The Templar Salvation

Chapter 60

Sitting in the back of the Jandarma Humvee, Tess felt pulverized. After what had felt like an interminable run of horrors, she’d finally found something to feel good about. A crack of light had somehow found its way through the dark shroud that had been suffocating her since that fateful day in Jordan, but just as quickly as it had appeared, it was now gone again. All the elation, relief, and excitement—wiped out in a few minutes and replaced just as quickly with more foreboding and gloom.

She hated the helplessness, the sense of defeat, the fact that yet again, she and Reilly had been bested. Most of all, she dreaded finding out what had happened to him and couldn’t help but imagine the worst. The Iranian now had what he wanted. There was no reason for him to hang around. There was also no reason for him to show any restraint in whatever it was he had planned for Reilly.

The thought made her stomach turn.

The local police had shown up soon after the shoot-out, alerted by the gunshots. The Jandarma had swooped in shortly afterward. The Iranian and his thugs had taken away their dead crony’s body, but there was still plenty of evidence of the bloody shoot-out in the old woman’s house, all of which had only made the Jandarma officer angrier. Tess had sat there passively as he’d bawled her out for having left the hotel in Zelve without authorization, and she’d played dumb, saying she’d only been following Reilly’s lead. She also concentrated on keeping the old woman’s role in all this under wraps and made sure the woman understood to follow her lead and not mention the gospels the Iranian was after or the stash of troves in the underground crypt.

It seemed to be working. They were taking her and the old woman to the local police station for their own safety, as well as, undoubtedly, more questions. It hadn’t been a comfortable lie, since she knew that her only hope was with these local cops, but she didn’t think that added level of disclosure was relevant to their efforts. All she could do now was wait—and hope. Maybe they’d manage to lock down the country before the Iranian made it out. Maybe they’d get lucky and stop him at some roadblock. Maybe they’d catch him at some border crossing or at some local airfield.

She rubbed her eyes and tried to massage the worry out of her temples. The thoughts weren’t offering her much solace, not when all they were doing was conjuring up harrowing images of a bloody confrontation that ended in disaster for the man she loved.

“I’m sorry,” the old woman said, her soft-spoken words pulling Tess out of her swamp of despair.

“For what?”

“If I hadn’t sent my granddaughter … If I had stayed hidden … none of this would have happened.”

Tess shrugged. Of course, there was truth in her words. She and Reilly could well have been flying back to New York right now. But, she also knew, life didn’t work that way. Unintended consequences were part of its fabric, and there was little point in wallowing in regret.

“It’s not over yet,” Tess told her, trying to believe her own words.

The old woman brightened. “You think … ?”

“There’s always a chance. And Sean’s usually pretty good at spotting them.”

The old woman smiled. “I hope you’re right.”

Tess managed to give her back a half smile and tried to block out the gruesome worst-case scenarios that, she knew, were not only possible, but probable.