The Seventh Stone (26 page)

The little girl slid to the ground. “When are you coming home, Mommy?”

Gabriella Hunter visibly stiffened. For a moment, Baltasar was afraid that she was going to shout for her daughter to run away. But to where? Instead, the woman forced another smile. “Very soon, Lucia,” she said. “I love you more than the moon and stars. You know that?”

Lucia shrugged, then looked up. “Wait, see what I found!” She ran back to where she had been leading Barbie into the jungle. Baltasar pushed back his chair so both he and Hunter could see the child. Lucia crouched. There, in the clearing, a
Phyllobates terribilis
, commonly known as the Golden Arrow poison dart frog, sat gleaming like a pure gold nugget against the dark soil. “It’s the fairy prince,” Lucia said. She lowered Barbie’s face towards the tiny frog. “Isn’t he beautiful? Barbie’s going to kiss him.”

On the computer, a look of recognition, then sheer terror, filled Hunter’s face. “Don’t touch it!” she screamed. She lunged towards the computer. “Lucia, get away!”

Lucia clutched her Barbie to her heart and stepped back. She looked towards the laptop, a sudden dismay flooding her eyes with tears.

Hunter lowered herself back into her chair. “I’m sorry I yelled, honey,” she said, her voice still with an edge. “But that frog is very poisonous. If you touch it, you’ll get sick.”

Baltasar signaled for Fenton to come in. Perhaps children’s emotions weren’t so unpredictable. He could see Lucia was on the verge of crying. Besides, he’d made his point. “Go with Mister Fenton,” he said to Lucia.

Lucia pouted. “I want to go home now.”

Baltasar stiffened. “I told you to go with Mister Fenton.”

Fenton stepped forward, crouched to lower himself to her level. “Chef just baked some cookies.” He breathed in deeply and smiled. “Can you smell them? Chocolate chip, my daughter’s favorite. Do you like them?”

Lucia hesitated, and then nodded. She looked at the computer screen. “Can I, Mommy?”

“
Go with Mister Fenton,” Hunter answered quickly. Baltasar sat back smugly. The woman would rather have her child with anyone than him.

Lucia eyed Baltasar. “Can you take me home then, after cookies?”

“
When you go home,” Baltasar said, “is entirely up to your mother.” Fenton offered his hand to the girl. She took it, and he led her from the orangery.

CHAPTER
32

The minute Christa bundled Liam in his car seat next to Percival, she rushed back to the greenhouse.
Find the stones
, Percival said. Like Dad hadn’t been searching for them his entire life. And she was supposed to piece together the clues in Salvatierra’s letter and find the Turquoise and Emerald within hours. But she was becoming more sure it wouldn’t end there. Salvatierra was the last man to see the Breastplate of Aaron intact. His letter laid out clues to its location. Thousands of lives relied on who found it first.

Salvatierra’s crucifix knocked against her chest as she ran. It was the kind of irony that only cycles in history could create, to be swooped up and dropped into Salvatierra’s five-hundred year old mission to keep the power of the Breastplate out of the hands of evil, out of the hands of a Contreras. To right a deadly wrong, even if it cost her life, even if it cost her soul. “Tried it your way, Padre,” she said, “but I need those seven stones together, not scattered around the world.”

Daniel stayed on the sidewalk, looking in the direction of Helen’s car and the clinic, as if wondering if what just happened was real or imagined. Christa shouldered her pack. She stepped out of the steamy womb of the greenhouse and met him in the cold dread of December.

He wrapped his arms around her. “I love you, Christa.” She closed her eyes. What a time for him to say that. He stroked her hair. “I believe in you.”

“
That makes one of us.”

He held her at arm’s length, his eyes searching hers. “This is all coming back to the Breastplate of Aaron,” he said. “We can find it. Think of it, Christa. To hear God’s voice. To solve the eternal question. To know, without doubt, that death is not the end of life.”

“
That kind of god complex is what got us into this mess.”

“
Exactly. That’s why we have to work with Contreras, not against him.”

She pushed away. “Have you been drinking the water?”

“
Think about it. Contreras is way ahead of us. You want to save Lucia? I know this man. I know how he works. He doesn’t want to kill people. He wants to save them. He is the only one in the position to find and distribute the permanent antidote in time.”

“
He kidnapped Lucia. He is chasing after Gabriella. He poisoned our water supply, for God’s sake.”

“
Lives are at stake,” Daniel said. “Do you want to be responsible for all those people dying? Because you will be, if you can’t admit Contreras is the only one who can save them.”

“
I’d make a deal with the devil first.” She hurried across the grassy courtyard. Dead leaves skittered around her feet. She hunched her shoulders against the chill. Few people were hustling along the sidewalks that surrounded the square plaza. Most students had already left for the winter break. It felt empty. It felt like death. Could Daniel be right? Could Contreras be the only chance at salvation? The thought was sickening. A scattering of melancholy measures from a violin escaped the caprices of the wind and floated their way to the inner courtyard.

“
The inviolate violinist,” Daniel said, close in on her heels. They had named the elusive musician when she and Daniel met to read on the grassy squares on sunnier days.

“
Mozart’s Requiem,” she said.

“
Mass for the dead,” Daniel said. “Most historians agree now that Mozart was poisoned to death, by his jealous rival, Solineri. It’s a sign, Christa.”

“
A sign? Mozart sending a message from beyond the grave? You have been drinking the water.”

“
Christa,” he grabbed her shoulders, “this is the Breastplate of Aaron, the greatest historical artifact of all time. Doesn’t a part of you want to know what happens when we restore it?”

Of course a part of her wanted that, more than anything. It was screaming at her, the imp of the perverse, clamoring at the bars of its cell that she kept locked and hidden away. “Only if restoring the Breastplate will show us the antidote, how to find it, or how to create it. We’ve got to get the permanent antidote.”

“
You’re talking about science,” Daniel said. “I’m talking about solving mankind’s ultimate mystery—what happens after we die.”

“
I’d rather not ruin the surprise,” she said. More like she was terrified of the answer. It was easier to accept her mother’s life had simply ended than to confront the fact that her immortal spirit blamed her for her death. She stepped up the granite stairs and battled the push of the wind to open the heavy oak door to the ivy-covered brownstone that held the history faculty offices. She stopped, blocked Daniel from entering. “I’ve got to do this alone,” she said. If only she had the strength to believe it. “I can’t work with you, Daniel. Not if that means working with Contreras.”

“
Contreras trusts me,” he said. “We’ll do it your way. I won’t tell him anything.” He grabbed her hand. “But I can get close to him, find out exactly what he’s up to, if you bring me in on what’s going on. You need to trust me, for Lucia’s sake.”

“
Just to get this straight, I should trust you, because Contreras trusts you, so you can double cross him.”

“
I don’t love Contreras,” he said. “You are the one I want to spend my life with.”

“
Your timing sucks,” she said. Once again, she was blowing it, kicking away anyone who she let close enough to care. But, in this case, he was right. She needed him, and damn it, she might only have days to live. She didn’t want to leave this life so utterly alone. “As far as spending time together, let’s see if we get through the next seven days.”

They hurried down the linoleum tile hallway. The florescent lights cast a ghostly pall over Daniel’s face, exaggerating his troubled expression. Most of the offices were already locked for the winter break. The air was still and heavy, with no way to escape the weight of the building pressing down on it. Laughter escaped from Professor Durham’s office, and a snippet of his phone conversation about an upcoming holiday party. It sounded out of place, surreal, from a parallel world where people didn’t kill and kidnap for sacred gemstones.

She shouldered open the heavy fire doors and headed down the worn marble stairs. Their footsteps echoed, populating the emptiness with the specter of ghosts. Phantom whispers teased the edges of her perception. Ghostly breath chilled the back of her neck. The poison couldn’t be driving her mad, not yet. And the object of her quest, Professor Conroy, needed no poison to know madness.

Her students referred to him as Crazy Conroy, not that they knew him. Like an historical figure in their texts, Conroy was someone they only had learned about. He had long ago been forced to retire from teaching, banished to a dusty, forgotten corner of the basement, becoming like one of the many curious relics in his collection. Christa made it a habit to visit him, at first to make sure he was still among the living, then to embrace his genius. She mined the Internet for facts, but Conroy, like a physicist with a proof to the unification theory, would interweave seemingly unconnected threads of information into a brilliant tapestry of humanity, a task still singular to the human brain.

“
This professor is an old friend of my father’s. He lived in the Colombian rainforest as a child with his missionary parents,” she told Daniel. “That experience inspired him to become an historian.” Same thing happened to her after Peru, desperate to make sense of the present by looking into the past.

Half the fluorescent lights flickered in the windowless corridor. Others had given up the ghost entirely. Dust dulled the linoleum floor. Even the custodians had abandoned this subterranean floor, presuming, correctly, that it wouldn’t be noticed. The frosted glass door at the end of the hall was stenciled in black with the simple identification, Cornelius Conroy, PhD. At least the University had acknowledged that much.

Daniel pulled her back. “Crazy Conroy?” he said. “One of my student’s older brothers talked about him. He’s nuts.”

She knocked. A confused muttering seeped through the door, as if someone suddenly awoke from a nap or was startled away from intense concentration. A shuffling of feet approached. The door opened slowly to reveal a man, who, for better or worse, could understudy for Albert Einstein with his wild hair and sharp eyes. The pungent scent of pipe smoke defied the musty air, although Conroy hadn’t smoked in years. Conroy wore his signature V-neck sweater beneath his brown corduroy jacket. In any season, his basement office felt chilled and damp, reflected in his ruddy complexion. His bushy eyebrows, normally raised in delight at Christa’s appearance, were knitted in concern. “It has begun,” he said, “and I will show you the beginning.” He grasped her upper arm and coaxed her forward. Daniel stepped in while Conroy checked the hall. Satisfied it was empty, he closed and latched the door behind them.

Conroy shifted the small stack of books teetering on the threadbare velvet chair to a vacant patch of floor, dropping them with a loud thud, rousing a swarm of dust mites. The spines were embossed with Conroy’s name. He was a prolific author in his glory days. He gestured for Christa to sit and motioned Daniel to the chair’s empty twin. Daniel hesitated, scrutinizing the chair. Its worn, red upholstery was framed by fanciful carved wood gilt in peeling gold leaf, lending it the look of a theatrical, if shopworn, medieval throne. “Professor Conroy rescued them from the dumpster after the University’s production of King Lear some years ago,” she said.
I like to treat my guests like royalty
, he had quipped.

Conroy wove his way past the bookshelf bursting with texts, papers and periodicals to the padded chair behind his desk. He wheeled his chair closer and leaned forward, clasping his hands on the blotter. “I’ve seen the phantoms,” he said. “I was expecting you.”

Daniel stood up. “This is crazy. He can’t help us.”

Christa grabbed Daniel’s hand and coaxed him to sit down again. She looked out the grimy hopper window. It was there, all right. The dark shadow, hunkering on the barren tree branch. This wasn’t a delusion. Conroy had seen it, too. “This is Daniel Dubler,” she said. “He was with Gabriella in Colombia last summer. He was the expedition historian.”

Conroy turned towards Daniel, his sharp eyes scanning him. “All historians are a bit crazy, Mister Dubler. It’s how we stay sane.”

Daniel turned away. He took a sudden interest in the glass enclosed barrister bookcases that were replete with an odd array of artifacts collected from remote areas around the world when, years earlier, Conroy was doing field research.