ll be coming for Tabib?”

  “I find it hard to believe the entire Shandihar culture came down to just these four individuals after surviving for almost two thousand years, Chief,” Daria told him. “Surely there are others. Whether or not they’ll go after Tabib is anyone’s guess.”

  “Swell,” Thorpe murmured. “So as long as the university has all their statues and things here, we’re going to have to be looking over our shoulders, worrying about some deluded guys who think it’s their duty to cut out people’s tongues? Or women who think they’re priestesses sending out these so-called guardians to cut off people’s hands?”

  “The university has housed these artifacts for almost one hundred years, Chief. Up until Harry Dragonis put this all in motion by stealing some of them, there were no incidents of violence, right?”

  “None that I heard about,” he conceded, “and I’m guessing something like this, I would have known about it.”

  “These people-call them gallas or guardians-are only interested in preserving and safeguarding their culture,” she told him. “I’m not concerned about more murders.”

  “Even though you’re going to be handling their sacred objects? And even though your great-grandfather was the one who stole their stuff away in the first place?” he asked.

  “I think that as long as I show respect for the culture-and of course as long as I don’t try to steal anything-I won’t have anything to worry about. Besides,” she added, “only a priestess could give such an order.”

  “How do you know Vita won’t do exactly that?” Thorpe frowned. “Not that they’re not welcome to Tabib.”

  “I don’t think Vita will be the one giving the orders,” Daria said simply. “I think the mantle’s going to have to be passed.”

  “Well, you change your mind, you let me know,” Thorpe said as he turned to walk away. “I’ll have someone watching you day and night.”

  “That’s my job,” Connor told her.

  “What about your real job?” she asked. “There isn’t going to be a whole lot for the FBI to do around here, once this is all cleaned up.”

  “I’m thinking I could take the occasional stateside job,” he told her. “This running all over the world, sleeping on rocky hillsides, is starting to lose its appeal.”

  “It has been kind of nice to sleep in the same bed-a real bed, that is-for more than two or three nights in a row.” She smiled. “Throw in a real roof overhead, and I could get used to it.”

  “Well, you’ll be here for the next year or so, right?”

  “That’s the deal.”

  “Maybe I could visit. A lot.”

  “I could get used to having you around. A lot.”

  She looked past him to the drive wh
ere the EMTs were getting ready to lift Vita’s gurney and load it into the ambulance. He followed her stare.

  They watched Vita hold up her hand, gesturing for the attendants to stop, just as Sabina Bokhari reached the gurney. She leaned over the wounded woman, who raised a hand and touched the young professor on the forehead. Sabina took Vita’s hand for an instant, then stood and backed away. The EMTs continued transferring the patient to the ambulance, and closed the doors. As the vehicle pulled away, Sabina stepped back onto the grass, her arms folded across her chest.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Connor asked.

  “Probably.” Daria nodded. “This should be interesting. I’ve never worked with a priestess before.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was planning to ask Louise if Sabina could work with me on the museum. There’s just too much for one person to do, and there’s no one else who knows as much about Shandihar as Sabina.”

  “Apparently, she knows even more than you figured.”

  “Which will work to our advantage. I was looking at the cylinders in the crates again the other night. It’s going to be impossible for me to both translate them and design the displays. There just isn’t enough time. Sabina would be perfect.”

  “I don’t know, Daria. Maybe the chief is right. Aren’t you even a little nervous about working with her?”

  “Not a bit. She’s no threat to me. Besides, Sabina is not Vita.”

  “Aren’t you just a little bit concerned that someone is going to want to punish you for what Alistair did? After all, he was never properly punished.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Daria told him. “There was something in one of Iliana’s diaries that makes me wonder how he really died. I don’t know if that story about a lung infection was true. That’s something I’m going to have to investigate when I have the time.”

  “You might start up talk of the curse again.”

  “Someone’s bound to bring it up sooner or later, anyway.” She shrugged. “If nothing else, it’ll make good press.”

  Connor’s phone rang and he took the call. Daria stood and tugged on Sweet Thing’s leash, and started walking back to McGowan House. In spite of everything, Howe had started to grow on her. She liked the campus, and wondered what it would look like in the fall, when all the trees turned color.