The Templar's Code (11 page)

“On the floor! Now!”

Edie heard rather than saw Caedmon dive off the couch in her direction. An instant later, his chest plowed into her shoulder, shoving her to the floor. Stunned, she opened her mouth, sucking in a gasp of air.

“Wh-what’s going on?” Then, a split second later, the realization dawned: “Oh God . . . it’s him, isn’t it?”
Him
being Jason’s Lovett’s killer.

Caedmon pressed his mouth to her ear. “Where’s your mobile phone?”

“Um . . . kitchen . . . charger . . . on the counter,” she rasped, unable to speak in full sentences.

“Right.”

Crouching over top of her, Caedmon grabbed her by the hand and pulled her off the floor, dragging her to the staircase in the foyer.

“Now what?”

“I want you to go upstairs and lock yourself in the bathroom. Do
not,
under any circumstances, come back downstairs.”

Shock having mushroomed into full-blown terror, Edie obeyed, taking the steps two at a time. Stumbling near the top, she made a wild grab for the banister. But not before painfully banging a knee against one of the stair treads. Her kneecap throbbing with pain, she hobbled down the hall.

Moments later, door securely locked behind her, she scanned the porcelain-and-tile confines of the bathroom.

Lurching toward the cabinet above the sink, she yanked it open and took a quick inventory: medicine bottles, ear swabs, cosmetic bag, hairbrush, Band-Aids. Nothing even remotely dangerous. Panic swelling, she wiped a clammy hand against her skirt. Somewhere, in the shadows of her house, a killer lurked, intent on—

Plunger!
The thick rubber cap was attached to a sturdy wood handle. If need be, she could use the shaft like a billy club.

With that thought in mind, she rushed over to the toilet bowl and snatched the plunger from its hidey-hole behind the porcelain tank. Tucking the plunger under her armpit, she went to the window. Palms pressed against the lower sash, she shoved upward.

The window refused to budge.

“Come on!” She balled her fist and pounded on the sash.

Teeth clenched, she tried again.
Success!
Opening the window to half mast, she scanned the alley. The fluorescent streetlamp on the corner buzzed and flickered, casting a surreal tangerine glow onto the row of parked cars and trash receptacles that lined the rutted lane. Several streets over, a dog repeatedly barked. Directly opposite, on the other side of the deserted alley, a light shone in the window.

Edie cupped a hand to her mouth. “Hey, you! Over there! Open the window!”

No one answered the summons.

The jackhammer insider her chest thumped faster.
What if Caedmon can’t get to my cell phone to call the police?
Rico Suave could kill them just like he killed Jason Lovett.

To hell with that!
Grasping the plunger between her hands, Edie took aim and hurled it across the alley at her neighbor’s window.

The rubber end hit the screen window before bouncing off and landing in the alley below. Edie held her breath, hoping someone inside the house would investigate the commotion.

Nearly twenty seconds passed before a small Latino boy tentatively pulled aside the curtain and peered out the window.

“I need you to call the cops!” Edie hollered.

The child shook his head, uncomprehending.

She put her right thumb to her ear and her pinky to her mouth. The international sign for “phone call.”
“Policía! Urgente!”

The little boy’s eyes opened wide. A few seconds later, he ran from the window. Edie had the sickening feeling that her plan just backfired, that rather than eliciting his help, she scared the bejesus out of the kid.

Her stomach painfully cramped, she stumbled over to the locked door and put her ear to the small crack between the jamb and the door. Caedmon was downstairs, in the dark, defenseless.

“Please, please, please,” she whimpered to the powers that be.

Because, in that terrified instant, it suddenly dawned on her: She no longer had a weapon.

Hearing a floorboard groan under a heavy weight, Caedmon froze.

His field of vision reduced to shadowy shapes and dark objects, he stood motionless. Holding his breath, he listened for a footfall. A swish of fabric. Anything to pinpoint the intruder’s location.

The entire house was silent as the grave.

Clever bastard, cutting off the electricity,
he thought grudgingly as he tiptoed into the kitchen. Made him think the assassin had preternatural senses. Or the advantage of night-vision goggles.

He came to another standstill, taking a moment to review the kitchen’s layout in his mind’s eye—refrigerator on the right, stove on the left, Edie’s mobile on the counter next to the back door. And, most important of all, carving knife in the third drawer. He pivoted in that direction. In the near distance, a police siren shrilly blared.

Suddenly, nostrils twitching, he detected a familiar scent.
Sandalwood.
The same cologne worn by Jason Lovett’s killer. The bastard was here, somewhere in Edie’s kitchen. Hearing a sharp breathy inhalation, he intuited the deadly spring was about to uncoil.

Like a mortar fired from a cannon, Caedmon launched himself at the cabinetry. Grabbing a knob, he yanked open the third drawer. Sundry kitchen tools loudly rattled. No time to choose, he grabbed the first utensil he laid his hand upon—a steel sharpening rod. Armed, he spun on his heel, weapon raised.

Just then, a beam of golden light hit his ocular nerve. Blinded by the unexpected burst of illumination, he shielded his eyes with his left hand while his right arm furiously slashed through the air, warding off an attack.

“Caedmon! It’s me!”

His pupils contracted, enabling him to see that Edie stood in the doorway, a flashlight grasped in her hand. “Get the bloody hell out of—”

“He’s gone.” She pointed to the opposite end of the kitchen.

Craning his neck, Caedmon saw that the back door was wide open.

“The neighbors called the cops. I’m guessing that when Rico Suave heard the police siren, he got spooked and ran off.”

Indeed, the strident blare had become louder in the intervening seconds.

“Thank God.” Exhaling a ragged breath, he walked over and closed the door, securing it with the chain latch.

“Lucky for us, Rico Suave’s survival instincts are stronger than his killer instincts.” Although the remark was uttered with a fair amount of bravado, the worry lines between Edie’s brows belied the bluster.

“Trust me, the latter are finely honed.”

Worry lines deepened. “Maybe we should cancel the trip to Rhode Island.”

Opening the metal door that housed the electric panel, he flipped the main circuit, flooding the kitchen with fluorescent light. “The sooner we leave Washington, the better.”

With Jason Lovett’s killer on the prowl, it would be foolhardy to remain.

“You must follow them to Arcadia.”

Heavyhearted, Mercurius hung up the phone. While not dire, the situation
was
troubling. Earlier today, one problem had been resolved only to have another emerge in its place. Jason Lovett had taken the historian Caedmon Aisquith into his confidence. Not only did the Brit know about the Templar colony, he was determined to find the sacred relic.

Mercifully, the Brit had no idea what he sought.

Worried what danger the new day would bring, Mercurius trudged down the hall toward his study to keep vigil. As was his custom, he stopped in front of the framed photographs that hung on the wall. His gaze slowly went from one heart-wrenching image to the next.
The massacre of Armenian Christians. The extermination of European Jews. The slaughter of Bosnian Muslims.

Bodies . . . blood . . . bones.

“‘And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of a sword,’” Mercurius softly whispered, the verse from Joshua ironically apropos. Ironic because three millennia ago, a terrible evil was spawned, an abomination that fostered hatred, promoted bigotry, and incited intolerance. Darkness followed in its wake. The evil manifested into the cult of monotheism. Judaism, Christianity, Islam—within the bosom of each cult beat the heart of darkness.

Crusades . . . holy wars . . . jihads.

So much hatred and violence. Century after bloody century. One could sweetly dream of a peaceful planet, but with the dawning of each new day, the nightmare returned. Indeed, mankind can be forgiven for viewing the world with suspicion. A suspicion germinated from the niggling fear that perhaps our gods had played us false. That we’d been duped into believing this world was created by a benevolent and merciful God.

What if it was all a hoax?

For
there
, in each haunting picture, was the uncontestable proof. A thousand words not nearly enough to convey the unrelenting anguish.

Confronted with this pervasive darkness, what man didn’t yearn to be free of the torment? Drugs, sex, food, shopping, gambling—just a few of the sedatives that mankind used to anesthetize the pain.

As always, his gaze returned to the framed black-and-white image of emaciated corpses haphazardly tossed into an earthen pit. He reverently touched the glass that covered the sixty-six-year-old photograph.
Auschwitz.

“Lest we forget . . .”

While that atrocity still haunted, who would mourn the slain Templars tossed into a mass grave at Arcadia? Mercurius didn’t need a photograph to envision that brutal episode. The Templars’ descendants had been hunted for their heretical beliefs. But massacred on account of the sacred relic that they’d safeguarded. For all their vaunted courage, in the end, the Knights Templar could not bring themselves to use the relic to eradicate the evil in their midst. Perhaps they’d harbored an ill-fated hope that the world could be redeemed.

A hope shared by so many.

Save the world. Save the earth. Save the planet.

The desperate cry of the anguished souls who refused to acknowledge that the Creation was flawed. Had
always
been flawed. Defective. One had only to turn on the cable news channel to ascertain that the hate mongers, the dictators, and the vicious thugs dominated global politics. Always threatening to pull the trigger. Start a war. Drop the bomb. It was now as it was in the beginning.

Mercurius tore his gaze away from the framed photographs. He refused to countenance such a world. A pragmatic man, he could reach but one conclusion: This world was not worth saving.