and a small travel bag was always at the ready in his motorcycle’s stow box.
After the incident at the store, he’d headed straight for Belfast International and immediately got standby seating on an Aer Lingus flight bound
for New York. A second booking on Continental got him to Phoenix by
late morning.
“Two men came looking for me,” he explained, “asking about the ossuary we’d studied.” The fear this brought into her eyes pained him. Guilt
came fast.
Confusion rumpled her brow. “I saw the ossuary in the news. Tough
to miss the dolphin-trident etching. They said it’d been stolen,” she said,
without trying to make it sound like an accusation. “Then it was anonymously returned to Jerusalem. Right after Dr. Bersei was found dead.”
Hearing her own words made her consider the facts. Conspiracies immediately began spinning in her head. “Was it him?”
Donovan shook his head. “Not Bersei.”
She studied his shamefaced expression.
A reluctant nod.
“To set things right,” he said, trying to defend himself. “A long story I
don’t have time to explain just yet. But the big problem is . . . I returned
it empty. And it seems these two men were looking to get the skeleton
back.”
“The bones?”
“Yes. They were very insistent. And when I chose to remove myself from the conversation”—he looked up with hard lines creasing his brow—
“they came after me with guns.”
Charlotte’s face blanched. Oddly, the first thought that struck her was
industrial espionage. Could it be the miraculous gene code they were after?
But only she and Evan knew about that. “Wow” was all she could say. “Besides me, I’m afraid you are the only person left who’s worked on
the project. And . . .” His voice trailed off and he spread his hands to
compensate for the lost words. He’d never anticipated all of this when he’d
first acquired the ancient manuscript that told of the ossuary’s existence
beneath Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
“You don’t think . . .” She looked hard at him. “You think they might
come after
Looking down again, he nodded. “I had to warn you.”
At that moment, he happened to divert his eyes to the corridor, where
two technicians were just coming off the elevator. They were attired like
Charlotte—spotless white lab coats covering business-casual clothing. But
the taller man’s coat wasn’t buttoned because his broad shoulders pulled at
it too tightly.
Donovan’s eyes went wide when he spotted the fellow’s companion—
an ordinary, forgettable man. It took only a split second before the man
made the connection too. “Jesus save us!” Donovan yelled, jumping up
from the chair.
The shorter man snarled as he went for the door and began fussing with
the lock.
A second later, the elevator doors parted and Evan emerged with a to-go
cup clutched in each hand.
“Oh no!” Charlotte cried. “Evan!” But her scream was subdued by the
glass partition. She watched in horror as Evan stopped in his tracks, his
confused gaze bouncing from the two lab techs to Donovan, who was frantically waving his arms, shouting for Evan to move away. But Evan failed
