The Sign

between that first encounter and the present moment and running them against the background skills he knew Matt possessed.

All of which colluded to draw his attention across to his car.

He took a half step closer to it, his eyes scrutinizing it as his operational instincts assessed what the likely culprit could be.

And frowned at the realization.

He wouldn’t have time to have the car checked out. Which meant there was a chance he’d have to leave it there for now. Which pissed him off even more. He really liked that car. He checked his watch. The jet’s arrival was imminent.

He looked around. The airfield was quiet, as it normally was. Which was good. He decided it was time to put an end to Matt Sherwood’s unexpected intrusions—permanently—and waved over two of his men who were waiting nearby.

“I think we’re about to have some company,” he told them.

Then he told them what he wanted to do about it.

Chapter 51

Deir Al-Suryan Monastery, Wadi Natrun, Egypt

“Finch!” Gracie’s cry shook the walls of the monastery as she dropped to the ground at his side. She was shaking. The blood drained from her face, and her hands shot up to her open mouth. Finch’s body just lay there, in front of her, flat against the desert sand. He was on his front, motionless, the puff of dust that he’d kicked up when he’d slammed into the ground drifting back down and settling around him.

Slowly, her hands came down and hovered over him, not daring to touch him. The others, led by Dalton, all rushed to her side.

“Is he . . . ?” Dalton couldn’t say it.

There were no visible open wounds, no blood seeping out. It didn’t make the sight any less horrific. His head, which must have hit the ground first, was twisted sideways at an impossible angle. He had one arm bent backward, and his eyes were staring lifelessly at the parched soil.

“Oh my God. Finch,” Gracie sobbed as she stared at him, not sure what to do. Her hands finally dropped down onto his body, her fingers pressing softly against his neck, searching for a pulse or for any sign of life she knew she wasn’t going to find.

She looked at Dalton through teary eyes and shook her head.

Dalton was shaking. He put his arms around Gracie, his eyes also locked on his fallen friend’s body. The monks, waiting hesitantly behind Father Jerome and the abbot, started murmuring some prayers. After a moment, Gracie pulled her hand back, then gently brushed a few errant strands of hair off Finch’s forehead and gave his cheek a gentle caress, staring at him, wanting to slide his eyelids shut but not daring to touch them. She sensed movement behind her, turned, and saw Father Jerome advance hesitantly, his gaze locked on Finch. The holy man took a few more steps until he was standing right next to her, then he knelt down beside her, softly, his concentration still focused on Finch’s dead body.

A shiver of anticipation rolled through her. What is he doing? She watched with rapt attention as he leaned in closer, held out his hands over Finch, and shut his eyes in silent prayer. For a fleeting moment, a wild notion rose within her, an impossible, absurd notion—that she was about to witness something miraculous, that Father Jerome was actually going to intervene with the heavens and bring her friend back from the dead. Her heart leapt into her mouth as she sat there, crippled with fear and hope, and she tried to hold onto that crazy possibility as long as she could, flashing to all the other impossible things she’d witnessed over the last few days and trying to convince herself that anything was now possible, clutching at it with raging desperation even as it slipped away as quickly as it had arisen, driven out by the sight of Finch’s mangled, still-dead body and the cold logic that had always guided her. A devastating sense of grief soon came rolling back in and numbed every nerve in her body.

She looked over at Father Jerome, who opened his eyes and made a cross over Finch’s head. He turned to face her with a look of profound sadness, and took her hands in his.

“I’m so sorry,” he said simply.

His expression, Gracie saw, was also riven with guilt. She nodded, but said nothing. He rose and shuffled back to join his brethren. The abbot and Brother Ameen were standing a few steps back, and as Father Jerome reached them, the abbot put a consoling hand on his shoulder, and he and the younger monk murmured some words to him. Gracie turned to Dalton, then glanced up at the top of the keep. Its sand-colored edge contrasted sharply against the backdrop of clear blue sky. It looked like a close-up one would find on a hip postcard or coffee table book, disconcertingly perfect with its striking pastel colors—too perfect to have hosted such an ugly death.

“How . . . ,” she muttered. “How could he fall like that?”

Dalton shook his head slowly, still in shock. “I don’t know.” His eyes went wide. “Do you think someone out there took a shot at him? Was he shot?”

Gracie looked at him with sudden horror, then bent back down to Finch’s side. Dalton bent down with her. She hesitated; then, with trembling fingers, she straightened Finch’s arms and legs and, slowly, turned him over. She scanned his front, but couldn’t see any bullet wound.

“It doesn’t look like it,” she said. “I didn’t hear a shot, did you?”

“No.” Dalton looked mystified. He turned his gaze back up at the top of the keep. “The lip of that wall up there, it’s so low. Maybe he was leaning over to tell us he found it and just . . .” His voice trailed off.

Gracie scanned the ground around them. The satphone glinted at her from a few feet away, half-buried in the sand. She scanned wider. Spotted it. A small black box, lying by the base of the keep’s wall. Finch’s BlackBerry. She got up, retrieved the satphone, then padded over to the wall. She picked up the BlackBerry and just stared at it, brushing the sand off it with her fingers, imagining Finch’s last moments in her mind’s eye as he found it on the roof and crossed over to the edge for—what, one last look? a wave? She wished there was some way to go back and stop him from climbing up there and having his life grind to a halt in one cruel and sudden moment. But there was no going back. She knew that. She’d seen enough deaths in her years and had learned, long ago, to accept their finality.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. Her eyes, still teary, drifted past Dalton, to Father Jerome, the abbot, and Brother Ameen, who were behind him, and the macabre contingent of monks slightly farther back.

“We’ve got to go,” Dalton told her, his voice hollow.

“What about Finch? We can’t leave him here like this.”

“We can’t take him with us,” he replied softly. “We just can’t.”

After a brief moment, she nodded, still reluctantly but with a hint of clarity seeping back into her. “You’re right,” she said. She looked over at the abbot. “Can you . . . ?”

Sparing her the need to say it, the abbot nodded solemnly. “Of course,” he told her. “We’ll take care of him until we can send him home . . . properly.” He paused, as if to make sure she was all right with that, then glanced over at the Previa and the men huddled around it. She followed his gaze. The faint drone of the radio was still there, threatening like a malevolent siren.

“You should go now,” he added, “as planned.”

AS THEY GATHERED THEIR GEAR, Gracie and Dalton watched as a few monks, aided by the driver, lifted Finch’s body onto a makeshift stretcher—an old door that they’d lifted off its hinges—and carried him inside the main chapel. Four other monks picked up the rest of the news crew’s gear, and the small troupe followed the abbot out of the sun-soaked courtyard and into the cool darkness of the monastery.