Eternal Nights (2 page)

The relics she thought were missing were valuable, but not so unusual that their absence would be noted. That made them perfect to be stolen. Kendall took another quick glance around the room and keyed in a search command for Dr. George’s ID code. She wanted to see every file he’d changed.

Most everyone was unaware there were two programs that recorded who made data changes. One loaded up front and some had discovered a way around it, but the screener that ran in the background was a different story. It was this program that she was scanning through for evidence.

The computer beeped and she jerked. Her station was at the back of the room and in the corner—no one could see what she was doing—but she had to stay cool or she’d give herself away. She ran her clammy palms over the thighs of her camouflage fatigue pants and started paging through the records.

There were a lot of them. Most, no doubt, were legitimate, since Dr. George was the head of one of the archeological teams, but surely all of them couldn’t be. What she needed was definitive proof. Something she could take to the officer in charge of planet security.

Kendall wasn’t easily daunted, but Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Sullivan intimidated the hell out of her. He was a hard-ass from the word go, and if she approached him with nothing more than anecdotal evidence and gut instinct, he’d blow her out of the water. She knew it.

But she’d had to tell someone, and when Wyatt hadn’t returned from his mission on schedule, she’d finally gone to his friend, Catfish. She’d been too scared to wait any longer once she was certain she wasn’t misreading the situation. Catfish had promised her he’d look into it and told her not to do anything, but how could she sit back and let thieves loot the Old City? She was familiar with the systems that the project team used and could discover things Hunter couldn’t.

Wait a second.
Kendall stopped paging through the records and tabbed back a few screens. Something had looked wrong.

Nothing there. She went back another screen to a sketch of the temple’s receiving room. As she studied the digital image, she knew something was off, but couldn’t figure out what bothered her. Her eyes widened as she figured it out.

The antiquity missing in the drawing hadn’t been stolen yet!

At least it hadn’t been a few hours ago. She knew because she’d been in that very room during her lunch break and had seen the sculpture with her own eyes.

She finally,
finally
had something she could take to Sullivan. Of course, this file with the missing relic wasn’t irrefutable. It would be easy for Dr. George—or anyone else, for that matter—to claim it was an oversight. That the statue in question had been inadvertently left off the room sketch. But it would be enough to cause security to investigate, and once they started, they’d surely find all kinds of evidence.

Kendall forced herself to take a deep breath and then another. She had to stay calm, had to think. First, she needed pictures that clearly showed the carving had been in this chamber of the temple, and the shots would need to be dated. That wouldn’t be too hard. She’d get the digicam from her quarters, sneak over to the pyramid while everyone was in the mess hall, and then she’d head straight for the colonel’s office. Sullivan had a rep for working long hours, and he’d likely still be there. If not, she knew where he lived. She couldn’t let this go one more night, not when it looked like one of the most beautiful pieces of art inside the temple was slated to be stolen.

When she realized she was tensing up again, Kendall made herself take it down a few notches. The artifact wasn’t gone yet. She could save it as long as she played it smart.

She needed a copy of this sketch for sure. After keying in a command, she strolled to the printer with as much nonchalance as she could manage and retrieved the page. As she turned, she caught sight of Dr. George. Kendall felt her knees sag and she locked them, but there was nothing she could do about the wild pounding of her heart.

Act normal.

She had to act normal. She had to breathe. He didn’t know what she’d printed, didn’t know what she suspected, and he didn’t know that she was on to him.

Oh, my God!

Kendall’s eyes widened with horror. She was an idiot. A complete moron. She’d left the file with the evidence up on her screen for
anyone
to see while she was away from her desk.

Her first instinct was to run to her station, but she couldn’t. That would definitely bring unwanted attention her direction and everyone would wonder what was up with her.

A very young, very eager second lieutenant stopped the archeologist and Kendall sighed with relief. Keep him talking, she thought, but the doctor put the man in his place—George was without question the biggest jerk on jarved Nine—and continued down the aisle. What were the odds he was coming to see her? He mostly ignored her unless it was to say something snide, and as far as she knew, she hadn’t done anything that would put her on his radar. But Kendall had a bad feeling about this.

Just in case, she eyed the distance to her desk. Her route there was shorter than George’s, but he was moving faster.

The lieutenant didn’t give up easily. He called the doctor’s name and hurried after him. Kendall picked up her pace. Not enough to be noticeable, but every second counted. She rounded the corner of her desk and resumed her seat as George the Jerk blasted the man a second time.

With a few clicks, she closed the telltale file and pulled up the database in which she was supposed to be working.

But she couldn’t breathe easy yet.

Now she had to unobtrusively get rid of the paper she was holding. That was as damning as the info on her screen had been. Her hands fumbled as she tried to pick up a memo about adhering to scheduled break times. It started to flutter to the floor, but she caught it in time, crumpling one side with her grip.

George was one row away.

With as much casualness as possible, she put the memo on top of her printout and rested both on the left corner of her desk, opposite the side the archeologist was approaching from. Relief flooded through her body, and she slumped back in her seat.

Dr. George stopped at her desk and cleared his throat. Kendall quickly sat upright as a new shot of adrenaline surged through her.

Before she could say anything, a sheaf of papers dropped onto the station in front of her. For a moment, she frowned, and then she recognized the report she’d written on the crystals of the Old City. This method of returning it to her could only mean one thing—she was about to receive a scathing commentary on her effort. She had a moment to wonder how George had gotten his hands on it. Kendall had turned her paper in to Dr. Hudson, the head honcho on the archeological project team.

“Miss Thomas, would you care to explain why you thought you could waste Dr. Hudson’s time on
that
?” His twang grated on her nerves, though that same Texas accent sounded appealing—all right, let’s be honest, sexy—coming from Wyatt.

“
Captain
Thomas,” Kendall corrected stiffly. Not that her rank would impress him, but she had to behave normally and she never let him call her
Miss
without straightening him out.

“Perhaps you believed you were writing for some half-baked New Age Web site,” he continued, raising his voice so everyone in the room could hear him lambaste her. “This, however, is a scholarly endeavor, one comprised of the brightest minds in the Western Alliance. If you want to invent stories about irrational things like the energetic meaning of crystals, I suggest you join a commune.”

Her face went hot. Thank goodness she hadn’t put her more controversial speculation on the crystals in the document. It took effort to keep her voice even. “If you had read my report carefully instead of jumping to conclusions, you’d know that I was theorizing about what the people who lived in the Old City believed about the gemstones, not what I believed.”

She met Dr. George’s angry stare without flinching. If he reported her, and he might, she knew Colonel McNamara would be understanding. It was no secret that the commander of Jarved Nine didn’t like this pompous windbag either. Besides, if Kendall was right and he was involved in the smuggling of antiquities, her lack of respect would be the least of his worries.

“The curriculum of Introduction to Anthropology must be much more rigorous than I recall from my days as an undergraduate,” he said. “In the near future, we must arrange for you to pass along your vast store of knowledge to the
doctors
on this team. After all, it’s not every day we have an opportunity to receive instruction from a cheerleader.”

Her hands clenched in her lap, and she pressed her lips together to contain the torrent of words. Four years in the army had taught her to be silent, but she didn’t like it.

“Nothing to say?” George’s smile was smug, contemptuous. “What a pity when we could have gleaned so much from you.”

She fisted her hands tighter, struggling to remain quiet, until with a nod of superiority, Dr. George walked away.

When he left, Kendall slowly relaxed her grip. There were red indentations where her nails had pressed into her skin, and she rubbed one hand with the other as she looked around. Everyone seemed to be concentrating on their jobs, but she knew that wasn’t true.

A rhythmic flash brought her attention back to the screen, and after pushing a loose tress off her face, she entered the correction with shaking hands. Once the program resumed its comparison scanning, she retrieved her drawing, and putting it on her lap, slid closer to her desk. Quietly, she folded it into a small square and slipped it inside her pocket.

Taking a shaky breath, she resumed her job. She’d barely processed the first scan when about a dozen wrist alarms went off, startling her. End of duty shift, she realized, and tried to calm her racing heart.

Kendall picked up her report and looked ruefully at it for a moment as she took some deep breaths. She’d written it in the hope that Dr. Hudson would be impressed enough to offer her a field assistant’s job. What a mistake. She grabbed her bag out of her lower drawer, jammed the paper into it, and headed for her house.

Jarved Nine was a planet light years from Earth, but this place felt more like home to her than anywhere she’d lived in the U.S. Kendall wished she knew why this world had been abandoned. It seemed as if the residents had just walked away and could return any minute. The lack of deterioration had a good deal to do with this perception—the field of energy encapsulating the city had preserved everything perfectly—but according to the tests the archeologists had done, the walled compound had been deserted nearly three thousand years ago.

The stone buildings lining the streets seemed to glow in the early evening sun, and as she walked, it relaxed her. Kendall was almost home when she was blinded by a beam of sunlight reflecting off the capstone of the pyramid at the center of the Old City. She brought up a hand to block the glare before memory slammed into her.

Damn. She’d forgotten. Forgotten the dream had awoken her again in the dead of night. Forgotten how frightened she’d been as she’d curled up in the middle of her bed and tried not to fall back asleep. Forgotten the way her heart had pounded and her lungs had strained for air. Kendall
hated
the dream.

Despite everything she’d tried, she couldn’t remember what it was about, no more than a few stray details—like the shaft of light hitting her eyes in almost this exact manner.

And the blood. So much blood.

If she could recall what happened, she could look up the elements in her dream dictionary and analyze them. Her mom had always told her that every vision had a message, and considering how many times Kendall had replayed this nightmare lately, it must be a pretty important one.

God, she wished Wyatt were here. Not that she’d tell him about her night terrors, but somehow they didn’t feel as horrific after she saw him. Shaking her head, she started walking again.

She wished he were here for another reason. As much as she liked Catfish, she wanted Wyatt working with her on the thefts. Kendall turned another corner, and the light was blocked. She lowered her hand and bit her lip.

What if the dream was a warning not to involve him in her investigation? She’d never been precognitive, but the nightmare had started four months ago, immediately after she’d met Wyatt. That had to mean something, right? What if he got hurt because he was helping her? Kendall sucked in a sharp breath and turned onto her street.

What if he got
killed
helping her?

She dropped her head back and blinked hard a couple of times. He’d already known something was bothering her before he left the city. Since she’d only been maybe ten percent sure at that point that something more than a memory lapse was going on, she hadn’t felt she could say anything. Now, however, she was ninety percent sure, and she had to tell him as soon as he returned. If she didn’t, Catfish sure as hell would.

Feeling as if the weight of the world rested on her shoulders, Kendall climbed the two stone steps to her front porch. As she passed her wind chime, she put out her index finger and set the rectangles of patterned glass dancing.

Instead of entering her quarters, she sank onto one of the chairs she kept outside, leaned back and listened. The tinkling tones soothed her, but it was more than that. The chime was one of the most beautiful things Kendall had ever seen, and the instant she’d laid eyes on it, she’d known she had to buy it.

Growing up, she hadn’t had much, and as an adult, Kendall still didn’t accumulate things. But she’d taken this wind chime with her to every post she’d been assigned to for the last four years.

With no breeze, the music didn’t last long. Too lazy to get up, she turned her gaze to what she could view from her seat. Since the temple was not only the biggest, but also the tallest structure in the Old City, she could see it over the roofs of the other buildings. Before she’d arrived on J Nine, the teams had performed about a gazillion different measurements and learned it was larger than the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Much larger.