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As Josh made his way over to the reporter, pushing through the crowd, Malachai followed him as if he needed to keep him in sight to keep him safe.
They exchanged greetings, and then Charlie, assuming that Josh was there on assignment, asked who he was covering the story for.
“I’m not here as press, I was here as a guest of the professor. But listen, I need you to—”
“Wait a minute. Do you mean you were here during the shooting?”
Josh nodded, annoyed that he’d inadvertently made himself part of the story.
“Did you see who did this? Did you get a shot of him?” Charlie glanced at the ever-present camera around Josh’s neck.
“I’ll give you all that later, but first you need to help me. This is urgent. This crowd could make it impossible for the police to collect evidence if they get any closer to the area around the tomb. They could be trampling evidence now. I can’t speak Italian, you can. Would you talk to them and ask them to stay back?”
“How ‘bout I trade you. I’ll talk to them and you tell me something I can use. What happened down there?”
“C’mon Charlie—” Josh pointed “—look.” The Goth girls were starting to cross the field.
“Okay, but when I’m done, I’m going to find you.” He started off. “You owe me now,” he called out over his shoulder.
Malachai had stepped away while Josh was talking to Charlie, but now he came forward again. “Bastard.” He indicated the reporter. “But I suppose it’s inevitable the press would be here.”
“He’s okay. I know him from way back. If I play it straight with him, he won’t screw us. Listen, I still—”
Loud wailing interrupted as three police cars arrived and officers jumped out.
“The press is the least of our problems now,” Malachai said. “After they figure out who’s who, the police are going to want to question us. We need to work out what we’re going to say about being here. This is going to be an explosive story, and I don’t want the foundation to be part of it.”
Yet another siren sounded as the ambulance readied to take the professor to the hospital. Josh glanced over. Something was holding them up. Now Josh saw Gabriella, fighting to get into the ambulance with the stretcher. The female medic blocked her and then, when Gabriella didn’t back off, physically pushed her away. Gabriella stumbled backward, tripped and fell to the ground. Without looking back, the medic hurried into the ambulance and slammed the door as it took off.
“She needs help,” Josh said, and ran toward her.
Once he reached her side he knelt down next to her. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
“They wouldn’t let me go with them.” She sat on the grass, eyes peeled on the vehicle as it disappeared.
“They didn’t have room.”
“But he’s alone,” she said, sounding dazed.
“He’s going to get the best care they can give him.” It was like talking to a child.
“Is he going to be all right?” She turned to Josh for the first time. As a photographer, he’d looked into thousands of anguished faces, but her pained expression ripped at him in an intensely personal way, which he couldn’t understand.
“I hope so,” he said. “Are you sure you’re okay, though? That was a tough fall.”
She didn’t seem to understand his question.
“You fell.”
She looked around, noticing where she was as if for the first time. Then, brushing off her hands, she stood up.
“I’m okay,” she said to Josh.
“You sure? You seemed pretty out of it there.” He handed her the knapsack she’d left on the ground, forgotten.
“I’m okay. I am. I just need to find out—”
By now, Charlie Billings had made his way over. “Gabriella?” He reached out and touched her arm. “What happened here?”
“Not yet, Charlie,” she said.
Josh was surprised that she knew him, then he remembered that Rudolfo had said she’d been talking to the press.
“Not for the record, then?”
“I don’t think she’s up to it. Give her some time,” Josh said.
“You’re really racking up those favors, you know?”
Josh offered his old colleague a nod.
“Can you tell me how the professor is?” Charlie asked Gabriella, still trying to get something for his story.
“He’s in critical condition, that’s all I know.”
Charlie scribbled something on his pad, and Josh took advantage of the moment to take Gabriella by the elbow and steer her away from the edge of the road and the reporter to her car. As Josh helped her into the backseat, Malachai, who was behind the wheel, said, “Josh, hurry up and get in. I think it would be wise to leave now and avoid the circus while we still can. Gabriella, do you have the keys?”
Focused on Josh, she didn’t answer.
“I just realized who you are. You’re Josh Ryder, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“You were here the whole time?”
“I was. I’m sorry.”
“Where did all this happen?”
“We were in the tomb when—”
“You were in the tomb with him?” she interrupted. “This happened inside the tomb?”
“Yes.”
“I want to go down to the site … I need to see it.” Pushing past Josh she got out of the car. Both Josh and Malachai got out and followed her. Catching up to her before she got too far, Malachai put his arm around her shoulder and stopped her. “It’s better to leave all this to the police. We’ll take you to the hospital. Come back to the car with me.”
“Not yet. I need to see the site first,” she said, shaking free.
“Let me go with you, then,” Josh said, concerned that she not be alone when she saw the blood, the broken artifacts and the state Sabina was in.
Not answering, or waiting, she took off, but before she had gone five feet, two policemen intercepted her.
The conversation appeared to go smoothly for the first three or four questions, until one of them must have asked something that agitated her, because she gestured wildly to the road, then turned, pointing back toward her car, inadvertently including Josh and Malachai in her gesture.
The policemen followed her glance.
Thirty seconds later, the two carabinieri approached Josh and Malachai.
“Mr. Ryder?” the younger one asked, looking at Malachai.
“No. I’m Josh Ryder.”
He asked him something in Italian.
Josh shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t understand.”
It seemed as if he’d said that to a dozen people already that morning. The language barrier was frustrating. He wanted to tell the policeman not to waste time with him when there was a man out there somewhere who had a gun and an ancient treasure and who was getting farther and farther away, but there was no way he could communicate that.
While this was going on, the carabinieri had their back to Gabriella and so they didn’t notice when she broke away. There were other police on the scene, busily interviewing people in the crowds, but, curiously, none of them were paying attention to the real scene of the crime—Gabriella’s destination, the tomb.
Of course not, Josh realized. None of them knew that the shooting had happened underground.
The policeman, who was still trying to talk to Josh, noticed him glance away and looked to see why. When he saw Gabriella, he called out to her.
She turned. There was fierce determination in her eyes, tear marks and dirt smeared on her face, dust on her clothes. She yelled back something Josh couldn’t understand and then descended into the tomb she had been responsible for discovering.
Josh’s heart lurched as she disappeared. He was desperately worried for her. There was no time to wonder why he was reacting so strongly to a stranger because, at that moment, two things happened almost simultaneously: the group of onlookers broke free from the sawhorses, and all the police took off to contain them.
Josh took advantage of the distraction to race toward the crypt.
“Stop, Josh. Let’s get out of here. Don’t—” Malachai shouted.
“She shouldn’t be down there alone,” he yelled back. He kept going, not knowing if the police were behind him or not. Not caring.
He was only a foot away when he heard Gabriella’s scream coming up from the ground. It was sharp and ragged, and so pained it sounded as if she were being tortured.
Chapter 13
She was on her knees in the corner of the crypt, kneeling beside Sabina’s broken body, emitting a low, keening cry of grief. It took Josh a few seconds to understand that Gabriella was saying the word no over and over; it sounded like a prayer.
He knew he was looking right at her, but he was seeing the tomb on another day.
A flash of a white robe.
Red hair.
Dark green eyes, filled with tears.
Sabina.
He wanted to reach out into the darkness, grab the specter and make her tell him what was happening here.
Gabriella’s voice, insistent, dark, brought him instantly to the present moment. “Kick the ladder out. Kick it hard and break it,” she said.
“What?”
“Quick! The ladder, pull it away from the wall.”
Still under the spell of his memory lurch, Josh did what she asked but didn’t understand why he was doing it.
“Now snap off the rungs. Use this—” She threw him a shovel. “Please, help me, buy me some time.”
Attacking the wooden ladder with a vengeance, he’d broken the top six rungs by the time the police arrived at the opening. He didn’t need to understand the language this time to know they wanted access to the tomb.
“Show them the broken ladder,” Gabriella said.
He wanted to smile at her clever, quick thinking, but he refrained. The man who had questioned him earlier looked from the ladder to Gabriella and then at Josh. Then he said something that caused the other officer to laugh and made Gabriella curse under her breath, “Pigs.”
Josh didn’t need to know what they’d said.
“You said you were down here when it happened?” she asked Josh as soon as the carabinieri were gone.
“The whole time. It happened too quickly for me to do any thing … to stop him… .”
She wasn’t looking at Josh anymore, but beyond him, examining the state of the tomb. It was the first time he’d really had a chance to study her with a photographer’s eyes; he noted the long neck, shoulder-length, wavy hair, full mouth and strong bones. It was her nose, aquiline with a hint of a bump, that turned a woman who would otherwise have been typically pretty into someone intriguing. She was wearing jeans and a white shirt with the top two buttons open, and Josh was shocked, in the middle of all this madness, to find himself wishing she’d left the third unbuttoned, as well.
“You said you saw who shot the professor? Who was it?”
“A security guard. Or at least he was dressed like one.”
“Did you take a picture of him?”
“No, it happened too fast. I was trying to get to the professor … I wish I had.”
She seemed baffled for a moment. “Why didn’t he shoot you, too?”
“I was in there.” Josh pointed at the tunnel, and a rush of images assaulted him: moving slowly through the space, the feeling of the dirt under his hands, the panic of the narrow space, the sense that something was terribly wrong and the urgency to get quickly to the other end.
For a second he was confused. Were these fresh images of what had happened an hour before or were they part of the mind movies?
Gabriella walked over to where he had pointed and noticed the tunnel for the first time. “What the hell is this?” She peered into the darkness. “Who dug this out?”
“I did.”
“Rudolfo allowed you to do this to our site?”
“He tried to stop me but … that’s why I couldn’t help the professor—I was pretty far back in there.”
