The Seventh Stone (37 page)

“
Give me that Emerald,” Contreras called through the door. “None of you will be hurt. And don’t even think about calling for help. You are well aware of my connections.”

Right, connections. He had to start making them, quick, separate the good guys from the bad. Rambitskov had the reputation as the Agency’s most fanatical flag-waver. But there could be no other explanation for him showing up at Jared’s murder scene than he was sent there by Contreras. Rambitskov couldn’t have known about Jared’s double cross in switching the authentic gems for fakes. Contreras believed he had the real ones in his briefcase. Rambitskov was the expert in crime scene investigation. That had to be his role, maybe to plant some evidence, or make sure Contreras hadn’t left any behind.

Dubler grasped Christa’s hand. “Give Contreras the Emerald,” he said. “I’ll stay with Contreras. I’ll make sure he restores the Breastplate and gets the antidote to the right people.”

“
Daniel, you can’t believe in Contreras,” said Christa, her expression morphing from a strange mix of determination and fear to shock. “He tried to kill you in there.”

Daniel swiped his glasses from their perch and pointed them at her. “He would never have gone through with it. It was just his way of convincing you to do the right thing. He needs me, just like he needs you, to find the seven stones.”

Braydon was still deciding if he believed Jared’s warning about finding these seven sacred stones, but he was sure these two did. Clearly, Dubler had bet his money on Contreras getting them first. The teacher didn’t know Fox. Braydon was getting a sharper fix on the teacher, though. “What did Contreras offer you, Dubler?” he asked.

“
The life of a little girl,” Dubler said, “the niece of the woman I love. I can save her.” Damn, the man’s cheeks actually blushed red. Either he was lying outright, or revealing a heartfelt truth. Either way, it reeked of threat. “Christa, you must give Contreras the Emerald,” Dubler pressed. The guy was lying, Braydon could smell it now for what it was.

The indecision in Christa’s eyes showed that she wanted to believe this guy. “No,” she said. “We don’t need to give him the Emerald. We’ve got to get the two gems in that briefcase.”

So she, too, thought Contreras’s diamond and sapphire were the real deal. Sirens wailed in the distance, drawing closer. A fist pounded on the kitchen door from the dining room side. “Agent Fox.” Ill-disguised anger now simmered in Contreras’s voice. “The authorities are nearly here. They will arrest you, not me, for your part in the attack of Jared Sadler. You are persona non grata in your Agency now.” Rambitskov must have adapted whatever evidence he planted at the crime scene to point to Fox as the attacker. Braydon had been seen leaving the scene, in direct disobedience to orders, by the paramedics. Contreras helped New York’s Homeland Security Chief land his job. The Chief wouldn’t be inclined to believe unsubstantiated accusations about his benefactor. Even if he could convince him, the delay could cost Lucia Hunter’s life. “You have one last chance to hand over that Emerald,” Contreras said, with irritating confidence.

“
You’re the one in the room with the two dead guys,” he answered. “And I’d bet you’re not carrying the annual report in that briefcase.”

“
Braydon,” Christa said in a hushed tone. He liked the way she said his name, with genuine concern. “I am not going to give him the Emerald, but we absolutely need to get that briefcase before it’s too late. If he gets the gems, he won’t need Lucia any more. He’ll kill her. It’s down to Contreras and that one armed thug. Against you, odds are in our favor.” Flattering, but he had other plans. She grabbed the mop handle to remove it and open the door. “This may be our only chance at stopping him.”

He forcibly moved her away from the door, the mop handle still secure. “Not our only chance, Christa,” he said. “Trust me.”

The sirens blared, by the sound of it from two blocks away.

“
Fox!” Contreras yelled. “This isn’t over for me. It’s over for you. You hear me. You’re dead.” Words right out of Rambitskov’s playbook. “Devlin, you are chosen to fulfill my destiny. And you will, I promise you that.” Two sets of footsteps receded across the floor. The restaurant’s heavy wooden front door slammed shut.

Dubler waved his arms wildly. “Damn it,” he said. “Contreras is gone. You let him just walk out of here.”

Braydon holstered his gun. “That’s our cue to leave,” he said.

Christa felt around her neck. “The crucifix,” she said. “I left it on the table. It’s still in the dining room. Ahmed said the crucifix will show us the way. I’m not leaving here without it.”

He pulled the crucifix from his pocket, dangled it before her. “I’ve got it.” It wasn’t the typical gold-plated cross his mother always wore. This was old, with a strange skull and cross bones at Jesus’s feet. An enamel of primary colors decorated the back, along with the words, Lux et Veritas. Like the sword. With a sudden, heavy unease, he realized where he’d seen a crucifix like this before. He was finally one step ahead of Contreras, but this time, his best friend’s life was at stake.

CHAPTER
44

Braydon shoved open the back door into the service alley. Not gun drawn, but ready. Only one way Contreras was going to surrender this fight, and that was toes up. The cold wind whipped the detritus of battered coffee cups, dirty papers and cellophane wrappers into a whirlwind, exacerbating the stench of garbage. Other than that, the alley was clear. If the crucifix was showing the way to the seven stones, then he had better find where it led him, fast.

He signaled for Christa and Daniel to follow him. Christa’s face paled as they followed the trail of blood splotches leading from the alley to Forty-seventh Street. He checked around the corner. The Arabs helping their injured friend, Christa’s friend, ducked into the Moroccan grocery store across the street. “Ahmed is a good man,” he said. “It took guts to stand up to Contreras, only to get pistol-whipped in the head for doing the right thing. A guy like that sticks by his friends and they stick by him. They’ll get him the help he needs.”

“
We’re wasting time,” Dubler said. “We need to catch Contreras.”

“
I don’t know what you’re catching,” said Braydon. “But I’m finally one step ahead of Contreras, not chasing after him. My car is this way.”

Christa grabbed his arm as they rounded the corner onto Tenth Avenue. They stopped.

“
What is it, Christa?” said Daniel. “Do you see Contreras?”

“
Phantoms,” she said. “I sense shadows, hovering above the people on the street.”

Braydon edged Christa behind him. The avenue didn’t look that much different from when he had entered the restaurant. Horns honked. Pungent smoke still drifted from the street vendor’s cart on the corner as he hunched over his hot chestnuts. Three elderly men with Brooklyn accents still argued and stamped their feet to warm themselves in front of the small market across the street. But everything felt a bit off, like a photo that had been knocked off-kilter on its nail. He took in the well-heeled woman flipping the bird at the taxi passing her by, the parka-clad mother, glancing around in fear as she tugged her dawdling toddler by the hand, the linebacker of the guy chowing down the greasy hot dog from another street vendor, looking like he was fueling up for a fight. Despite the city’s tough reputation in movies and books, Braydon knew first-hand that these weren’t the typical New York attitudes. “Do you see these phantoms,” he asked Christa, “or is just your spidey-sense tingling?”

“
I know you think I’m crazy, but I see dark shadows. One is hovering behind that man in the jeans there.” She pointed. “Another behind that guy in the suit, there.”

Christa hadn’t let go of Braydon’s arm. Her hand felt right, holding on to him. It could make a man promise to do crazy things, like believe in her and get her to believe in him. He wasn’t ready for that, not yet, not by a long shot. “I had a partner who had a bad feeling about a robbery in progress at midnight at a high end jewelry store. She insisted we go by the book and wait for back-up. She wouldn’t let me go in for the collar. The place blew up. She saved my life.” In more ways than she ever knew. They couldn’t wait to get married and spend the rest of their lives together. He thought she’d be safer covering the front of the next store the gang hit. The gang always cleared out the back before they set off the explosion to destroy evidence. He should have stuck with her, protected her, his partner. Instead, he left her in the front while he raced around to cut them off at the back. He’d wanted to get these guys, badly, before they killed someone. He didn’t.

Two cruisers careened down Forty-seventh Street. Two more, sirens blaring, were coming fast on Tenth Avenue from downtown. No black Homeland Security SUV, yet. “Only Rambitskov would pull four cruisers off riot containment downtown,” he muttered. “The man must have eaten megalomania for breakfast.”

Christa kept her eyes on what must be her phantoms. “Rambitskov?”

“
New York City’s Chief of Homeland Security,” Braydon said. “He’s working with Contreras. Full disclosure. I hate the guy.” He pulled her towards his car.

“
Rambitskov,” she said. “He’d know how to poison the water supply. And Contreras has a deadly poison. He wants control of the only antidote.”

“
This poison,” he said. “It’s a bio-weapon.” The poison Jared warned about.

“
The poison causes madness, then death, in seven days.” She pressed against the pouch between her breasts. “The gems are connected.”

He, too, felt for the package in his pocket, the diamond and sapphire tucked into the hotel napkin. Jared had bet his life on the redemption they promised. “I swear on my badge I’m going to kill that guy.”

“
Which one?”

“
Both of them. Rambitskov first.”

The argument between the two men with the bad shadows escalated into a clumsy fistfight. Two of the eight cops responding to the restaurant detoured to stop it. That diversion wouldn’t last long. He hurried Christa across Tenth, keeping his face turned away from the cruisers as they passed them in the intersection. He had parked in a tow zone on Forty-seventh. He tossed her the Impala keys. “You drive,” he said. “I’m riding shotgun.” He shoved Dubler into the back. Couldn’t risk him running to Contreras, or the cops.

“
Turn uptown on Tenth,” he said.

“
Past the Marrakesh?”

“
The cops are too busy storming the place to notice.” No sign of Contreras’s Rolls Royce Phantom either. He had minutes, at best, before they tracked him down using the GPS on his Impala. He had to use every one of them. “Fill me in on what happened in there.”

Her voice was tense, but steady, even when telling about seeing the diamond and sapphire. Then her face paled. “That man poisoned by the frog,” she said. “I wouldn’t wish that death on anyone.”

“
Second that,” Daniel chimed in from the back seat.

“
I know one man I’d wish it on,” grumbled Braydon, “maybe two.” The traffic crossing Broadway was near a standstill.

Christa handed him a computer print-out from her daypack. “I translated a letter written by a priest named Salvatierra in 1586,” she said. “My father had been searching for it for years. It’s historical proof that the Breastplate of Aaron not only existed, but was intact and in South America during the conquest of the new world.”

He skimmed the letter. It was an amazing story, of shipwreck and survival, of conquest and defeat, an eyewitness account. “Alvaro Contreras,” he said. “The conquistador. Could Baltasar Contreras have gotten hold of this letter?”

“
No way,” said Christa. She jockeyed around a minivan to clear her way across the intersection. “He kept harping about his family destiny. I figure he has his own, independent family history, passed down through the generations.”

“
Along with the god complex,” he said. “That’s what these gem thefts are all about? Baltasar Contreras is planning to find and restore the Breastplate of Aaron?”

Daniel guffawed from the back seat. “You’re not going to pretend to know what we’re talking about.”

“
I don’t pretend,” he said. “The Breastplate is described in Exodus, although there is discrepancy in various translations about the placement and type of its twelve gemstones. Famous gems are my expertise. You don’t get much more famous than God.”

Christa worried the scar on her forehead. “We think that the restored Breastplate is the only way to find the hidden canyon in Colombia where the plant that produces the antidote grows.”

“
If Contreras doesn’t find it, he’s got an indefensible weapon in the poison, the perfect blackmail,” said Braydon. “If he does, he’s got the only cure, worth billions, and an artifact that can be the catalyst for a new world religion.” The trips to Colombia, the theft of the Abraxas stones in San Francisco, it was all beginning to make sense. “The crucifix, Christa. Your friend, Ahmed, said it would show you the way. He wasn’t the type to proselytize, so I figure the cross must be connected to these seven stones that Contreras is after. Looked old.” He grasped the door handle as she swerved around a yellow cab to make the light. “It could be Salvatierra’s, the crucifix that the priest offered as payment for the delivery of his letter to the Vatican.”

Christa nodded. “Salvatierra gave it to Ahmed’s ancestor in 1586 along with the letter,” she said. “He was a Muslim, of course. When he got to the Vatican, the guards didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. They threatened to kill him, so he returned to Morocco with the crucifix and the letter, passed it down through the family, until a recipient was proved worthy. My father saved his mother’s life. And his mother sent the crucifix and letter to me.”