The Templar's Code (55 page)

There was one other pipe in the room—a solid metal pipe securely attached to the concrete wall with heavy-duty straps. He knew it was securely attached because he was handcuffed to the blasted thing and had had no luck yanking it free from the wall.

I don’t see any electrodes,
Caedmon thought with a measure of relief,
so how bad can it get?

Earlier, gun barrel pressed to the back of his head, he’d been “ushered” into the basement of a nineteenth-century bank building currently undergoing renovation. Scaffolding, sawhorses, and plastic sheeting were strewn about the gutted upstairs interior. A negligent workman had been kind enough to leave a string of electric lights turned on. So they wouldn’t break their bloody necks as they trespassed. Since he’d been forced to drive the Audi, Caedmon knew the bank was located in the vicinity of Catholic University. The bastard probably reconnoitered the site earlier in the evening en route to his murderous rendezvous with the unfortunate Professor Lyon.

Even in her distraught state, Edie had to know that if she handed over the Emerald Tablet to their nemesis, she would be rewarded with a bullet to the brain. Caedmon prayed that her sense of survival was strong. That she used the cell phone to call a taxi. And that she took the taxi directly to BWI airport. He didn’t care which plane she boarded so long as she left the D.C. area.

On the other side of the room, the steel door suddenly swung open with a jarring reverberation. A jaunty hitch in his step, the once handsome man strolled through the metal door frame, the bare bulb casting an unflattering light on his hideously swollen jaw.

He calmly placed a hammer with curved claw and a pair of slip joint pliers on top of the metal table. “The upstairs is being completely refurbished to make way for a discotheque. I’m not entirely certain, but I believe it will be called La Banque.”

“How unoriginal,” Caedmon muttered, taking silent note of the hardware. It ominously implied that he would be “put to the question.” The quaint medieval euphemism for torture.

As though he were a mind reader, his captor forcefully shoved the metal table in his direction, butting the short end against his waist. Caedmon grunted, the wind knocked out of him.

“How careless. My apologies.” Placing a hand over his heart, the bastard insincerely smiled. A grotesque parody given his battered left side. “I have yet to introduce myself. I am Saviour Panos.”

Saviour.
Caedmon caustically snorted. The bastard’s mother certainly played a cruel joke on the world the day she bestowed that name upon her son.

Panos seated himself kitty-corner, presenting Caedmon with a view of his still-beautiful right side. “Did you know that you have me to thank for the successful retrieval of the Emerald Tablet?”

“Indeed?”

“There was a police officer in Meridian Hill Park. Probably still is.” Panos punctuated the addendum with another insincere smile. “Unless someone has found him.” Reaching behind him, he removed a heavy revolver from his waistband and set it next to the hammer and pliers.

Belatedly realizing that the weapon Panos had been brandishing was the dead policeman’s service revolver, his belly painfully tightened.

“Good God.”

“That depends on which god one prays to—the god of Light or the god of Darkness.”

Caedmon wondered if his captor obliquely referred to the octogram star, which comprised two perfect squares. Light and Darkness. The union of opposites.

“I take it that you are an occultist.”

Raising his hand, Panos lightly caressed Caedmon’s cheek. “Can you take it? Do you want to take it?”

Caedmon instantly recoiled, banging his head on the concrete wall behind him. The conversation had suddenly veered in an unexpected direction.

“I’m curious about your woman. . . . Does she give you pleasure?” The picture of nonchalance, Panos draped his upper arm over the back of the chair.

Caedmon refused to answer.

“I will take your silence as a yes. She’s very beautiful. Usually women don’t arouse me, but if I had the right woman—”

“Don’t even think about it, you bastard!” Caedmon exclaimed, the other man’s verbal blade cutting deep.

“You are in no position to stop me. From doing
anything.
”

To prove the point, Panos rammed his elbow into Caedmon’s chin, slamming the left side of his face into the metal pipe attached to the wall.

Jaw clenched, he swallowed a deep-throated bellow as a burst of excruciating pain instantly radiated across his cheekbone. Like a bear caught in a trap, he futilely pulled against the handcuff that restrained his right wrist. When that got him nowhere, he went for his captor’s throat with his uncuffed left hand.

The other man chuckled, six inches out of reach. “Just desserts, my English friend.”

Also chuckling, Caedmon spat out a mouthful of blood and spittle. His aim true, the disgusting gob hit Panos directly in the face.

The smirk instantly vanished. “For your sake, I hope the curly-haired bitch loves you. If not . . .” He let the threat dangle.

I loved the fact that you were a brainiac. An iconoclast. A Renaissance man.
Prior to the brake failure, Edie had used the word
love
in the past tense. Not exactly the sentiments of an enamored woman.

Despite the throbbing pain, he summoned a cocky grin. “She’s mad about me.”

Snarling, his face twisted with rage, Panos grabbed the hammer.

Caedmon braced himself.

Edie stood at the hotel window. Cell phone clasped in her right hand, she began to shake. Afraid she might collapse, she grabbed hold of the window frame. A photograph of Caedmon, unconscious and blood-splattered, was displayed on the small LCD screen.
Beaten to a pulp.
A little welcome-to-your-room present from Rico Suave.

Horrified, she stared at the photo, the need to scream so strong, she didn’t know if she could control it. Instead, she threw the cell phone across the room, the device harmlessly landing on the plush wall-to-wall. Then, like a deflated balloon, she slowly slid down the wall onto the carpet. Knees drawn to her chest, she wrapped her arms around her legs and rocked to and fro. Paralyzed with fear. Sobbing, praying . . .
begging.

Trapped in a bell jar, a prisoner, she could only peer through the glass.

When she was eleven years old, she’d walked into the trailer and discovered her dead mother on the floor, an empty needle in her arm. Grief-stricken, she’d lain down beside her mother on that stained, threadbare avocado-green carpet. Until a neighbor found her the next morning.

She was now on the verge of that same stupefied kind of shock.

Determined
not
to slip over the edge, Edie lifted her head from her knees. The driving rain cast distorted shadows across her huddled body, the night animated with shadows. Dark, murderous shadows.

Earlier in the day, she’d pleaded with Caedmon to turn and walk away from the Emerald Tablet. Just like Benjamin Franklin had done more than two hundred years ago. It couldn’t have been easy for the inquisitive genius, but Franklin knew the staggering fallout that would ensue if the Emerald Tablet fell into the wrong hands. Men would lie, steal, and kill to learn the secret of creation. As Rico Suave had so pitilessly demonstrated. But Caedmon had been hell-bent. And now they had to contend with a fiend from hell.

To escape the monster, she’d sought refuge in a small hotel in D.C.’s Chinatown district. Mentally and physically exhausted, she’d picked up a take-out order of kimchi and
bulgogi
from the late-night Korean restaurant on the corner. She hadn’t eaten since early afternoon and needed to recharge.

She glanced at the unopened food cartons that she’d put on the desk, suddenly nauseated by the smell of cabbage and beef.

Worried that the outcome of Caedmon’s abduction was a fait accompli, she felt a deepening sense of dread. They were dealing with a preternatural killer who, from the onset, had been one step ahead of them.

How the hell did Rico Suave find us?
Rhode Island, London, Philly, D.C.—somehow he’d always managed to put in an unwelcome appearance.

Okay, he probably trailed us from D.C. to Arcadia in the Audi
, she thought, the fog slightly clearing. When the arrows started to fly, she and Caedmon had been forced to abandon the netbook computer. A casualty of war. It could be that Rico retrieved the netbook and discovered the online booking that had been made for London.

But how in God’s name did the fiend track us to the Christ Church Burial Ground? And then a day later track them to the Willard?
Because, obviously, that’s what he’d done. And then he went the extra mile, locating the Mini in the valet parking lot and sabotaging the brakes. For all she knew, he’d been shadowing them the entire day.

Hit with a niggling suspicion, Edie crawled across the carpeted floor and snatched her leather satchel off the bed. Unzipping it, she rummaged around and removed a hardbound notebook. She flipped it open. That’s when she felt it—a small nearly invisible strip. She reached over and turned on the nightstand lamp. Holding the notebook near the bulb, she saw what appeared to be a clear Band-Aid stuck on the inside cover.

As she sat there mired in fear, the bastard, transmitting device in hand, was simply waiting for her to retrieve the Emerald Tablet from the Willard Hotel. The device would indicate
exactly
when she stepped foot in the hotel lobby. He could then follow her, forcibly take custody of the relic—and pull the trigger.

Fear now trumped by rage, Edie shoved herself upright, strode across the room and snatched the container of kimchi off the desk. Opening it, she smashed the magnetic strip into the fiery cabbage concoction, her nostrils twitching from the sudden burst of cayenne pepper. She then headed over to the window; a benefit of being on the third floor, the window actually opened.

For nearly five minutes, she stood at the ready, container in hand. A white pickup truck stopped for a red light directly beneath the window. The rap music blaring from the truck’s sound system meant—

Taking aim, Edie tossed the food carton.

The driver didn’t hear the thump in the truck bed when the kimchi plopped all over ribbed cargo space.

Mission accomplished, she walked over and grabbed the discarded cell phone off the floor. She set it on the nightstand. Rage a clarifying antidote for fear, she began to devise a plan of action.

Not having a weapon was most definitely a handicap.

No!
That wasn’t true. Granted her weapon didn’t come with round-nosed bullets, but it
was
deadly.

Edie mirthlessly smiled.

The devil may have demanded a dance, but she would pick the tune.