Ark of Fire

CHAPTER 2

“Who the devil are you?”

Pop.

Crash!

Thud.

Those sounds registered on Edie Miller’s brain in such quick succession that it wasn’t until she saw Dr. Padgham’s lifeless body sprawled on the Persian carpet, three feet from her huddled position under the desk, that she realized what had happened.

She stifled a shriek of terror. Like a freight train that had jumped the tracks, her heart slammed against her chest. Hearing a clang above her, she froze, the murderer having picked up her folded tripod from the top of the desk.

In a state of shock, her brain sent a series of urgent messages. Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t twitch so much as a finger.

Terrified, Edie heeded the commands.

And then her fear turned to joy.

Several seconds had passed since Dr. Padgham had hit the floor, and she was still alive. It was her lucky day. The killer didn’t know she was crouched in the knee well under the desk. Covered on three sides by antique mahogany, she was hidden from view. In order to find her, the killer would have to bend at the waist and peer under the desk.

From her low vantage point, Edie saw a pair of gray-clad legs suddenly come into view. At the end of those legs was a pair of tan military-style lug boots. Next to those legs she saw a large masculine hand wrapped around a pistol that had a silencer attached to the end of it. As though she were looking through the lens of a camera, she focused on that ham-fisted hand, noticing the hairy knuckles and the unusual silver ring made up of interconnected crosses. The notion that she and the killer might actually pray to the same God caused her to bite down on her lip, hard, a hysterical burst of laughter threatening to escape.

And that’s when the killer did the completely unexpected.

Stepping over Dr. Padgham’s body, he set the gun on top of the desk and, bending forward, began clicking away on the computer keyboard. A few seconds later, Edie heard him softly swear under his breath as he yanked open the desk drawer.

He was looking for something.

Edie barely had time to wrap her mind around that thought when the killer reached under the desk and removed the digital memory card from the computer.

She held her breath, praying to God, Jesus, anyone who would listen, that the killer didn’t see her. It stood to reason that you couldn’t plead with a man who sneaked up on his victims and killed in unpitying silence.

Only able to see the killer from the waist down, she watched as he unclipped a cell phone from his belt. Then she listened, and heard seven digital beeps. A local phone number. He was calling someone in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

“Let me speak to the colonel.” Several moments passed in silence before he again spoke. “Sir, I’ve got the breastplate. I’ve also got a problem.”

The breastplate, she belatedly realized. Dr. Padgham had been killed because of the bejeweled breastplate.

“I’m not sure, but I think the little English homo sent digital photos of the relic to someone outside the museum. I found a tripod on the desk, a memory card with photos of the breastplate, and an e-mail address.” Edie heard a sheet of paper being ripped from a pad. “C Aisquith at lycos dot com.” A short pause. The killer carefully spelled out the e-mail address. Another pause ensued. “No. I couldn’t find the camera . . . Yes, sir, I took care of the guards . . . don’t worry, sir, I’ll cover my tracks.”

Edie heard a digital beep as the call disconnected. She then heard the metallic whhsh! of a zipper. The killer was putting the bronze box with the bejeweled breastplate inside some sort of carrying case.

And then he was gone, exiting the office as unobtrusively as he had entered.

Edie slowly counted to twenty before she crawled out from under the desk. Forced to straddle Dr. Padgham’s corpse, she took one look at his bloody, mutilated eye socket . . . and promptly threw up. All over the Persian carpet. Not that it mattered; the carpet was already stained with blood and brain matter.

Still on all fours, she wiped her mouth on her sweater sleeve. She’d never liked Jonathan Padgham. But someone else had liked him even less. Enough to kill him in cold blood. Correction. Warm blood. Warm, wet, coppery-smelling blood.

Lurching to her feet, Edie picked up the telephone. Nothing but dead air. The killer had disabled the phone line. With a sinking heart she knew that her cell phone was still plugged into the battery charger on her kitchen counter. So much for calling the cops to come to the rescue. Since the killer “took care” of the two museum guards downstairs, Edie knew she was on her own.

Her goal being to get out of the museum as quickly as possible, she left the office and headed for the main corridor. The Hopkins Museum was housed in a four-story nineteenth-century Beaux Arts mansion located in the heart of the Dupont Circle area, a vibrant commercial and residential district. Once she was free of the museum, help was only a shout away.

Coming to a halt at the end of the hall that led to the main corridor, Edie tentatively peered around the corner.

Oh, God.

Stunned to see the killer, Edie caught herself in midgasp. A behemoth of a man in a gray janitor’s suit with a black ski mask pulled over his head was standing in front of the wall monitor attached to a security keypad. In order to gain access to the administration area, every employee, regardless of rank, had to key a personal ID number into the security system, repeating the procedure when they left the admin area. The code activated the lock on the intimidating steel door adjacent to the keypad through which one entered and departed the fourth-floor office suite. The computer system enabled museum security to monitor all employees’ whereabouts.

It occurred to Edie that in order to enter the office suite, the murderer had to have had a valid security code to unlock the steel door.

How did he get ahold of a valid code?

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was stuck on the fourth floor with a murderer. To get to the elevator, she had to pass through the steel door. Meaning she’d have to wait him out. Once he left the premises, she could escape the building.

Wondering what the killer was doing, Edie watched his supersized hand move across the keypad with surprising dexterity. She knew from experience that it took no more than two seconds to key in a five-digit code and unlock the door, but by her reckoning the killer had been standing in front of the monitor and keypad a good thirty seconds.

So just leave already.

“Fucking shit!’ she heard the killer mutter as he removed a notepad and pencil from his breast pocket.

As she watched him scribble something onto the notepad, Edie went slack-jawed. Although the monitor was too far away to verify, she suspected the killer had accessed the computer security log. If true, that meant the name E. Miller had just popped up on the monitor. Beside her name would be the exact date—12/1/08—and time—13:38:01—that she had entered the fourth floor. Even more damning, there would be no date or time indicated in the DEPART column.

Edie had watched enough crime dramas on TV to know she’d been made.

She had to find a hiding place. Now. This very instant.

Terrified that the Neanderthal in the gray coveralls would somehow home in on her, Edie slowly eased away from the corner. She then ran down the hall, past the office with the sprawled corpse on the floor, grateful for the hideous maroon carpet that muffled her footfalls.

Turning right, she headed down another hall, this one dead-ending at the supply room. Lined with shelving units that were, in turn, stacked with boxes, it would make an excellent hiding place.

Or it would have made an excellent hiding place, had the door been unlocked.

Stymied, she stared at the locked door.

Now what?

If she could get downstairs to the exhibition galleries, she could yank an artifact off the wall, instantly triggering the museum alarm system. The D.C. Metropolitan Police would arrive within minutes. Maybe even seconds, if there happened to be a squad car in the area. But to do that, she’d have to first sneak past Dr. Padgham’s killer.

Too faint of heart to give the idea further consideration, Edie spun on her booted heel. As she did, she caught sight of a bright red sign with bold white lettering.

The fire escape.

With renewed hope at seeing the word EXIT, Edie rushed down the hall toward that welcoming red light. When she reached the door, she grabbed the bar handle and pushed, bracing herself for what she assumed would be a very loud alarm.