Trove (The Katie Walsh Mysteries)

by KJ Montgomery

  “Aye, it will go no further.”

  Alec hesitated, his face clouded, aided by the shadows cast from the street lamps.

  “I prefer people to be direct. No need to beat around the bush, so to speak. Just be out with it,” she said, turning to face him directly.

  He breathed deeply, as he crossed his arms. “I‘ve just been offered a job and I’ve accepted.”

  She flashed him a genuine smile. “Congratulations. But what does that have to do with the Institute, with me?” She tucked her hands under her thighs to stop their trembling. She searched his face for any hint of what he was trying to tell her. She needed to maintain her composure. She didn’t like surprises as a rule. The look on his face, one that heralded bad news, made her dinner come alive and start swimming in her stomach. She swallowed.

  He glanced away, looking everywhere but at her, clearly hesitating before speaking. Finally he raised his eyes and turned to face her again. He looked directly into her wide stare. He dropped his arms back to his thighs. “Katie, the job I accepted is Director of the Celtic Lore Division at the Nordstrom Institute.” He exhaled, seeming to get his bearings. “I’m your new boss.”

  Eric gasped, almost choking.

  She felt as if she’d been shoved off an iceberg into frigid water, her brain momentarily disconnecting from her voice, her body reacting as if by remote control. She slid down the bench from him, turning to face him again only when the cold metal armrest halted her escape. Her face was on fire, the anger, the hurt threatening to overwhelm her. She could literally feel the heat rising. That job was supposed to be hers. What the hell happened?

  She swallowed, slowly sweeping her head from side to side. “I don’t understand,” she said, clenching her hands. “The board of directors of the Nordstrom Institute all but guaranteed me that position upon my return from this conference. I know I don’t know you, but is this your idea of a sick joke?”

  “No, I wouldn’t pull something like that on you. I wouldn’t toy with you. I have too much respect for you and your reputation,” he said, uncertainty creeping into his expression.

  She took a few deep breaths, trying to wrap her head around this nightmare that was only getting worse by the second. “I have the experience in Celtic myths and legends, not to mention how intimately I’ve become acquainted with many artifacts over the last seven years I spent creating the database. Add to that the fact that I’ve become an expert in Anglo-Saxon runes which are a rich source of the lore…” She glared at him. “Surely you can’t claim to be anywhere near the expert in them that I am.”

  She felt the screams of frustration fomenting at the back of her throat threatening to spew forth like Vesuvius erupting. “I’ve never heard of you professionally before tonight.” Her emotions were fast swirling out of control, and that she would not allow. She faced him and tilted her head back, partly to see him and partly in defiance of what he’d just told her. “What did you say your background was? I could swear it was archaeology. Seems like someone mistook your experience in ruins for runes,” she seethed quietly.

  “Katie, let me explain—”

  “Explain what? When I started at the Institute, the runes catalog was minimal and the translations were weak. I went in and beefed up the collection. I turned the translations into a robust resource that allowed others to leverage the information into their work. I also researched numerous other artifacts and discovered correlations between individual items.”

  She stood as straight as her spine allowed, facing him, her clenched fists planted on her hips. “Do you hear what I’m saying? I did it. Me, myself, and I,” she said, pointing her finger in her chest. “They all laughed at me, told me I was wasting my time and the Institute’s resources. And now, now they can’t get their hypocritical hands on my work fast enough.” She wasn’t sure if she were headed for an explosion or a meltdown as she clenched and unclenched her fists repeatedly.

  He lifted his head, his sight riveted on her and her clenching hands. “Katie, the rise in the reputation of the Nordstrom Institute is due in large part to your work in my humble opinion. My appointment is not meant as a negative reflection of you. Your contribution to the Institute is a valuable asset.”

  She strode to the stone balustrade, hands unclenched, now planted on her hips, then turned to face him and a now standing Eric. She leaned back against the railing as if it would provide her with the support she suddenly felt lacking. “So the fact that I created the software program that vastly increased the correlations between artifacts and documents that had previously been considered as stand-alone items means nothing?” She blew out her breath in several quick pants, trying to collect her thoughts and force her confused emotions into order. Through clenched teeth she asked, “What would I have to do to earn a promotion, create a time-machine?”

  “That’s not true and you know it.”

  “Obviously, I don’t. Do you want to know why?”

  She continued before he could respond, “Because if I knew it, I’d understand why, at the very last minute, the job… the job that was supposed to be mine, was offered to you, an archaeologist, a damn digger, no less.”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “Katie, please let me explain—”

  “I am assuming,” she said, cutting him off, “and it may be a rather large assumption on my part, that you at least know what runes are?”

  When he didn’t answer she continued, “Runes in basic terms are characters created to represent meanings. They are not letters. Combinations of runes are used to create phrases or contextual references. Slight variations in the runes can lead to vastly different interpretations. That is one of the critical benefits of my software program.”

  “Katie, I know what runes are but thanks for the refresher. And just so you know, my studies in archaeology have focused on Celtic and Nordic ruins in the British Isles. It’s not like I’m out of my element.”

  “And that makes you infinitely more qualified than I am?” She shook her head. “Who would have ever seen that coming, someone who spends their time digging in the dirt hoping to discover Camelot becomes the head of the Celtic Lore group.”

  He rose and walked toward her. Eric shadowed him. “I understand how you feel, having lost out on the promotion.”

  She crossed her arms, wrapping them tightly around her. “Lost out on the promotion? You make it sound like I lost the weekly lottery. I worked hard for that promotion.”

  She turned, raising her head to look at him in the lamplight. “For the last seven years of my life, I’ve dug through old documents, crawled around artifacts that were poorly catalogued, had to deal with male colleagues with roaming hands. I not only straightened that mess out, but I added value to their context. And you, you waltz in at the last minute and just manage to get the position, based on what? ”

  When he didn’t respond she said softly, “Just think of this for a moment. Suppose you were about to be handed a plum archaeological assignment. One which you were eminently qualified for and would validate your intelligence and standing among your peers once and for all. Now, at the very last minute, you found out that the job was awarded to someone with no experience in archaeology, say… someone with my background. Tell me, Dr. MacGowan, how would you feel?”

  He looked away from her. He braced his arms on the stone railing, leaning and staring out over the Thames. “Look, please don’t shoot the messenger, but I don’t know why I was selected over you. To answer your question though, I wouldn’t like it. In fact, I’d be pissed.”

  “I thought so,” she said, her voice hoarse with frustration, tears pooling, shimmering, and threatening to spill over. She lowered her head, shaking the tears out of her eyes and watching as they hit the ground, before looking back at him. “Tell me, how much money did your brother have to donate to the Institute to secure the offer?”

  He looked as if he’d been stabbed. His expression darkened. “My brother had nothing to do with it. He actually went before the board and
detailed why he supported you.”

  After swallowing a sob that threatened to escape, she managed to say, “Thank God I have one friend at the Institute.”

  “Katie, I want us to work together. Our backgrounds are complementary. We can leverage that combination. I know we can be a success in the new division. We can succeed beyond what anyone can imagine. I’m that certain of our synergy.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. MacGowan,” she said, as the tears born of anger and hurt began to slowly drip down her cheeks, “but I think that highly unlikely. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel a severe case of jet lag coming on.”

  She sidestepped past him, grabbing Eric’s arm for support, and hailed a cab.

  As the cab pulled away, she looked out and saw him standing under the street lamp, his expression tight with strain and something else. Was it sadness?

  ****

  Katie paced back and forth in her room, clenching and releasing her fists as she fumed over tonight’s debacle. She didn’t know which was worse, losing her promotion, or losing it to him. They weren’t ever to see each other after that night and then the piece de resistance, he was a damn digger.

  “What the hell happened? I was all but guaranteed that job.” She moaned as she swept her head from side to side trying to fathom what he’d told her. “I knew it, I just knew it. I had this feeling niggling at me, but why all the lying, the subterfuge, stringing me along?”

  She grabbed her cell phone and dialed John Bolt in HR. Thanks to the time difference he was still in the office. He picked up on the third ring.

  “Dr. Walsh. What can I do for you?”

  “You can drop the doctor, John. We’ve known each other too long to play that game. I need to know...is it true? Is Alec MacGowan the new director?” Her hands trembled as she tried to quell the anger and hurt that threatened to consume her,

  “Yes, Katie, it is. I sympathize with you, especially since I can hear how upset you are, but unfortunately there is nothing I can do.”

  “So I take it that I’ve been assigned to his division?” she asked.

  “Yes, at least for the time being.”

  “I want to see a list of open positions. Would you please email it to me?”

  “Your skill set severely limits your options Katie, but I’ll send you the list tonight.”

  “Thanks.” Katie sighed softly, relaxing a bit. “John, tell me something,” she said, softening her tone, “why wasn’t I given the position? I’ve done so much work and improved the reputation of the Institute. I’ve done so much more than anyone ever hoped. Dammit, John, I created that division. It should be mine.”

  “I wasn’t privy to the board’s decision-making process, and I do agree that your work’s been stellar. Maybe, if I can speak as your friend, maybe it’s your rather solitary work style. You’ve been successful, but it’s been a singular effort. You have to admit, you don’t try to work in a team environment.”

  “I get results but because I won’t stick my nose up someone’s butt, stroke someone’s ego, I don’t get the position? That’s so not fair.”

  “Life’s not fair, Katie, but here’s my advice. Take a few days to think about it before you make any long-term career decisions.”

  She pondered what he was saying before admitting that her options were pretty much non-existent at the moment, and to be honest, it made sense. “Okay,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “I think I’ll take you up on your suggestion to think it over before doing anything drastic. But I still want the option of applying for any position that I see fit.”

  “If you find any, let me know and I’ll start the application process.”

  “John?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why was he here, in London?”

  “Not sure what you mean, Katie.”

  “Well, why did he tell me about the promotion, his being my boss? Shouldn’t that have come from your HR group or the board of directors?”

  Katie heard him inhale. “It was a decision made by Dr. Austin. I had no say in the matter.”

  “The founder of the Nordstrom Institute decided to let Dr. MacGowan tell me and not HR? Since when does that happen?”

  “Since never, Katie.”

  ****

  Katie spent the next few days attending the different seminars, demonstrations, and presentations. She was pleased to see the advance in computer-based tools that would aid in the research and documentation process. So impressed was she by a handheld wand scanner that she ordered one online via her personal account and was assured it would be delivered to the Institute before she returned to Boston. The key selling point of the wand was its ability to scan bound documents without harming the original. Once they were scanned, she’d be able to download the images to her laptop, then manipulate, link, and compare different documents. Her mind was in overdrive as she thought of the discoveries this technology might unlock.

  She noticed that Alec was not at the conference and after checking her emails from Laura Benson, her assistant, discovered that he was back in Boston at the Institute.

  On Thursday, with the conference behind them, she and Eric spent the better part of the day reviewing their Overlay Project. This was her latest pride and joy. She was convinced it would work and add even more prestige to the Institute’s reputation and hers. More importantly, it would substantiate her belief and help her prove that, at their very core, myths and legends were based on fact. Once she’d uncovered the basis of just one myth, the origins of just one legend, she’d have succeeded and thumbed her nose at all those naysayers proving the validity of her hypothesis and how it should invite more research.

  This project would allow the user to take a geographical area and run the clock backwards, restoring the land to what it looked like at various points in the past, revealing a much different landscape, rebuilding eroded mountains, uncovering ancient migration routes, re-foresting lands now barren, and hopefully much more. In a way, she thought, she was a treasure hunter, not of objects like jewels and gold, but a hunter of knowledge.

  If this succeeded, her first quest would be to locate Norland, prove it was real, and then find the Knowledge Crystals. If she could find proof of the Trove Runes, it would move her light-years closer to the core of the myth and the crystals. Legend, from what she’d been able to decipher, had it that the settlers of Norland, survivors of Atlantis, had encoded their knowledge of earth science, medicine and energy fields into crystals, probably hoping that they would last a very long time if protected from the elements. This made sense since she knew that in modern time crystals where used to store data and were rather durable. For some reason, if the legend was true, this knowledge had been lost for thousands of years, but not destroyed. It could be recovered. There had been other anecdotal reports of Atlantis using crystals to store energy. She just knew that if they could use the crystals for power, then by extension they would probably have used them to store data.

  If she could find these crystals, she’d be able to prove her theory that there had been survivors of the destruction of Atlantis and that one of the groups had settled in western Britain, near what was now the Isle of Skye. She needed to identify possible sites. “So, Eric, once this step is completed, can we try incorporating the use of GPS coordinates?”

  Eric nodded. “Aye, I’ve almost finished linking into the supercomputer at the Institute with a user-friendly interface. That should allow you to run the program using the extensive maps and satellite photos stored on the mainframe.”

  Katie sighed, pleased with how far they’d come. “I can’t believe we’re so close to the end of phase one. You know what my first quest will be?”

  “Nae.” He laughed, his deep voice rumbling through his chest. “Would it be Norland?”

  “Oh, you know it.” She smiled. “If I could find any trace that would help me prove my theory and unwind the legend to discover just what was at the core…”

  “Aye, t’would be something, lassie, but just so you know, the ini
tial load and linking of the software and the supercomputer may take a day or two and that’s assuming it all goes smoothly.”

  She grinned. “Did you ever think when you were at university studying geology that you’d morph into a techno-geek?”

  “Nae, no more than I ever dreamt of hooking up with a renegade researcher by the name of Katie Walsh.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “We make a great team, lassie.”

  “Yes, yes, we do,” she said as she pulled away from him, suddenly uncomfortable with the intimate gesture. “I got confirmation that we can link to the computer this weekend, if you’re ready. You can start tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  She stood and stretched. “Good. Let’s give the supercomputer a real workout.”

  ****

  After checking with Eric on Friday morning and finding that the linking and initialization were proceeding well, she headed off to meet Henri St. Claire. Henri was a collector and dealer in obscure objects mostly from the British Isles. Though now well into his seventies, Henri was as spry and sharp as someone half his age.

  Katie had discovered his name noted on the inventory tags of several items she’d uncovered in the Institute’s storage rooms during her cataloging project. There was such an odd mixture of items that had been procured by him that she just had to meet him. After several phone conversations, they had agreed to meet when she was next in London. That was more than two years ago. While not close friends, they each had respect for the other.

  Though not a collector of things because of their investment value, she had started to collect objects that she believed were linked to Celtic and Nordic myths and legends. The few items she already had in her possession provided her with a tangible link, an immediate connection to the distant past.

  Shortly after their initial meeting, she had asked Henri to seek out a dagger with a rough-hewn, unpolished emerald in its handle. At least she believed it to be an emerald. It could be a green agate, but frankly she didn’t care. The artifact itself, not the component parts, held value in her mind. Legends had survived through the last thousand years that named this dagger the “Emerald Blade.” She believed that this was a modern name for the artifact, derived from the emerald that had been embedded and protected in the hilt. She thought the item may in fact be the “Stone of Grass.” The link between this dagger and Norland existed only in her mind at this moment. But while creating the robust catalog at the Institute, she’d run across two obscure references. One was tenuous at best, but the other provided a more tangible connection to Norland. This blade was one of two. The other resembled it, but instead of an emerald, it held a ruby, and was commonly known as the “Dirk of Skye.” If related it would be the “Stone of Blood.” Her research revealed that this blade was acquired several years ago by Lord Anthony Chester, the owner of Willowton. While she was on friendly terms with Lord Chester, she had yet to see it. She didn’t want to make her interest in the blades known, at least not yet.