Relic (The Brethren Series) (12 page)

Just as the dust devils whirled harmlessly over the desert, so too did the D’Angelo family and Gabriel gather themselves up and head out by late afternoon. Serena took to walking about outside. She saw Raphael coming toward her with purpose in his steps. He didn’t look pleased. Her heartbeat instantly quickened, and not from watching his lithe form approach her either. She spoke first to quell the uneasiness growing inside her, as though it would give her the courage to face whatever he had to throw at her.

“I was beginning to wonder where you’d run off to, leaving me to fend off the coyotes and snakes all on my own,” Serena admonished.

“Oh, knowing what you do for a living, I figured you’d have them coyotes and rattlers running scared the minute they saw you, darlin’,” he joked. More sincerely he continued, “Thought I’d give you some time and space after spending time with the craziness that is the D’Angelo family.”

He laughed and tucked his hands in his pants pocket. “I’ll tell you though, there is nobody better suited to be a principal and a teacher than Michael and Emma. Their kids are damn lucky to have them as parents. And their kids, well, you don’t find finer these days. I needed some time, too, after hearing Emma’s assessment of your healing. Seems I’m to play a big role in the completion of your healing.”

“Oh, really? Interesting.” She nodded.
There’s more. I know he needs to tell me something, but he’s hedging.

They stood together in silence for a while, watching a hummingbird hover over honeysuckle to drink its nectar. Raphael gently placed his hands on her shoulders. “Serena, we have to talk.”

“Why do those four simple words always sound so ominous?” She twisted out of his grasp and walked toward a series of natural boulders, that when looking at them a certain way, reminded her of a tortoise. “Maybe it’s because nothing good ever follows them. ‘Serena, we have to talk, your mother is dying. Serena, we have to talk, your father has had a catastrophic stroke. Serena, we have to talk, we’ve tried everything and can’t find your brother.’ So, Raphael, you tell me we have to talk. Let’s talk.”

She turned back to him, took a deep breath to steady her nerves, and projected an air of fortitude she truly did not feel. “Whatever it is you have to tell me, I’ve had years of practice ‘talking’ and facing adversity. So, I ask that you don’t mince words with me. Don’t sugar-coat it. Say what you have to say and I’ll deal with it the best I can.”

“Come sit with me on the bench.” They walked together yet apart. Serena intentionally distanced herself from him and steeled herself for the message he brought. Her brain warred with her heart as possible worst-case topics of conversation flitted across her mind. She sat on the edge of the teak park bench and as far from Raphael as she could get.

“Well, out with it,” she pressed.

“It’s about your brother, Serena.” Her stomach clenched into a ball of knotted nerves. “The Brethren have been trying to find you, to tell you about him, and when I finally located you, you were, well, not in very good shape to hear anything. So I’ve been waiting, biding my time until you were strong and well. Serena, we’ve found him.” Raphael took her icy, trembling hands in his. “It’s not good news. I’m afraid he’s dead.”

There they were. Words that she’d been afraid she’d eventually hear, but until now, held out hope that she wouldn’t hear until she grew quite old and gray. She closed her eyes and lowered her head while visions of Jared with his easygoing smile came flooding back to her.

My baby brother is dead. Gone, forever. Impossible
!
How
?

“How? How did he die?” She opened her eyes and could swear the world had dimmed. Everything, all the vibrant colors, appeared muted.

“We’re not sure exactly,” Raphael replied solemnly. “He’d been dead for some time when we found him. We believe he joined a cult called The Source at some point, and worked for one of its truly evil leaders. We found him in an abandoned mine in the Goldfield Mountains, south of here a few hours away. At the time, the only thing we could do was to give him a proper burial. I’m so sorry. Truly I am.”

“You buried him? Why didn’t you call the police when you found him? When did you find him? How long has he been dead?” She jumped up and began pacing. “Wait, how do you know it’s him? What proof do you have?” Questions were coming to her faster than she could spit them out.

Raphael took out Jared’s wallet and put it gently in the palm of her hand. She turned it over, inspecting it. Her hands visibly shook as she opened the wallet to find her brother’s face staring back at her with a confident grin. His driver’s license. Another picture peeked out from inside—the picture of Jared and her from their Grand Canyon trip. It looked as though it had been through a war, all tattered and torn, yet still remarkably vivid in color.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God!” The wallet fell from her hands. She dropped like lead and would have kissed the ground had Raphael not been there to stop her. She hadn’t fainted or begun to cry. She sat on the ground, stupefied. Her vision blurred, and she shook her head back and forth as if saying no would make it so.

“Serena. Serena! Look at me, honey.” He cupped her face so she could do nothing more than see his eyes. “Sweetheart, you’re alive. And you need to keep on living, for Jared. He wouldn’t want you to do any less. You hear me? Grieve, yes, but don’t let it consume you. If you have any hopes of helping to bring down the ones who ultimately did this to him, the very ones who are after you, you gotta get up and go on, and live in the here and now. Serena!”

She saw his lips moving.
Is Raphael saying something to me
?
Jared is gone, probably murdered. But for my non-communicative father, I am alone. Alone and deeply afraid.
There were men after her, bad men, men who wanted her and a man who wanted her dead. But now there was also Raphael, a good man, staring anxiously at her, with those eyes of the most curious blue. And he spoke from those lips that had set fire to her own.
Did he just say something about being alive
? Alive. She didn’t feel alive. She felt numb, empty.

“Alive,” she whispered. “I’m alive.”

“Yes, that’s right,” he encouraged. “You’re alive.”

“Jared’s dead, and I’m alive,” she droned. “Why am I still alive? I should be dead, too. I should be dead….” She cocked her head, perplexed.

“Serena, you’re alive because that’s the way it should be. Come on. Let’s get you off the ground and inside. I’ll get you some tea and we’ll talk.” He lifted her off the tiny stones surrounding the bench.

“Yes, tea sounds nice.”

***

It took a full pot of chamomile tea and three pitiful healing attempts on Raphael’s part to get her back to sanity.

“I’m a fake, a phony, a fraud,” she began, chiding herself. “There I go telling you to lay it on me, I can handle whatever you got to tell me, and then I go all nut-house crazy. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I don’t usually fall apart like this. What you must think of me, I can only imagine.” She fiddled with the tablecloth at the kitchen table.

“You would be imagining wrong if you believe I think any less of you,” he shared softly. “And don’t think for one minute more that you have to put up a brave front with me. I know how strong you are, sweetheart. You have been through more than most, and rather than feeling cursed for living, you should feel as though you have been granted an incredible gift of resiliency. I, for one, am supremely thankful you are alive and sitting with me now.”

He reached over, grabbed her hand, kissed the palm, and held it to his cheek. He gazed steadily in her eyes. She blushed and looked away, not used to the attention and adulation.

“Hey, do you think you could answer a couple of questions for me? Gabriel came today with some interesting information, but we need some from you to piece it all together and have it make sense.”

“Yes, I’ll tell you everything I know, especially if it will help you catch the jerks that planned on ruining my life.” She quivered from his tender display of emotion.

“If you feel uncomfortable at any time, let me know and we can stop. Understand?”

“Okay.”

“First question….” He opened a notebook. “You mentioned that the last time you saw your brother was two years ago, and at that time he’d given you the stolen relic. So, we’re wondering why it took Dr. Chappo so long to get to you, given the fact that you’re in a highly visible business. You’d think he’d be on to you as soon as he figured out your brother had stolen the relic.”

“I decided to take a leave from my business to go search for him a week after Jared stopped showing up anywhere he normally would. Up until a couple of weeks ago, if anyone came snooping by Sikes and Sounds, they wouldn’t have found me. And they wouldn’t have found me at my house either. I had rented an RV and was on the road, every road, each night and day. But eventually my money ran out.” She poured herself the last drips of tea, and welcomed the self-imposed reprieve from painful memories. “Nearly two years is a long time to be a vagabond in search of a missing brother. In the end, I returned home empty-handed.” She paused. “I want to thank you for burying him. For giving someone you didn’t even know the dignity of a proper farewell.”

“It’s the least we could do, Serena. No one deserves to die and be left unattended. Being who we are and what we do, the Brethren certainly couldn’t abide by that. So, you weren’t available until recently. Had you come across any information regarding Dr. Chappo?”

“Not a thing. I couldn’t even find out where he lived. I guess I’m not very good at investigating.” She laughed mockingly at herself.

“Well, Gabriel found out some stuff.” He flipped to another point in his notebook. “First of all, Dr. Chappo is a legitimate archeologist, but he’s a very quirky fellow. There are no current pictures of him anywhere, not even school-age pictures. So the only way we can identify him is by someone actually describing him to us. Also, he lives in an isolated area southeast of here, near Tortilla Flat.

“Now, you mentioned he took Jared on a dig in Germany. Gabriel could find no record of this dig. It seems as though Chappo did this on his own time, funding it with his own money. Did Jared tell you anything about the dig or the finds?”

“Not much.” Serena shook her head. “He said Chappo had been looking for a particular relic for a long time, and this dig had been part of that search. Jared worked there for nearly two months, came home the day before my birthday, and handed me the relic. In typical sister form and being the skeptic that I always am, or was, with him, I basically interrogated him. He had trouble with staying on the right side of the law when it came to acquiring goods. As I told you already, he claimed everything to be on the up and up. Of course we now know that to be a lie. That’s why I gave it back when I got the letter.”

“Any idea why Chappo is so interested in ‘acquiring’ you?”

“Honestly, the only connection I can see is that he knows I look like the freaking relic. The fact that he now wants me, too, tells me he is one sick, delusional man. I mean, what could he possibly want with me? I’m not some statue to be collected.” She bristled, aggravated by the whole thing.

“How much do you know about the relic, Serena?”

“I know that it’s about a thousand years old. It’s a statue of the goddess Sirona, an ancient Celtic goddess of healing. And that’s all I know. Oh, and I look like her. Whoopie for me! Wait a minute. I look like her. She’s the Goddess of Healing, but she’s a statue, and I’m real. Son of a bitch!” Serena shot up from her seat, her hands flying to her gaping mouth. “Raphael, don’t you see? It finally makes sense! He thinks I’m her!” She paced the floor and stopped cold, looking Raphael square in the eyes.

“Raphael,
I’m
the relic!”

Chapter Fourteen

Her heart leapt to her throat at the stunning realization.

“But why, Raphael? Why does he need me? What can I possibly do for him?”

“Maybe he’s ill. Maybe he thinks you can heal him.” He rubbed his temples with his fingers.

“You can’t be serious. With all the doctors and hospitals in the world, you mean to tell me he’s decided I can heal him? That’s crazy!”

“I’m only guessing here, but it seems to make sense, in a twisted way, that if you look like the statue, maybe you could do what he thinks the statue can do. I don’t know. It’s just a thought, and a troubling one at that.”

“So, now I possibly know why Dr. Crazy is after me. I can work with that. But Bull, he still presents a big problem. What am I going to do about him?”

“First, you need to stop saying ‘I’ and ‘me’. We’re in this together, Serena. Don’t think for one minute I’m going to let you go or do anything on your own. Plus, we’ve got the other Brethren backing us up if we need them. So don’t worry about Bull. The Brethren will take care of him when we find him. As far as Dr. Chappo goes, now that we know a plausible connection between you two, we can work on a plan to stop him in his tracks as well.”

“That’s sounds great to me. I want my life back, Raphael. I want to hike my mountains and walk the vortexes. I want to work my business. Lord knows I’ve been away too long, and owe it to my people who’ve kept the place running so well. And I want to be strong again. I know Emma healed me, but I can tell I’m still not my old self.” She sighed, looking at the sky. “The sun’s beginning to set. I think I’ll go in and start making dinner.”

“Want some help with that?”

“Actually, I’d like you to build a fire, if you’d be so kind. We could eat beside it. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“That would be perfect.” He wrapped his arms around her like a cloak. They stayed that way for a good long time, watching the sun take its leave of the day. Long enough for Serena’s belly to grumble. “Okay, okay. I hear you.” He laughed. “Let’s go in and get some grub.”

***

Bull watched as the couple made their way back into the house. It had taken him long enough to get there, but he’d finally found the bitch’s hideaway. It took all of his restraint not to barrel out of the brush and kill her immediately, boyfriend be damned. He decided he’d kill him, too. Maybe he’d shoot him first and make her watch. And before he killed her, he’d teach her how real men want it, over and over. Maybe he’d even do her a couple of times just to see the look of horror on her face. It would be priceless. Pure fantasy. He knew he’d never get close to her now. He’d have to use his sniper rifle to kill her.