Immortal Trust (15 page)

As if someone touched her with a hot poker, Chloe’s spine snapped straight. She whipped around to face her brother. “Julian, I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with you, but you need to get a grip.
Now.
Or you can leave.”

Julian’s mouth twisted into a vicious sneer. “You would buy into it. Give you a pretty face, and you’ll believe anything. Let’s get to the trunk. It’s more interesting than bits of glass pasted onto more glass and stories about chunks of wood.”

Equal anger flashed behind Chloe’s amber stare. She drew in a breath, held it, then exhaled hard.

Before she could spew her temper, Lucan shifted his arm so he could clasp her fingers and gave them a reassuring squeeze. Leaning close to her shoulder he murmured, “Let it go. ’Tis a tale for later.” Saints’ teeth, touching her satisfied his soul.

Surprising him, she did as he suggested and presented her back to her brother. With a subtle dip of her chin and a faint blush, she set the cross down and reached inside the cardboard box again.

Lucan looked over her head as she talked and caught Julian glaring at the back of his sister’s head. Deep down in Lucan’s gut, a similar anger sparked. Aye, indeed, Julian bore Chloe ill intentions. Why, Lucan could not fathom. Yet he did not attribute this to the centuries of suspicion that lived inside his soul. The evidence was plain. Julian, however, did not seem to understand that to get to Chloe, he must first get through Lucan.

Julian’s gaze shifted to Lucan. His upper lip curled in what could only be described as a snarl.

Mayhap he understood after all.

*   *   *

Chloe watched as Gareth carted the last of the three boxes out the door. To her right, Lucan sat on a stool, one foot casually propped against the wooden rungs. On her left, her brother mirrored Lucan’s position. But casual didn’t fit her brother’s posture. It reeked of mockery. Stunk of misplaced testosterone.

Lucan’s relaxed expression didn’t fool her either. He just managed to hide his animosity a hell of a lot better. Like he had practice doing so, where her brother had never known a day of temperance.

The tension that spanned them crackled like dried wood on a fire. Thick enough that she didn’t need a knife to cut it. Her finger would do the trick. Maybe even just a hard breath.

But she could honestly say Julian deserved every bit of animosity he received. He’d egged on Lucan and Gareth at every opportunity. As if he was trying to drag them into a fight. One he’d lose, no doubt. Particularly if he’d managed to get beneath Gareth’s skin as well as he had Lucan’s. In truth, though, Julian aimed his barbs squarely at Lucan, not so much the younger Church representative.

Oddly, Chloe found herself siding against her brother for the first time since they’d been kids. Lucan’s quiet, yet obvious, aggression strangely calmed her own. That he could contain himself, unlike Julian, increased her growing respect for him. It didn’t hurt either that he’d just spent a good three hours enrapturing her mind with tales about the various pieces her team had collected over the last several weeks.

Whether he spoke the truth or not, the legends he recited fascinated her. Pieces of the True Cross. Bits of saints’ bones. Fantastical objects made to hold them all. How and why they had been carried across the lands. Everything he said reinforced her opinion that he knew his field, and knew it well.

The fragile trust she had begun to embrace over breakfast wavered. All the more reason to mistrust him with the contents inside the last remaining piece—the golden trunk.

She glanced across the table at the five expressions that glowed with anxiousness. Anxiety she too felt, though for entirely different reasons. In the depths of her heart, she knew what she’d find inside the reliquary. She’d never admit it aloud, but after surreptitiously checking the beads to see if one might break free, and finding them unmovable, she couldn’t find any other explanation for the surreal, otherworldly experience she’d encountered when she held the bead.

Veronica’s Veil.
Christ’s existence at last proved beyond a doubt. The revered scientist Dr. Noelle Keane, whom Chloe had worked with on research many times, put those wheels into motion with the official carbon dating of the Sudarium of Oviedo. But since her disappearance, along with the Sudarium’s, the Christian community lacked a crucial piece of evidence to celebrate the fact. Now, at last, Chloe would bring something useful to the world. People everywhere would rejoice, and she’d see to it the cloth sat on public display in a museum.

No matter how Lucan fought the notion.

“Damn it, Chloe, get on with it,” Julian snapped. “We’re all here. Open the trunk.”

The shift of Caradoc’s hand gave her pause. She followed the motion, observing as he wrapped his fingers around the hilt of a sword. Chloe blinked. Who wore a sword in public? And where had he gotten it—she hadn’t noticed it before.

As if he sensed her questions, Caradoc gave her a warm smile. “Proceed, if you will?”

“Yeah.” Weird. Just … weird.

She took a deep breath and reached for the lid. Digging her nails into the thin seam between lid and body, she pulled.

The top held fast.

“’Tis locked,” Lucan murmured.

Chloe tried again, annoyed he’d made the observation first. When the lid refused to budge more than a fraction of an inch, she gestured at the metal rack of shelves. “Chris, see if you can find the ice pick in there. Maybe we can jimmy this lock.”

While he rummaged, her heartbeat accelerated. She squirmed in her chair, anxiety possessing her as well. Beside her, Lucan chuckled. He dropped his hand beneath the table and gave her thigh a gentle squeeze. Warmth tingled up her leg. She shifted, expecting him to move that hand and relieve her of the pleasant discomfort. Instead, his palm rested heavy and unmoving, a blessed torment that made concentrating on the ice pick Chris passed across the table, and inserting it into the tiny keyhole, exceedingly difficult.

Lock picking had never been her forte. On one or two occasions she’d had to fiddle around with a pick until rusted old mechanisms broke free. But all of those events included a simple lever type of lock where all she had to do was press the bottom up or down to release the weight. In the reliquary’s case, however, the designer made the mechanism more complex. She fumbled around inside the keyhole, scraping the ice pick’s point against aged metal, accomplishing nothing.

As frustration set in, Lucan’s hand left her thigh to close over hers. He stood up, bent around her, and enveloped her with his body. His chest molded into her back. His arms framed her shoulders. And his cheek tucked so close to the side of her face she could feel his warmth. Her gaze shifted as he turned her wrist, and she glanced sideways at high cheekbones, the touch of dark stubble that told her he hadn’t shaved that morning. Damn, oh, damn. If she turned her head a fraction … If he did the same …

She swallowed hard and jerked her eyes away from the handsome outline of high cheekbones, long eyelashes, and tender lips she remembered all too well.

The lock gave with a faint
click
. Lucan straightened, taking the heavenly feel of his body with him. He released her hand, took the ice pick from her fingers, and passed it back to Chris.

A whole new sense of anticipation launched through Chloe. For a fleeting moment she forgot the way Lucan turned her mind into a pretzel. She reached for the gilt lid and lifted.

The ageless scent of earth escaped into the air. Hesitantly she pushed out of her chair, bending over to peer inside, as did all the other heads that gathered close. Nestled in the bottom, a length of delicate, yellowed muslin lay in a neatly folded square. Chloe’s breath came out in a hard rush. The Veronica. Chills rippled down her spine.

“Let me see that.” Julian’s bare hand shot beneath her nose.

She slapped his wrist aside with more venom than she’d meant and drove his hand into the hard silver and gold edge. He drew back with a muffled oath. His scowl wielded daggers.

“What the hell?” she cried. “Damn it, Julian, you could transfer contact DNA without gloves. Where has your freaking brain gone? God, it’s like this thing has possessed you.” She drew in a deep breath and with more calm, motioned Andy and his camera close. “Get a few pictures of this. There’s something weighing down the cloth—see it? Before we disturb it, I want it documented.”

Dutifully he clicked away while she pulled on a pair of thin latex gloves. When he stepped back, indicating he’d finished, she dipped her hand inside and removed the chunk of metal atop the fabric. Her throat closed as she stared at the heavy bit in her palm.

Just like the medallion Lucan’s dark gray shirt hid from view, this one bore the same engraving. The same
Milites Templi
above and below the cross’s vertical beam. She looked to him, met the knowing in his steel-gray eyes. Unable to digest the meaning in front of her brother and her students, she set the coin-size medal aside. As she reached in once more, her gaze briefly touched with Caradoc’s. There too, she recognized the same shared secret that reflected in Lucan’s eyes.

While Chris laid a protective covering across the table, Chloe forced her brain to let go of the questions that leapt to life and reached into the reliquary for the cloth. Gingerly she unfolded it. Spread it on the covered table. Andy moved in to snap more photographs. The crowd gathered closer.

Chloe’s fingers traced the brown stains embedded into the material. She knew what she touched. But the magnificence mystified her.

“What do you think it is, boss?” Kevin asked quietly.

Chloe looked up. Her students’ expressions shone with curious intrigue. Julian’s eyes gleamed, the age of the material not lost on him. But Lucan and Caradoc stood at ease. Only mild interest touched the corners of their eyes. Where everyone else stared at the fabric, the two representatives of the Church watched the people.

In that instant Chloe realized she, Lucan, and Caradoc were the only people who knew what lay beneath her fingertips. The discovery hit her with so much force she shivered. On its heels came the startling knowledge Lucan and Caradoc remained silent, though they were perfectly able to answer Kevin’s question.

Lucan’s question echoed in her mind—
Will you trust I shall reveal the cloth when the time is appropriate?
The same inquiry resided in his silent stare now.

Trust, no. But she would wait for solid evidence that her team could put together and reach the conclusion. She shook her head at Kevin. “The only way to know is to begin by dating it. If we establish what period it came from, we’ll have a starting place.” She nodded at the metal drawers. “Chris hand me a razor blade. I’ll try to separate a few fibers out of this frayed corner. We’ll ship it off to the lab.”

“Let me see it, Chloe,” Julian urged.

Lucan placed his hand on the cloth and leaned his weight into his arm. “Our scientist shall handle the carbon dating.”

Chloe blinked at him. Do what? Their eyes clashed. In that instant, every last ounce of shaky trust Chloe had given him shattered. “This is my discovery. I’ll have my normal lab date it. Get your bare hand off before you damage it.”

With a firm shake of his head that left no room for argument, Lucan gently nudged her out of the way and folded the cloth. Depositing it back into the trunk he answered, “Nay. ’Tis the Church’s property. ’Twill be dated by our representatives.” He closed the gold lid.

Chloe shot out of her seat, knocking the stool over backward. “That wasn’t part of the agreement! You’re supposed to observe. Verify we follow protocol and take whatever we discover as rightfully belonging to the Church back to the Vatican. At no time did the letters I received mention you could take things away before we discovered what they were!”

Undaunted, Lucan passed the reliquary to Caradoc. He looked to her, firm warning etched into the tight lines of his face. “Then you were misinformed. I will not argue this with you. The relic returns with us.”

She opened her mouth to spill the numerous curses and insults that rose in her throat. But before she could spout a single one of them, Lucan and Caradoc stalked out the door, leaving her no option but to clench her hands at her sides and bite back a frustrated scream.

CHAPTER 14

Chloe clamped her teeth together and drew in a deep breath. Embarrassed in front of her students. Damn Lucan. The least he could have done was called her aside. He had to have known she’d want to date what was inside the reliquary—why hadn’t he warned her privately he intended to have the Church’s specialists date the damn thing?

She grabbed for her composure to keep from chasing after him and creating a greater scene. The stunt in front of her team already defied all the lessons she’d tried to instill in her students about the politics of archaeology and how to approach stubborn officials who tried to impede progress.

“Tim, would you oversee the closing of the site? Make sure we have everything inside—the shovels, whatever you all used. Andy, head on back and start downloading those photographs. I want to send them over to Cambridge and see if Dr. Hildenbrough has any thoughts.”

Her students shuffled to life, grabbing coats and mufflers before filing out the door.

Chloe sank onto her stool and drummed her nails on the table. “Stupid jerk. I can’t
believe
he just did that.”

“Welcome to the Church.” Julian snorted. “I told you he was in this for his own means.”

Frowning, Chloe ignored his self-satisfied smirk. “He could have warned me. But in front of the team? Good God, Julian, who does that kind of stuff? That’s completely unprofessional.”

“Oh, come off it, sis. What else do you expect from an organization that’s kept the truth from humanity for thousands of years? You think he doesn’t know what it is?” He slapped his hand on the table. “I’ll guaran-damn-tee he knows
exactly
what it is, and they don’t want
you
finding out.”

Stiffening, she gave him a sideways glance. That didn’t make sense. Lucan had already
told
her what it was. “Why would you think that?”