Hearing the rattle of a metal door, she peered through the jumble of furniture, keeping watch as the killer exited the fire escape. He’d removed his ski mask, and Edie could see that he sported a military-style buzz cut. His face mottled with rage, he looked to be on the verge of a steroid-induced rampage.
In hunting mode, the killer swiveled his head from side to side, perusing the alley. Edie saw a large bulge at the back of his waist. A gun. The very same gun that had killed Dr. Padgham.
Methodically, the killer’s gaze moved from target to target: blue Dumpster, green condenser, white service van. And then his gaze zeroed in on the furniture pile.
These may very well be the last few moments before my death.
Edie envisioned her bleeding body sprawled beneath a pile of discarded chairs put out for the trash. No doubt, that’s who would find her—the orange-suited guys in the sanitation department.
Holding her breath, Edie slowly counted backward from ten.
Ten, nine, eight, seven—
The killer’s gaze suddenly swung to the other side of the alley, where a group of recycling bins overflowed with aluminum soda cans.
She’d gone undetected.
Surprisingly light-footed for such a large man, the killer walked all the way down the alley toward Twenty-first Street before turning around and heading back to the fire escape. As he did, a police cruiser pulled into the alley from the opposite direction.
Relieved beyond words, Edie released a pent-up breath. Opening the door to the fire escape had obviously triggered a silent alarm, and the D.C. police had arrived to investigate.
Although for some strange reason the killer didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by the sudden appearance of the cop car, actually raising his hand to flag down the cruiser.
Why would he do that? she wondered. Might as well announce that he set off the alarm.
A few seconds later she had her answer. A uniformed police officer got out of the cruiser and approached the killer, who removed a duffel bag from his shoulder and handed it to the cop.
The bejeweled breastplate.
The cop was in on the murder.
The cavalry had come to kill her.
“Looks like the op is a go,” Edie overheard the cop say as he took custody of the stolen relic. “We fly to London at nineteen hundred hours.”
The killer shook his head. “We’ve got loose ends dangling. Someone else was in the museum besides Padgham and the two guards. The little shit escaped down the fire escape.”
A resounding bang ensued as the cop pummeled his fist against the hood of the police cruiser. “Shit! We’re fucked! The English fag was supposed to have been the only staff person in the building.”
“It gets even worse,” the killer said. Reaching into his breast pocket, he removed the same notepad that Edie had seen earlier. “Padgham e-mailed photos of the breastplate. I notified the tac team at Rosemont. They’re hunting down the person at the other end of Padgham’s e-mail.”
Watching the exchange, Edie took slow, deep breaths, willing her cramped legs to stop quivering, her body protesting the straitjacket confinement.
“This was supposed to have been a simple snatch-and-go,” the cop muttered.
“And sometimes a mission gets bogged down in the mire. What we need to do is find this fucker—what’s his name?—E. Miller and get things tidied up.”
Thank you, God. She’d caught a small break. They mistakenly thought she was a man. That’s who they would be looking for—a man, not a woman. They also didn’t know that Padgham never sent the e-mail. But that wasn’t her problem. Her problem was getting free and clear of the alley.
“So far, there’s been no calls made to 911.”
“When Miller does call, I want to know ASAP.”
“Don’t worry. I’m on it,” the cop said before getting into his police cruiser.
At hearing that, Edie felt the knot in her stomach tighten painfully. If she contacted the police, the killer would know where to find her. And because one of the killer’s cohorts—maybe more—wore a police uniform, she’d have no way of distinguishing the good guys from the bad.
More scared than ever, Edie watched as the police cruiser drove away. The exchange ended, the killer walked over to the service entrance of the museum and punched in a code to buzz the locked door open. As if he owned the place, Padgham’s killer went inside the museum.
Edie hurriedly backed out of her hidey-hole. Standing upright, she took a big gulp of air. The alley reeked of old urine and rotting garbage, the stench so strong her eyes welled with tears.
Hearing a loud mechanical rattle, she spun on her heel.
Across the alleyway a garage door slowly opened. Meaning she could exit the alley without having to go past the museum.
No sooner did a black BMW emerge from the underground garage than Edie broke into a run. Or at least tried to. Severely hobbled by cramped leg muscles, she awkwardly lurched forward.
The driver turned his head and glanced at her—a wild-haired terrified woman with an ungraceful gait—then just as quickly glanced away.
“Obviously, one of the apathetic multitudes,” Edie mumbled under her breath as she dodged into the garage.
Seeing an elevator, she headed toward it. Not until she was safe inside the elevator, the doors closing with a melodic chime, did she permit herself a sigh of relief. Although in actuality it was more like a sag of relief as her body went into an old-lady slump, her legs barely able to support her weight.
A few seconds later, the elevator doors opened onto what looked to be an upscale apartment building lobby. Straight ahead, a pair of plate glass doors beckoned. Overcome with a sudden burst of giddiness, she limped toward those beautiful glass doors with their big beautiful brass handles. Yanking the door on the right side wide open, Edie barely restrained herself from running up and hugging the mailman in the vestibule who was busy inserting mail into rows of identical-looking postal boxes. Instead, she smiled at him. A big, toothy, glad-to-be-alive smile.
Just then, a cab pulled up to the curb in front of the apartment building.
Free at last. Thank God Almighty, she was free at last.
CHAPTER 5
ROSEMONT SECURITY CONSULTANTS THE WATERGATE COMPLEX
Like a man who’d just been baptized in the cool waters of the Jordan, retired Marine Corps colonel Stanford J. MacFarlane stared at the jewel-encrusted breastplate.
The Stones of Fire.
Arguably one of the most sacred of all biblical relics, third only to the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Stan MacFarlane knew from his Bible studies that the twelve inlaid stones had originally been entrusted to Lucifer when he was still God’s favorite. After Lucifer’s expulsion from heaven, God retrieved the stones and later gave them to Moses, who created the breastplate according to God’s specific instruction. Worn only by the Hebrew high priest, the breastplate came to be known as the Stones of Fire. Hidden within the sacred confines of the Jerusalem Temple, the breastplate was plundered by the Babylonians when Nebuchadnezzar’s army sacked the holy city in the sixth century B.C. For the next twenty-six centuries, the holy relic had remained hidden in the deserts of Babylon, in what is now modern-day Iraq.
When the U.S. military forces liberated Iraq, Stan had ordered a special-ops team to find the relic. Much to the team’s chagrin, someone beat them to the prize. Shortly thereafter, he learned from paid informants that Eliot Hopkins, the director of the Hopkins Museum of Near Eastern Art, had uncovered the Stones of Fire in Iraq. Not about to let the relic elude him a second time, Stan sent his most trusted aide to retrieve the breastplate.