She prayed Gray's intuition was right.
She had her answer a moment later.
The entire floor suddenly vibrated. A great grinding of gears shook through the room. The floor began to tilt again-but the wrong way. It started to rotate upside down. Rachel dared not even scream as her body began to slip across the stone. They were going to flip over.
Then something caught. The floor stopped with a stomach-jarring jolt. With a harsher grinding of gears, the floor slowly reversed itself. It swung back in the proper direction.
Rachel clung hard, her lips moving as she said the Lord's Prayer.
She watched the floor's edge rise under Gray's toes and push him back up. She rolled off the side of the sarcophagus and onto the leveling floor. They all lay flat, breathing hard. Even Gray slumped to his rear beside the cross.
Kowalski came back with a flashlight. 'If you're done playing down here...'
Rachel glared in his direction.
'I came to tell you that the storm's getting fierce. Lyle says we better move it if we want to get off this godforsaken island.'
Before anyone could move or respond, another section of the roof crashed down, striking the floor like a bomb. Water and a flow of bricks came next. The tower was coming down on top of them.
'Out!' Gray yelled.
They all shot to their feet and ran for the exit. A resounding snap jolted the entire floor. It began to wobble, teeter-tottering as something broke in the ancient mechanism.
Off balance, Rachel tumbled to the side, but Gray caught her around the waist and rushed with her toward the tunnel. They all flew into it as more of the cavern imploded.
A last glance showed the floor tilted askew as a waterfall of bricks and rain flooded into the room. Then she was too far up the tunnel to see any more. A moment later, an earthshaking crash chased them. A flume of rock dust rolled up the tunnel and over them.
Coughing, they reached the exit and climbed up, one after the other, back into the storm. Up top, a stunned Lyle offered them umbrellas.
Rachel took one, but she kept her face turned up toward the sky. She let rainwater wash over her.
We made it, Rachel thought.
1:42 P.M.
Gray stared over at the wreckage of the abbey tower. It was now only a tumbled pile of rubble sunk halfway into the ground. Water had already begun to pool around it.
The cavern was surely gone.
A roar rose behind him as Lyle started the tractor. The storm wailed-the winds had picked up while they'd been down there. Rain pelted out of the sky, whipping horizontal at times as the winds swept off the Irish Sea and across the island. Even the lightning had grown more subdued, as if cowed by the growing intensity of the storm.
They loaded up into the trailer for the ride back over the hill to the harbor. Lyle hunched in his seat and pushed the tractor into gear. The trailer lurched as it began to move.
They all crouched low, trying to keep out of the rain and the wind.
Wallace gazed back at the fallen ruins of Saint Mary's Abbey. 'First rule of archaeology,' he said, then glanced sidelong at Gray. 'Don't touch anything.'
Gray did not blame the professor for scolding him. He had acted without properly considering the dangers. He had been so shocked to discover that the cross predated Christianity, that the wheel component actually turned. He leaped before looking. Unlike Father Giovanni. Judging by all the priest's calculations, he had gone after the puzzle in a systematic and studied way.
But then again, the priest had been trained as an archaeologist. And Father Giovanni didn't have a woman's life hanging in the balance.
His group had only another two days to solve this mystery. Gray wouldn't apologize for pushing their investigation hard, for taking chances, for eschewing caution to get results.
Still, as he pictured the painstaking notations and calculations done by Father Giovanni, he knew there was something he was still missing. The more he tried to pin it down, the more it slipped away.
Wallace shook his head. 'Just think what we might have learned if we'd had more time with that cross...'
Gray heard the accusation behind his words. The man's usual joviality had been worn away by exhaustion, terror, and not a small amount of disappointment. With one mistake, they'd destroyed a priceless illuminated treasure and lost access to whatever the cross had kept hidden.
'What if the key is still down there?' Wallace asked pointedly.
Gray had had enough. 'You don't believe that. And neither do I.' The words came out more harshly than he intended, but he was tired, too.
'How can you be so sure?' Wallace asked.
'Because Father Giovanni left. He continued his search. I think he solved the riddle of the cross, found an empty vault that once held the key, then moved on, taking the one object he needed to continue his search.'
'The relic from the grave,' Rachel said.
Gray stared out into the storm. 'The key is still out there. I don't think the cross offered Father Giovanni that much help. So he moved on, just as we must.'
'But where?' Wallace asked. 'Where do we even begin to look? We're right back where we started.'
'No, we're not,' Gray said.
'How can you say that?'
He ignored the professor's question and turned to Rachel. 'How did you know so much about Saint Malachy?'
She shifted on the floorboards, clearly caught by surprise. 'It was Uncle Vigor. The prophecies intrigued him. He could talk for hours about Saint Malachy.'
Gray had suspected as much. Monsignor Verona had always been passionate about the mysteries of the early Church, seeking truths behind miracles. Such a figure as Malachy would have captured both his attention and his imagination.
'That's why Father Giovanni sought out your uncle,' Gray said. 'He knew the key to solving this mystery lay in the life of that saint. So Giovanni went to the best source he knew.'
'Vigor Verona.' Wallace sat straighter, ignoring the wind and rain.
'Maybe Marco knew about the plot by Viatus, or maybe he just had an inkling. But I suspect that the further he delved into this matter of curses and miracles, the more he knew he was in over his head. That he needed the expertise and protection of the Church behind him.'
Seichan added her own bleak viewpoint from the back of the trailer. 'But he sought them out too late. Someone knew of his plan.'
Gray nodded. 'If we're going to discover where the Doomsday key was hidden, we're going to need an expert on Saint Malachy.'
'But Verona is still in a coma,' Wallace said.
'It doesn't matter. We have someone who knows just as much.' He turned to Rachel.
'Me?'
'You're going to have to help us from here.'
'How?'
'Because I know where the key is hidden.'
Wallace looked hard at him. 'What?...Where?'
'Malachy's Bible was left in that sarcophagus for a reason. More than just to sanctify a relic. It was left behind as a symbol, a bread crumb to lead to the key's new resting place. Prior to the coming of the Romans, the key and the grave of this ancient royal were always kept together. They were bound together. And in the sarcophagus, we discovered Malachy's Bible binding a relic of this ancient person, binding it to him.'
'So what are you saying?' Wallace pressed him.
'I think Saint Malachy has taken the place of this ancient. That he's become the proverbial keeper of the
