The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (148 page)

Brandt watched the priest’s face as he clearly struggled with how much to share with them. In the end, he stood, smoothing his robes.

“There are some preparations to be made, but as much as we can answer, we shall.” His face softened as he looked to Vakasa and then the statue. “We owe her that much.”

Brandt wasn’t sure which “she” the priest was referring to, but he’d take it. The sooner they got out of Europe and back to the States, the better. The villagers left the room, taking the Black Madonna with them.

“So,” Talli asked. “are they really getting ready to help us or…?”

“Firebomb us?” Levont finished.

Brandt wasn’t sure which way that one was going to go, either. “Check the doors.”

The men set up on either side of the room, protecting the only two exits out of the room. Rebecca rose, keeping Vakasa close.

“If we do prove she
isn’t
the Messiah,” Rebecca asked quietly, “what happens to her once we get home?”

It was getting a little old not having any firm answers. “I don’t know.”

Rebecca crossed her arms over Vakasa. Like a mother would her child. “I was thinking…”

She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Brandt knew exactly what she was thinking.

* * *

Rebecca waited as Brandt studied her face. She knew what she asked was a lot. A whole lot. More than she thought she’d ever be ready for, but with Vakasa’s hands in hers, it felt right.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Brandt answered.

“Are you sure?” Rebecca asked, wanting to make sure he’d understood her unspoken question. “What about your family?”

To her surprise, Brandt chuckled. “Are you kidding me? Vakasa wouldn’t be stateside a week before Mom had her entered into a beauty pageant, and trust me, the family Christmas letter would announce, ‘Three generations of beauty queens.’”

Rebecca smiled back. Could something so good come out of such a horrible set of events?

Before she could ponder the notion any further, Hernández returned. “Follow me.”

Vakasa didn’t hesitate, skipping after the man. Rebecca had to grab her hand and keep her in proper formation as they made their way out of the cottage and toward an older, overgrown monastery. The wooden structure had fallen into disrepair. Tiles hung down from the roof, and it looked like squirrels had set up housekeeping in the eves.

Ahead of her, Levont had to lower his head to make it into the broken doorway. Once inside the monastery, it seemed like they had stepped back several centuries. With no electricity and branches covering most of the windows, Levont and Talli turned on their flashlights, the beams cutting across stucco walls and leaf-covered floors.

Was it just Rebecca, or did the wind rustling through the vines sound like a monk’s devotional chant? Nothing, however, adorned the hallway. Not a single cross or painting. Had the monks taken everything with them, or had the place been looted?

Hernádez led them through an ivy-choked chapel and back into the living quarters. Here there was more filtered light through the broken windows. The priest pushed aside a large swath of moss from the floor and moved a board to reveal a stash of artifacts.

Silently, he brought them out one by one, laying them on the lone moldy bed.

The first item was a
halarii
—actually, it was a small pendant shaped in the image of a
halarii
, or Basque gravestone. The top was a disc shape that connoted the rising or setting of the sun. This disc sat upon a triangular base. Several ancient Basque symbols filled both the disc and its base.

Vakasa smiled as her finger traced the six-leafed rosette. The most ancient of iconry. Yes, primitive man drew bulls and horses, but those were meant to be literal. They were drawing animals. Many scholars tried to argue that these stylized flower petals were only meant to represent the plant and nothing more. Others argued that the sun-like disc and rosette were representational of the gods’ gifts to man. Sun and foliage. The two things man needed to survive. Included inside the base were several lines of ancient letters and a crude symbol for running water.

Rebecca had never really had an opinion one way or the other. In some ways, she felt it was splitting hairs, but seeing the ancient totem, it did feel like whoever had carved it was trying to send a message.

Who knew what it was, though? Rebecca couldn’t translate the lettering. She turned to Hernández. “What does it say?”

“That is what I hoped the child would tell us.”

Vakasa, though, simply picked up the
halarii
pendant and tied the leather cord around her neck. She patted it as if to make sure it was going to stay there. Vakasa then moved on to the second item. An unusual cross lay on the tattered blanket. With a circle encompassing the top of the cross, used to represent Christ’s death and resurrection, Rebecca was certain it was a Coptic cross. Silver and apparently heavy, Vakasa picked it up.

“
Hermano
,” she whispered, touching her lips to the center of the cross.

Brother.

“Don’t start,” Brandt said from the corner of the room. “Are we learning anything of value here?”

Vakasa took the cross and whacked it against the wooden frame of the bed.

“No!” Rebecca cried out, trying to get the artifact from the child before the priest had an aneurism. “Honey, no.”

But the girl wiggled out of her grasp and hit the cross again. It cracked at the base of the circle, revealing a small compartment down the shaft of the cross. Vakasa pulled out a small piece of parchment. With a smile, she walked over to Brandt and handed it to him.

Rebecca looked over Brandt’s shoulder as he carefully unrolled the parchment. The drawings on it seemed to be a map. Only, a map of what?

* * *

Bunny paced behind Stark. “Well, is it going to work?”

“Everyone does realize I am hacking into the NSA’s central database, right?”

Prenner frowned. He’d voted against them, of course. Luckily, he was outvoted.

“I still think we should move to Langley,” Emily added for like the thousandth time.

Stark nodded toward the leftovers. Only the trunk of a pancake elephant and tiny shreds of crispy hash browns survived. “And exactly what are they going to serve us there?” Before Emily could retort, Stark overrode her. “And these computers are more secure than any CPU in
any
government building.”

To underscore his point, the computer dinged, indicating he had in fact just hacked his way into the NSA’s hub. Stark rubbed his hands together. “Let’s see what they’ve been up to since Vanderwalt dropped them off in Turkey.”

Bunny really hated this whole radio silence thing. But with the Disciples hot on Rebecca’s trail and half the US military wanting to pull in Lopez and the rest, it was the only way to keep them safe. Stark flipped through reams of data, apparently sorting it in his head.

“Here we go,” Stark stated, bringing up a photo of a jumbo jet parked on a pretty small runway. “That’s gotta be Lopez.”

Yes, Bunny had to agree. Which meant they had headed to the Basque region. Which meant they were going back to Rebecca’s old stomping grounds. “Can you get us some satellite coverage of the northwest area of the Basque region?”

Emily shook her head. “There’s not a lot over that area. Not since the separatists agreed to the cease-fire.”

Bunny frowned.

“Sorry, darlin’, she’s right,” Stark said. “I can’t pull up footage that isn’t there.”

“What about the Disciples?” Prenner asked. “Can you pick up their trail from the Congo?”

“Well, I already knew that they followed Brandt to Egypt after chartering a plane out of Cameroon…” Stark stalled out as he brought up and rejected several maps. “Out of Egypt, though? That is a problem. After the Sphinx disaster, only three planes made it out before a complete lockdown of Egyptian airspace. One was the Turkish plane. The other two were headed nowhere near Spain. One went to India, and the other headed to South Africa. It doesn’t look like they followed Brandt at all.”

Stark was good. Extremely good at his job. However, the tech had never gone up against the Disciples. They didn’t give up. They didn’t know what giving up looked like. But how else could they have gotten out of Egypt?

“How long until they locked down the ports?” Prenner asked Stark. “Those are usually far more porous than airports or even train lines.”

“Good question,” Stark commented as his mouse flew across the multiple screens. “For major ships? They were pretty quick, but look at what we’ve got over here…”

He brought up a map of the long coastline of Egypt. A satellite feed showed numerous small crafts launching from non-port locations. Actually, it looked a little like rats fleeing a sinking ship. If anything, there were too many boats to track.

“This is going to take a while.”

Prenner shook his head, though. “There’s no way they were going to stay on the water. Too high a probability they could get stopped and searched.”

“And it would just be too slow,” Emily added. “The Disciples must have known Brandt was going to take to the skies.”

“All right. Let’s see if anybody’s flight path crossed a—” Before he even got the sentence out, he found a seaplane that had landed near a boat. Sure enough, from Brandt’s description, that was Frellan and his team.

Bunny watched in horror as he shot the crew and pitched their bodies over the side. Yes, that was the Disciples for sure.

“Looks like they headed to Italy, then took a charter to Madrid.”

“Madrid?” Emily clarified.

“Yep.”

Prenner frowned. “But look at the timeline. Lopez hasn’t even stolen that jumbo jet yet. How could they know Brandt was going to Spain?”

“Don’t know,” Stark admitted. “But let’s look at Flickr to find out what the Disciples did once they got to Madrid.”

“Flickr?” Bunny asked. “You’re joking.”

“Nope,” Stark said as he brought up the photo-sharing site and started grabbing photos from Madrid. The vast majority were from cell phone shots. Candid pictures taken by locals and tourists alike. It was weird looking at the Spanish city through the eyes of hundreds of lens. “Got ‘em.”

Rapidly, the tech brought up a series of photos that, cobbled together, formed a crude and jumpy video. They watched as Frellan was met by a…

“Is that a priest?” Prenner asked.

It certainly looked like it. Stark’s fingers flew again. “Let me backtrack and see where he came from.”

If watching the cobbled-together video was odd going forward, it was mind-bending going backward. Yet somehow Stark followed the priest all the way back to
Iglesia de San Andres
. A prominent Catholic cathedral.

“Unless the guy thought he was being followed,” Stark announced, “it looks like he is a bona fide priest.”

“Where did they go from there?” Emily asked.

“Working on it,” Stark said, fast-forwarding through thousands of photos. Then the video came to a stop as Frellan and the others climbed into three SUVs. “Gonna have to switch to real-time cams and hope we’ve got an angle on them.”

Stark flipped through every traffic cam in Madrid, coming up empty.

“Check the official Spanish website,” Emily suggested.

Even though Stark looked about as confused as Bunny was, he did as ordered. “Now what?”

“Check out the scenic cams. They stream live video of rural Spain.”

Bunny nodded. “Look at highways heading toward the Basque region.”

No one spoke as a clear shot appeared of the three SUVs heading up into the mountains. Heading straight for Rebecca and Brandt.

* * *

Brandt studied the parchment. It looked like an old Crusader’s map, judging by the Jerusalem Cross in red along with the standard waving of an antique English flag.

“Does it show a location?” Rebecca asked.

“I’m pretty sure it is of the Holy Land, but this arrow is pointing off the map.”

“Is that a Star of David?” Levont asked, indicating to the last item on the bed.

Drawn to the artifact, Rebecca left Brandt’s side. Just as well. Half a map didn’t get them very far. Vakasa picked up the steel star and spun it on her hand. After playing with it for a few moments, she laid it back down.

Not exactly the actions of a prophesized messiah.

“I don’t get it,” Rebecca said, looking to each of the artifacts.

Which was not good news. If Rebecca didn’t get it, none of them could. Brandt was beginning to feel like it was time to pull the plug. Head home, face the consequences of their actions. Actually, Brandt would have done that several injuries ago. His instinct was to get stateside ASAP, hopefully ditching the Disciples. But there was that little girl and her radiant smile. If they went home now, without clear answers, Vakasa would be whisked away, taken to some DARPA research facility.

Rebecca leaned over to study the Hebrew symbol. “A
halarii
, a Coptic cross, and a Star of David—what made you collect them?” she asked the priest.

“It was not I, but the monks that originally settled here,” the friar stated. That didn’t seem to help Rebecca any, though, so he continued. “Look to the back of the star.”

Turning over the star, Rebecca read an inscription on the back. “
Schechinah.
”

Brandt frowned. He’d heard the word but couldn’t place its origin. Rebecca turned over the broken cross. The same inscription. Vakasa twirled her
halarrii
around her neck to reveal the same word.

He was about to ask Rebecca what it meant but realized she was “processing.” Not emotionally. Hell, Rebecca was worse than his men at dealing with her feelings. No, her mind spun, trying to tie everything together. Vakasa. The items. The inscription. Asking Rebecca anything at this point would only slow her coming to a conclusion.

Unfortunately, the friar didn’t seem to understand this concept. “The girl was born in Solomon’s mines, was she not?”

“What?” from all four of them echoed off the mossy walls.

“We don’t…” Rebecca stammered. “We’re not sure…What?”

The priest seemed nonplussed by their surprise. “In the Congo region. The child came from deep within East Africa.”