Relic (19 page)

“But you get up and try every time,” she said.

“So do you.”

Her face flushed again, and she chewed her lip. “My parents weren't awake the other night.”

I blinked. “What?”

“The night that you and Colin went to the museum, I could've come. My mom was working, and my dad was sound asleep. But I was so afraid that I'd do something to mess it up. It was supposed to be an easy mission and—”

“Lisa,” I said, “you don't need to explain. One of these days I'm going to feel like that, and you and Colin are going to have to pick up the slack. We're a team. You don't need to feel guilty.” She nodded weakly, and I added, “And I used to think that our failure meant that I had caused someone to die, but that's not the way it is. You heard Archer, right? Someone is going to die, and we have a shot at giving them more time. That's all. We're not going to save everyone. I think I realized that the day Mr. Utlet died. But we've saved people, Lisa.” I nudged her leg. “You are one of the reasons my sister is still alive. I couldn't have done that without you and Colin.”

She sighed, and a real grin flicked at her lips. “Do you think Colin is having trouble coping with any of this?” We craned our necks around the plywood teepee and saw Colin having a fake conversation with an Egyptian sarcophagus. He glanced back and saw us looking, then promptly wrapped his arms around the artifact in a passionate embrace and pretended to make out with it. We both laughed.

“He's dealing with it the best he knows how,” I said, chuckling. “Plus, I'm pretty sure he thinks this is all some hidden camera reality show.” I was about to whisper across the room at him when I noticed that he'd stopped moving and his gaze was fixed on the door. Then I heard what he must've heard.

The rattle of a handle and
click
of the door unlocking.

 

Lisa yanked me back as the door opened. We peeked through the crates and made out the silhouette of a guard standing in the doorway.
Colin
, I thought. I tried to look around the teepee again, but I couldn't spot him, and I didn't dare risk sticking my head out farther.

The guard closed the door behind him and walked down the steps into the bay. He must've flicked the light switch by the door, because the large overhead lights flickered and then turned on. I felt completely exposed. We should've found a better hiding place. I should have backed Lisa up when she told Colin to stay put. I groaned inwardly.

The guard drew a series of deep breaths and let them out slowly. He looked like he was in his early twenties, with dark spiky hair and a dark complexion—not one of the guards from my visions. He sauntered casually across the bay to the loading doors and gave them a good shake.
He's doing his rounds
, I thought. Checking to make sure all the doors are locked. I checked my watch—it was 5:14—and wondered if this was something we'd need to be worried about every hour or just something they did once after closing.

He picked his way between the rows of artifacts and props and came to an abrupt stop when he got to the Egyptian sarcophagus, the same one Colin had been making out with moments before. The guard glanced back at the door and then bent over, disappearing below a shelf of goods. Lisa's hand felt like a vise on my shoulder, and I think we both expected the guard to stand up holding Colin by the ear or something. Instead the guard popped up holding a curved sword and began battling what I could only assume were invisible pirates.

Lisa and I glanced at each other, her unhinged jaw matching my own, and then we turned back and watched the guard maneuver around statues and over boxes. As shocking as it was when the guy started playing with the sword, after a few seconds I had to clamp my hand over my mouth and pinch my leg hard to stop from laughing. Lisa was struggling not to laugh too, and even though the last thing I wanted was for us to get caught, I had to admit that it was good to see her smiling.

The door suddenly flew open with a
clang
, and the spiky-haired guard dropped his sword to the ground.

“What are you doing?” a gruff voice called from the doorway. “It shouldn't take you more than thirty seconds to check the door. And did I just see you waving a sword around?”

“No,” the spiky-haired guard answered. “It was, um, just…I mean, I was just, um, picking it up off the floor.” He quickly bent and plucked the sword from the floor and placed it on one of the nearby crates. “The loading bay is good. Everything's checked.”

The guard at the door groaned. “Hurry up, rookie, there's more building to check.”

The guard scampered back up the steps, flicked the light off, and disappeared through the door. Lisa sighed beside me, and a moment later, Colin's head popped up from somewhere near the sarcophagus. He moved quickly back to our hiding place and let out a sigh of relief when he was hidden beside us again.

“Whew, that was close,” he said.

“We stay in here from now on,” I said. “Lisa was right. It's too important to risk being caught for a little exploring or so that you can make out with your girlfriend's coffin again.”

Colin laughed and nodded. “You have to admit, she's quite the hottie.”

“Or at least she would have been a couple thousand years ago,” Lisa said.

 

***

 

For the next few hours, we passed the time as quietly as possible. Colin talked about how we should challenge Eric and Rodney to a rematch at The Killing Field, an idea I wasn't too keen on until he mentioned that his dad had promised to buy him a couple top-of-the-line guns.

“They shoot over two hundred paintballs a minute,” he said. “Those two jerks won't have a chance.” He smiled when both Lisa and I said we'd consider it, and then he smiled even wider when Lisa asked what he'd brought in his backpack. He pulled out each item, held it up so we could get a look, and then replaced it:

 

•Three rolls of duct tape

•Twelve feet of rope

•A block of cheddar cheese

•Six mouse traps

•Four Roman candles

•Lady finger firecrackers

•Water bottle

•Needle and thread

•Roll of tinfoil

•Four Israeli military-grade stink bombs

•BBQ lighter

•Pocket knife

•Glow stick

 

Lisa and I shook our heads when he was done, both wondering the same thing, no doubt: why in the world did Colin bring so much junk? Colin had reasons for everything, and none of them made much sense. Though, to be fair, the stink bomb did do the trick.

“I would have brought my walkie-talkies,” Colin added after showing us everything, “except that someone decided to give one to a homeless guy along with his bike.” That reminded me that I still needed to get my bike back.

By nine-thirty, we'd slipped into our dark clothes, and by ten, using only the moonlight that filtered through the skylights, we crept to the door, unlocked it, and opened it just a crack. I cursed internally when I saw that same spiky-haired security guard sitting on the edge of the caveman display, humming along to the tune pounding in his earphones. I moved so that Lisa and Colin could see what we were up against, and both of them groaned.

“What do we do?” Colin whispered.

“We wait,” Lisa answered.

 

The minutes ticked by agonizingly slowly, each one bringing us that much closer to when Sok and his gang of thieves were going to get here and, shortly thereafter, die. I was just about to tell Colin to break another one of his stink bombs when heavy footsteps sounded from down the hallway.

“Rookie!” It was the same gruff voice from before. “You're not getting off to a very good start. First I find you sword fighting in the loading bay; now you're slacking off with the cavemen. At this rate, you're going to lose your job before your first paycheck.”

“I was just taking my break,” the other guard said.

“Your break was over fifteen minutes ago!”

There were more words I couldn't quite make out, along with the sounds of footsteps disappearing down the corridor. We waited another couple minutes for good measure before we peeked out the door again.

It was clear.

We kept low and hid behind the plastic bushes in the caveman exhibit. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead, and I swiped them away with the sleeve of my shirt. “Ready?” I whispered.

Lisa and Colin nodded, and together we stepped into the deserted corridor.

Museums are kind of creepy during the day. I mean, they are filled with dusty old junk, ancient treasures that probably have curses on them, and things that have been dead for a really long time. But they're even worse at night. The bulbs mounted overhead gave off a strange blue light that made the shadows stretch and climb the walls. Some of the mannequins had an evil glow about them that made them look strangely alive and, at times, like they were smiling, as if they knew something we didn't, and found it hilarious. It was like a haunted house, only ten times worse because there were actual dead things hanging around. My heart was hammering like a machine gun blasting away in my chest, and if I listened carefully, I thought I could hear Lisa's and Colin's doing the same.

Just behind us was the medieval weapons exhibit, and I briefly wondered if it would be smart to grab a spear or a mace or some other weapon. Lisa caught me looking and nudged my arm, urging me forward. We crept like the thieves we were about to become and ducked behind the plastic shrubs and ferns beneath the giant T. rex skeleton. I checked my watch: 10:17.

“We're taking too long,” I said. “Sok could be here any second.”

Colin nodded and pointed to the metal ball contraption we'd seen the last time we were here. “If we duck behind that, we can make it to the Buddha head from behind. We should go one at a time. I'll go first.”

Lisa and I nodded, and Colin hunched and sprinted over to the Rube Goldberg machine and disappeared behind it. I was about to follow him when Lisa grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back into the plastic bushes. Her finger was pressed tightly to her lips, and her eyes were giant disks.

“What?” I mouthed. She pointed toward the Buddha head, and I saw a single beam of light swinging back and forth, and a couple seconds later, a guard sauntered into view. He swung his flashlight from one display to the next, and passed the beam across the balcony of the second floor. His radio crackled, and he responded with something that I couldn't make out. Lisa and I shifted deeper into the bushes, and for the second time that night, I hoped Colin had the good sense to hide.

The guard's light swung across the bushes we were hiding behind, and my breath hitched. I thought he hadn't seen us, but then the light swung back and, this time, hovered on the imitation foliage.
Move on
, I thought, just
move on
. The light didn't move. It was pointed directly at us. The guard must've seen us, or part of us, or at least something that he felt needed to be checked out. The staccato footsteps drew nearer and nearer, each step making the light seem brighter and brighter. Finally, the footsteps stopped, and I thought he must have been standing directly on top of us. I was too terrified to look.

“Who's there?” It was an older guard this time, not the spiky-haired kid. I recognized the voice as the man who had given us a hard time about wanting to touch the dinosaur on that first day. Fisher, from my first vision. I risked a glimpse through the leaves and saw him standing just a few feet away, shining his flashlight in a wide arc. “Rookie, if you're messing around out here again, you won't be getting another warning.”

The arc of his beam was nearing the dinosaur exhibit, and I thought for sure he'd spot us when suddenly a whirring, cranking, sputtering sound came from the metal ball contraption. Colin must've put a metal ball in the machine as a distraction, but now the guard definitely knew someone was here.

The guard turned and shone his light directly at the machine and cursed. He reached to his waist and pulled up his radio.

“Hey, Larry,” he said.

“Yeah?” a crackly voice on the other end said.

The guard was about to speak again. I could see his mouth open, and I bet he even had the button on the side of his radio pressed. But before he could actually make a sound, something rushed out of the shadows behind him, something dark and lightning fast. It ploughed into the guard, knocking him to the ground. The radio slid across the linoleum, ricocheted off the coprolite exhibit and spun right into the dinosaur platform.

“Fisher?” the static-filled voice asked. “Fisher, say that again. We didn't hear you.”

Grunts and shouts carried over from where the guard was now wrestling with the dark shadow.

“Hey!” This time the voice came from the balcony on the second floor, and a beam of light illuminated the guard and his attacker. “Fisher? Fisher, what's going on down there?”

There was a grunt, and then another voice yelled, “Vite! N'avons pas le temps!”

Two other dark figures suddenly rushed out of the shadows from farther down the atrium, sprinting toward the Buddha head. One of them had a stick of some kind, and the other was clutching a black sack.

“That was French,” Lisa whispered. “He told them to hurry, that they don't have any time.”

“French,” I gasped. “Oh, God, we're too late!”

 

“It's too early,” Lisa said. “Isn't it?”

I glanced back over the bushes. The guard was pinned, and the man in black had taken the pistol from the guard's belt and now had it outstretched, pointing toward Fisher. The other dark figure was almost at the Buddha head. Just before he got there, two more flashlight beams came bounding down the far corridor, and the shadowy figure stopped and turned, scampering to the left. Two different guards rushed into the atrium, their guns drawn. They weren't close enough that I could make out their faces to tell if they were the ones from my vision but I imagined they were.