Madonna Key 03 - Dark Revelations

by Lorna Tedder

  Rather than argue with his cryptic ramblings, I knelt beside him and helped transfer the tiles to the cloth. My fingers tingled when I touched them. I’d think about it later, when I could think clearly, about Ma Ma and Matthew and Lilah and Joan and me. I tied the four 108

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  tapestry ends together and threw it over my shoulder, like the Fool in a tarot deck. I shinnied up the fire hose and left the tiles in the vault while I went back for Myrddin, who really wasn’t much heavier than the tiles.

  With the tiles slung over one shoulder and the briefcase full of the words of Isabelle, sister of Joan of Arc, I turned back to Myrddin.

  “You said you could get us out of here,” I reminded him in a whisper. Guards still stood outside the vault door, and it was only a matter of time before Simon returned to see if I had authenticated the incunable. We had to escape before he returned or there might be no escape at all.

  “Shhh,” he warned, finger to his lips.

  The guards outside were talking, but in Italian. It sounded as though they were being dismissed. Then I recognized Caleb’s voice. God, no!

  Myrddin pointed to a glass-and-brass case that held a Samurai helmet and armor. He ran his gnarled fingers under the edge of the ledge, found a button and pushed.

  The case swung open to reveal a passageway behind the wall. Myrddin tugged me inside and pulled the door closed behind us. We stood in the dark for a few seconds before Myrddin fumbled his way to something on the wall. The soft glow of a battery-powered lantern fell over us.

  We stood in a small room no larger than a stall in a train-station latrine. I heard the vault door open and pressed my face to a small peephole in time to see Caleb stalk into the vault. I held my breath.

  “Myrddin,” I whispered, “what is this place?”

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  “Trap.”

  I jerked my head up to look at him in the dim light, but he smiled through dingy teeth.

  “Not for us. For intruders. It’s on a time release in case thieves—like you—try to escape with Max’s jewels. The passageway opens in ten minutes if—”

  “Ms. Moon?” Caleb called out. I watched through the peephole as he stalked around the vault looking under tables and behind counters. He didn’t seem to notice the missing artifact I’d brought with me. “Ginny? Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  I peered up at Myrddin, but he shook his head and gestured for me to remain quiet. Caleb paused for a moment to look at the glass-and-brass case in front of our hiding place. He was close enough that I could see the outline of a child’s dirty handprint on his shoulder.

  Benny, I assumed. Caleb squinted into the glass case and then a wide grin spread across his face.

  “I see you!” he exclaimed.

  Heart pounding, I stepped away from the peephole.

  Myrddin shook his head. Without exhaling, I leaned into the peephole again. No, he didn’t see us. He thought he did, though. He’d seen the reflection of the oubliette’s opening in the glass between us.

  Caleb stomped over to the oubliette and addressed the opening as he flung the fire hose across the vault to prevent any future escapes. “I see you’ve found the old man. Excellent! I can’t think of two people who deserve each other more. Now you can rot down there together.”

  He kicked the trapdoor shut with one foot, then dragged 110

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  a heavy Black Madonna statue over the door. “Enjoy your time together. You’ve got the rest of eternity.” He stalked out of the vault with a grin.

  “We have to get out of here,” I told the old man beside me. “He’ll tell Simon—”

  “Tell Simon what? That he disobeyed his father?”

  Myrddin snorted. “The two of them get along almost as badly as Simon and his father and the father and son before them.”

  “Regardless,” I said, glancing around our hiding place, “Simon will be back and it won’t take long for him to realize I’m gone, you’re gone and the ‘artifact of the second millennium’ is gone. Now how do we get out of here?”

  “Another few minutes. Max had this precaution installed because of you.”

  I frowned. “Me? I never even knew him.”

  “But he knew you. He knew how talented you were.

  He was afraid you’d break into his home one day and take back all the things you’d brought to this vault, especially if you figured out the tunnel system around the castle ruins. He wanted to make sure you got only so far before he caught you.” He laughed softly. “And now it’s your only means of escape. How ironic.”

  But if the old man knew about the trap, then Simon…? “The Duke will be back. We can’t wait here.”

  “You have two choices. Wait here with me or go back through that vault door and take your chances with Caleb and Simon.”

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  didn’t like limited choices. Maybe with the guards gone I stood a better chance of escape. I reached for the door Myrddin had closed behind us.

  “Your mother would have found a third possibility, though I have no idea what.”

  I jerked my head up. “My mother? What’s my mother got to do with this?”

  “How do you think she died, Aubrey?”

  “Broken neck.” My voice cracked. “She was riding horses in the country. She wasn’t a very good eques-trian. Her horse threw her. She died before the doctors could reach her, but there was nothing they could have done anyway.”

  Myrddin eased his bony limbs down onto a low table not meant for sitting. “Yes, a broken neck. And yes, she was riding a horse shortly before it happened. But Aubrey—” he leaned forward with as much tenderness as he could muster “—she was fleeing Max and Simon’s men on horseback and protecting those tiles of hers.

  And yours.”

  “What?” My mother? My mother had been a gloves-and-hat British-born lady who’d never raised her voice and would have been more concerned with tainting her manicure than with protecting tiles made of ground-up gemstones.

  “Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, your mother was an excellent horsewoman. Sharp-shooter, too. She was fast but not fast enough to outrun a dozen men after shooting another six of them.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

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  “They took a package off her body. Tiles.” Myrddin laughed. “Tiles she’d made herself to fool Simon. It took him almost a year to find out they were fake and that you had the real ones in a false-bottomed trunk.”

  My head was reeling. My mother had been murdered? My mother had had a secret life—and I’d followed in her footsteps?

  “I didn’t know what they were. They were in a trunk with her other treasures and some weird recipes for plaster crafts. That’s the only reason I kept the tiles.” I’d been nauseated every time I’d looked at them. “Their only value to me was that they’d belonged to my mother.

  I didn’t even know what they were.”

  “Simon found that out too late. He thought you knew your identity. That the tiles had been passed to you.

  That’s why he sent a man to assassinate you.”

  Simon. Simon had been the one. It made sense now.

  I nodded furiously, suddenly seeing it again through eighteen-year-old eyes. “That guy meant to kill me. If Matthew hadn’t shown up…”

  “Matthew worked for Simon.”

  His words sank in. I shook my head. “No. No way.

  That man followed me and I ran into the medieval studies seminar and he took twenty of us hostage. He killed fifteen of my classmates, for pity’s sake! Then this young lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force showed up.

  Special Operations, he said. There on vacation. He saved me.”

  How he’d gotten there or why he’d been armed, I never knew. I’d been eighteen and falling hard into love and I’d Lorna Tedd
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  simply accepted his explanation in that naive way that very young women do when they’d led a sheltered life.

  Nothing but being with him had seemed important.

  I could still feel his arm around me as he’d fired back at the gunman. I could still see the smoke as he’d led me to the rooftop of the building. Matthew had whipped off his belt and looped it over a cable at the roofline and twisted the belt around his wrist. Then he’d wrapped one arm around my waist, and we’d plunged over the side of the building, riding the cable to safety.

  Instead of taking me to the police, Matthew took me away to the countryside. To somewhere in the thatch-roofed Cotswolds. He’d said the police could be bought and paid for and could do nothing to help us. We hid in the countryside for three months, and when we realized I was pregnant, he smuggled me into the Scottish highlands and told me to wait for his return. He never came back.

  “He may have saved you, Aubrey, but his mission was to kill you.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I scanned the walls of our hiding place. I had to get out. I needed air.

  “It’s true. He went along as backup, in case the assassin failed. The man who was supposed to kill you got a little carried away. Panicked when you led him into a classroom full of students. Matthew was supposed to finish the job. Fortunately for you, he was also working for a higher power than the Adrianos. Simon had to abandon his plans when he realized you were gone, but his men did find your tiles eventually, exactly where Matthew said they’d find them.”

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  “Matthew would never betray me.” I was thinking seriously of leaving Myrddin in his hellhole for suggest-ing such a thing.

  “He didn’t betray you. Not intentionally.” Myrddin rose from his makeshift seat. “Simon tortured the boy.

  Your lieutenant—he wasn’t really a lieutenant—gave up the location of the tiles with his dying breath. Your Matthew never did give up your whereabouts, though.

  All he would say was that you’d left him after you miscarried his child.”

  I let my head loll against the wall. I shut my eyes and willed away any show of tears. So Matthew had died protecting me. At the hands of Simon Adriano. I had probably known in my heart for years that Matthew was dead, but I’d never let myself believe it. I had held on to the hope that someday I’d have back everything I’d lost—Matthew, Lilah, the Joan of Arc manuscript, peace of mind, something sweeter than the freedom to be unfettered by the bonds of normal relationships.

  “Max found you almost ten years later. Lured you to Paris on a phony sabbatical. He knew you’d never stay on your own accord, so he set you up. Turned you into a criminal so you’d end up working for Simon.”

  I blinked at him. “Why? Why would he do that if he’d tried to kill me before? Why didn’t he just kill me then?”

  Maybe it would have been better that way.

  “He thought you knew who you were. He thought you’d lead him to others like you. So he let you live. And made you useful to him at the same time. But he didn’t trust his own son not to make a mess of things. He never Lorna Tedder

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  told Simon that the fearless Dr. Moon and poor little Aubrey were the same woman. And Max didn’t know you’d never been told of your true legacy. That was his failing, and probably the one thing that kept you alive.”

  For so many years I’d wanted answers. Nothing more. And now I had them. The problem was, so did Simon Adriano. Now, somehow, Simon knew the truth.

  But how? Had Max Adriano, dying somewhere in a hospital, had a change of heart about his secrets and passed them on?

  It was bad enough to be on his blacklist when he didn’t know who I was, but now to learn that he’d tried to kill me when I’d been an innocent eighteen-year-old girl? That he’d killed my mother, that he’d killed my lover and that he knew my true identity, whatever that meant? If he knew about my life as Lauren Hartford, how much longer before he found out about Lilah and went after her? How could I warn her without putting her in more danger? I could only hope that she had a little bit of Joan of Arc’s blood flowing through her veins, too.

  Something clicked in the walls. A quiet whirring.

  The sliding of arched walls on two sides of us.

  “When one door closes, another one opens,”

  Myrddin whispered. “Sometimes your only choice is to wait for it.”

  We stood on a narrow plateau. The passageway led up more slender steps above us and looked the same below where it dipped deep into the earth.

  Steps. Why did it have to be steps?

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  “How did you know about this passage?” I asked, following Myrddin carefully down the steps. My knee screamed with each downward motion. “What if Simon finds us here?”

  “Simon doesn’t know about it. I told you, I knew Simon’s father, Max, quite well. When I was a boy, Max’s father showed the passages to me. Of course, back then it was kerosene lanterns, not battery packs.

  Max modernized it over the years.”

  “So you used to run with the bad guys, but now you’re a good guy?”

  Myrddin paused on the steps to look back at me through the heavy wrinkles around his eyes. “I never said I was a good guy. I never said I was anything. The only thing you need to know, Aubrey, is that we’re on the same side.”

  I followed him down at least fifty steps before having to rest. “What’s up the stairs?”

  “The passageway connects every treasure trove in case the Adrianos came under attack and needed to hide their most valuable treasures or escape with them. The vaults, certain bedrooms, Simon’s office.”

  “And he doesn’t know?” I asked for the third time.

  “No. His father never trusted him. That’s part of the Adriano legacy. It’s because of what sons have done to their fathers for centuries. Later, when the son becomes the father, he fears history will repeat itself. It usually does.” The old man was at least twenty steps ahead of me. “You should get that knee seen to, you know.”

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  to that obscure little beach town with the eye candy of a knee doctor and relax and work the kinks out of my knee for good! Right after I figured out how to keep Lilah safe.

  “Myrddin? Where does this passageway come out?”

  “About thirty meters from the main gate. The tunnel levels off underground and comes up in a clump of bushes not far from the private beach.”

  “Meet me at my automobile,” I said. “You go ahead and I’ll follow as best I can.”

  “I’d hate to leave you behind. Would you like for me to carry the tiles?”

  Arrogant tease. Arrogant smelly tease. “No, you go ahead. I’ll carry the tiles.”

  “Suit yourself. But don’t get caught.”

  I watched him walk ahead, turning on lanterns as he went. The weight of the briefcase and the tiles tore at me. I descended the steps sideways, which made the knee pain much more manageable but was incredibly slow. When the tunnel leveled out, I could walk normally and made better time. The last few steps swerved upward and I knew I was near the parking lot.

  I poked my head out of the bushes and then fully emerged from the tunnel.

  A new pair of guards milled about at the main gate, but their attention was on the video monitors inside. I half ran, half limped to the automobile, spotting Myrddin bending down low in the front seat. Anxiously I fished in my dress pocket for the key and opened the trunk. I slipped in the tapestry of tiles, dumped in the 118

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  briefcase, then closed it with the kind of solid click only an expensive German automobile makes. I turned to run to the driver’s seat and heard a click.

  “Leaving without saying goodbye?”

  Holding my breath, I turned and stared into the blue eyes of Eric Cabordes. Then I lowered my gaze to the gun in hi
s hand and nearly went cross-eyed. I exhaled and let my breathing become heavy as I looked from the gun to the man. I wet my lips.

  “Maybe we could just say, ‘Until we meet again.’”

  His face showed no emotion at all. “Turn around,” he said.

  My pulse quickened. “Why? So you can shoot me in the back of the head? No, I’d rather watch.” My jaw wound tighter until it hurt. “I’d rather see the look in your eyes when you pull the trigger. I don’t want to miss anything.”

  “Turn around.” He still didn’t raise his voice.

  “No. If you’re going to kill me, you do it on my terms.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Turn around. Please. And put your hands up.”

  I took a deep breath and grudgingly obeyed.

  “Goodbye.” A whisper. That was all.

  I closed my eyes and waited for bullet to splinter bone.

  Nothing happened. Slowly I turned to look over my shoulder at Eric Cabordes, but he was gone.

  Chapter 7

  I left the headlights off until I hit the main road—a winding two-lane ripple of blackness—then gunned the engine of the rented Mercedes. Surprised as we lurched onto the pavement, Myrddin raised an eyebrow at me but said nothing. A sound like a mewling kitten rose from the passenger seat. I didn’t know if it was the old man’s stomach or his fear was showing through, but I was already on the verge of rolling down all four windows to air out the vinegar smell of his soiled clothes.

  “Take a left up there,” the old man instructed, pointing a gnarled finger to a strip of brown earth ahead and a flourishing field of drooping yellow sunflowers I’d seen earlier in the last rays of sunlight. The head-120

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  lights bounced off the stone fences that lined the intersection. “That way leads out,” Myrddin added.

  I grunted. How many times had I been here, with and without Caleb? “I know these roads.”

  “And I know the ones you don’t know.” Myrddin seemed stronger now than he had in the oubliette or even in the tunnel, as if he’d caught his second wind or was running on willpower alone. I glanced across the seat at him and recognized the excited gleam in his eyes. Damn.