Shadowlight (10 page)

For more on this two-thousand-year-old mystery, pick up the latest issue of
Roman Relics
magazine, available at fine bookstores and newsstands near you.

“The forgery was very well-done, but upon closer inspection we found we were able to confirm the Americans’ findings,” Geno Zanella, the leader of the Italian team, told reporters. “This scroll was made in the last few weeks, not two thousand years ago.”

The American experts, whose trip to Rome was underwritten by a grant from biotech corporation GenHance, Inc., made no comment about their scandalous revelations, and released their findings and test results before they left Italy to return to the States.

RomanRelics.com attempted to reach Professor Angelo Calabrese at the University of Rome for his comments, only to be told by university officials that the professor has been missing since the forgery was exposed. The president of the university about Calabrese’s abrupt disappearance: “Angelo was the most honest of men. If he said the scroll was genuine, it was. You can be sure he will explain everything as soon as he returns.”

Another colleague, who wished to remain anonymous, had this to say about the scandal: “I think those Americans tampered with the find. They might even have switched the scroll with a counterfeit in order to steal it from us.” When asked why Professor Calabrese vanished on the day the forgery was made public, the anonymous colleague said, “He was the only one who had worked with the scroll. I think they had him killed to cover up the theft.”

At the time of this update, police in Rome were still investigating the matter.

“What?” Jessa stared into beautiful, angry eyes the color of old jade. “What did you say?”

“GenHance,” the man told her. Tall and powerfully built, he stood like a prizefighter ready to throw a punch, his chin down, his arms bent, his hands fists. “They brought you here to take you. To kill you.”

“You’re crazy.” Jessa backed away from him. “Get away from me.” She turned toward the valet. “Call the police—” The man bent over, shoving his shoulder into her belly almost as hard as she’d hit the waiter with her case. Before she could recover or fight him off he upended her over his shoulder and ran with her twisting, kicking body to the car. Screaming for help, she struggled frantically, but he simply pulled her off him as if she were no more than a rag doll and flung her inside.

She landed on her side in the passenger’s seat. Before she could push herself upright he clamped his right arm across her heaving form, slammed shut the driver’s door, and drove out into traffic.

“Let me out of here!” She tried to free herself, clawing and pushing at his arm before grabbing at the door handle, which wouldn’t move. “What are you doing?”

“I’m taking you to safety,” he said, weaving in and out of the traffic lanes with terrifying speed. “I’m saving your life.”

The back of the car skidded on the wet road, fishtailing for a second before the man quickly righted it.

“You can’t drive like this.” She pushed at his arm. “The rain is flooding the roads. We’ll crash.”

He checked the rearview mirror. “Better to crash, then.”

She forced herself to calm down, catching her breath as she looked at the interior of the car. The lock on the door had also been removed, and the windows of the car had been tinted almost black.

“You cannot get out,” he told her, shifting his arm and reaching for something on her other side. “There is nothing you can use as a weapon. I will not harm you.” As the traffic on the road ahead of them thinned, he leaned over her and pulled a funny-looking seat belt over her, clipping it into place.

She glanced down and saw the dark stains on his dripping sleeves. She almost asked him if he’d been shot before she recalled the flash of steel she’d seen in his hand. “Did you stab Lawson?”

He nodded. “Twice.”

The matter-of-fact tone he used made her stomach roll. “Why?”

“He pointed his weapon at my face.” He glanced at her. “He would have shot me. He would have done the same to anyone else who came between him and you. Then he would have shot you.”

“You’re wrong. Bradford Lawson is a businessman.” She pushed the wet tangle of her hair back from her eyes. “He works for one of the largest biotech firms in the country.”

“He does.”

He wasn’t asking her; he was agreeing. Maybe she could talk him out of whatever he had planned. “Then you must know he has no reason to shoot me.”

“I know he has many reasons. He was sent to take you,” he told her. “They need you, but not alive. The drugs were the usual measure, but shooting you would have stopped you and made you easier to transport.”

He sounded delusional, but she realized something else—he wasn’t American. She couldn’t place his accent, but his careful English and the words he used made it clear that he wasn’t speaking his native language. He might come from a country where violent confrontations were normal events.

“You’re mistaken.” she said, as gently as she could. “A lot of Americans carry guns for protection. He probably took it out as soon as he saw you with your knife.”

“Knives,” he corrected. “I had two.”

She swallowed. “Then you can understand how that might have frightened him.”

“He took out the gun after you put your food in his face.” He paused as he made a quick, tight right turn. “I drew my blades only when I saw the weapon in his hand.”

She was reasoning with a seriously disturbed man, and that required another deep breath. “With everything happening all at once, maybe it seemed that way to you, but I’m sure it was the other way around.”

“You know it was not,” he countered. “You knew he meant to take you before I came to you.”

“I don’t know—”

“When I first saw you, you were making a pretense of being drugged,” he reminded her. “You knew what he had planned before I reached you. You used my interruption as an opportunity to escape him.”

“I don’t know anything about his plans.” Her fingers hurt, and she looked down to see she had them laced so tightly together that all the joints had turned white. She forced herself to relax her hands. “I knew only that the waiter drugged the wine.”

His mouth hitched. “How did you know this? Did he whisper it to you? Did he pass you a note?”

He couldn’t know, but he sounded as if he did. “I tasted it when I took a sip,” she lied.

“That was a remarkable feat,” he said, “as the drugs Lawson uses have no taste.”

He
was
toying with her. “Look, mister—”

“My name is Gaven Matthias.”

Why was he telling her his name? “Gaven, I’m Jessa.” Maybe he was some sort of deranged Good Samaritan who would respond better to some assurances—not that she planned to keep them. “I appreciate what you did back there. It was very heroic of you to risk your life for me. But you have to pull over and let me out now. I won’t report you to the police, I promise.” At least that much was true.

“Lying to me and yourself will not change what has happened. Lawson was sent to take you, and you know it.” He gave her a quick sidelong look. “Now that he has failed, others will be sent. Professionals this time. They will go to your office and your home. They will watch your employees and your friends.”

Her throat tightened. “I’ll call the police—”

“By now Lawson has reported you to them,” he said, startling her again. “He will say that you arranged to have me attack him. That you are with me now. That we are armed, dangerous. The police will begin to search for us. They will block roads. They will issue warnings to the people. They will use the television.”

She went rigid. “If you know he’ll do that, then you had to be in on it.”

He stopped at a red light and turned to face her. “You are not the first to be taken. Nor will you be the last.”

Now he was going to tell her how many women he’d murdered, and how he planned to kill her. “You’ve done this before?”

“GenHance has. Many times.” He saw the light turn green and returned his attention to the road.

Every book she’d ever read featuring a serial killer had a scene like this, Jessa thought. The newly abducted victim, bound and helpless, begged for her freedom. The satisfied killer ignored her pleas or mocked her. So far Matthias had ignored every request she’d made, and his cryptic statements could easily double as taunts. Even his assurance that he was taking her to safety didn’t make her feel any better.

The safety might be for him rather than her.

The seat belt he’d pulled over her had three straps instead of two, which crisscrossed tightly over her from shoulder to waist. When she tried to loosen them, she discovered they had no give, and the belt clip on her left had no release button.

She was trapped, as surely as she had been in the restaurant. “If you really want to help me, Gaven, then please take this belt off me. It’s too tight and I can’t breathe.”

He didn’t look at her as he drove onto the ramp leading to the expressway. “If that were so, you would be unconscious by now.”

He was the last man on earth Jessa wanted to touch, but if she knew what he had done in the past, she could be ready for what he intended to do to her. Working an arm out from under the restraining straps, she reached over and clamped her hand over his.

Shadowlight.

A cutting wind scoured her face with tiny, stinging ice crystals, and she had to squint against the blinding intensity of white light. Taking a breath was the same thing as being stabbed in the lungs. Buried to midcalf in fresh, powdery snow, she felt her feet go numb.

The blizzard didn’t allow her to see much of her surroundings, but she was outside, alone, and so cold her body shivered with the helplessness of someone having a seizure. If Matthias were here, she couldn’t see him, but she slogged forward, wrenching her legs up and down, pitching forward as the snowdrifts collapsed under her weight. She landed on her hands and knees, and then she saw the vague shape of a man fighting through the snow ahead of her.

He struggled to stay upright against the wind. Under his arm he carried something, a snowy bundle too small to be a body but too large to be his laundry. The ice-encrusted scarf wrapped around his head covered all but his eyes, but it was Gaven Matthias. She could feel him as surely as she felt the wind and cold.

She couldn’t read his thoughts, however. His mind seemed wiped clean of everything but staying on his feet and taking the next step.

Jessa heard thunder, and what sounded like a low-flying jet over her head, and looked up. That was when the bomb went off, exploding with enough force to scatter the violent wind and create a momentary window of visibility. She could see the top of a ridge with an enormous shelf of snow that seemed to be rising higher.

It wasn’t until several smaller bombs went off and a cloud of white billowed at the base of the ridge that she realized the mountain was not rising but that the shelf of snow was sliding down, all of it at once—on top of her.

Jessa flung up an arm as the first chunks of snow crust pelted her, as hard as thrown rocks, and then a white ocean roared over her, lifting and rolling her, flinging her against tree trunks and bouncing her off boulders before it swallowed her whole.

As a crushing weight settled over her, her thoughts became a jumble of disbelief:
Snow? Mountains? Not Atlanta. Where? Where is he? What did he do?

Her fingers slipped away from the disembodied hand she held, and she was glad. She didn’t want to see the airless void of white anymore. But the cold that bit into her aching body didn’t retreat, and the grinding weight pressing over her didn’t ease.

The sunlight never came.