The two women studied one another in silence for several moments. Maddie was the first to break eye contact. She snorted in disgust and ended the impasse by stepping back a few paces.
Only then did Cassie drop her arms and allow her teammates to enter the room.
As Erik wheeled Griffin past her, he gave Cassie a conspiratorial grin and whispered, “Rock on, tiny terminator, rock on.”
Limping forward, Erik told his superior, “Everything’s OK, chief. Chill.”
Her face turned purple. “Do the three of you think I’m handing out insubordination vouchers today? Remember who signs your paycheck, kid.”
Erik winced but made no reply as he positioned Griffin beside the desk.
Maddie flounced down next to Faye while the security coordinator sank into the last chair.
“Griffin brought his own seat,” Cassie quipped, hoping to break the tension as she resumed her own place.
The two older women traded concerned looks but remained silent.
After giving the newcomers a few moments to get settled, Maddie finally said, “OK, let’s hear it.”
The men glanced at Cassie. She shrugged helplessly. “You guys got here too soon, and they didn’t give me a chance to explain.” Turning to Griffin, she said, “You might as well tell it.”
“Right then.” The scrivener sighed. “I was shot.” He lapsed into silence.
“Shot!” the two older women cried in unison.
“He had a little scuffle with Hunt on the mountain,” Erik elaborated.
“But Griffin’s going to be OK,” Cassie added cheerily. “The bullet missed all the vital organs, and the bump on his head is a lot better than it was.”
“Bump?” Maddie echoed.
“Yeah, when he jumped out and tackled Hunt. They were fighting, and his head got slammed into a rock,” Erik offered. After noticing the stricken looks on his listeners’ faces, he tried to back pedal. “I mean, he only blacked out for a couple of hours.”
Maddie gave a timeout signal. “Whoa! Everybody back up and start at the beginning. Tell us exactly what happened right after you put the fake relic in the ground.”
They all began talking at once, but somehow Maddie and Faye were able to piece together the string of events that led to Griffin’s and Erik’s injuries.
“You should have been stationed inside the cave,” the operations director told Erik reproachfully. “If you’d been there, he wouldn’t have gotten shot.”
The security coordinator rolled his eyes and murmured to his teammates, “I told you she was gonna blame me.”
“It wasn’t his fault.” Cassie rushed to his defense. “He was on the summit trying to head off trouble when everything went down.”
Maddie relented. “Since you’re all still breathing, I guess that counts as a win.”
Faye nodded. “Indeed. That’s the main thing to remember. We are deeply indebted to the quick thinking of the Basque sentinel. A man like that ought to be working for the Arkana.”
“Way ahead of you there,” Erik said. “Since Iker is basically out of the sentinel business because of us, he has a lot of free time. Ortzi asked him to head up security at the Basque trove.”
“You might actually get a chance to meet him,” Cassie said. “I put him in touch with Grace Littlefield, and he’s decided to come to America to visit his long-lost relative. I told him Chicago was right in the neighborhood.”
“That was a bit of a stretch,” Maddie objected.
“So, I shaved off a few hundred miles.” Cassie equivocated. “You want to meet him, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Faye agreed. “We owe him a great deal.”
“Then all’s well that ends well,” the pythia prompted. “Right?”
“Certainly.” The memory guardian smiled. “Our team has returned alive, and the bait has been taken by the Nephilim.”
“According to Hunt’s last call to Metcalf before he left Spain, everything was fine. Of course, he didn’t mention anything about a scuffle in the cave. Maybe that’s a good thing, or I would have been fretting.” She paused and added pointedly for Erik’s benefit, “Fretting even more than I already was.”
The security coordinator adopted a blameless expression. “We didn’t want to worry you while Griffin was getting back on his feet.” He regarded his teammate ruefully “Sorry, man, bad choice of words.”
“How long will you be confined to a wheelchair?” Faye asked worriedly.
“I’ve been instructed to visit the vault physician for regular checkups, but it should only be a matter of weeks.”
“Thank heavens,” Faye said. “We’re both very relieved to hear that there’s no permanent damage.” She glanced at the metal box on Cassie’s desk which had gone unnoticed during the interrogation. “Now that we’ve sorted out what happened last week perhaps we should turn our attention to this interesting little item. There was no time to talk about the artifact itself in the rush to have it duplicated.” She slid the box closer to Cassie. “Can you read anything else from it, my dear?”
The pythia shook her head as she removed the relic from the box and held it in her palms. “Afraid not. I’m starting to notice a pattern here. It’s like each of these objects has a message for me when I pick it up for the first time. Once I get that message, it doesn’t have anything else to tell me. Whatever I was supposed to know got transmitted to me when Grace handed me the artifact at the Haudenosaunee trove.”
She placed the object in the middle of the desk. Her companions all moved closer to regard it with keen interest.
“What kind of bird to you think it is?” the pythia asked.
Griffin picked up the artifact to inspect it. “It appears to be a dove in flight.” He squinted appraisingly. “And it’s carved out of pure lapis lazuli unless I miss my guess. Very delicate craftsmanship on these outstretched wings.”
“There’s some writing on the breast,” Maddie observed.
“Yes,” Griffin agreed wistfully. “But it’s little enough to go on.”
“Like I said back at the trove,” Cassie reminded him. “Fewer words don’t necessarily translate to an easier clue.”
“What do the symbols mean?” Faye urged.
Griffin placed the lapis dove back
