The Templar's Code

CHAPTER 91

“Caedmon, don’t!”

To Edie’s horror, he ignored the shouted plea.

Like uncoiled springs, Caedmon’s cuffed wrists thrust upward into the air, then looped over the top of Panos’s head. With a grunt, he yanked the other man against his chest, strangling him with the metal chain that linked the two cuffs.

Panos wildly thrashed against Caedmon, the two men no more than three feet from the trap. Having a height advantage, Caedmon managed to hold firm. Grimacing. Grunting. His face a mask of pained determination. With his left hand, Panos impotently clawed at Caedmon’s face. In his right hand, the Greek still held fast to the revolver. Given their close proximity, he obviously realized that he risked shooting himself if he fired it.

Edie, hands fearfully clasped to her mouth, stood frozen in place. With no weapon at the ready, she was afraid to intervene. Afraid she might break Caedmon’s deadly focus. Given the amount of pain that he had to be suffering, what she was witnessing was nothing less than heroic. Superhuman, in fact.

Face beginning to turn blue, Panos suddenly used his revolver in an unexpected manner — he forcibly rammed the butt of the weapon against Caedmon’s battered left hand.

“Fucking bloody bastard!”

Caedmon raised his manacled wrists, releasing the hold on his blue-faced captive. Gasping, he recoiled from the other man.

Oh God!

With a sickening sense of certainty, Edie knew how the violent tableau would end. As soon as Rico Suave caught his breath — which could be any second — he would kill Caedmon!

As though reading her mind, Panos bared his teeth and growled. A savage animal. “I’m going to blow a hole in your conniving heart, boutso gliftie!” he hissed, his malice recharged.

Hearing his intention so bluntly put propelled Edie into action. Like a snapped rubber band, she lunged forward, her survival instincts kicking in. Literally.

Falling back on the six weeks of kickboxing that she took at the YMCA, she quickly advanced on her target. She’d taken the course three years ago, so there was only one move she actually remembered. Probably because it was the only one she’d mastered with whambam proficiency — the side kick. Able to hear her instructor’s voice in her head—Slide! Chamber! Kick! — Edie assumed an offensive posture. Funneling her fear into one dynamic, quick motion, she smashed her hiking boot into Saviour Panos’s crotch.

The wailing howl that ensued was perversely gratifying.

As expected, the wounded gunman doubled over — a defensive move programmed into the male DNA — shielding his groin from another attack. Bleating, he muttered what sounded like a string of foul epithets in a foreign language.

Caedmon quickly jabbed his right knee upward, catching Panos in the chin. The hard-hitting knee strike sent Panos reeling backward. The younger man gracelessly windmilled his arms, attempting to regain his balance. Still holding the revolver, he crashed into the stone altar.

Edie instinctively ducked, afraid the loaded gun would accidentally discharge.

Grunting, Panos bounced off the edge of the rough-hewn altar, staggered several feet, and—

Plunged through the concealed death trap in front of the niche!

Vanishing without so much as a whimper. Or a foul-mouthed curse.

Caedmon, slack-jawed, stared at the gaping hole. “My God.”

Edie exuberantly thrust her right fist into the air. Recalling her favorite episode of Lassie, she happily exclaimed, “Timmy’s in the well!” Yeah, boy!

Euphoric, she rushed over to Caedmon, who calmly peered into the hole. “A deadly fall from grace,” he said dispassionately. No love lost.

Her cheeks moistened with tears, it took every measure of self-control not to fling herself at her battered warrior. Instead, she stopped a handbreadth in front of Caedmon. Ever so gently, she brushed her fingers against his bruised cheek.

“Worse for wear,” he said matter-of-factly, preempting her inquiry. “Let’s leave it at that.” Then, one side of his mouth quirking upward, “Your bravado gave me quite the scare. I don’t know whether to kiss you or throttle you.”

“I’ll settle for the former. The latter will have to wait until I’m suited up in my fishnet stockings and black leather corset.” She shakily laughed, her emotions all over the map. “Aren’t you the one who said that ‘bluff can move mountains?’ Although”—she glanced at the hole in the floor—“as crazy as it sounds, I wish it hadn’t come to this.”

“I’m afraid that nothing short of death would have stopped him. Survival of the fittest at its most horrific.”

Sidestepping the death trap, she walked over to the niche behind the altar. “All that trouble and he never did take the bait.” She removed the relic and carefully retraced her steps, purposefully not peeking into the hole. “I don’t know about you, but I am ready to blow this joint.”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than the skin on the back of her neck prickled. In that instant, she intuitively knew… A dark shadow loomed behind them. She warily turned her head toward the entrance to the sanctuary, halfway expecting to see Saviour Panos — Rasputin-like — having survived the deadly plummet.

“Good God,” Caedmon uttered.

Her thoughts exactly, stunned to see an armed white-haired man standing in the entryway.

“I… I don’t… don’t understand,” she sputtered. “We thought you were dead.”