Caught

by Kristin Hardy

  “They should have done all of their writing in Latin.” Frustration bubbled in her voice. “Latin, I know. Greek, I know.”

  “Never bothered to learn French, did we?”

  She shot him a narrow-eyed look. “If I’d specialized in European art, I’d have learned French. I specialized in antiquities.”

  “So you learned to speak the language of dead people.”

  “Funny.”

  Alex shifted the book to leaf through the pages of beautifully inscribed vellum. “So how much is it worth to you to know what’s on these pages?”

  Julia gave him a suspicious look. “Why do I get the feeling I’m about to be scammed?”

  “Not at all. It just so happens that in addition to my many other talents, I speak French.”

  “You speak French.” She eyed him.

  “Three years in high school, three in college. What can I say? I really wanted that semester abroad in Paris so I could learn to pick up French chicks.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me even a little.”

  He grinned. “You could at least be impressed by my planning, mon petit chou.”

  “Mon petit chou?”

  “My little cabbage. A French endearment.”

  “You silver-tongued devil, you.”

  “I admit, I’m a little rusty in conversation, but I’m still pretty good on paper. Let me at this bad boy.” He pulled the book closer and tried to concentrate on the pages and not her legs, shown off so nicely by his shirt. Lucky damned shirt, to be wrapped all around her. “I’ll read you the intro and then we can go through the pages together. White Star translates as étoile blanche, by the way.”

  “How do you say ivory?”

  “Haven’t a clue.” He brightened. “But I know six different ways of cussing a person out.”

  “Nice to see you spent your semester abroad constructively.”

  “I also learned some great French pickup lines.”

  “I’m sure you did. Mon petit chou.”

  “Didn’t I tell you you were getting a soft spot for me?”

  Julia shook her head. “Read, please.”

  “Okay.” Amused, he scanned the page. “Let’s see. It was a double abbey, like we said, which could have made for some interesting parties.”

  “Oh yeah, you know those wild monks. I expect they locked the women behind gates.”

  “Oh, not entirely,” he told her. “You’re going to love this. Apparently the chicks ran the show.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “The abbey was presided over by an abbess, not an abbot. Pretty common, from what I recall. They might not have let them preach or hear confession, but they knew that no one can kick butt like a nun.”

  A corner of her mouth twitched. “You know this from personal experience?”

  “Sadly. I went to St. Mary’s parochial school up through sixth grade.” He rubbed his knuckles absently.

  “So that stuff with the rulers and the knuckles isn’t a joke?”

  “No joke.”

  “Here I would have figured a slick guy like you would give them that innocent smile and just slide out of any trouble around.”

  “Who says I ever did anything wrong?” He gave her his best innocent stare, the one that had worked on all the nuns.

  But not, apparently, on Julia. “Ever got caught, you mean.”

  “I was a model student in all ways.”

  “I’m just sure you were. Read the account, please.”

  He grinned and went back to scanning the page. “It looks like the fighting came right up to their doorstep.”

  “That must have been a shock.”

  “Listen to this. ‘This morning, an engagement took place in the copse below the front portal. We attempted to provide such aid to the fallen, of both camps, as we could, all men being equal in the eyes of God. Frère William sustained an injury from an arrow, though ’tis slight and did not keep him from his evening devotions.

  “‘The abbess fears that we shall perhaps be overrun if the exigencies of battle force it, for war is a capricious force of destruction before which none are safe. Accordingly, she has ordered an inventory of the abbey’s possessions, and that they shall be hidden away, buried in the deepest cellars until this conflict be safely behind us.’” He glanced at Julia. “I wonder what she’d have said if someone told her it was going to last a hundred years. More than.”

  “How can people spend a hundred years fighting over someone else’s land?” She shook her head. “How can you spend that much time killing?”

  “They were far less efficient at it than they are now,” he said drily.

  “Did it ever depress you, studying all of this? I mean, isn’t that most of what history is—one war after another, with occasional intermissions?”

  “There’s more. Watching the world change over time. The majority of people today live better, longer. And for every idiot ruler who starts a war, there are people like Frère William, going out onto a battlefield to help, even though it would have been easier and safer to hide away. That’s what history is about, people like him.”

  “That’s an optimist’s view.”

  “I’m nothing if not an optimist,” he said softly, giving in to temptation, finally, and reaching out to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes.

  She didn’t move away, as he’d expected. Instead she studied him. “Why didn’t you ever teach?”

  “Like my parents?”

  “Why not? You said you admired them. And you’ve got a subject here you really love. Why not do something with it?”

  “I do do something with it. I work on behalf of the museum.”

  “Sure, taking people out to lunch and dinner and pumping them for money.”

  “To keep this museum running.” Even he could hear the edge in his voice. “Allowing people like you and Paul to preserve things so that some little girl someday can walk in and see a cup and get an inkling of how she fits into the world.”

  The rebuke came out sharper than he’d intended. Julia just stared at him, gaze unnervingly steady, as though she were studying something entirely new. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, suddenly irritated at having been held to account—again. “Hey, well, we should look through this inventory list.”

  “Maybe we should,” she said quietly.

  Columns of items covered the open sheets of vellum, some entries filled in with brief details of value, provenance, age. There were pages of it, he realized. “We’re going to have to work on this together,” he said. “Move in close and we can each take a side of the page. Scan for the words blanche or étoile.”

  Silence filled the room. Silence worked for him. He wasn’t all that sure he wanted to have any more conversation just then. He wasn’t at all sure he’d like the direction it had been going.

  Julia turned to him. “A little free-flowing anxiety?”

  “What?” He looked to where she pointed, realized he’d been rapidly bouncing his leg. “Oh, sorry.” He stilled it.

  The quiet returned, except for the turning of the pages. Julia stirred. “Here?” She pointed to some words.

  Alex read them. “Chandelle blanche. Uh, no, that’s white candle.”

  “Oh. Well, it was the word blanche.”

  “Ten points for effort.”

  They lapsed into silence again, broken only by the sound of their breathing.

  “What about that?” Julia asked.

  This time he looked at her. “White cup.”

  “Sorry,” she said insincerely, a grin hovering beneath.

  He felt his frustration ease and noticed that they were breathing in sync, that her hand had slipped over the arm of her chair to brush unconsciously against his. And it brought not the usual sizzling awareness, but a quiet connection different than anything he’d felt with her before.

  And it was because they were connected that he felt it when she tensed. “Alex, what about this?” Her voice vibrated with urgency. No teasing this time, this was
for real.

  He scanned the page and felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck. “Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner, brought to us by the lovely Julia Covington. Wave to the crowd, Ms. Covington.” Julia gave a little float-lady wave. “Okay, Ms. Covington, let’s see what we’ve got.”

  13

  Saturday, 11:30 a.m.

  “READ IT,” JULIA BEGGED Alex. “I’m dying here.”

  “Give me a sec. It doesn’t come as quickly as it used to.” He cleared his throat. “Lessee…it says, ‘One amulet, provenance unknown, fashioned of—’ ivoire, it says, which I assume is ivory—‘in the shape of a star with five points. It shows two tiny dots of carnelian on the front and is but finely cracked along the back.’”

  Julia clutched at Alex’s shoulder. “Alex, the crack.”

  “I know.”

  She nudged him. “Keep going.”

  “‘We know not how this thing came to be in our care. It is clearly pagan, but many pagan things have been won over through prayer, and it appears thus with the amulet. Frère Joseph, our librarian, insists a verse from the Roman poet Adeodatus describes this object, down to the faint carvings on the front that can be discerned by only the sharpest eyes (the author, alas, not being in possession of such, must take them only by report).

  “‘The words of Adeodatus tell of a desert kingdom and the purest of loves and a White Star that brings that love to those whose hearts remain unsullied. Pagan nonsense, withal, but if a Roman truly wrote about this amulet, then it must be very ancient indeed.’”

  “Unsullied hearts,” Julia repeated. “Pure of heart. It comes up over and over.”

  “It’s a pretty strong concept,” Alex observed. “Purity was much more fashionable in historic times than it is these days.”

  “I don’t think true love ever goes out of fashion,” she argued. “It’s what everyone truly wants, deep down inside, isn’t it?”

  “What, true love?” A corner of his mouth quirked.

  “Yes,” she snapped, rising to the bait. “A soul mate. Someone you connect with so much that it’s about way more than sex, it’s about who you are. Don’t tell me that you don’t want that. Everybody wants that. It’s like finding your place.” She took a breath. “Finding your forever-and-always true love…” She trailed off, staring at him.

  Alex looked back at her, his eyes unfathomably dark and deep. The moment stretched out, endless and lost in place and time, as the whole room around them faded into nothingness. His deep green gaze was everything, holding her, pulling her, drawing her until she felt herself tipping, tilting, falling into those deep green pools, falling into him.

  Then her elbow slipped off the arm of the chair. She started, yanked abruptly out of the moment.

  Swallowing, she gave herself a brisk shake. “Anyway, is there any more there?”

  Alex took a moment to answer. “No.” He glanced at the page. “That’s the end of the entry. Do we have any translations of Adeodatus here?”

  “I can’t think why we’d have any poetry, but I’ll check.” Julia turned to the computer, relieved to have something to do.

  “Do you know anything about him?”

  “Adeodatus?” Her fingers flew over the keys. “Not really. He was Roman?”

  Alex nodded. “He specialized in love poems. It makes perfect sense that he would have written about the White Star.”

  “But how did he stumble across it?” Think about the research, she reminded herself. Don’t think about that moment, that sense of being balanced on the edge of a very great fall. And don’t, absolutely don’t, think about Alex. “There’s no way we’re going to find out anything with our resources,” she said, frowning at the screen. “We don’t have Adeodatus or even any poetry anthologies or resources. And there’s no telling what his source could have been. He could have heard it from a traveler—”

  “Or stopped in at the library of Alexandria—”

  “Or maybe it was a legend that was already so widely circulated that everyone just knew it.”

  “Collective mythology?”

  “Sure.” And as she applied herself to the intellectual exercise, she began to relax. Living in her mind was always safest. It was living in her heart that she mistrusted. “How many of the ancient myths are shared among cultures? Wars, invasions, the capture of slaves. People traded gods around like baseball cards. The Romans added the gods of half the countries they invaded. This could have been like that, traveling from country to country until people had no idea where it started.”

  “You mean like ‘Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away…’”

  “Exactly.”

  “Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away lived a prince who was cruelly imprisoned in a conservation lab, though he had done no wrong. And lo, through the days and the nights he suffered privation and hunger and translated French and longed for a princess to offer him succor and mop his brow and feed him Twix bars.”

  Julia’s lips twitched. “Twix bars, huh?”

  “If we have any more. If not, I’ll take mummy flesh.”

  “You are hard up, my poor prince.”

  Alex rose. “Somehow I’m detecting a distinct lack of sympathy.”

  “Oh, mon petit chou, no. I’m all over sympathy for you.” She stood and felt the whisk of air under her…well, it couldn’t properly be called a dress, certainly. Not even a mock dress, not with all the leg it showed. And Alex was definitely aware of it, she thought, catching his glance as they made their way out to the main lab, where they’d piled their booty. “Here,” she said to distract them both, “have a Snickers.”

  “I don’t want a Snickers.”

  “A granola bar?”

  He pushed out his lip. “I don’t want a granola bar.”

  “Cheese crackers?”

  “There has to be something else in this office.”

  “You’re not going to find a burger and a beer, I’ll clue you in.”

  He started across the lab. “We haven’t checked Paul’s desk yet.”

  “I’m not sure we should.” Julia’s voice was uneasy.

  “Why not? We’ve checked everywhere else, and in case you haven’t noticed, we’re down to our last few Milky Ways.”

  “But he’s the head conservationist.”

  “Then he probably has well-preserved food. I think it’ll be okay, and if he gets upset about it, he can talk to me.” Alex stopped and gave her an appreciative look. “Better yet, he can talk to you. If he sees you in that outfit, he’ll give you whatever you want.”

  “You’re funny.”

  “You’re the one who said you were in love with him this morning.”

  “Pure love, remember? Platonic?”

  He looked at her. “Not true love?”

  She reddened and looked away.

  Alex stepped into the office and flipped on the light. “You said Paul works weird hours, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So he probably keeps something here.” He began searching the desk. “He has a coffeemaker. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and find some Cup-a-Soup.” He rifled through the top drawer, “Or maybe an—oh, baby, come to papa.”

  “What did you find? A ham sandwich?”

  “Better.” He stared at the plastic wafer feeling something very close to love.

  “What’s that?”

  He turned to the desk and pulled the laptop toward him. “That, my dear, is a Wi-Fi card.”

  “Wi-Fi?”

  “A wireless network card to get Internet service in airports and cafés. Places like that. He probably uses it on travel.” Alex slid the card into its slot with a snap, with only an inch or so projecting beyond the computer case.

  “You didn’t get it put in all the way,” Julia told him.

  Alex pushed on it a little. “It’s supposed to stick out like that. That must be why he had it tossed in his desk. A decent laptop would already have the antenna installed.” Life in the nonprofit environment meant that
you made do. Then again, a laptop was a laptop. Alex pulled the computer closer and began nosing around the Start menu. “The thing is, if there’s an open network around here, we might be able to get online. We can’t send messages on his mail application or people won’t know it’s us, but we can go to a Web-mail site and set up an account.” He brought up a window listing local wireless connections. “Okay, do you feel lucky?”

  Julia scanned the little window. “They’re all password-protected.”

  “Nearly all. But look at this sweet thing.”

  “Netgear, unsecured network,” she said slowly.

  “Exactly. Let’s hope it’s a home network or that somebody’s working Saturdays.”

  They stared at the screen as the tiny icon of the antenna sent out little dots. Suddenly, it disappeared and a tiny image of a computer sprang up, showing the connection.

  “That’s it, we’re on!” Julia was jubilant. “Go to the Net. Forget about Web mail, just go to the NYPD site. I’m sure they’ve got a way you can mail them directly. Open up the browser.”

  And Alex just sat, staring at the screen.

  “Alex, open up the browser.” She looked at him. “What’s wrong?”

  What was wrong was that if they sent e-mail to enough people, they would be rescued. It was a given. He should have been happy about it. He was starving. Being locked up was driving him crazy.

  Being with Julia felt just right.

  He needed more time, he thought. He was making progress. They were connecting—the moment in the book repository had demonstrated that to him. But he needed more time to change her mind, to show her what they could be together. He needed more time to convince her to give them a chance.

  Turning away wasn’t an option, though. It wasn’t just his choice, his life. He owed it to her to do whatever possible to get her out.

  Alex stirred. “Okay, let’s get this show goin…dammit to hell.”

  They both saw the red line appear across the wireless-network icon at the same time.

  Connection broken.

  “Bring it back up,” Julia said urgently. “Click on it.”