The Last Templar - Страница 30

She kept her eyes shut and, as the lights were finally past her, a wailing squeal sheared the air as die train's sparking brakes bit into the wheels. Her heartbeat still throbbing in her ears, she felt a surge of relief.

A station. I must be near a station.

Tess drew on her last reserves of energy and stumbled the final, desperate few yards and, as the 82

train moved off again, she came out into the bright light and dragged herself up onto the platform.

The last few passengers were disappearing up the stairs. If anyone saw her, they didn't react.

For a moment, Tess remained there, alone, on her hands and knees at the edge of the platform, her heart still racing with fear and exhaustion. Then, wet and filthy and still shaking, she pushed herself upright.

Wearily and on rubbery legs, she followed the others up into civilization.

Chapter 38

W rapped in a blanket and cradling a huge mug of hot coffee, Tess sat in Reilly's car across the street from the subway station on 103rd and shivered. The cold had thoroughly penetrated her soaked clothing. From the waist down, she was frozen, and the rest of her didn't feel any better.

He'd offered to take her to a hospital or straight home, but Tess had insisted that she wasn't hurt and didn't need to go home just yet. She felt she had to fill him in on her findings first.

As she watched teams of police officers entering the station, she told him about her run-in with Vance. How Clive had suggested she consult the professor, how she'd actually met Vance years ago, how she'd taken a chance at the cemetery, hoping he could help her find a connection to what had happened at the Met. She went over what Vance had said, about his wife dying in childbirth and about how he blamed their priest for it, and about how he had said he wanted to "make things right," which seemed to intrigue Reilly. She told him the story about the dying Templar and the monk whose hair had turned white, and explained how Vance had shot her, how she'd found herself in the cellar, how they were interrupted by someone, the gunfight she'd overheard, and finally how she had escaped.

As she talked, she envisioned the search parties fanning out into the various tunnels, looking for him in that underground nightmare, although she knew the odds were he'd be long gone.

Thinking about the tunnels again made her shudder. It wasn't somewhere she was keen to revisit, and she hoped she wouldn't be asked to do so. She had never been so scared in her life. At least, not since the raid on the Met, which was less than a week ago. She was on a roll, a pretty unpleasant one at that.

When she finished, Reilly was shaking his head.

"What?" she asked.

He was just eyeing her silently.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she insisted.

"Cause you're nuts, you know that?"

She exhaled wearily. "Why?"

"Come on, Tess. You're not supposed to be running around chasing clues and trying to solve this thing on your own. Hell, you're not even supposed to be trying to solve it, period. That's my job."

Tess managed a grin. "You're worried I'm going to make you all look bad, is that it?"

Reilly was having none of it. "I'm serious. You could have been badly hurt. Or worse. You don't get it, do you? People have died because of this thing. It's not a joke. I mean, for God's sake, you've got a daughter to think of."

Tess stiffened visibly at his mention of Kim. "Hey, I thought I was meeting a history professor for a little academic chitchat over a cup of coffee, all right? I didn't expect him to zap me with his—" Her mind went blank.

"Taser."

Whatever. "—his Taser, stuff me in the back of his car, and chase me through rat-infested sewers.

He's a history professor, for God's sake. They're supposed to be mild-mannered, pipe-smoking introverts, not—"

"Psychos?"

Tess frowned and looked away. Somehow, she didn't think the term was appropriate, despite everything that had happened. "I'm not sure I'd go that far, but . . . he's definitely not in good shape." She felt a tinge of empathy for the professor, which threw her, and she heard herself saying,

"He needs help."

Reilly studied her, pausing for a moment. "Okay, we'll need to do a proper, in-depth debriefing as soon as you're comfortable; but right now, I need to make sure we find where he took you. You have no idea where you were being held, where that cellar is?"

Tess shook her head. "No, I told you. When I came to in the car, I was blindfolded, and getting out of there was just one big, dark maze of tunnels. But it can't be that far from here. I mean, I walked it."

"How many blocks, if you had to guess."

"I don't know . . . five?"

"Okay. Let's get some maps and see if we can find this dungeon of yours."

Reilly was about to walk off when Tess reached out and stopped him. "There's something else, something I didn't tell you."

"Why am I not surprised?" he chastised. "What is it?"

Tess reached into her bag and pulled out the roll of sheets she'd taken from Vance's desk. She spread them out for Reilly to see, and now, in the light, she could see them properly for the first time. The documents, ancient vellum scrolls, were beautiful despite having no illustrations on them; they were just simply and oddly packed, virtually edge to edge, with a continuous stream of impeccably drafted letters. There were no breaks, no spaces between words or paragraphs.

Reilly scrutinized the sheets in stunned silence, then turned to her. She grinned, her smile lighting up a face smeared with the grime of the tunnels. "They're Vance's," she told him. "The Templar manuscripts from the Languedoc. But here's the thing. I can recognize Latin, and none of this makes sense. It's gibberish. That's why he needs the encoder. They're the key to what this is all about."

His expression clouded over. "But these pages, they're useless without the encoder."

Tess had a self-satisfied glint in her eye. "True, but . . . the encoder is also pointless without them."

It was a moment she would always enjoy remembering: watching Reilly all conflicted and speechless. She knew he had to be delighted, but she also knew it was probably killing him that he couldn't show it. The last thing he wanted to do was encourage her recklessness. Instead, he just stared at her before climbing out of the car and calling over one of the other agents and asking for the papers to be photographed immediately. Moments later, an agent hurried over with a large camera, and Reilly handed him the sheets.

Tess watched as the photographer spread them out on the car's trunk and got to work. She then turned to see Reilly pick up a small two-way radio and get updated on the situation in the tunnels. There was something attractive about the urgency with which he went about his work. As she watched him mumbling cryptically into the radio, he glanced over at her, and she thought she spied a faint smile there.

"I need to go down there," he told her after he signed off. "They've found your two friends."

"What about Vance?"

"No sign of him." He clearly wasn't happy with that. "I'll get someone to take you home."

"No hurry," she told him. Which wasn't true. She was desperate to get out of her filthy, wet clothes and stand under the shower for hours, but not before the photographer was finished. She was even 84

more desperate to take a look at the documents that had started all this.

Reilly walked away, leaving her in his car. She watched him chat to a couple of other agents before they all headed toward the station entrance.

Abruptly, her thoughts were interrupted by her cell phone. The caller ID displayed her home number.

"Tess, dear, it's me." It was Eileen.

"Mom. I'm sorry, I should have called you."

"Called me? Why? Is anything wrong?"

Tess breathed out with relief. There was no reason for her mother to be worried about her. The FBI would have been careful not to alarm her if they'd called to find out where Tess was. "No, of course not. What's up?"

"I was just wondering what time you'd be home. Your friend's already here."

Tess felt a sudden chill shoot up her spine. "My friend?"

"Yes," her mother chirped. "He's such a lovely man. Here, have a word with him, dear. And don't be too late. I've asked him to stay for dinner."

Tess heard the phone changing hands, and then a newly familiar voice came on.

"Tess, darling. It's Bill. Bill Vance."

Chapter 39

Tess froze in her seat, a knot the size of a fist forming in her throat. He was there, in her very own house. With her mother. And—Kim?

She turned away from the car door, clasping the phone tightly.

"What are you—"

"I thought you'd be here already," he interjected calmly. "I didn't get the time wrong, did I? Your message said it was rather urgent."

Message? Tess's mind was racing. He's in my house and he's playing games. An anger swelled inside her. "If you hurt them, I swear—"

"No, no, no," he interrupted, "it's not a problem. But I really can't stay too long. Much as I'd love to take up your lovely mother's invitation and have dinner with you all, I have to get back up to Connecticut. You said you had something for me. Something you wanted me to have a look at."

Of course. The papers. He wants his papers back. She realized he didn't want to cause her mom or Kim any distress. He was posing as a friend, and was acting accordingly. Her mother wouldn't know anything was wrong. Good. Let's keep it that way.