The Book of Names (29 page)

He didn't notice the overweight fan in the Braves jersey who ambled in with his cardboard tray of beer and pizza and squeezed into an empty seat four rows behind his family. Guillermo waved to the cheering crowd as he ran out onto the field.

When the fatal shot rang out near the end of the first inning, everyone thought it was the crack of Guillermo's bat.

 

LONDON

David stared through the rain at the man exiting the cab in front of the Tower Monument. It looked like . . . it couldn't be . . .

Dillon.

“Driver, stop. Let us out here,” he ordered, hurriedly fishing euros from his pocket.

“Trinity Square is over there, what are you doing?” Yael asked.

But David was already lunging onto the wet pavement, his gaze locked on the two men approaching the Tower Monument.

Yael had jumped out beside him. As the cab whisked away, she touched his sleeve.

“Do you know them?”

“One of them.” His jaw was tight. “My best friend, Dillon McGrath. The priest who sent me to Rabbi ben Moshe.”

The friend who couldn't find my passport. Who couldn't find Eva either. The same night I sent him to my house, she turned up dead. The police are looking for me
—
but he never explained why he had to leave the country.

“What the hell is Dillon doing in London?” he muttered.

“Who's the other man—do you know him?”

“Not yet.” David started across the street. Dillon and his companion were already walking briskly down King William Street toward London Bridge. The shorter man popped a black umbrella against the misting rain. Dillon pulled his collar higher, hunching his shoulders as he kept pace with his hefty companion.

David was oblivious to the rain collecting on his eyelashes, streaming down his cheeks. Yael's steps matched his, and he sensed her rising tension as all around them, preoccupied Londoners hurried through the rain.

“I take it there's a reason you haven't called out to him,” she said.

“I'm not sure . . . if I can trust him.” David's lips faltered on the words. He'd never imagined saying something
like that about Dillon. The implications hung in the damp air, bleak as the sky overhead.

“You think he had something to do with Eva's murder?”

David had pushed away his suspicions before, but he couldn't any longer. Seeing Dillon in London, knowing that Crispin was here . . . and Stacy . . .

“I'm even wondering if he had something to do with ben Moshe's murder. It kills me to say it, but he knew I was going to be with ben Moshe that afternoon.”

“They're turning onto Arthur Street” Yael interrupted breathlessly. “We'd better drop back a few paces.”

Foot traffic was thinner here in the industrial area nearer the docks and David didn't want to risk Dillon spotting him. The Thames gleamed a dull pewter in the distance as he slowed his pace. They were getting farther from Trinity Square with every step.

As if sharing his thoughts, Yael glanced at him, biting her lip. “What about the phone call to Crispin?”

Torn, David held his panic at bay. “First I need to see where he's going. Then we'll double back.”

And hope to hell
, he thought desperately,
that Mueller hasn't grown tired of waiting.

Tension throbbed through him in painful waves as he watched Dillon and the other man hurrying along the street, continuing as it merged into Swan Lane.
Am I putting Stacy at risk over nothing?
Dillon was the truest man he'd ever known. Maybe he was getting paranoid. The Gnoseos had turned his life so upside down he was doubting his closest friend. A man who had devoted his life to the service of God—not to evil.

Dillon could be of help right now. All I have to do is call out. . . .

But he couldn't bring himself to do it—the words stuck behind his teeth like lumps of clay.

Then he saw the next street Dillon and his companion were turning in to. His brain screamed in alarm.

Angel's Passage.

Dark
Angels?

Yael gripped his wrist. “They're going into that warehouse, David.”

“And so am I. You with me?”

She quickened her pace, but kept her tone low and even. “Haven't you noticed? Every last step.”

THE ARK

Where were those sounds coming from?

Stacy pressed her ear to each of the four walls, listening as intently as she could. The sobs were so faint, so indistinct, she couldn't be certain. But she knew she wasn't imagining them.

Someone was in pain or afraid. If she could only get out of here, she could try to help them.

What a joke. She couldn't even help herself. She tried the door for the hundredth time, jiggling the knob in every direction, only increasing her frustration. She had no idea how long she'd been here, or what was going to happen to her next—she only knew that in the end the lion-man was planning to kill her.

David's coming.
She clung to that knowledge, holding on to every shred of hope. She wanted to feel happy about David coming for her, but instead she was terrified. She knew the man was telling the truth when he said he'd kill her and then kill David. Just like she knew the man who'd kidnapped her had already killed Mom and Hutch.

The tears streamed down her face faster than she could swipe them away.
Mom.
She couldn't erase the image of
her mother sprawled in the gravel, blood trickling from her head.
Where was Mom now?
she thought, rocking back and forth with sobs.
Still lying there? Did Len know? Did David?

She tried to stop the tears, telling herself to search the room.
There must be something here I can use to trip that man when he comes back. If I can just get past him while the door's open, I can run. I'm fast. My reflexes are excellent and I have good instincts. That's what Coach Wilson always says. I'll dodge around him
—
his limp will slow him down. I can run, get away
. . .

She froze in the center of the room as, suddenly, the key clicked into the lock.
No, not yet!

Frantically, she stared around the barren room. There was nothing to trip him with. . . .

The door opened with a rush of air. Stacy shrunk back, fear lodged in her throat.

A man she'd never seen before strode into the room.

 

As soon as Dillon and his companion disappeared through the warehouse door at 8 Angel Passage, the building became indistinguishable from every shuttered two-story warehouse around it.

David quickened his pace as the drizzle hardened into a steady tap of rain, causing Yael to shiver as she hurried along beside him.

“I think we should wait, David—listen first before we go in there,” she said, blinking away raindrops. “Unless you're ready to barge right in and confront him.”

“Not yet. Let's check out the delivery door.” David sidestepped puddles as they made their way to the rear of the building.

He stopped so abruptly, Yael stumbled into him. They both flattened themselves against the side of the building as they spotted the flurry of activity around the loading ramp. David scrutinized the white truck backed up against the dock. An assembly line of workers were unloading suitcases and boxes, methodically handing them off to men who hustled them inside.

“Look at their badges,” Yael whispered.

David nodded, his stomach twisting with disbelief. The badges clipped to the workers' belts were chillingly familiar. Even from this distance, he could make out the shape of the tower, of the lightning slash in the sky.

The tarot card.

“We've found them, David. We have to get inside.”

He hunched his shoulders against the rain. “Then we follow Dillon.”

“What about Stacy?”

“If this is some kind of Gnoseos headquarters, Crispin might be right here—with her. We may have just saved ourselves a telephone call.”

“And gained the element of surprise.” Even as she said the words, David tugged out Gillis's Tower card. She did the same with the rabbi's.

“We walk through the front door like we belong,” he said tersely, wheeling toward the main entrance to the building.
And pray this is leading us to Stacy.

“You sure you want in on this, Yael? You could go back to scope out Trinity Square—”

“I said every step of the way, remember?” She hurried past him to the front and tried to push open the steel door.

Locked.

“Open sesame,” David muttered. He rapped on the door. Then, noticing the peep hole, he raised the Tower card and plastered it in front of the convex lens.

The door opened almost immediately. A man roughly the same size and build as Gillis stood there, doing his best impression of a Brink's truck. A Brink's truck packing a machine gun.

Unsmiling, he held out his free hand for the Tower cards. David fought off the sensation of being in a surreal dream as the man scrutinized their cards. This was no dream. It was a nightmare. Dillon was a Gnoseos. A traitor.

Dillon.

He swallowed down the bile in his throat, trying to assume nonchalance as the guard handed back their cards and stepped aside for them to enter.

“Down the hall to your right.” He gestured with the machine gun. “Baggage?”

“All taken care of.” David brushed passed him as if he had all the time in the world, a hand at Yael's waist.

The warehouse interior was nearly empty save for half a dozen other armed men, who looked both alert and single-minded.
Dark Angels.
Farther back in the shadows were boxes, suitcases, and floor-to-ceiling cases of bottled water.
Provisions.

He could hear Yael's shallow breaths as they reached the end of the hallway and were confronted by a plain wood door. Leading, one would suppose, to the warehouse manager's office.

But it wasn't an office. As David pushed the door wide, they realized they were in a subway station entrance. A flight of cement stairs rimmed by a round metal banister led steeply down. Tiny orbs of light glowed like ghosts' eyes from the sides of the steps, dwindling away to pale pinpoints of light. He heard Yael draw in her breath beside him.

It was a damned good thing he'd conquered his fear of heights or he'd never have mustered the courage to descend those steps, much less in quasi-darkness. He could glimpse nothing of the bottom—the stairs just curved away far below, giving no indication where—or if—they ended.

An eerie desperation thumped in David's chest as he launched himself down the staircase, Yael right behind him. He was certain that Dillon had come this way just minutes before. The dank air was still layered with the scent of his friend's Aramis cologne.

He heard Yael's footsteps clacking behind him. She hadn't shown a single flicker of fear, which was more than he could say for himself. His trepidation accelerated as their descent steepened.

There was no sign of an end to these stairs.

“Coming back up is going to be a bitch,” Yael whispered behind him.

David could only hope they wouldn't have to race up pursued by a flock of Dark Angels. He kept that thought to himself.

The light grew still murkier, the air even colder.

Yael's sandaled feet felt like blocks of ice. She'd spent many of her adult years sifting through underground excavations, but never had she encountered anything as strange and foreboding as this seemingly infinite set of stairs.

Just when she decided they were doomed to trudge downward forever, a cement landing came into view. She breathed a sigh of relief and hurried toward it.

But when they halted, there was only a closed metal door to their right and yet another staircase continuing downward. This one twisted in a harsh spiral of steel and copper, plunging down a hole bored through the bedrock surrounding the landing.

“My God,” Yael breathed.

David had never seen anything like this. He felt as if he were descending into the underworld, and wouldn't have been at all surprised to find himself standing at the banks of the River Styx.

“Your choice . . . the door or the stairs.” Yael cast him a questioning glance as she rubbed her aching calves.

David chose the door. Futilely, he tugged at it.

“It'll make too much commotion if we try to break in—let's take our chances with the stairs.”

“I wonder how many years it took them to tunnel this
far down.” She hated the raspiness of her voice, but at least she still had one. She braced herself against the rock wall, stretching to work on the kinks. All of her bruises seemed on fire and the burn at her throat was throbbing.

She wondered if it had occurred to David that they'd come down here without a single weapon.

“Is it too late to point out that we're going in unarmed against the enemies of God?”

“We have good on our side, right?” David was only half joking. He wished he'd thought to buy a pocketknife after they'd left the airport. But the point was moot.

The air smelled even mustier as they started down the next set of steps. “Watch out,” David cautioned as his head disappeared down the hole. “These steps are slippery.”

“Condensation.” Yael concentrated on maintaining her footing, fixing her gaze on the rungs one by one, avoiding the danger of staring down the dizzying spiral.

Suddenly from far above, they heard footsteps and low voices. Others were coming down behind them.

They
probably know where they're headed, she thought.

David and Yael trudged on, picking their way down the slick metal steps. David had never been this far below ground. He wondered if either one of them would ever see daylight again.

He shook the thought away, concentrating instead on the Lamed Vovniks, reminding himself that as long as any of the thirty-six still drew breath, there was hope.