Blood Relics (A James Acton Thriller, #12) (16 page)

I’m a
lucky man.

He hadn’t
told her yet that he loved her, but he was pretty sure he did. It was a big
deal for him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had told a woman he loved
her. When he was a teenager and in his early twenties he had said whatever he
felt would get him across the goal line, but after breaking a girl’s heart in
his late twenties he had sworn he’d never say it again unless he meant it.

But
you said you loved me!

Her
cries still haunted him.

His
phone vibrated. Somewhere.

He
stood, eyeing the room, trying to narrow down the sound, finally finding his
pants hanging over the dresser mirror, Maggie having pulled them off him and
tossed them over her head when he had first arrived.

He was
loving having a girlfriend, a serious girlfriend. There was some sort of stability
there that he hadn’t realized he had been craving all these years, The Unit
providing him all the stability he had thought he needed.

He had
been wrong.

He was
finally beginning to understand why so many Special Forces operators were
married, and why the brass preferred married men. It gave them something to
fight for, something to come back to, an anchor in their uncertain worlds.

Maggie
was quickly becoming his anchor, something he looked forward to coming home to,
something he missed when away.

The boys
had been ribbing him on the last trip about wedding bells in his future, but he
had dismissed them.
Waay too early for that.
But he had to admit, he
could see it someday.

He
fished the phone out of its pocket.

“Go.”

“Is that
anyway to answer the phone?”

He
smiled as he recognized the voice of an old comrade turned CIA Operator, Dylan
Kane. A voice that didn’t sound right. “You sound like shit.”

“Funny
you should say that, that’s all I’ve been doing for the past six hours. That
and the Technicolor yawn.”

“Pleasant.
You know I’m heading out for dinner in a few minutes.”

“Don’t
get the pea soup. Or raw oysters.”

“Ahh,
trying to enhance the old sex drive.”

“You
should try it sometime.”

“Apparently
I don’t need any help in that department.”

“Good
man!” Kane became serious. “I got a message from our old friend.”

Dawson
sat on the edge of the bed, pretty certain who Kane was referring to. “What’s
the professor gotten himself into this time?” he asked with a laugh.

“His
wife’s been shot”—Dawson immediately regretted his levity—“and to top it off,
kidnapped. The Doc doesn’t even know if she’s alive.”

“Christ,
he must be going bat shit crazy.”

“Wouldn’t
you?”

Dawson
looked toward the bathroom, steam and happy humming rolling out the door. “What
can I do?”

“I’m completely
offline, I can barely walk. I’ll contact my guy at Langley and get him working
the data. Any chance you can get yourself over there to help?”

“Where’s
there?”

“Paris
for the moment.”

“Maggie
will kill me. We’ve been talking about vacationing there.”

“Take
her.”

“Riiight,
I can picture it now. Honey, you go visit the Louvre, I’m going to go kill some
people. Dinner at six?”

Kane
laughed. “Up to you. Find Laura, take care of business, then fly her over for a
romantic getaway.”

Huh.
Not a bad idea.

“I’ll
clear it with the Colonel. I’m assuming your Langley guy is Leroux?”

“Yup.”

“Okay,
I’ll touch base with him and keep you in the loop.”

“Thanks,
BD, it’s appreciated.” He heard a grunt. “Oh shit, gotta go!”

Heaves
erupted before the call ended.

Poor
bastard.

He
stepped into the bathroom, pulling aside the curtain.

“Hey,
you were supposed to wait!”

He
climbed into the shower, pulling her close.

“There’s
been a change of plans.”

Kruger Residence, Outside Paris, France

Laura opened her eyes, immediately shutting them, the glare of
overhead lights almost painful. With some effort she lifted her hand, shielding
her eyes as she opened them again, blinking several times, her eyes dry. A
monitor beeped to her left showing her vitals, weak but steady. Something moved
to her right. She looked and saw a man in a lab coat swirling a large beaker,
holding it up to the light.

It
looked nothing like a hospital.

And
everything like a laboratory.

“Wh-where
am I?”

Her
voice was raspy, her mouth and throat dry.

The man
looked over at her, putting the beaker down. “So you’re awake.” He walked over,
checking the monitors. “How are you feeling?”

“Water.”

He
reached for a glass on a side table, helping position the straw to her mouth.
She took several sips then swished some of the water around, relieving her
cotton-mouth.

“Enough?”

She
nodded.

“Good.
Now, how are you feeling?”

“Weak.”

“Any
pain?”

She
reached for her stomach. “A dull ache, but that’s about it. Where am I?”

“You’re
safe, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

She looked
around, it clear she wasn’t in any type of formal medical care facility. “I
doubt that.”

The man
laughed gently. “Yes, I suppose so. What I mean is that for the moment, you’re
not going to die, but you will need to be careful. I removed the bullet and
stitched you up, but it made quite the hole and you lost a lot of blood.
Fortunately we’re equipped for that sort of event here.”

“And
where is here?”

“Let’s
just say ‘the French countryside’.”

“Uh huh.
And I assume I’m a prisoner?”

“A
horrible term, but for lack of a better one, yes. Once this entire exercise is
over you will of course be free to go, but until it is, we can’t risk you
letting the authorities know where we are.”

“Considering
I have no clue, that’s hardly a problem.”

He
smiled, patting her shoulder. Lifting a control pad attached to a wire, he
placed it in her hand. “Bed controls. You can raise or lower yourself, whatever
makes you comfortable.”

She took
the controls and looked at them. Pressing the button with an up arrow she felt
herself start to rise and was soon in a reasonable sitting position, her wound
a little tender but tolerable.

“Can I
get you anything else? I need to get back to work. Feel free to chit-chat, I
could use the company.”

“I’m
fine, thanks.”

Her
stomach rumbled, loud enough for both of them to hear it.

“I’ll
have a light meal brought for you. You don’t want to stretch anything down
there by overindulging.”

He
stepped away, placing a call for food, then returned to his workbench, lifting
what she recognized as the Crown of Thorns. He swabbed several parts of it
before gently returning it to the countertop.

“What
are you doing?”

“Swabbing
for DNA.”

“Christ’s
DNA?”

“Ahh, so
you’re onto us.”

“Multiple
thefts, all taking only the Blood Relics? Not much of a stretch. Who’s sick?”

“You’re
a bright woman, Dr. Palmer.”

Her
chest tightened. “You know who I am?”

“Your ID
was in your fanny pack. I looked you up. Very impressive career. Oh! Congratulations
on your recent marriage.”

Her
stomach leapt.
James!
“Where’s my husband, is he okay?”

The man
shrugged. “No idea where he is, but from my understanding only police officers
were hurt during the retrieval, besides yourself of course.”

She
breathed a sigh of relief, watching as several vials were prepared and loaded
into a machine that began to spin them. “Do you really think you can retrieve
the blood of Christ?”

“Absolutely,”
replied the man, turning to face her while the machine did its work. “The only
problem is finding an actual relic with DNA on it, then of course hoping that
the DNA we do find is His.”

“You
sound confident yet not.”

He
laughed. “You’re a very perceptive woman. I am confident in the science, just
not the premise. First, finding an actual artifact with His blood on it I
personally think is next to impossible. Second, should we actually find that
blood, the only way we would know it was His is if it actually heals my
employer. And third, if it weren’t to heal him, he would insist we continue the
search, because his assumption would be that it
wasn’t
the blood of Christ.”
The man threw up his hands in exasperation. “I have no choice but to simply
keep testing whatever they bring me.”

“There’s
not a lot of relics left.”

He
frowned. “I know. It’s unfortunate. He’s a good man, he deserves to be saved if
he can be.”

Laura
felt a slight rage build inside her. “A good man? I was shot, a priest was
murdered, police officers are dead. A good man?”

“That,
my dear, was not
him.
That was his son.”

Laura
bit her lip, silencing the retort she wanted to deliver.
Sins of the son?
“Was he responsible for all the thefts?”

The man
nodded. “Yes, under orders from his father.”

“He
seems to have escalated.”

“There’s
been a recent development.”

Laura’s
eyes narrowed. “What?”

“My
employer, the boy’s father, took a turn for the worse today. I fear he’ll die
soon.” The machine beeped. “Which makes my work all the more important.”

“Don’t
you think you’re on a fool’s errand?”

The man
chuckled as he removed the vials. “I may be, but if that man dies, I fear what
his son might do.”

“What do
you mean?”

“He’s a
fine young man, but you’ve seen what he’s capable of. If his father dies, he
just might blame me.” He paused, turning toward Laura. “Or you.”

1st Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta HQ, Fort Bragg,
North Carolina
A.k.a. "The Unit"

Command Sergeant Major Burt “Big Dog” Dawson had taken a chance that
the Colonel might be in and he had been right, his call answered directly since
Colonel Thomas Clancy’s secretary—or receptionist, assistant, whatever she was
called—was now sulking on her couch back at her apartment.

She’ll
get over it.

In fact
she already had, or at least partly. She understood the job and the fact he
could be called away at a moment’s notice. She understood that more than most
since she worked with the Colonel five days a week. She was a little miffed at
first that it was a favor for a friend, though when she had heard of Professor
Palmer being shot and kidnapped, she had quickly whipped him together a quick
bite to eat though he knew she was disappointed.

So was
he.

But
Professor Palmer had been instrumental in helping them with the Circle of
Eight, and both professors had proven themselves to be good people, people who
could be relied upon to always do the right thing, even if it meant risking
their own lives for strangers.

And he
owed them.

They all
owed them.

Their
first encounter had been ignominious at best. They had been given falsified
intel, told Professor Acton was the head of a domestic terror cell and that he
and his students were all on the President’s Termination List.

He
wasn’t proud of what had happened and it still tormented him to this day, and
when the dust had settled, he had tried to make up for all the innocent deaths
by being a better person, and whenever possible, helping James Acton and Laura
Palmer.

It had
been tough at first. In fact, the first time Acton had seen him after those
events he had swung a baseball bat at his head. He smiled. He liked to think
that there was at least mutual respect there, and perhaps they might even be
friends of a sort. The professors had even sent Bravo Team an invite to the
wedding. They hadn’t been able to attend, prepping for a mission to
Afghanistan—and it probably wouldn’t have been appropriate regardless—but Niner
had sent a photo with them all standing against an unmarked wall.