The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (64 page)

* * *

Brandt was such a bad liar. That gunshot had to hurt like a mo.’ But she wasn’t talking about his injury, or even the men trying to break their way into the monument. She was talking about the monitor in the dead man’s hand. He hadn’t just taken a lucky shot. He had something to aim at.

“Don’t touch it,” Brandt said figuring out she was staring at the handheld Gamma monitor.

Rebecca would not make the same mistake she had made back at the restaurant. Clearly, the Knot’s equipment was rigged to go off if the biometric locks weren’t reset. No, she knelt beside the Gamma screen, looking at the faintest wisp of a reading.

Her reading. She had drunk far more champagne than Brandt had.

“How can that be?” Brandt asked, gripping his side again. “We ate the damn fish crap.”

Some of the Gamma must have leaked into her blood stream before the activated charcoal could absorb the radiation. Which normally would have diluted the signal. Not so great for her health, but it should have masked the reading. Her hand flew to her neck. Her thyroid gland. It was scavenging the radiation and concentrating it there, producing the blip on the screen.

“We don’t know it’s you,” Brandt protested, but she backed a step, then another. The blip moved with her.

She was a shining beacon. Once those men broke in…

Rebecca let go of the panic and turned to Brandt. She had a plan.

“Love is eternal.”

* * *

“No, no, no, no, no,” Brandt said as she sprinted down the hallway.

Damn it. He loved her too, but he wasn’t too fond of her making herself an active target. Rebecca was using the same decoy technique as the restaurant only the bait wasn’t champagne glasses, it was her.

Voices carried from the entrance. The Knot had broken through.

Brandt grabbed the dead guy’s monitor, streaking it with blood as he put his thumbprint front and center. The device’s screen turned red, blinking its intent to self-destruct. Brandt counted to three, then chucked the thing toward the entrance. Pain seared up his side, but he was rewarded with screams as the thing exploded.

Now, though, he had no more tricks up his sleeve. He had Rebecca on the run and he had to take care of the remaining gunmen before they took care of Rebecca

Ducking behind a flying marble arch, Brandt counted off Rebecca’s footsteps. He knew where she would go. The central tomb. That “love” line hadn’t been a proclamation of her feelings. It had told him where she was headed.

It was line out of a poem or something. Brandt really hadn’t paid attention when she was reading it aloud in bed. They’d just made love, their legs still entangled. The last thing on his mind was poetry. However, it was a good thing he paid enough attention to know the phrase was carved on the crypts.

The gunmen, not knowing she had a final destination in mind would fan out to cut off her escape routes. Which placed them at strategic positions around the tomb.

God, he hoped that the Knot played this by the book. Otherwise, they were screwed.

* * *

Rebecca could swear she felt the gunshots in her marrow as they echoed off the impossibly high ceilings. To think that centuries of carefully preserved art was being damaged, all for her. Had she and Brandt been fools to think they could ever escape the wrath of the Knot?

About the only thing longer than the Knot’s lineage was their penchant for destruction. After what they had done to one of their own just for failing…

Rebecca refused to let that image come into her mind. She had walled off everything that had happened in that cavern in Rome. But here it was coming back to haunt her.

She dodged through a doorway and skidded to a stop as she reached the inner tomb. The two crypts that housed the Shah and his third wife were enclosed by an octagonal set of marble “screens.” They weren’t as much screens as works of art. Each had been carved out of their own slab of marble. All that intricate detail. The inlaying of each lotus flower petal and stem had taken the artisans over ten years to complete. Right now, though, she just needed the screen to stop some bullets.

She rushed through the doorway and ducked behind the Shah’s tomb. Her fingers gripped the edge of the marble, digging into the spaces between the jewels. Gunfire and screams filled the air, but each time she heard those short, controlled bursts, she knew that Brandt was still alive.

Which only helped to marginally calm her since she knew that every last gunmen of the Knot was honing in on her exact location. Despite about a ton of marble crypt in front of her, she felt exposed.

The wailing sirens were closing in, but Rebecca had no illusions they would charge in like the cavalry. The Knot would kill a policeman as quickly as they had killed those poor tourists at the hotel. Didn’t the Knot realize that if she hadn’t revealed what she had discovered in that ancient tomb in Rome, she never would? Or were they so blinded by revenge?

Whichever, the gunfire grew louder and louder.

How many assailants were left?

She peeked around the white marble crypt as a shadow passed by the archway. Was it Brandt, or…?

A gun pointing in her direction gave her the answer. She dropped down as bullets flew. They ricocheted off the marble, pinging all around her. The guy didn’t have to have good aim the way the bullets were deflecting off the marble.

She couldn’t wait for Brandt. Opening her laptop, she scanned for frequencies. The gunmen had to be communicating in some way. They had shut down all the normal avenues for communication, but the Knot was anything but normal.

Rebecca needed to adapt or die.

* * *

Brandt couldn’t get a bead on the gunman. They were playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse, only Brandt wasn’t sure who was the mouse right now.

As much as he hated to admit it, each time he did fire, his aim got further and further off. He was losing blood, and the pain? Well, the pain was his constant friend now.

His body subconsciously protected his side, pulling his shots up short.

Screw his subconscious. Rebecca was in danger.

Ditching his pack, Brandt charged straight at the guy, firing where the gunman should come out. But he never appeared. He must have gone inside the tomb. With Rebecca.

Not good. Not good at all.

* * *

Rebecca stood as the gunman walked into the tomb. There was no point in hiding now. He had the feral grin of an animal about to make a kill. There may be no one in the Knot to go and brag to, but this man wanted to see her die, right in front of him.

No matter. She needed him nice and close.

Rebecca hit one last keystroke on her computer. The gunman must have realized that something was wrong with his Gamma monitor, as it vibrated in his hand just before its screen went red.

She’d found their microwave communications and patched into it. Once he was in range, Rebecca convinced the device that the man’s handprint was no longer his own. The assailant’s eyes dilated as he tried, to no avail, to override the self-destruct mechanism. He tried to hurl the object away, but it exploded in midair, knocking him back, slamming his body against the marble before it slid down to rest still on the tiled floor.

On one hand, she was horrified at the sight. On the other, no matter how inappropriate, she wanted to jump for joy. The last of the gunmen were dead.

Brandt limped forward from far down the hallway. “Rebecca…”

That’s about when that damned whistle of an RPG filled the chamber.

* * *

Brandt wanted to rush forward and protect Rebecca, but he knew he would never make it in time. The best he could do was throw himself to the side as the rocket hit the dome.

The mausoleum shook as the roof tumbled down. Shockingly, though, the building held. It was on fire, but it held. Could it stand another attack?

Moonlight filled the hallway. Brandt glanced up. If moonlight could get in, bullets could get out. Swinging his gun up, Brandt found the minaret that the RPGs had been launched from.

He breathed in, despite the pain. He braced his arm against the smooth marble, since his body might betray him. He bled on the snowy-white floor, waiting for the RPG operator to take aim again.

How long could it take to reload, anyway?

Time slowed as Brandt watched through his rifle sight. Once there was movement, he held his breath, slowing his heart rate. The man sprang up with the RPG launcher on his shoulder. The mechanism blocking a head shot. Brandt took the next best thing.

Pulling the trigger sent shards of agony down his side, settling at his hip, but the shot was off. Even though the man tipped over the side of the minaret, he had already launched the rocket. It sailed the short distance until it exploded against the main dome of the mausoleum, shattering it.

Brandt turned on his heel to see Rebecca disappear behind a pile of rubble and dust.

“Rebecca!”

No matter that the building was falling down around him, he pushed off the arch and headed to the tomb. Chunks of fiery plaster and heavy marble fell around him, but he had eyes only for the broken doorway.

Brandt used the last of his strength to shove away a support beam and duck under the arch. He stumbled into the crypt to find it relatively unscathed. The inner dome had fallen onto the thick marble screens and acted as a shelter from the destruction from above.

Rebecca rose behind the crypt, coughing, but alive.

He rushed forward, falling to one knee.

* * *

Rebecca watched Brandt go down.

No! They couldn’t have survived so much to lose him now.

“What’s wrong?” she asked almost afraid to hear the answer. What could be worse than being shot twice?

He pulled a little red box out of his jacket. Was he mad?

But then he opened the box to reveal a bright, shining diamond ring.

“Rebecca Sasha Monroe,” he said, his voice only hitching with pain twice. “Will you marry me?”

Her lips trembled as tears streaked down her cheeks. This proposal was so wrong that it made it so very right.

“Yes,” she said lowering to her knees as she cupped his hand. “I think I will.”

Brandt slipped the ring onto her finger. The gilded band felt so light yet carried so much weight. As sirens wailed and shouts carried through the Taj Mahal, Brandt leaned in and kissed her.

While his lips tasted of salt from tears, iron from blood, and even a little fishy, Rebecca knew this was a kiss to last for the ages.

# # #

HAVOC

UPON THE MOUNT

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Mount Sinai

1480 BCE

Yehoshua held his breath as the clouds roiled overhead. It had been long these forty days and nights upon the mount. He had nearly given up all hope of God fulfilling His promise.

Moshe, proving himself the prophet foretold, had somehow kept hope alive. He found berries where none should grow. A cool spring that should be dry. Brought forth heat where no flame burned. Without supplies or even a goat to milk, they had survived amongst the mountain peaks these long weeks. Moshe had said God would provide and He did, albeit in meager portions.

It was not for Yehoshua to question Moshe. The gray-haired prophet had delivered them from Egypt. Had subdued the Red Sea and had brought the Chosen People to the base of this mount. All upon God’s word. Would Moshe’s followers have his exquisite patience though?

Before Yehoshua could ponder Aaron and the camp’s mood during their long absence, the sky set afire burning in reds and oranges. A column of flames shot down, dancing upon the barren plateau. Yehoshua shielded his face from the heat. The air itself felt on fire as it entered his chest.

Moshe however took a tentative step forward toward the column.

“No!” Yehoshua cried out, worried for his patriarch and his friend. God asked too much this time.

A noise so similar to the grinding of stone against stone to build a pyramid churned from the flames. Yet amongst the harsh groaning a wisp of a voice carried through. It sang. Promising them an eternity of faith if they just stepped forward. Who was Yehoshua to accept God’s grace? That was Moshe’s blessing.

And his curse,
Yehoshua thought as he wept for a man he loved above every other except God as Moshe stepped closer to the flames. How was he not burned as the fire licked his thick wool tunic? The winds tossed his long white beard to and fro, playing with it as child might a doll’s.

Then arms wide, praying, Moshe walked into the heart of the flames.

Yehoshua fell to his knees, tears streaking his dirt-smeared cheek.

Would faith be enough to survive God’s trial by fire?

As the minutes then hours passed, Yehoshua rocked back and forth on his knees. His hands held up to the heavens in supplication. Had he anything to sacrifice, he would have, yet this journey through the mountains had left them nothing but the rags upon their backs.

The sky brewed black above them as red and oranges danced upon flames from on high. Was God angered? Had they mistaken God’s intent? Had Moshe walked into fire only to be scorched to ash?

A loud whoosh sounded just before the flames climbed their way back to the sky. They rolled and jumped and leapt higher and higher until they were no more. When Yehoshua eyes finally looked down, there was his prophet, Moshe.