The Reincarnationist

Chapter 13

She was on her knees in the corner of the crypt, kneeling beside Sabina’s broken body, emitting a low, keening cry of grief. It took Josh a few seconds to understand that Gabriella was saying the word no over and over; it sounded like a prayer.

He knew he was looking right at her, but he was seeing the tomb on another day.

A flash of a white robe.

Red hair.

Dark green eyes, filled with tears.

Sabina.

He wanted to reach out into the darkness, grab the specter and make her tell him what was happening here.

Gabriella’s voice, insistent, dark, brought him instantly to the present moment. “Kick the ladder out. Kick it hard and break it,” she said.

“What?”

“Quick! The ladder, pull it away from the wall.”

Still under the spell of his memory lurch, Josh did what she asked but didn’t understand why he was doing it.

“Now snap off the rungs. Use this-” She threw him a shovel. “Please, help me, buy me some time.”

Attacking the wooden ladder with a vengeance, he’d broken the top six rungs by the time the police arrived at the opening. He didn’t need to understand the language this time to know they wanted access to the tomb.

“Show them the broken ladder,” Gabriella said.

He wanted to smile at her clever, quick thinking, but he refrained. The man who had questioned him earlier looked from the ladder to Gabriella and then at Josh. Then he said something that caused the other officer to laugh and made Gabriella curse under her breath, “Pigs.”

Josh didn’t need to know what they’d said.

“You said you were down here when it happened?” she asked Josh as soon as the carabinieri were gone.

“The whole time. It happened too quickly for me to do anything…to stop him…”

She wasn’t looking at Josh anymore, but beyond him, examining the state of the tomb. It was the first time he’d really had a chance to study her with a photographer’s eyes; he noted the long neck, shoulder-length, wavy hair, full mouth and strong bones. It was her nose, aquiline with a hint of a bump, that turned a woman who would otherwise have been typically pretty into someone intriguing. She was wearing jeans and a white shirt with the top two buttons open, and Josh was shocked, in the middle of all this madness, to find himself wishing she’d left the third unbuttoned, as well.

“You said you saw who shot the professor? Who was it?”

“A security guard. Or at least he was dressed like one.”

“Did you take a picture of him?”

“No, it happened too fast. I was trying to get to the professor…I wish I had.”

She seemed baffled for a moment. “Why didn’t he shoot you, too?”

“I was in there.” Josh pointed at the tunnel, and a rush of images assaulted him: moving slowly through the space, the feeling of the dirt under his hands, the panic of the narrow space, the sense that something was terribly wrong and the urgency to get quickly to the other end.

For a second he was confused. Were these fresh images of what had happened an hour before or were they part of the mind movies?

Gabriella walked over to where he had pointed and noticed the tunnel for the first time. “What the hell is this?” She peered into the darkness. “Who dug this out?”

“I did.”

“Rudolfo allowed you to do this to our site?”

“He tried to stop me but…that’s why I couldn’t help the professor-I was pretty far back in there.”

“I don’t understand. Why would Rudolfo let you do this?”

“Listen, I couldn’t understand anything anyone was saying up there. I’ll tell you everything that happened, but first, tell me, what did the medics say about the professor? How bad is it?”

“They won’t know until they get him to the hospital. But the bleeding had stopped and that’s a good sign. They said if he lives, that you’re the one who-” She stopped talking, reached down and picked up something off the mosaic floor.

“Why is this broken?” Her voice shook and so did the hand that held the piece of shattered fruitwood box. “Where is the rest of this?” She was back on her knees, frantic again.

“Gabriella.” Josh knelt down beside her and put his hand on her shoulder, to stop her, to comfort her, to prepare her for what he was going to tell her. Her skin felt warm through the shirt. “The security guard took what was in the box with him. That must have been what he came for. I’m guessing what that means is that he took what you and the professor think might be the Memory Stones.”

Her face distorted into two expressions at the same time, something Josh wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before: her eyes showed utter devastation, but her mouth set in a line of cold fury. She stared down at the pieces of wood she still held. Two seconds went by. Five. Ten. Finally she lifted her head up. All the vibrant rage and deep sadness had left her face. Only a look of resolution remained. He was surprised at her resilience.

“There’s no time to talk about this now,” she said. “Too much to do. The police are going to figure out another way to get down here and are going to want to know what happened.” She looked back at the broken body and the wood fragments and splinters. “I need to get to the hospital. They wouldn’t let me go with them in the ambulance. I’m not family, they said.” She shook her head as if she was clearing her thoughts, and her curls danced. Josh thought of Sabina’s curl, escaping from her braid during the robbery.

“Before I leave I need to make sure I get rid of anything that might make them ask too many questions about this area…” She peered into the tunnel’s blackness. “Do you have any idea how you’ve corrupted this site?” She took a deep breath, then turned to him. “What made you start digging there, anyway?”

Her eyes bored into him. There was no way he could explain it all to her now, even if he wanted to-and he didn’t know if he did. “I saw the discoloration on the wall and there was something about the size and shape of it that suggested there was something beyond it.”

Josh wasn’t sure she believed him, but she didn’t press him. “Will you help me close up the tunnel? I don’t want them traipsing through here. Who knows what they might disturb.”

They worked side by side as quickly as they could, shoveling dirt back into the opening, packing it down, piling on another layer. Between digging this out the first time and then crawling in the tunnel, the skin on Josh’s palms was shredded.

“I don’t care about anything now except that when the police talk to you about what happened down here, you lie, make up something, say anything you want, but don’t tell them about this tunnel. No one can go in there who isn’t connected to the dig before we get in there ourselves. When they come down, somehow we have to make sure they get their samples and photos and get out. I need to seal off the site until…If you say anything, if you suggest there’s a passageway here, they’ll insist on examining it. No one has been in that tunnel since this tomb was closed. Anything we might find in there will be priceless. A totally unique find. Can you do this, please?” Her voice was huskier as she elicited her promise, as if even voicing it had to be done in secret.

“Since the tunnel won’t help them find out who did this, no, I won’t tell them.”

“You promise?” She was still concerned. “Where will you say you were during the shooting?”

“I’ll say I was outside. Heard the gunshot, saw the guard running away and came down here to help.”

She nodded and went back to work.

Now both Malachai and Gabriella had asked him to lie to the police. He wasn’t eager to become involved with the investigation either, but not because he was trying to hide anything.

He wasn’t as sure about either of them.

“Josh, hurry. Please. We can’t have much time left.”

Despite his lacerated hands he went back to scooping up the dirt, packing it down and then piling on another layer, wondering if the woman who had been buried had known there was an escape route so very close by. He breathed in some of the dirt-coughed-thought about how amazing it was that no one had discovered the tomb or the tunnel for sixteen hundred years, and wondered how many secrets were buried here alongside Sabina’s heartbreaking form.