Sin and Sacrifice

by Danielle Bourdon

  Looking up, they locked gazes.

  “What the hell are you doing? Stop running!” he shouted.

  Evelyn took off down the alley. She refused to stop or slow down. There was no need to listen to his excuses. Bastard. How could she have been so naive.

  The metallic thump of his shoes on the metal rungs of the ladder encouraged her to go faster. Zig-zagging through another market, she looked for places to duck into. Places like the last where she could double back or hide or come out a different exit on another street that might throw him off her trail. There were less people here and she didn't know whether to be angry or thankful.

  A jewelry and bead shop looked like it might connect elsewhere in the building, or perhaps she could bribe the owner to hide her. Either way she rushed in, accidentally knocking over a display. Thousands of beads flew everywhere, a riot of color that made the floor a haphazard landscape. Several shouts erupted at once and she gave up thinking to ask the owners to help her. The more commotion they made, the more it would draw Rhett's attention.

  While confusion reigned, she found a door that led into another shop and she didn't even hesitate. Running through, toppling racks of clothes and collectables, she burst out onto another street teeming with tourists. It looked to be some sort of gathering or party.

  Someone grabbed her ponytail, wrenching her head back. Screaming, thinking Rhett had finally caught up with her, she aimed a vicious kick at the man's knee. She felt it give and bow backwards, hyper extending the joint. When he howled and fell to the ground, she realized that it wasn't Rhett but someone who'd probably thought she was a thief and had been trying to stop her.

  Disoriented for a moment, knowing his caterwauling would draw more attention, she glanced around to get her bearings. A glimpse of Rhett crashing through the shop drove her forward, barreling through people and onto another, less busy street. Here, where she had room to move, she picked up speed, uncaring at the way passerby whipped their heads around to watch her go.

  A narrow alleyway between two buildings came up on her right and she swerved into the dark opening, feet pounding, breath coming in gasps. Not being a main street, the corridor looked empty, desolate. Muted light from two bulbs spilled over the asphalt, just enough to see by.

  She didn't realize she was crying until the alley became blurry and out of focus. Passing two fire escapes, she looked for side doors into shops or businesses and found three—but they were all locked when she tried them.

  Whirling at the crunch of gravel underfoot, she saw Rhett standing perhaps twenty feet away, poised like he'd been stalking her. His chest rose and fell with heavy, rapid breaths.

  He held up a hand in the traditional gesture of Stop. “Evelyn, listen to me--”

  “You liar!” she shouted, reaching into the waistband of her jeans to snatch the gun out. Bringing it up, shaking to the point the barrel wavered three or four inches in any direction, she aimed it at him.

  He put both hands out this time. “I have to explain--”

  “I've heard enough from you! Is your name even Rhett? Is it? You've been lying to me this whole time!” The shrill edge to her voice carried through the alley.

  “We can't do this here, Evelyn. You're going to draw too much attention,” he said, taking a cautious step closer.

  “Stop! Don't you dare move another inch.” Clenching her teeth, furious and hurt, she tried to steady the gun. Rhett had abused her trust—trust that she should never have given him—in ways that threatened to shatter her. Fear ticked along her pulse like a mad insect, racing to and fro, to and fro.

  He stopped, palms still up in surrender. “There are things you don't understand, Evelyn.”

  She cut him off. “I understand what you are. That's all I need to know. You've been lying since the very beginning. What did you all do, decide to have you 'rescue' me, so that I'd trust you and lead you to my sisters? Bastard!”

  The whole sordid plot unfurled before her eyes; a daring save, a charming 'agent', selfless acts of protection. They'd planned the entire thing from the beginning. She felt sick beyond anything she'd ever experienced.

  He cocked his head and looked confused. “I thought you said you didn't have any sisters?”

  “Stop playing games!” She railed at him, angrier by the second that he continued his ruse. If he was a Templar, then of course he knew she had sisters. Sisters they pretended they were going to rescue. Evelyn didn't know what happened to the girls, but she suspected they couldn't get in contact because they'd been hounded worse than she'd been.

  “I'm not playing games. Evelyn, come back to the hotel--”

  “No! I'm not going anywhere with you.” The gun wavered, centering on him.

  “I don't know what you're thinking--”

  “I saw the tattoo, Rhett.”

  His eyes narrowed in a calculating way. “So? What's it mean to you?”

  What did it mean? Death and destruction.

  “It means you're one of them. You've known all along. Did you participate in my torture, even?” Nausea gripped her hard. That he could have such a cruel streak after making her feel safe unnerved her. The duplicity was so extreme that she could hardly wrap her mind around it.

  “Do you think I'd have risked my ass, rushing into that basement to save you, if I'd been a part of it? Lower the gun, Evelyn.” He took a step closer and had the audacity to look affronted.

  “Don't,” she hissed. “Don't do it.”

  “You're not thinking clearly. Just stop for a second and listen to what I have to say.”

  “I don't need to listen. I know what you want.”

  “What is it you think I want? Besides sisters you told me you didn't have.”

  “How could you have done this? I trusted you, Rhett.” Evelyn choked back a fresh sob that started to rise up her throat. “Was it you that sent me that text? No wonder the boat found us so fast. You were telling them where we were the whole time.”

  “I did not tell anyone our location. What is it you think you know about the tattoo, Evelyn?”

  “It doesn't matter what I know. Or how. It matters that you all lied, thinking I'd lead you to my sisters. You don't actually have them in your custody, do you? That was a ploy and a lie like the rest.”

  Rhett looked perplexed. “Have you forgotten I came under gunfire? That I almost took a bullet head on for you?”

  Evelyn couldn't believe how realistic his confusion seemed. It antagonized her further. “Staged, like your fake concern and your kisses.”

  “You're crazy if you think I was faking that. There's some kind of miscommunication going on here, Evelyn. Just take a second to breathe. Let's go back to the hotel and figure it out.” He closed the distance by a foot. Cautious, careful. Watching her eyes.

  “Don't. Take. Another. Step.” She clipped out each word with a shaky voice. Her insides were a mess of tension and stress.

  “Or what, Evelyn? I know you won't shoot me. You can't stand there and tell me you haven't felt the same thing between us that I have since we met.”

  “No. That was nothing. And it was certainly nothing to you. If you really thought I wouldn't shoot you, you would have just come over here and grabbed the gun by now.”

  “You don't believe that--”

  “Don't tell me what I believe!” She took a step back, gripping the gun with both hands. The muzzle shook like she was having mild seizures. Through the gloom, she could see people passing the end of the alley in periphery. They were alone, but they wouldn't be alone for long. He'd probably alerted Christian. Maybe even Dracht and Dragar.

  Of course he had.

  “Give me the gun, Evelyn. Let me take you somewhere safe so we can figure out what's going on.” He stretched out a hand. Coming closer.

  The crack of debris under his boots sounded so loud to Evelyn just then. Every one of her senses seemed exacerbated by the strain of the moment; the green of his eyes was greener, his hair more golden. She could hear him breathing, hear the rustle of
of his shirt when he moved. The gun felt heavier, less steady. Cold. Hard. And much deadlier when it bucked in her hands the second she pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Eight

  Dracht glanced down to the paper in his hand. The license plate number matched the one of the van parked in the lot of the decrepit church.

  “It's the same one,” he said.

  “I'll bet they've got them in the basement again,” Dragar said, rechecking the rounds in his clip before sliding it into the gun. “There has to be another door leading down there besides having to go through the front.”

  Two other men in the back of their own van made final preparations. All were dressed in black to blend in better with the night. They wore shoulder holsters under their jackets. Each had a belt on with additional supplies: minor explosives, mirrors, stun grenades, heavy sedatives.

  Dracht looked out the windshield from the driver's seat and brought the binoculars up to scan the outside of the building. It was the fourth time he'd checked for security. They'd gotten word only an hour ago that the van had been spotted. Dracht didn't want to waste a second closing in. With any luck, they wouldn't arrive to find the women moved to another location, like the last time.

  “Anything?” Dragar asked.

  “Nothing. I think I see stairs at the back but no one's guarding them.”

  “That'll be the door directly to the basement we need,” Dragar added, then spoke over his shoulder to one of the men in the back. “Raoul, bring the bolt cutters just in case.”

  “I'm on it, boss,” Raoul said, taking the bolt cutters out of a bag on the metal floor.

  “If we're going, we need to go now. There's only about an hour until daylight,” Dracht said, lowering the binoculars.

  “Then let's go.” Dragar pushed open the door and got out.

  On cue, the other men exited at the same time, leaving the doors cracked so they wouldn't alert anyone on guard at the church to their presence.

  Four hulking shadows crossed the street and swarmed the back stairs, descending one at a time.

  Dracht stood to the side and let Raoul cut the chain wrapped through the door handles. He wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad sign. Either the group of men wanted to make it hard for anyone to get in, or they'd already vacated the premises. The van could be a decoy to make them spend time here while the group interrogated the women somewhere else.

  The church, on the outskirts of Athens, was an older monument that had not gone through renovations in some time. Thin spires rose high and sharp against the black sky, like needles trying to pierce heaven. A large cross threw a shadow down onto the sidewalk from the moon. Stained glass windows depicting scenes from the bible lined every wall. Several had been broken out from vandals who had no care for religion or sacred places.

  After Raoul painstakingly removed the chain, Dracht opened one of the doors and listened; in the distance he heard water dripping and a strange metallic noise that creaked rhythmically. The men around him stayed quiet, keeping an eye out in different directions so that they weren't taken by surprise.

  Dracht made eye contact with Dragar. At the go-ahead nod, he crouched and went in; for such a big man, Dracht could move with predatory speed. One spare, lone light bulb swung from the ceiling on a string, casting eerie shadows on a long basement with discolored, pocked walls and thick wooden support beams. Gun drawn, he swung it left and right, ready to encounter anything.

  The sight that greeted him when he passed a support beam that had been blocking his view was a shocking study in premeditated violence. A black woman hung from her wrists, head sunk down against her chest in death. Naked, her toes dangled at least a foot from the cold, concrete floor. A pool of blood sat beneath her, dripping down from the hole in her chest where her captors had cut out her heart.

  This must be Genevieve.

  “Mother of god,” Raoul whispered somewhere behind him.

  In this business, Dracht had seen a great many things. Vicious, ugly things. Torture, death, dismemberment. The impact of this girl's death hit him strange and hard and for reasons he could not understand. It felt like something precious had been lost, the light of goodness doused by something evil. This woman should not have died.

  Dracht knew and understood that instinctively. The quiet noises the others made assured him that they felt the same thing he did. Unexplainable. Odd. Unlike any other death scene he'd come across in his lifetime.

  He wondered if the men who'd found the blond behind the nightclub had the same reaction.

  “Room's clear,” Raoul said after a cursory sweep.

  Dracht lowered his gun, mouth thinning in disapproval and disgust.

  Dragar stepped past him, weapon down at his side. He made a wide circle around the girl, looking for other clues and signs. Dracht knew Dragar well and he could see and sense the same disturbance about this death that he himself felt.

  Raoul and Benecio came to stand at his flank. Their unease was unusual and palpable.

  “Go check the church and the back steps to make sure they aren't circling around to trap us in here,” Dracht said.

  Raoul cut one way and Benecio cut another.

  The drip of blood made no noise, but it grated on Dracht's nerves nevertheless.

  “This is different than other killings, hm?” Dragar said, bringing up what Dracht hadn't said into the open.

  “Yes. You feel it, too?”

  “I do. I want to have her examined by a private physician and see if they find anything unusual. Besides the obvious. There's something here we're missing,” Dragar said.

  “It doesn't look like they've killed the other women yet, unless they've done so between this stop and another.” Dracht brooded over the fact that the murderers were keeping one step ahead of them and they hadn't saved Genevieve in time.

  “They could have split off into two groups. Rhett said there were four of them in the room when he got Evelyn,” Dragar replied. He came to stand next to Dracht facing away from the dangling woman.

  Dracht hadn't thought about them splitting off into two groups, but it made perfect sense. “If they've done that, then there's even more here than we thi--”

  Raoul came back into the gloomy basement at a run, cell phone in his hand. “Christian just called. He said we need to fly back to Port Said immediately. Rhett's been shot.”

  In the underworld of politics and religion, men of power had resources at their disposal other people did not. Such as the private jet that swept Dracht and Dragar across the Mediterranean toward Egypt; such as the team they left behind to take care of the deceased Genevieve. Dracht had left specific instructions that she was to be handled like a precious jewel or face the consequences of his wrath. He'd called the mortuary holding the other one, Galiana, and expressed his desire for them to keep the body in cold storage rather than cremate her until he had some answers.

  The tasks kept him busy until they landed on the private airstrip where a waiting car whisked them away to a hospital on the outskirts of Port Said. Even here they had pull. Christian would have made sure to get Rhett out of the public eye and have him treated by a physician who could be trusted to keep his mouth shut. They had discovered in flight that Rhett had not been mortally wounded, which notched down the anxiety several levels.

  When they walked into the secure, isolated hospital room, Dracht was not surprised to see Rhett sitting up on the bed yanking at the IV line. He had a bandage over the top half of his left shoulder with a small spot of blood seeping through the pristine, white gauze. A flesh covered bandage protected what he supposed was the other wound Rhett had acquired saving Evelyn from the safe house.

  Two close calls.

  “What the hell happened?” Dracht asked while Dragar went closer to investigate.

  Christian stood up from a chair in the corner and hovered near the other side of the bed with his hands in his pockets after the greetings.

  “She shot me, that's what happened,” Rhett said with a snort.

>   “Evelyn shot you?” Dracht asked. Of all the scenarios he'd imagined, that was not one of them.

  “That's right.”

  “The kicker, is that he gave her lessons in the desert, thinking to help--”

  “Shut up, Christian,” Rhett growled.

  At any other time, Dracht might have thrown his head back and laughed. The recent death in the basement and Rhett having been shot by the woman he was protecting subdued his humor.

  “I guess you didn't teach her how to shoot to kill?” Dragar asked, clapping Rhett on the shoulder once he seemed sure the man wasn't dying.

  “I taught her just fine. If she wouldn't have closed her eyes when she pulled the trigger I might be in the morgue right now,” Rhett said with disgust.

  “Do you think she would have really killed you?” Dracht asked, growing more serious at the question.

  “I don't think so. I think she was scared and wanted to slow me down.” Rhett didn't seem disgusted so much at Evelyn as with himself.

  Dracht regarded Rhett with a sharper eye. “Why did she shoot you to begin with?”

  “Because she saw the tattoo.” Rhett twisted his torso around so Dracht and Dragar could see the way the 'patch' had peeled away from his skin. Half of the Templar tattoo was visible.

  “I don't understand,” Dragar said. “Why would that send her into flight?”

  “She apparently knows something about it. I couldn't get what she knew out of her. Situation was too tense,” Rhett answered.

  “How could she know? That secret has been carried down through the centuries. Only rumors exist outside the Church and our group,” Dracht said. He wasn't sure what to think that some random woman knew about their status. Even people that had seen the tattoos didn't know what they really meant. The legend of the Templars had died out hundreds of years ago.