The Devil's Chord

by Alex Archer

  Annja was prevented from going after him by a hand slamming down on her shoulder.

  Chapter 22

  “Let’s take a walk outside,” a gruff voice said with as little joy as Annja had ever heard.

  Evan had already rushed out the back door. Not wanting to cause a scene in the crowded bistro, Annja stood. “Sure. Feel like a little exercise anyway.”

  She turned and aimed for the restaurant’s main exit. The man behind was twice her size, and the man in front of her was more slender but a head taller. The slender guy was dressed in leather motorcycle pants and a T-shirt that did not reveal any hidden weapons stashed at his waistband, for instance. He flexed his fingers into a fist.

  Outside, the slender guy turned immediately right, down an alleyway that was about four feet wide and had three-story buildings on both sides. Not optimal for swinging punches or getting her back clear so she could keep both men in sight. But she would make do.

  Where had Evan gone? Frustrated that he had a knack for continually giving her the slip, Annja mentally prepared herself.

  The fist she didn’t want to meet swung around toward her. Annja ducked and reached up to grab the larger guy by his forearm. Dropping into a forward roll, she managed to tug him off his feet and slam him against the other man. The impact surprised them both.

  Now she had her back clear. The men staggered to their feet, and the larger one again took the initiative and reached inside his jacket pocket. Annja called the sword to hand from the otherwhere. It fit with a smart landing against her palm. A knowing warmth surged through her arm and made her stand taller. Yet she didn’t have the freedom to swing in a wide arc, so would have to compensate with smaller stabs and defend herself.

  “He said she might have a sword,” the tall one said to the other.

  Not many people on this planet would be able to warn their henchmen that she wielded a sword.

  “Braden,” Annja suggested. “Yes?”

  “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, lady.”

  “So I’m a lady, eh? If this is the way you treat ladies, your father needs to be admonished.”

  “Don’t bring my dad into this,” the thin one spat.

  Annja was losing her patience with these guys and so ran toward both men. She leaped sideways, pushing off the wall to her left, and swung down hard to knock the first guy off-balance. He yelped and dropped a knife he had drawn from the inside of his jacket.

  Annja landed and quickly slashed the other man’s thigh. Shoving the tip in deep, she ripped the seam of his pants open and, behind that, scored his skin in a crimson slice. He fell to his knees, yowling.

  His partner reacted, scrambling for the knife. He speared it toward Annja. She caught the blade against her sword hilt and dashed it away with a flick of her wrist.

  Stepping up onto the fallen man’s shoulder for added height, Annja jumped and spun in the air, striking the sword across the man’s neck as he lunged again for the knife. Midair, blood spattered her gray T-shirt.

  She hit the ground perfectly balanced and assessed the damage. Both men were alive and would remain so with the proper emergency medical care.

  “That’s going to leave a mark,” she noted of the thigh wound she’d left on one of the goons.

  Not wanting to stay for a chat, she ran down the alleyway. Releasing the sword to the otherwhere, she cursed Garin Braden’s need to exercise his muscle from a distance.

  If the man had an argument with her, she preferred he address her face-to-face. Or had it been Evan that Garin was ultimately after? She hadn’t seen if Evan had gotten away without luring a henchmen after him.

  Evan...Garin... Who was working with whom?

  * * *

  BACK AT THE HOTEL ROOM, Annja assessed her injuries. Minimal. A few scratches to her arms and wrists, and another bruise on her shoulder—it was beginning to look like an interesting tattoo with the green-and-purple tinting.

  She gathered up the laptop and stuffed her dirty clothes into the backpack.

  She rang up Roux but he wasn’t answering, as usual. Where had he gone? Had the thugs following him tracked him down yet again? For 1.2 million dollars? Most certainly that tail would be difficult to shake.

  “Supposedly, he can handle himself,” she muttered and tucked her cell phone into a pocket as she exited the room.

  She didn’t check out of the hotel, but rather decided to keep her room as backup should she find herself staying in the city one more night.

  She guessed Evan’s choice of hotel after scanning the offerings online. The place was centrally located, so easy to get to. At the reception desk she asked the angelic-faced blonde to see Evan Merrick, not expecting that he’d actually used that name. Getting a headshake and a reply that no one under that name was registered, Annja nodded. She made up some story about being Evan’s fiancée and missing a train connection, describing him as the sexy American with the pulsating blue eyes. Yeah, pulsating eyes, she repeated. It killed her to say that, but the receptionist nodded in kind. She’d seen him and knew he was staying at the hotel. But she refused to give Annja his room number.

  Annja sighed. “I understand. You might lose your job. Oh, is there a bathroom here in the lobby I can use?”

  The receptionist pointed it out and watched Annja walk across the marble floor and enter the unisex bathroom. The space was small, offering only two stalls and one sink. She wasted as much time as she could thinking of a means of escape that would get her past the blonde at reception. Nothing useful came to mind.

  When a handsome, mature man walked in, she nodded and made a show of washing her hands. He did his business, and she quickly grabbed a paper towel and wiped at her shoe to buy her some more time.

  “New,” she said to him as he stood at the sink washing his hands. When he left, she peeked out after him. The man had been just handsome enough...

  Yep, the receptionist’s head whipped around, following the man with tufts of gray above his ears. He wore the Armani suit and leather shoes like a fashion model. The distraction allowed Annja to slip along the wall behind a palm frond and around the corner to the elevator bay. Fortunately an elevator was just arriving. She slipped inside and pressed the button for the second floor. A good thief would choose a lower floor, she mused, for an easy and fast escape. Though a higher floor would allow for a better vantage point of the surroundings. but he was the getaway man, so there you go.

  There were only four rooms on each level. The first two rooms she dismissed given the food trays sitting outside the doors. Unless Evan was eating for two and liked roses with his meal, she guessed rooming behind those doors were honeymooners or traveling couples.

  Two doors remaining. She stood before the first, poised to knock and heard the television beyond the door. Sounded like a religious program given the prayers being offered.

  Annja adjusted her position and opted for the opposite door. No light from underneath the door and no sound from a TV. She knocked and didn’t bother to step aside. When darkness flashed over the pinhole, she smiled and waved.

  The door opened and Evan conceded her win with a gesture that she enter his room.

  “Of course you’d stay at the da Vinci hotel,” she said, wandering in and scanning the surroundings.

  “I’ll give you that one,” he said. “Way too obvious.”

  “So we were having a conversation,” she said, “before you decided to leave me to fight the bad guys.”

  “Was there a fight?”

  “You weren’t followed? Figures. Was the harpoon in the canal meant for me? Because it doesn’t make sense otherwise.”

  “Ah, sorry, Annja.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Nah, I’m not really. Were they Braden’s men just now?”

  “I can only guess. But you’re not w
orking for him, either. That’s why he sent the thugs. Am I right?”

  “I haven’t given you enough credit, Creed. Never thought a television personality would be so smart and observant. But then, I think you know both Roux and Braden much better than you’ve allowed me to believe, yes?”

  “Roux just hired me for this job,” she replied, unwilling to detail the complexities of their relationship. “Now, let’s continue where we left off. Why is Roux proof that the music-box device works?”

  Evan ran his fingers through his hair, exposing a healthy flash of ribbed abs as his shirt stretched up. Annja averted her eyes. He was working it. She was not interested.

  “All right.” He splayed his hands in surrender. “You’ve earned that much. But I’ll tell you right now that the Lorraine cross is not in this room.”

  “I believe that. It would be foolish of you to keep it out in the open. But you’ve got it close.”

  “Very close. You want to search me?” He lifted the shirt to again expose his abs.

  “Just explain about Roux.”

  “I can do better than that. I’ll show you.”

  He lifted up the duffel bag from the chair by the bed and picked through the contents. Pulling out a small leather-bound book, he then tossed it to Annja.

  Guessing what it was while it was midair, Annja deftly reached to catch it, but at the same time was careful not to do so roughly. She clasped it gently in both hands. The supple leather creaked and the loose leather tie rested over her wrist.

  “This is...” She carefully turned the antique over and studied the plain leather cover. “You idiot!”

  “What?”

  “This is five centuries old! And you just tossed it across the room like it was the remote control. Have a little respect, please.”

  She set the notebook on the end of the bed. Evan made a move to pick it up but she blocked him.

  “If you’ve no interest in looking at it...”

  “I do.” She shrugged the backpack off her shoulder and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. “I just need to do it right.”

  And she knew immediately it was that old when she peeled aside the cover and saw Leonardo da Vinci’s writing. “This is the notebook you nabbed during—what heist did you say?”

  “I didn’t say. But good try. The Lorraine cross is detailed on the first page. The info about the music box is toward the end. But there’s something even more interesting in the middle. Let me show you.”

  He held out his hand and she was reluctant to give him the notebook. This was compelling history that had been kept from the public. The first page was an orderly mix of text, and a sketch on a smaller card had been pasted onto the page—the Lorraine cross—and text written over what appeared to be erasures. Paper had been a valued commodity in Leonardo’s time, so it made sense that he’d used as much of the space as possible.

  Evan snapped his fingers. “You can drool over it later. Right now, let me show you what you wanted to know.”

  “You got gloves?”

  He nodded and from the nearby duffel bag pulled out a pair of black latex gloves. The color was appropriate.

  She handed him the notebook and he carefully paged through it, which she appreciated.

  When he found what he was looking for, Evan folded back the front pages against the back of the notebook, and even as Annja cringed, she saw that the papers curled easily like that. Perhaps it had been found rolled. It conformed to such a shape.

  He handed the notebook back to her, opened to a sketch.

  She was careful to only touch the leather cover and the very edges of the paper.

  Annja gasped at the sight of a man’s face drawn in red pencil on the lower right corner of the page. He was not young, nor very old. Middle-aged. Long white hair curled gracefully around his face, and a few marks crinkled out from the corners of his world-weary eyes. The artist had also illustrated a frown line at the bridge of his nose—a line with which Annja was all too familiar. The name Roux had been written near his ear, as if to label the face for future reference.

  Remarkable. Could this be the drawing Leonardo had made of Roux that night they’d met in the tavern? It made sense.

  Evan had mentioned he’d already obtained this notebook before any of this business had started. So, when he’d met Roux at the auction, he had already seen this sketch. Maybe? Had he tracked Roux down purposefully? No wonder he seemed to think he knew so much about Roux. But this was only a sketch.

  Before Annja could ask her first question, her eyes noted the bottom of the page where the sketch ended at Roux’s right shoulder. In black ink, written in thick angry letters, was the word ladro.

  “Thief,” Annja interpreted.

  Why would Leonardo have written that? She knew Roux was a shifty old coot, but had he a deeper vein of thievery that had prompted him to steal from the famous painter? Had Roux stolen the music box?

  No, that made little sense. He was looking for the music box now. Although, if he actually had the music box, then all he would need was the Lorraine cross.

  She needed to talk to Roux.

  “As I’ve told you, I pored over this notebook for months after obtaining it. I know every line Leonardo sketched as if I’d drawn it myself. I recognized Roux immediately at the auction. But even more interesting? This sketch is the same man I saw in the SUV this afternoon outside the graveyard. You can’t deny it.”

  “You’re really pushing to make the uneven pieces fit, Evan. If the man in the picture was Roux that would make the Roux I know over five hundred years old.”

  “Yep.”

  Annja’s laugh was forced, and she knew it sounded that way, too.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of doubles?” she tried. “Doppelgängers? Throughout history the instances of people resembling historical figures are well-known. There is an entire subset of blogs and websites devoted to celebrity and historical look-alikes.”

  “You talk a good game, Creed, but I’m willing to bet you know the truth. And if you don’t, now you do.”

  “And what truth is that?”

  He rubbed his palms together in such gleeful delight Annja took a moment to consider his mental stability. He had poisoned himself—surely his sanity was questionable.

  “Roux is a time traveler,” Evan stated. “And,” he continued, “he’s traveled to our time via da Vinci’s music box, the time-shifting device everyone is eager to get their hands on. And Roux is after it to return home.”

  Home? Annja’s jaw dropped. It was a fantastical explanation. To have arrived at such a conclusion must have cost Evan a heap of brain cells.

  On the other hand, he’d provided a great cover for the truth. Far be it from her to rain on the man’s crazy parade.

  “Aren’t you the clever boy?”

  Evan dropped the excited pose. “Do not condescend to me, Creed. You think I’m deranged.”

  “I think you’re a man who will believe what you need to believe. It’s gotten you this far.”

  “Indeed, it has.”

  “But tell me one thing.”

  “I’ve already told you more than a sane man should.”

  “Yes, well, your sanity is under consideration,” she noted. “Where do you intend to travel once you get that device? And do you think you’ll come back? I mean, if Roux traveled from the fifteenth century to here, why didn’t he go back?”

  “Creed, would you go back to the fifteenth century if you landed in the technologically advanced twenty-first century? I mean, the modern sanitation system alone should answer that question.”

  He had a point. While studying the Middle Ages was fascinating, being a modern woman living in the Renaissance would present many challenges. Computers she could manage without. But no camera to record all that she saw? And to imagine neve
r again eating at her favorite restaurants again? And if she went there, she had to consider the friendships she would miss. Doug and Bart, and yes, even Roux, and occasionally Braden. Some things were too valuable to live without.

  “I’m good with where I’m at,” she replied. “I’m going to guess that you are, too. Who are you selling the device to?”

  Evan’s shock gave him away. Annja knew if he had a buyer, he wouldn’t spill. And likely he did not have a buyer arranged just yet. He needed to have the music box before he could attract a buyer willing to lay down the millions, she estimated, he would ask for the prize. Though if he were so hard up on his financial luck, it did surprise her he wasn’t using every angle he could manage to bring in bids for the time-shifting device.

  “Don’t think about it too much, Creed,” he said. “It’ll give you a headache.”

  Indeed.

  “All parties involved know the cross is in play, Evan.”

  “As I’ve said, it’s safely in my hands.”

  “Yes, and that it is required to activate the device. Yes?”

  Again, he pointed to the notebook.

  Annja sat on the bed, taking advantage of Evan’s willingness to cooperate for the moment. She half expected he’d try to knock her out and make an escape. That was why she sat facing him as she pulled the notebook onto her lap.

  “See how I’m still wearing protective gloves?” She waved at Evan. She couldn’t stop herself from making the point.

  Paging toward the back of the notebook, as he’d indicated, Annja found the part that detailed the music box. It wasn’t labeled as a time-shifting device. There wasn’t a label at all. But she guessed this was it. It had a particular steampunk-ish look to it. A rectangular box with a compass and a crossbar fitted to the top, and gears at either end, which rotated—with a turn of the cross key? Another crossbar fronted the long, narrow side of the box with dials placed along it, like a combination lock. The box had been fashioned from wood and some kind of metal and had ornate decoration all over it.