The Sacred Vault

About ten minutes later, a nurse came to find her. ‘Dr Wilde? Dr Sharpe is asking for you.’

Nina jumped up and followed the woman to a recovery room. Rowan lay in a bed, a pale, fragile figure hooked up to wires and tubes. A monitor beside the bed silently recorded the slow pulses of his heartbeat. ‘Rowan? How are you feeling?’ She felt almost embarrassed at asking such a dumb question, but it was all she could think of.

‘Hey, Nina.’ His voice was little more than a whisper behind a transparent oxygen mask. ‘So that’s what getting shot feels like? You didn’t tell me it hurt so much.’

‘Can I touch him?’ Nina asked the nurse, getting a nod in reply. ‘Jerk,’ she said, rapping his knuckles. ‘God, I was so worried about you.’

‘So was I!’ He tried to laugh, which turned into a cough. The nurse gave them both a scolding look, and checked the monitor before leaving the room. ‘What about the Codex?’

‘They didn’t take it,’ Nina said, tactfully deciding not to concern him with the news that it was currently on the bottom of San Francisco Bay. ‘Eddie stopped them.’

‘Great. I think you’ve . . . found quite a good husband. Obviously not the best you could have done, but . . .’

‘Oh, stop it.’

He smiled, then turned his head slightly to look down at her neck, weakly raising one hand to indicate her pendant. ‘Just goes to show that thing . . . really does bring you good luck.’

‘Seems like I need a lot of it.’

‘I’m just glad some of . . . your luck rubbed off on me tonight.’ His gaze moved down to her hands. ‘Did you . . . bring me something?’

Nina held up a bag of chocolates. ‘Dark. I remembered. Wouldn’t want to give you hives.’

‘Yeah, as if I don’t . . . have enough to worry about!’ Another smile - then he frowned sharply.

‘Are you okay?’ Nina asked. ‘Shall I get the nurse?’

‘No, I’m fine, just . . . a headache. Think I took a knock when I fell down. Didn’t notice at the time because of the whole . . . getting shot thing . . .’ Another twinge, more pronounced. ‘Ow, jeez. That really is . . . one hell of a headache. Got any Tylenol?’

The peaks on the heart monitor were closer together, rising higher. ‘I’m getting the nurse,’ Nina said, worried.

‘No, I’m okay, I - nghh! ’ His whole face twisted, body flinching. An alarm trilled on the monitor, Rowan’s heartbeats no longer silent as the machine recognised dangerous activity.

Nina jumped up and threw open the door. ‘Hey! I need help in here, quick!’

A doctor and a nurse ran in, the nurse checking the readings on the monitoring equipment while the doctor examined his patient. ‘It’s not his breathing,’ the nurse reported.

‘Pupils are dilated, left eyelid drooping . . .’ muttered the doctor, shining a penlight into Rowan’s eyes. ‘Dammit! We need to get him back to the OR, right now - get Dr Kyanka down here.’

‘What’s happening?’ Nina asked desperately as the nurse hurried to the room’s phone. ‘I thought he was all right!’

‘He was. We treated the gunshot wound - this is something else, looks like a cerebral aneurysm.’

‘What? Oh my God!’

The nurse slammed down the phone. ‘Dr Kyanka’s on his way.’ Another nurse burst into the room to help her move the patient.

Nina watched, helpless, as the pain-stricken Rowan was rushed away. ‘Help him, please!’

‘We’ll do what we can,’ said the doctor as he charged after them down the corridor. But his grim expression filled Nina with terror.

Bandaged, limping slightly on a stiff leg, Eddie made his way through the hospital. He was mildly irked that Nina hadn’t returned to the ER; Rowan’s injuries were far more severe than his own, yes, but a bit more support from his wife would have been nice.

He arrived at a small waiting area, and saw Nina hunched in a chair. ‘There you are!’ he called. ‘So you’d rather hang about waiting for your ex-boyfriend than watch your husband have splinters tweezed out of his arse . . .’

He tailed off as she looked up at him, eyes red and puffy, cheeks streaked with tears. There was only one possible cause for her distress. ‘Oh, shit,’ he said, quickly sitting beside her and holding her hands. ‘Are you okay? Is Rowan . . .’

‘He - he didn’t make it,’ she said, throat raw. ‘He was okay, they treated the bullet wound, but then he, uh . . .’ Her voice began to quaver. ‘He had a . . . burst blood vessel in - in his brain . . .’ She broke down, sobbing.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Eddie, knowing all too well what it was like to lose a friend. He wrapped his arms protectively round her and held her close as she wept.

6

New York City

The Talonor Codex rested on Nina’s desk. Around it lay dozens of photographs and page upon page of printouts - the IHA’s reference images and translations of the ancient document.

None of them were helping. Nina had gone through the translations twice already that morning, but even as she began a third reading she suspected it would prove equally unenlightening. Talonor had been methodical in the accounts of his travels . . . meaning the sheer amount of information was overpowering. How could she pick out what she was looking for in a journal that spanned three continents?

But no matter how much she tried to focus her mind on her task, no matter how many times she re-read the ancient text, she was unable to escape a constant, gnawing guilt. She knew that she was using work as a way to avoid thinking about the events in San Francisco, the analytical part of her mind attempting to box up and shut away the emotional. But the attempt was doomed to failure. The Codex itself was a reminder, a symbol of her loss. Rowan Sharpe had died because of it.

That thought tore open the box. Its contents flooded her mind, memories of Rowan from throughout her life. As a colleague, as a friend . . . as a lover. But the one that hit her the hardest was the image of him with her parents when she was a teenager with a puppy-dog crush, all of them working together to solve the riddle of Atlantis.

That riddle had taken the lives of her parents. And now, fourteen years later, even though she had solved it . . . it had taken Rowan too.

Her eyes stung with tears.

Eddie entered the office, walking rather stiffly. ‘Ay up,’ he said in casual greeting - then he read her expression, his own filling with concern. ‘You all right?’

‘No,’ she admitted, trying and failing to hold back a sob as she wiped her eyes. He crouched beside her, putting an arm over her shoulders. ‘Oh, God, Eddie. Rowan’s dead, and it’s all my fault . . .’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Eddie said firmly. ‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Because . . . because I brought him into all this. I hired him to be in charge of the exhibition. If it hadn’t been for me, he’d still be alive . . .’ She broke down, hands to her face to cover her grief and shame.

‘Nina, look at me. Look.’ He slowly pulled her hands down so he could meet her eyes. ‘I know I got a little bit jealous of Rowan, but it wasn’t serious. He was a good guy. But you didn’t kill him, okay? You have to tell yourself that. It was like . . .’ He paused, recalling the impact of a loss of his own a year and a half earlier. ‘Like when Mitzi died when we were looking for Excalibur. I blamed myself for that when it happened. You remember?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But . . . but I realised as time went on that I didn’t kill her. Just because she was there with me didn’t make it my fault that she died - I didn’t pull the trigger. And I know this’ll sound harsh and horrible right now, but it’s the same for you. You didn’t kill Rowan. And you didn’t get him