Tear of the Gods (6 page)

The camp had been ransacked. Several of the tents had been torn down entirely, while the contents of the others were strewn about, left to lie where they had fallen during what Annja assumed was the search for the torc.

She slipped from one piece of cover to another for the first several minutes, leery of suddenly running into any of the men she’d encountered the night before, but eventually she realized that the camp was deserted and that let her move about more freely in the open.

The killers, whoever they had been, had fled.

Her free hand touched the torc through her shirt. What was so important about it that someone would kill to possess it? she wondered.

The entire attack just didn’t make sense. While she knew there was a burgeoning trade in black-market artifacts, she wouldn’t expect a piece like the one she currently carried to be of particular interest. They’d only dug it up yesterday, for heaven’s sake!

She knew the only way information could have gotten out about the torc was for someone on the dig team itself to have relayed word of the find to the outside world.

Which meant one of the people she’d been working with for the past two days was responsible for the deaths of more than thirty others.

It wasn’t a comfortable thought. Realizing how close she’d come to dying sent a shiver down her back.

It also put a fire in her belly. She would find out who was responsible for this and bring them to justice, no matter what.

Annja came to her own tent and discovered, not surprisingly, that it hadn’t escaped the attention of the intruders. She picked up her clothes from where they’d been scattered about and pieced together an outfit of clean jeans and a fresh T-shirt. An oversize Henley would help ward off the cold. Annja stripped, leaving her muck-covered clothes in a sodden heap on the floor of the tent. Goose bumps rose across her body as the chill morning air caressed her naked flesh and she didn’t waste any time pulling on her new set of clothes. Her boots were unfortunately ruined, but some rummaging around in the other tents turned up a spare pair that was only a size bigger than her own. An extra pair of socks helped overcome the difference; it wasn’t perfect, but it would do for the time being.

Feeling slightly better, Annja turned her attention to the rest of her belongings. Her iPod and BlackBerry were gone, more than likely snagged by one of the intruders, but she found her wallet, camera and laptop computer tossed into a corner. The computer screen had been smashed, what was left of it still bearing the muddy impression of the boot that had done the deed, but a few minutes with a screwdriver she scrounged from elsewhere allowed her to recover the hard drive that contained all her notes from the work they had done to date. Even better, the camera looked undamaged. That was the first good news she’d had all day; with the data on the drive and the torc in hand, she had a much better chance of identifying it.

Once she did that, she could narrow the list of individuals who might have been interested enough in it to kill to possess it.

Annja searched through the other tents, looking for a working cell phone, but came up empty. She briefly considered going back and searching the bodies of the dead for one, but then decided against doing so. Even if she got lucky enough to find one, it would probably be too waterlogged to operate properly, anyway. And the thought of pawing the bodies of those she’d been working next to only hours before made her wince with distaste. They deserved better than that and she’d see to it that something was done as soon as she got out of here.

She considered her options. Without a working cell phone, she couldn’t call in help from the authorities. Nor was anyone expected to arrive at camp that day, which meant the assault could go unnoticed for days unless she got back to civilization and reported it. To do that, she needed to hike back to the staging area where she’d left her rental car.

It wasn’t a bad hike, she knew, but it would get hot soon, so she looked around until she found a shoulder pack and a few bottles of water to go inside.

She stepped out of the tent she’d been rummaging through and that’s when a sound caught her attention. It was faint at first, just a distant thrumming, but it slowly grew louder as it drew close to the camp. It only took Annja a few seconds to recognize the sound of an approaching helicopter.

She turned in a slow circle, trying to pinpoint the sound, or, even better, get a look at the approaching aircraft. She couldn’t see it yet, but she knew it wouldn’t be long. When it arrived, she had to be ready. If she could flag it down she could get the authorities on-site quickly before the elements had a chance to destroy too much of the evidence.

She glanced around, looking through the personal belongings scattered about the camp until she spied a bright red sweatshirt, then ran over and picked it up. It should be colorful enough to catch the attention of anyone looking her way, she thought.

The sound was loud now, filling the air with the steady rhythm as the rotors beat their way closer, and she moved into the center of the camp, only a few steps away from the spot where Craig had died. His blood had seeped into the ground, leaving a dark stain, and seeing it, Annja again vowed that she would make those responsible pay for his death.

She could see the helicopter now, moving in her general direction. Most of the body was black, with the section directly under the rotors painted a bright yellow, a color scheme she recognized as belonging to local law enforcement. She began waving her arms over her head, the red sweatshirt held aloft in one hand, doing what she could to attract the pilot’s attention.

But as the aircraft drew closer, her waving hands faltered and then stopped. She had that feeling again, that sense that something was terribly wrong, and ever since taking up the sword she’d learned to listen to such things. Doing so had saved her life more times than she could count.

The helicopter altered course slightly, now headed directly toward the camp, and that sense of impending disaster rose up inside her like a wave about to break.

She had to get out of sight and she had to do it now!

Annja didn’t stop to think, didn’t consider that she might be turning her back on the only help for miles around. Instead, she turned and ran between the nearest two tents, getting out of sight as quickly as possible.

Once behind the tent she’d been standing in front of, she circled around to her left, dashing between several others until she found a place where she could watch the helicopter without being in the open.

The helicopter began its descent, the rotors pounding the air and whipping up a heavy breeze that tossed clothing and camp supplies about indiscriminately. Annja was forced to shield her eyes from the dust and dirt kicked up in its wake.

The aircraft settled to the ground in the center of the camp. Doors on both sides were thrown open and men wearing the uniforms of the regional police force climbed out.

For a moment, Annja thought everything was going to be all right. That feeling of foreboding must have been for something else. The police were here; she could breathe a sigh of relief and turn the investigation over to the professionals for the time being, at least until she’d had a chance to rest and get a better understanding just why someone would kill to possess the torc.

But as she moved to leave her hiding place, to call out to the police officers fanning out through the camp, her gaze happened to fall on one of the men at the back of the pack.

The last time she’d seen him, he’d just tried to put a bullet in her skull.

He was dressed just like one of the regional police officers, and from the easy way that he interacted with the rest of them, it was clear he wasn’t a stranger.

What on earth was going on?

One thing was certain: any hope of getting help from these men was gone. With the killer an accepted member of their group, she couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t shoot her on sight.

Quickly and quietly she eased her way back from the tents and then slipped into the trees behind them, headed deeper into the woods.

When she felt she was far enough into the tree line to not give away her position, Annja picked up her pace, headed on a course that would take her directly away from the camp on the straightest line possible. She knew the police would be fanning out, looking for both the perpetrators and for any survivors, and right now she couldn’t afford to be detained as either.

Once she was several hundred yards away from the camp, she stopped and took a moment to think about her next move. The staging area was out of the question; the cops would be all over the vehicles there in short order, if they weren’t already. If she couldn’t approach the cops and it was too risky to try and reach her rental car at the staging area, it seemed she had no choice but to travel overland until she found some alternate means of transport.

Squatting on her heels, Annja drew a quick map in the dirt in an effort to help her get her bearings. If the camp was here, she thought, and the staging area here, then the road must go like this. She drew a line in the dirt that traveled parallel to the camp for a short distance before angling sharply away toward the southeast. There was only one major road in these parts and that was it, if she was remembering things correctly. That meant if she turned south at this point, she should eventually run into it. She wasn’t sure exactly where she would cross it, but cross it she would, if she just kept going south.

“All right then, south it is,” she said.

With her pack over her shoulder, she started walking again.

It was hard going. The terrain was a mix of woods and marshland, which wasn’t the best possible choice. She had a healthy respect for the danger the marshy bogs represented, given what she’d recently gone through, and so she was forced several times to change direction, skirting the edges of the bogs rather than attempting to find a path through them. Each time she cleared them she headed south once more, but after the first few hours it was clear she’d underestimated the task ahead of her.

By midday the sun was beating down and Annja had gone through the two bottles of water she’d snatched on her way out of the camp.

If she had to do this for much longer, dehydration was going to start being a problem.

The marshlands gave way to wooded hill country, which had its good and bad points. She was out of the sun more often than not, and no longer had to take these wide looping detours to avoid the bogs, but the constant hike up and down the hills began to wear on her.

As she crested another hill, the trees fell away before her at the top and she found herself looking down a long grassy slope.

There, below her, was the road.

“About time,” she said, with not a little impatience. She’d known it would be a long hike, she just hadn’t expected it to take several hours. She was hot, tired, thirsty and more than a bit irritated. She almost felt sorry for whomever it was who eventually stopped to give her a ride.

Annja descended the hill and, once on the roadway itself, took a moment to brush the dust and leaves out of her clothing and hair. It was going to be difficult enough to get someone to stop out in the middle of nowhere; she didn’t want to make it any harder by looking like she’d just spent the afternoon rolling around in the woods.

Satisfied her appearance was as good as it was going to get, she set off walking along the shoulder, hoping it wouldn’t be long before someone came along to give her a lift.

The first two cars, both driven by women, passed her without slowing despite her efforts to flag them down. Stopping to help a fellow female stranded by herself on the side of the road was too much effort apparently. As they roared on past, their gazes averted so they could pretend to themselves they hadn’t seen her, Annja took the time to memorize their license plates. If she ran into them again up the road, she wanted to be sure she could identify them properly, if only to show her appreciation for their kindness to a stranger. And just to show that she was a better person than they were, she waved cheerfully after them, laughing all the while. It felt good to blow off a little steam, even if it was over something as stupid as a stranger’s failure to give her a ride.

Heaven knew she had enough to worry about.

She’d been on the road for almost an hour when she heard another car in the distance behind her. Her two previous encounters hadn’t gone very well, so this time around she was prepared to try something different. As the sound of the engine drew closer, Annja hurriedly stripped off the long-sleeved Henley she wore to expose the thinner T-shirt beneath and stuffed the outer shirt into her pack. She gathered the bottom of the T-shirt in her hands and tied it into a quick knot, which had the dual result of exposing a bit of her tanned midriff while at the same time pulling the fabric of the shirt tight across her breasts. Stuffing the ball cap she wore in the back pocket of her jeans, she let her long hair fall down her back in a gleaming wave, fluffing it up a bit with her fingers as she did so.

At this point, her ears were telling her that the car was less than a hundred yards away.

Turning to face the oncoming traffic, she cocked one hip toward the road, stuck out her thumb and put a big smile on her face.

Please let it be a man, she thought, knowing she’d feel a bit ridiculous dressed like this if it was a woman who stopped for her.

The car was a beat-up old four-door Renault, blue-gray in color, and thankfully there was a man behind the wheel.

He was already slowing the vehicle as he got closer to her and so she was able to get a good look at him as he drifted past to bring the car to a stop just a few yards farther up the road from where she stood. He looked to be in his early thirties, with thick blond hair that didn’t seem to want to stay where he put it and a tentative smile on his face that told her stopping for a hitchhiker, and a pretty one at that, was outside his usual behavior.

She hustled over and bent down to look in through the open passenger window.

“Car trouble?” he asked.

Wanting to avoid having to explain why he hadn’t passed her car along the way, she answered, “Boyfriend trouble. The SOB dumped me on the side of the road three miles back.”

He said something in reply, but Annja didn’t really hear it, as she was staring at the Roman collar about his throat and taking in the uniformlike black shirt and pants he was wearing.

“You’re a priest?” she said, surprised, though she didn’t quite know why. For a second she even felt guilty about the thing with the T-shirt, but, then again, it had worked, hadn’t it?

“Is that a problem for you?” he asked, genuinely concerned, and Annja realized she’d inadvertently offended him.

“Not at all,” she said with a smile. “It’s a relief, in fact. You can never be too careful nowadays.”

He nodded sagely and Annja fought the urge to laugh.

“Can I give you a ride?” he asked.

Annja opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. “A ride would be great.”

As she got into the car, another vehicle came roaring around the corner ahead of them, headed in the other direction, back the way she had come. It was a late-model Mercedes, black with silver trim, and Annja looked up to watch it go past. The windows were all tinted, so she couldn’t see inside it, but she felt a chill pass over her as it sped by. In that moment she was thankful that she hadn’t been on the road alone when the vehicle had appeared.

“Well, coming or aren’t you?” her Good Samaritan called, breaking her reverie.

Annja laughed and got inside the car, the Mercedes already forgotten.

Concerned that the men who were hunting her might somehow catch up with them, Annja introduced herself as Amy, not wanting to reveal her real name. The less the good father knows, the better, she thought.

He, in turn, told her his name was Gary—Father Gary Anderson, to be exact—and he was a newly ordained Catholic priest working out of the Church of St. Ignatius, a small parish about twenty miles outside of London. He was returning from a clerical conference and was happy to take her to the parish rectory, where she could call a cab to take her the rest of the way into the city.

Gary was pleasant company and Annja found herself relaxing as he told her funny stories about the parishioners he’d met in his first few months at the church.

He must have been eager for company, for he barely let her get a word in edgewise, and she soon found herself listening with half an ear. That proved to be fortuitous, for when the growl of a heavy engine came roaring up behind them, Annja noticed. She looked back just in time to see the Mercedes they’d passed twenty minutes earlier closing on them rapidly.

It didn’t look like the driver had any intention of stopping.