The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (65 page)

Yet he did not seem the man he knew and loved. Instead fire seemed to crackle in Moshe’s eyes as his arms spread wide to carry two huge stone tablets. Yehoshua rushed over.

“Moshe!”

“His…” the prophet tried to say but faltered.

“Enough of this,” Yehoshua demanded. “Sit down. There is an eternity to tell me of the wonders within the fire.”

A slow smile spread across over Moshe’s cracked lips. “I need not tell for you can read.”

Yehoshua had not even noticed that the large thick slabs were chiseled deep into the stone. He passed his hand over the writing. What a wondrous tale it would make.

“How did you carve so deeply without a chisel or hammer?”

“I did not,” Moshe stated. “It was God’s finger that wrote upon the slab.”

Yehoshua snatched his hand back. “God?”

Moshe seemed to have only strength for a shallow nod. Although the stones weighed heavily upon his friend, Yehoshua was no longer eager to take the burden.

“What sayth He?” Yehoshua asked breathlessly. He so desired to know God’s heart yet did not feel his eyes were worthy of seeing God’s actual words.

“He gaveth to me and to all the people the
Asereth ha-D’bharîm
.”

The Ten Laws.

Yehoshua began to weep. God loved man enough to govern him. The worry that God would abandon the chosen Chosen People faded from Yehoshua’s heart.

“Do not shy away, Yehoshua,” Moshe urged. “This was meant for all men.”

Fearful his eyes would catch fire as soon as he glanced at the carvings, Yehoshua ever so slowly brought his gaze upon the stone. Once his eyes settled upon God’s words they were loath to look anywhere else.

“I am the Lord thy God.” A tremor shook through Yehoshua. The truth of these words settling into his bones. “Thou shalt have no other gods.”

Who would wish to have any other God but the one and true God? There were more laws below, however Yehoushua’s eyes were drawn to the second tablet. This slab had much smaller writing, filling the entire surface, and if Yehoshua was not mistaken, the words flowed to the other side.

“What is this?” Yehoushua asked, pointing to the flowing writing.

Moshe’s eyes lost their spark and he seemed wholly a man made of flesh and blood. His long gray beard trailed down his chest and he lowered his head.

“They too are God’s words.”

“Then why not is that not joy in your voice?”

Moshe touched the second tablet, tracing the words. “Some of these will be hard for our people to hear. To understand.”

“But if they are God’s true words, they will listen, will they not?” Yehoshua asked.

Gathering his strength, Moses hugged the slabs closely.

“With all my prayers I hope,” Moshe whispered, stepping away from the plateau to the path that led down the mountainside to the fields below. To their people.

CHAPTER 1

══════════════════

20 km outside of Varazdin, Croatia

2:00 p.m. GMT, Present Day

Brandt’s shoulder slammed into a tree trunk. The air rushed from his lungs and refused to go back in. No matter. Brandt pulled a knife from his boot sheath, pivoted the blade backward, and arced up with his arm, hard. A muffled cry answered the maneuver. He shoved his assailant back while still trying to catch his breath.

For a moment, his vision swam and all he could see was Rebecca’s face. But she was safely stowed away in London doing research, and he was knee-deep in half-frozen pig slop. This lonesome corner of Croatia had seen better days. And he wouldn’t live to see another if he didn’t get his freaking head in the game.

Gulping a breath, he pushed off the tree and turned on his attacker. He blocked a punch, but the pain shot up his arm and settled into his shoulder. Damn it. Where the hell was Lopez? Or Talli? Or Brandt would even take that sorry excuse for a new point man, Harvish.

No one could replace Svengurd, of course, but seriously, this was the second ambush in two days that they’d walked into. And for a brief moment he even regretted not having Davidson up in some tree, then bile choked the back of his throat at the private’s betrayal.

No, Brandt had to work with what he had. And at the moment all he had was his knife.

As he swung around for another swipe, a flash of gold caught his eye. His wedding band. It caught him by surprise each time he saw it.

Bam.
A punch to the kidney.

Forget freaking matrimony. Brandt needed to just get out of this day alive.

His boot caught the top of an ice-encrusted rock and sent him sprawling forward, just in time for him to miss a bullet to the head. Even though he landed on his injured shoulder in a soggy, rotting, leaf-covered pool of pig excrement, Brandt thanked his luck.

Gaining momentum with his legs, he caught his attacker in a scissor kick, bringing him down to muddy ground. He scrambled up, bringing the knife down, nailing the guy in the chest.

“No!” Lopez screamed, but it was too late. The well-maintained knife had sliced through his attacker’s rib cage and sunk in to the hilt.

The corporal sprinted up. “That’s Amed!”

But it couldn’t be. They were tracking his third in command, second at most. This couldn’t be Amed. Looking down into the man’s eyes, so dark they looked like the soot that smeared both of them, Brandt knew Lopez was right. He had just struck a mortal blow to the head of an al-Qaida splinter group.

Normally he would be ready to down a beer in victory, but this prick was the only one who knew the location of the biologicals that were stolen from the Russian armory. Had they been deployed? Were they safely contained or leaching into the groundwater near some metropolitan area? Only Amed knew.

Lopez tried to stanch the bleeding, but Brandt knew it was a done deal. That blade was in Amed’s left ventricle or he wasn’t as good as he thought.

“I think he’s trying to say something,” Lopez said as he knelt over the dying man.

Talli joined them, dropping his light frame to the ground. “Back away.”

While all of them knew Farsi, Talli was half Pakistani and half Iranian. The soldier knew his way around the Arabic dialects. But even with those credentials, the man shook his head, unable to make sense of Amed’s mumbling.

“Damn it,” Brandt growled and grabbed the terrorist by the collar and jerked him up so that they were nose to nose. “I know you speak English, prick. If you want to talk, talk!”

Amed laughed, causing blood-red froth to coat his lips. “I go to paradise, brother.”

What was the guy playing at? Brandt had read the man’s extremely thick Interpol file. The Iraqi-born leader was a cold-blooded, send-children-to-their-fiery-death kind of extremist. Shouldn’t he be cursing them and spitting in their eyes rather than calling him brother?

“The words are spoken. There will be no hiding.”

Brandt looked at Talli. “Is that some kind of code he’s talking about?” Off the darker man’s shake of the head, he continued, “A parable?”

Talli shook his head forcefully. “I know not of what he speaks.”

Amed gripped the knife’s hilt, shoving even deeper into his chest. “The prophet speaks. Shalom.”

The man fell back, dead. His eyes fixed upon a point over Brandt’s shoulder, an eerie smile upon his face.

“Why would a hard-core Islamic extremist use a Jewish phrase like that?” Harvish asked, as he limped up to join them.

Lopez leaned back on his heels, wiping the dead man’s blood from his hands. “I bet I know one doctor who might be well enough versed in Islam and Judaism to answer that question.”

Rebecca, of course, had come to Brandt’s mind as well.

Talli looked quizzically between them. “We are speaking about the paleoanthropologist Dr. Monroe, are we not?”

Lopez slapped Talli on the back as they all rose to their feet. “Oh yeah.” He turned to Brandt. “But is she gonna be pissed!”

“Rebecca’s a professional. She’ll help even if she’s sworn off religious controversy,” Brandt corrected.

“Dude, not
that
she.”

“Then she, who?” Brandt asked, confused.

“Um, Maria. Your pregnant wife, remember?”

Oh, yeah.
Her
.

* * *

Rebecca carefully positioned the cross-section of bone. This microscopic splinter of James’s bone was the only thing left from their near-fatal quest to find the savior’s remains. She had lost so much in that darkened smoke-filled cave. Everything, really, she just hadn’t known it yet.

Sure, Brandt and she had a whirlwind romance, then a surprise engagement at the Taj Mahal, but shortly thereafter reality crashed in. A reality by the name of Maria. It seemed a one-night stand had resulted in a pregnancy. It had happened several months before Rebecca and he had met, and she’d been sure they could get through it, but Brandt’s damned Catholic sense of honor and duty had forced him to break off their engagement and marry the mother of his child.

She caught tears at the edge of her eyes. Not wanting to, but unable to stop herself, she looked up to the second shelf above her workstation. A diamond sparkled at her. Her engagement ring. It was still where Brandt had left it. He had refused to take it back. He had said it was his final gift to her. She should have thrown it at him, screamed at him, done something besides let him walk out that door. Now she couldn’t bring herself to move the damned thing. It sat there mocking her. Reminding her of the life that could have been, that could never be.

But she couldn’t dwell on the past. Or at least not the recent past. She still had the “smart” gene to prove. And somehow through the fifteen thousand debriefings she had survived, of course lying through her teeth at each one of them, Rebecca had kept this tiny, tiny shard of James’s bone hidden.

All the preparations had been made. All the calculations done. Today was the day she would drill into the bone and extract a minute quantity of DNA from the bone marrow. Given the fragment’s extremely small size, she would have only one chance at this.

Rebecca needed her mind and hands focused. She needed to block out everything but this piece of bone and her microknife.

Taking a deep breath, Rebecca double checked her instruments, then looked through the microscope. She could see the tiny spicules of bone, interlaced before her. She knew within this tiny lattice, the DNA she needed lay hidden.

Closing her eyes, Rebecca steadied her nerves. Whether or not she was ready to have her theory proven correct or debunked, James’s bone was ready.

Slowing opening her eyes, she found a spot between two spicules that looked especially promising and moved the joystick into position. Ever so carefully, Rebecca moved the joystick forward, angling the microblade toward the position. She would have to coordinate the cut and the sterile vacuum to collect the material before it turned to dust.

She was ever so close to fulfilling her life’s work when the door burst open.

“Dr. Hottie Monroe! Are you ready for some Latin love?”

In her shock, Rebecca not only drove the microblade through the entire section, but she broke the seventy-thousand-dollar tip off as well. “No!”

Months of preparation ruined. James’s bone destroyed.

Rebecca spun around, ready to lay waste to whoever had ignored her huge sign warning anyone not to enter, but found Lopez with his arms spread wide. Behind him a figure hung back in the doorway.

Their eyes met over Lopez, locked in some kind of painful flashback. God, had Vincent’s jaw gotten even squarer? Were his eyes more crystalline than before? And his biceps. How easily she could remember them holding her.

Even though Lopez was no slouch in that department, his fierce hug felt completely hollow.

“What, you don’t have any love for an old comrade-in-arms?” Lopez asked, feigning hurt.

She punched him in the arm. “You trashed my experiment, Ricky.”

“My bad,” the corporal said, but his grin told a different story.

Two other men entered the laboratory. She didn’t know them nearly as well, but by Brandt’s constant complaining about them not living up to their predecessors she knew the shorter, darker-haired one was Talli and the redhead was Harvish.

All eyes were upon her. Well, upon her then flickering back to Brandt. Clearly they had come on some military need, despite their business casual clothes, but that didn’t change the utter awkwardness that choked the room.

“Dr. Monroe,” a voice called from the other room. “Is there a problem?”

Rebecca willed the man to stay back. She announced, “Sam, everything’s fine!”

But the younger man, his face a riddle of reconstruction scars, came around the corner. His features were so distorted that it took a moment for Brandt to recognize who stood in front of him. Lopez was quicker on the draw.

“Davidson!” Rebecca rushed to get between them as Lopez whooped, “Dude! You are alive!”

But that might not last for long, as Brandt pulled a gun from his belt and aimed at Davidson. The red laser light glowed against her previous enemy’s, now assistant’s, forehead.

Brandt growled, “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

* * *

Rebecca shoved herself in front of Davidson, knocking Lopez back. The corporal looked to Davidson, then Rebecca, then to Brandt.

“Um, I think I missed something,” Lopez commented, backing out of Brandt’s line of fire.

More like a lot of something. Like a world of something.

“Get out of the way, Dr. Monroe,” Brandt ordered.

The fact the man she loved called her Dr. Monroe hurt possibly more than that damn gold ring on his finger announcing he was another woman’s. And since when did he think he could boss her around? Hadn’t he learned that lesson back in the Ecuadorian jungle?

“Not until you listen,” she retorted.

“Yeah, Sarge, I kind of have to agree with the doc, here,” Lopez stated. “What’s going on?”

Brandt glared at his second in command. “Before you go all BFF on Davidson you might want to ask why
he
was the mole for the Knot.”

Lopez’s head spun around, looking for Rebecca to somehow dispute Brandt’s words, but she couldn’t. They were true. Davidson had in fact been a part, an integral part, of the organization that had tried to kill them all last year.