Madonna Key 03 - Dark Revelations

by Lorna Tedder

  I needed to concentrate, but so much had happened so quickly! I wasn’t sure who was the enemy and who wasn’t. Maybe I never had been, not even in the beginning of my life of crime.

  Had the police officials really been police at all or just part of the setup to make me believe I had no choice but to go with Ricardo, the man who’d rescued me, the same one who’d handed me the backpack, the one who’d later become my trainer in the world of art theft, the one who’d turned me into a thief for real?

  He’d given me my new name, too. He’d said Max Adriano had seen me from a distance, admiring the moon as if I were wishing to be that far away, and he’d called me Dr. Ginny Moon. I’d never met Max or I might have been nervous about how similar the name was to my birth name, Aubergine de Lune.

  I remembered the night I’d wept under that full moon for the daughter I’d left behind. My emotions had been closely tied to that moon and the notion that somewhere my Lilah might be looking up at the same moon and wishing for me to come home in spite of the news she’d just received that her mother had been killed in a train accident somewhere in Europe.

  I heard the snap of something outside. A twig? A leaf? I was here with antique weapons good for little more than decoration, and they were waiting for me out Lorna Tedder

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  there with access to the most advanced modern weapons available to the Adrianos and most small governments.

  Back when I’d first learned about stealth technology, the NVGs had been huge, experimental, so heavy that I’d needed both hands to lift them to my face. Technology had changed a lot even in that short time. Now NVGs were easily strapped onto the forehead with such little weight that the wearer barely nodded under their influence. They didn’t create light where there was none but if there was the slightest bit of illumination, even star shine, they amplified the light into an eerie view out of what seemed to be utter darkness. And if there was too much light…

  I pulled down an eighteenth-century French épée from the wall, its long double-edged blade still sheathed in a steel guard attached to an ornate corded belt. I gripped the copper-wrapped hilt in one fist and extended the weapon to test its range. It almost tripled my reach.

  Tucking the épée under one arm, I felt my way along the wall until my hands tingled all over. Energy. Old energy. Lifetimes ago, but still strong, like a memory left behind on the weapons. I found the crossbow and pulled it down, along with one tiny iron arrow. I pricked my finger while loading it and was thankful I’d had a tetanus shot after a job in the States last spring. No telling where that arrow had been, though I doubted it had been used for hunting stags.

  Careful not to drop my makeshift arsenal, I plucked the very modern halogen lantern from the reception desk. A slight sound caught my attention, like a cat 222

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  landing on the roof. I recognized it. I’d heard my own feet land on many a rooftop in the same way, but my hearing was better than ever tonight and buzzing with sensation. It was the kind of sound that most people would never notice or, if they did, would think was a creak in the roof or perhaps a bird. But I was good at landing quietly on my feet. So was whoever the Adrianos had sent after me.

  Feeling my way along the corridor walls, I found a side exit and squeezed through the door. The outside air was damp and unseasonably chilled. Immediately my bare toes sank into mud from the constant pounding of rain for the past twelve hours. Its coolness sent a dull ache up my legs and into my knee. The sky was clear, though. Not a cloud in it or the moon, but there were enough stars to make a night-vision-goggle aficionado bubbly with joy.

  I studied the darkness against the stars and waited, separating myself enough from the building so that I might see any shadows on the roof. There!

  I flung the halogen lantern around, flicking it on as I did, aiming it directly for the silhouette on the roof.

  The powerful beam caught one shadow by surprise—a man in all black: black boots, black trousers, black sweater, black mask. A halogen beam in the eyes is bad enough, but with NVGs on?

  “Amplify that,” I muttered under my breath.

  I saw the weapon in his hand, but his reflexes got the better of him. He threw one arm over his face and jerked the headpiece off, blinking into the halogen beam as if he’d just seen his maker. Not yet, anyway.

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  The shadow of another man moved behind him, but I could get only one. I raised the crossbow and took aim.

  This time he fell to the roof with a heavier thud.

  The shadow beside him jerked sideways. Another man in solid black. In the beam of my lantern, he whipped off his NVG headpiece and took aim at me. I dropped the lantern and skidded sideways. I didn’t hear the report of his weapon, but I heard his bullet whiz past me, right above the lantern. I left the lamp in the grass, its beam skittering across the stone pathway as I som-ersaulted to the stone column close to the entrance. Surrounded by stone, I knew the second man could not afford the ricochet.

  What was I doing? It was all about instinct. I’d never used weapons like this before, yet there was an energy around them that I could feel, like memories attached to them, and I simply obeyed where they led.

  I pulled the épée from its sheath and touched one edge of the double blade, careful not to cut myself. I flattened my body against the column and waited for the second man to come down. Under other circumstances, I might have vaulted onto the roof and fought him there, but my knee hated inclines. Level ground would at least not put me at a disadvantage.

  Since I’d held the larimar eyes to my chest, my senses had stayed alive and magnified, more so than they did from my usual adrenaline rush during a heist. I felt it coming before I could react.

  Something hard and muscled caught my shoulder.

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  against my throat, pulling me back, choking me. I swatted at him with the épée, but the blade was too long. I couldn’t get a good angle! I choked and sputtered and fought the glimmer of gray in my vision. He brought back memories of Caleb’s hands on my throat.

  This man wasn’t Caleb. He was shorter, leaner, younger, but just as ruthless.

  The gray in my vision grew denser. I’d pass out soon.

  I might never wake. Or, if I did, I might find myself tied to Caleb’s bed.

  I grabbed the hilt of the épée, its decorative pummel hard against my wrist. I aimed the blade directly in front of me. With every ounce of strength I could muster, I slammed the blade against the stone column. As any good swordsman knows—and certainly any good art thief—épée blades don’t last forever, especially one this old and this pitted. The blade shattered halfway down its length. I flipped the hilt in my hand, bringing the blade parallel to my forearm, and jabbed it back hard behind me. I felt the resistance when it found its target. I urged the blade deeper, heard a grunt of surprise, and then the arm released. I fell forward onto the grass, sucking in oxygen, heaving, and then struggling back to my feet.

  I frowned down at the man on the ground. A pair of sightless eyes stared back at me from underneath the black ski mask.

  I heard the motion above me, and before I could move, the first assassin tumbled from the roof onto the ground and fell at the edge of the darkness. Dead. My crossbow’s arrow was still lodged in his chest.

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  I had not killed often. Only a few times. The first time had been seconds after a rival thief had murdered an English professor friend of mine, Drusilla St. Augustine, over a manuscript in Madrid, then turned his knife toward me. In my fury, I’d gained the upper hand and stabbed him through the heart and then I’d fled the burning building with the artifact.

  That first time had been the worst, but every time had been in self-defense. Certain old manuscripts, particularly those related to the occult, talk of claiming the power of your enemies as their souls rush out of their bod
ies at the moment of death. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush of having survived. It was always just enough to get me through the moment so I wouldn’t think too much about what I’d done.

  I’d think about it later, though. Later, when I was safe and everything was quiet. Then, when I was all alone, my knees pulled up to my chin and my arms wrapped around my knees, I would rock and keen and cry for what I’d done. Later. Not now.

  In the darkness, I heard nothing else. Not even the sound of night birds. Everything was quiet. Too quiet.

  That meant something else was on the prowl besides me.

  I retrieved the lantern, but before I turned it off, I noticed the sliver of light across the grounds to the gray BMW parked haphazardly behind some shrubbery. The three men who’d been tailing us, two of whom had been dispatched at my feet. The third?

  Eric had hidden the rented Mercedes to throw them off, yet if there’d been another tracker on the automo-226

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  bile, it should have led them in the opposite direction.

  They would never have come here. That meant that there was a tracker either on me or on Eric…or on Benny!

  I bolted back into the building the way I’d come, hauling the bright lantern with me and running on bare wet tiptoes down the corridor. Benny. God, that sweet little boy! Not just the hope for the future of the Adrianos but for anyone dealing with the Adrianos. My knee screamed. I couldn’t get to him quickly enough!

  That little boy had a destiny, the kind that would affect thousands of lives. A true Indigo Child, as the New Agers called them. A future king.

  When I rounded the corner, I heard the hum of the tiles. Or maybe I just felt them. The ringing in my ears meant I was close. Almost like a silent alarm. As I reached the rooms, I saw that the corridor doors to both Eric’s room and mine were still closed. I caught my breath and leaned against the wall.

  The metal key felt warm in my hand as I fished it from my pocket. I glanced up and down the corridor again as I put the metal in the lock and twisted. I cracked the door just enough to see Benny snuggled up with his kitten and facing the wall. His chest rose and fell in tender dreams.

  He was asleep. Our little prince was still okay.

  I pushed through the door, closing and locking it behind me, then turned around. I gasped. A man in black—the last of the trio of assassins—stood between Benny and me.

  With his little finger, he caught the hem of his ski mask under his chin and yanked off his camouflage. It Lorna Tedder

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  landed on the floor at my bare feet. I didn’t know him.

  It was a calculated move to let me know he had no fear of my seeing his face. He grinned at me…then Benny…

  then me…then Benny. He had a gun in the holster under his left arm and a knife in his right hand.

  “Put down the blade,” I whispered. I couldn’t call to Eric without startling the boy. I didn’t want to wake Benny. I didn’t want him to see anything violent.

  Children shouldn’t have to witness such things, not even little Adriano boys. “Let’s take this outside,” I whispered.

  Where the hell is Eric? Then my heart skipped a beat. What if the assassin had already found Eric, asleep in the next room? He could have killed the boy’s bodyguard first with a plan to dispose of the child afterward.

  But the assassin wasn’t just between Benny and me. He was also between Eric and me. I wanted Benny to stay asleep. If he woke, a panicked child would be a volatile variable I didn’t want to deal with.

  “Why would I want to take this outside?” The man took a step closer to Benny. He kept his voice as low as mine.

  In the periphery of my vision, in the outer circle of the lantern’s light, the kitchen knife above the doorway gleamed like a beacon. Purposely I didn’t look directly at it. I knew better than to do anything to call attention to the weapon before I leaped for it. Other than that, the quickest weapon was the lantern in my grip. If it didn’t kill him, it still would make a dent in his skull.

  I had to get this assassin away from Benny. Any way I could.

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  “You want a piece of me?” I offered. “Come on.

  We’ll take it outside.”

  He twisted his jaw to one side. “I’ll get a piece of you when you’re dead.” He took another step toward Benny.

  “Get away from him!” I ordered. Another damned necrophiliac thug!

  The assassin shook his head. “I have orders to kill you both. Him first. Then you.”

  “That’s not going to happen.” I took a step toward him, another step closer to both the blade in his hand and the one I’d left in the wall just above his head.

  “It’s too bad you eluded us for so long. Caleb said the Duke was willing to make you a trade. Now you’re too late.”

  He fingered a cell phone at his belt. An Adriano cell phone, no doubt. Probably sending every word of our conversation direct to the palazzo’s security center. To Caleb. Yes, to Caleb! Simon would never have sent an assassin to kill the Adriano heir. But Caleb would have.

  These men worked for Caleb, not for Simon.

  “What would Simon have to trade? I have the tiles, I have the manuscript and I have his grandson. Looks like I’m the one with the leverage.”

  The man turned on his heels, grinning in the halogen light. I saw the flash of steel toward Benny’s bed. The whoosh of a bullet disguised by a silencer split the air.

  The man froze, then crumpled to the ground. The knife fell from his hand.

  Eric appeared in the doorway exactly as I’d left him—without a stitch on. He held out a gun in his Lorna Tedder

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  extended hand. He slanted a quick glance in my direction. “Are you all right?” he whispered.

  I blinked at his nakedness. The hardness of his chest, over his abs, all the way down to a muscle that dipped low on his groin. Weapon in his hand. And not looking the least bit fazed. It was a picture I intended to hold in my mind for the rest of my life.

  “Never better,” I murmured so softly that not even an Adriano could hear it.

  Eric stalked over to the assassin on the floor and rolled him over onto his back. The man wasn’t dead. He pressed his left fist hard against the growing dampness on his black shirt. A trickle of blood escaped with a cough.

  Eric put his finger to his lips and nodded at the cell phone. He kicked at it and it fell off the man’s waist. Eric stepped on it with one bare foot, bearing down his full weight on it and twisting his heel until the phone crunched. As he stepped off it, he kicked it across the room. Bits of electronics scattered on the wooden floor.

  Eric shrugged. “They don’t make cell phones like they used to.”

  The assassin squinted up at Eric. “Cabordes… I should have known. When they find out you’re helping her, the Duke will have your heart cut out!”

  “Sorry. Already had my heart cut out on behalf of the Adriano family.”

  “Eric?” I motioned to get his attention. “Your cover’s been blown.”

  He shook his head. “No. Not yet, anyway. This man’s certainly not going to tell anyone.”

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  Benny mumbled something in his sleep, a waking sound as if he’d incorporated any sounds he’d heard into a bad dream. I left the lantern on the floor and tiptoed closer to him. I sat on the corner of his bed and brushed my fingers over his hair the way I used to do Lilah’s.

  He waved away my touch as if he either wasn’t used to the gesture or had been trained to find it uncomfortable.

  “Shhh, sweetie. It’s okay. You go back to sleep.”

  His sleepy eyes blinked open just enough to see my fingers over his face as I traced his delicate eyebrows with a featherlight touch. “You’re bleeding,” he said softly. He pointed to my finger where I’d cut myself on the iron crossbow arrow.

  “Yes, honey. That’s what happens when you play with sharp things.” I ki
ssed his cheek. “Now you go back to sleep and don’t wake your kitten.”

  He nodded, hugged a tolerant kitten momentarily harder, then relaxed back into sleep. For that, I was grateful.

  The assassin coughed again. He made a funny sound like a cross between a gurgle and a laugh. “You can’t get away from the Adrianos, bitch. As long as you’re alive, they will hunt you. Sooner or later, they will find you.”

  He was right. I glanced up at Eric. “There’s another tracker on us. It’s not in the car. It’s on one of us.”

  The assassin’s right hand moved. He grasped the gun in his holster and swung the weapon toward Benny.

  Without thinking, I threw myself over the child.

  The bullet sliced through the air. I waited a split second that seemed forever. Lilah would never know, Lorna Tedder

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  never know me, never know what I’d done, either the good or the bad.

  No. Not a bullet. I hadn’t been hit. Tentatively I looked up.

  Eric stood over the man, his arm still extended, still in play. The handle of the kitchen knife wobbled in the man’s chest next to his heart.

  I expelled a ragged breath and pulled myself off Benny, who merely flung an annoyed hand at me for dis-turbing his sleep. I sat up, stiff with tension.

  The assassin steadied his gaze on me. It took all his effort to focus on my face. Words tumbled out of his mouth. Raw, venomous. Stabbing to my core. Then the light went out in his eyes, long after his words hung in the air.

  “The Duke…has…your daughter.”

  Chapter 14

  Eric, completely naked, strolled around me and picked up a blanket off the pallet I’d made earlier for Benny.

  He covered the body on the floor, careful to hide anything that might frighten the child when he woke.

  Me? I sat on the corner of Benny’s bed and stared at the floor. Eric was talking, something about going outside to take care of the other two assassins who’d sure be right behind this one.

  “Been there, done that,” I whispered. Not even an armed and naked Eric could raise my spirits.

  Eric raised an eyebrow, then nodded approvingly.