The Illumination (7 page)

“Here!” she yelled. “Reception!”

The exit door burst open, and Ski Mask sprang up, tucked his head down, and made a beeline for the elevators, hitting the buttons repeatedly with the flat of his gloved palm. The center door slid noiselessly open, even as Natalie launched herself toward the plants.

Had he found the pendant? Had he taken it?

Then her breath whooshed out in relief as she caught its glint from the carpet behind the cycas palm. Her fingertips scrabbled for the hammered gold as the security guards surged past her and toward the elevator bank.

But they were too late. All they caught sight of were the doors closing on a huge ski-masked man—and Natalie rising from her knees amid the array of plants, trembling, wearing only one high-heeled red shoe.

 

 

 

Barnabas kept his steps to a measured pace as he walked toward Central Park, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his sweatshirt. Behind him sirens screamed, but he forced himself not to run, hoping it was too dark for anyone to notice the blood dried beneath his nostrils and speckled across the gray fleece fabric covering his chest.

In the dark, the spots could easily be mistaken for sweat. To passersby he was merely a jogger on the way home from his nightly run. No one looking his way would possibly guess how he'd gotten tonight's workout.

Blood and sirens pounded in his ears as he reached the park and ambled down a winding path. He skirted the Great Lawn at Turtle Pond, keeping his pace steady. Though outwardly calm, inside he was raging, and it was a struggle to keep his breathing even.

How could he have let himself fail? The Light had been a hand's breadth away, and he'd been driven off by a woman's slap and a bunch of rent-a-cops.

That green-eyed woman had surprised him. She was trim, no more than five feet six, but toned like a female who took her elliptical workout seriously. Still, he'd never expected her to fight back like that—she was much faster and stronger than he'd have guessed.

How would he tell Reverend Mundy that a woman had bested him?

Tears of frustration squeezed from the corners of his eyes. He'd had four chances today—four—but each time he'd been a beat off the mark. If only he'd been able to take it from the bald guy before he'd ducked into that cab at JFK. He'd followed fast enough in the next cab, but had gotten hung up at a traffic light, and by the time Barnabas had jumped out and run across the street, someone else was in the bald guy's cab and the target was entering the museum.

Even when he'd finally caught up with Mister Rusty Sutherland outside the museum and managed to inject him with two milligrams of Ativan without anyone being the wiser, he'd still failed. He'd dragged Sutherland up two flights of stairs in a condemned building in Alphabet City, and searched him thoroughly, but hadn't found the Light in his backpack or anywhere else.

Barnabas had been left with no other choice than to bind the man like Abraham had bound Isaac—rendering him a ducttaped sacrificial lamb ready for the altar of interrogation.

He'd had to wait nearly two hours for the Ativan to wear off, but he'd used the time to pray, certain that the Lord would aid him in getting the information he needed without having to resort to violence. But the Lord had different plans, and they were not for Barnabas to question.

Pain normally worked quickly on people, but Sutherland had proved stubborn. Barnabas realized the Lord was testing him in this task. Even after he'd snapped several of Sutherland's fingers like pencils, the bald man had refused to say what he'd done with the Light.

Barnabas had assured him that he didn't want to inflict any more pain. Everything would have been so much simpler if only Sutherland had complied. Though Barnabas had apologized over and over, he'd found it necessary to force the man into cooperation. The most he could get out of him, even as he held him by the feet over the abandoned elevator shaft, was that Sutherland had left the Light at the museum.

The museum.
That was my fourth failure. Why, Lord? Why didn't you see fit to bless my quest? Why are you testing me?

Now everything was far more complicated. The police would be looking for him, and the woman still had the Light.

What is she telling the police about it? How much does she know?

Sweat soaked along his hairline as he began to pray again, praying now for guidance, for God to grant him the Light. His lips moved beneath the murky glimmer of the streetlights as he walked. He was heedless of the passersby and of the pain throbbing through the nerve endings in the center of his face.

The pain in his soul was far worse.

Suddenly the answer crept into his mind, like a whisper from above.
The Sentinel.
If anyone could find out the woman's identity, it was the Sentinel. He needed to call Reverend Mundy and ask for that help.

And admit his failure.

Barnabas's shoulders were bent by the time he entered his room in the Skyline Hotel two miles away.

His voice cracked as the reverend answered his cell phone. Reverend Mundy sounded so eager.

“Please don't be disappointed in me, sir. I failed you tonight—but I will do better, I give you my promise. We don't have to worry about the man anymore—but now the Light is in the hands of a woman.”

Or in the hands of the police,
he thought in panic, not daring to give voice to such a possibility.

“I need the Sentinel to find out who she is, sir. The woman who works in the museum.” He rushed on, delaying the moment when he would hear the disappointment in the reverend's voice. “Tell me who she is, and then, in the name of the Savior, I'll find her. And the Light will be ours.”

 

 

 

“Fill me in on something, Dr. Landau. Why were you here in the building after hours?”

Detective Marv Henderson inspected the tiny sloping scrawl across his notebook, then lifted his glance once more to Natalie's drained face. He sat stout as a beer keg in the seat across from her in the museum director's office, a no-nonsense man with bristly gray hair, nibbled-down fingernails, and an unwrapped cigar sticking out of his breast pocket.

Throughout the museum, every light blazed as police fanned out to search the galleries, storerooms, and corridors, assisted by staff members who'd been summoned to ascertain whether anything had been taken or damaged. Roberta Flaherty, the museum director, had rushed over from the theater still clutching her program.

“As I told Officer Garibaldi already, I came back to get something from my desk.” Natalie slouched back in her chair wearily, Dana's pendant clenched between her hands in her lap.

The detective was once again studying his notes from behind his thick eyeglasses, his manner almost distracted. “And you were here how long before you heard the intruder?”

“Five minutes . . . ten. No more.”

“And are you in the habit of returning to the museum after hours?” At that, his gaze locked on hers.

“Of course not.” She bit back her annoyance. “It's my
habit
to go home at the end of the day.”

“But not today?”

“No. I told you, just as I told Officer Garibaldi, I had dinner with a friend and then came back to get something from my desk.”

“And what was that?” His pen was poised in midair. His eyes looked twice their size, magnified by the thickness of his lenses.

Slowly Natalie unclenched her hands and held out the pendant she'd retrieved from the tangle of plants.

“It's an evil eye amulet. I was planning to study it at home this evening.”

Detective Henderson's brows slid together, colliding in the middle of his creased forehead. “Are you in the habit of taking museum property home with you in the evenings?”

“Absolutely not.” Natalie felt a twinge of alarm. The amulet had nothing to do with the break-in. And the last thing she wanted was for the police to get sidetracked. “This isn't the museum's property. It's mine.” She closed her hand around the pendant again and met his magnified eyes. “My personal property.”

“You said the intruder tried to take it from you. And that he was wearing gloves. Which means the only prints on it would be yours, Dr. Landau?”

“Yes, that's right. He was wearing gloves. Black gloves. The thin cotton kind you'd wear for gardening.”

He paused to scratch again at his notepad and Natalie waited uneasily. She suddenly felt too warm in her belted gray cashmere sweater. Detective Henderson's manner reminded her, uncomfortably, of her childhood neighbor, Mr. Petroskey, who spent every spring accusing her or Dana of picking his precious tulips.

“Is it valuable? Your amulet?”

The question jolted her, and her mind raced in a panic.

How was she to answer
that
? She had no idea yet whether it was valuable or not. And if she told him it might be, he'd ask her where she'd gotten it—and then what? She'd have to tell him that her sister, the famous newscaster, had sent it from
Iraq. Without knowing its provenance, the last thing she'd want was to inadvertently get Dana in hot water or to embarrass her network.

Natalie's thoughts flew ahead. What if Henderson followed up—and it turned out the pendant
was
an antiquity and valuable? That Dana actually
had
unwittingly sent her something looted from the Iraq museum?

Her throat went dry. Dana's career could go up in flames like one of the car-bombed armored vehicles she reported about.

I can't risk it. If there'd been some horrible mistake, it can be taken care of quietly. Diplomatically. Not tossed in the lap of an NYPD detective on a wild goose chase.

“No, it's not valuable at all.” The lie just sprang from her lips. And then it was too late to take it back.

It's a very small lie,
Natalie told herself.
If it even is a lie.
It wasn't as if Henderson needed the truth about the amulet for his investigation. She didn't even know what the truth
was
yet.

“It's just a trinket . . . a souvenir.” Natalie's throat felt so parched she was surprised her voice didn't creak.

“So why did you bother coming all the way back for it?” the detective pressed.

She sat up straighter in her chair. “Because it's a gift. One that has sentimental value for me. Believe me, Detective, I never would have come back here tonight had I known there was going to be a break-in.”

“I heard you handled yourself pretty well,” he said slowly. “You described the intruder as a large man, approximately six feet what?—six two, six four? One hundred eighty pounds? And he attacked you. You don't look much the worse for wear.”

“My Krav Maga training kicked in.”

He twitched the cigar from his pocket and began chewing on its tip, his disconcerting eyes never leaving her face. “And just how did you come to be so proficient at an Israeli self-defense technique employed by government agencies and police forces?”

Natalie stole a furtive glance at her watch: 11:30
P.M
. She'd been sitting across from him for nearly two hours. Her head ached, her wrist was already purpling, and she was emotionally
drained. All she wanted was to get home, strip off her work clothes, and climb into a hot bath with a glass of wine.

“I picked it up in Israel a few years ago,” she answered tautly. “When I was working on some archaeological digs.”

She wasn't about to tell him her life story. Or what had happened to Maren Svendborg in Israel, the horrific attack at Bet She'an that had robbed Natalie of her friend and impelled her to learn Krav Maga.

“Are we almost finished, Detective?”

“One more question, Dr. Landau.”

Natalie braced herself.

“Are you by any chance related to the journalist Dana Landau? The one in Iraq? You look a bit like her.”

“You're very observant, Detective. She's my sister.”

“Brave lady.” He tossed down his pencil and almost smiled. “I guess it runs in the family.”

“Our parents died when Dana and I were teenagers. We had to be brave.” She leaned forward. “May I go now, Detective? It's a long trip back to Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn, is it?” He scratched his head. “Just sit tight a minute, Dr. Landau. I'll get Officer Lopez to drive you home.”

It was a half hour later that Natalie finally reached her Willamsburg apartment. Her legs felt like jelly. She smelled onions and cumin lingering in the hallway, probably from Juan and Peter's kitchen. Normally, Natalie loved the aromas wafting from their apartment, one night Thai, one night Moroccan, but tonight food was the furthest thing from her mind. Every muscle ached, her scalp throbbed, and she was mentally exhausted from the questioning by both the police and her superiors.

She grimaced, remembering the way Detective Henderson had studied her with those piercing eyes until she felt like confessing—even though she'd done nothing wrong.

Had he sensed she was holding something back? God, she hoped not. The only thing he hadn't asked her—yet—was to go to the precinct house and look through endless books of mug shots. She'd probably been spared that only because the intruder had worn a mask, and all she'd likely be able to identify was a pair of slitted brown eyes.

As far as anyone had been able to determine, the intruder hadn't targeted any of the exhibits. But he had knocked out and hog-tied a security guard. And there was evidence he'd searched two storage rooms. But oddly, nothing appeared to be missing.

Then what was he looking for in the offices?
she wondered, as she fitted the first of her keys into its lock. Natalie stepped wearily inside and flicked on the light switch, awakening her tiny living room from sleep.
A private detective hired by Dennis's wife wouldn't have riffled through the storage rooms. And he wouldn't have attacked a security guard—or me.