Jane relaxed into the long, easy curves of the Bohemian countryside, humming to herself. She pushed thoughts of the future away. Just luxuriated in the present moment, her body pliant and happy in a way it hadn’t been for—well, she preferred not to think about how long. They drove for miles through fields, trees, and villages.
David broke the long silence. “Sounds like you’ve figured out that piece of music.”
“Huh?”
“That tune you keep humming. Sounds like the composition you’ve been working on.”
She hadn’t realized she’d been humming, much less her new piece. But now that David called her attention to it, the tune evaporated. Jane sat up, trying to remember it all. She had the first two phrases, which she hummed again. “Do you remember the rest?”
“Ah, performer’s anxiety.”
“No, it’s just—”
“Seriously. Composing is right-brained. You can’t think about it too much. Have to catch it out of the side of your eye—or ear, I guess.”
“I suppose that makes sense.” Jane remembered studying music theory and banging her head against the keys on a number of occasions. One of her professors had told her not to despair, to study until the rules became second nature, until she didn’t have to think about them anymore. “I hated music theory. Made me give up on being a composer.”
“I had trouble with it too, but you just have to study it until it becomes second nature.”
Jane gave a surprised laugh. “You sound like Dr. Mueller.”
“Dr. Mueller.” David slapped the steering wheel. “I haven’t thought of him in years. You studied with him, too?”
She pulled her chin in and spoke in a sonorous, yet deeply disapproving voice. “You may use that chord there if you wish, Ms. Frey. However, I do not recommend it.”
David snorted. “Oh, he was something, all right. I didn’t realize you played cello.”
“I don’t. He was my piano teacher when I was in high school. Miss Essig recommended I study with him for a while. Said a serious musician should take lessons from more than one teacher. Then I had him for theory in college—and some music history. I forget the period.”
“I suppose they all taught piano. It’s the most popular instrument.”
“I used to get to the conservatory early so I could sneak down the hall and play the harpsichord.”
“In the new building?”
“Yeah, but I remember the old one. I used to run up those stairs and wait out in the hallway. They tore that building down, right?”
“Yeah, it was too modern for Old Salem.”
“I guess that’s good, although I miss the old white house at the bottom of Main Street.”
David frowned. “Don’t remember that one. I don’t think we realized how good Salem’s music program was when we were young. It’s still top of the line.”
“You’d know.”
“Just relax and forget about your piece. It will come back.” He held up an index finger. “Then I’ll pay close attention. We’ll capture it together.”
Her stomach rumbled and they both laughed.
“Ready for lunch?” he asked.
She leaned over to look at the car’s clock, but David hid it with his hand. “We’re on vacation. Let your stomach decide, not some timepiece.”
Jane lolled her head on the head rest. “Vacation, huh? You think our part in this quest is over?”
He was quiet for a minute, then said, “Quests are like music. If you’re meant to be on one, it will come to you. Let’s just have fun. See what we can find out along the way.”
“That suits me. Carpe diem and all that.”
He reached over and stroked her thigh, gently squeezed her knee. Warmth spread with his touch. His hand moved back up her leg and found her stomach beneath her coat. She opened her eyes in alarm. “You are watching the road, aren’t you?”
He pulled his hand back. “Maybe we should pull over. Check in somewhere.”
The husk in his voice sent a shiver of desire through her. Only a couple of hours ago he’d taken his time, kissed and caressed her until she’d lay under his touch like a green field beneath the sun. Then he’d rebuilt another kind of tension, her flesh warming, awakening, finally quivering like a sprouted seed just breaking through the soil. But once Ivar had left, they’d jumped into the car, not back in bed. Somehow Ivar’s visit had made her shy of him, but now she almost regretted their decision. Even though they were supposed to be looking for the artifact Philip’s employer was after. It seemed even Philip had given up on it.
His hand came back to her leg. Warmth radiated from it and a small moan escaped her.
A chuckle, rich as dark chocolate sauce poured over dark chocolate cake, escaped David. “I can’t drive if you do that.”
“Sorry.” Jane pushed David’s hand away and sat up.
“Aw,” he said, genuine disappointment in his voice.
She ignored it and poked the map on the GPS. “We’re near Jihlava. Want to stop for lunch?”
“So it’s lunch you be wanting, then?” he asked, imitating his friend James’s Scottish brogue.
“We need fuel.” Her voice was low, suggestive. She was a little surprised by what a wanton flirt she’d suddenly become, but she enjoyed the new role. Pushing thoughts of her family, of her troubles with the OGMS away, she reached out and stroked his shoulder, tucked her hand under his arm. “But maybe that town’s too big. Let’s wait until we see something.”
David nodded. “Just tell me where to turn.”
After a few kilometers, Jane spotted a spire and the flash of roofs on a hillside. The river snaked silver between the pencil lines of tree trunks. “This looks promising. Take the next exit.”
David turned the Fiat off the D1 and followed a road beside the Jihlava River that lead to a village. A restaurant sat on the edge of town, right next to the water. They parked and went inside where they were escorted to a table with a neat, white cloth and wax covered Chianti bottle of all things. Their table overlooked the silver stream running amongst rounded boulders. Some ice clung in the shadows, but the sun shone warm.
They talked about his children, her travels, while Jane feasted on the local trout and David on sausages. Would he ever get his fill of them? They both ate potatoes and drank the local pilsner. After they’d eaten more than they should, they sat back and sipped their beer, feet intertwined beneath the table. The trickling stream lulled Jane almost to sleep. Her composition rose in the back of her mind to accompany the sound of water flowing over stones. She listened, not grasping for it as David had suggested. It played out to the last phrase she knew, then stopped.
David grabbed the keys just at that moment, as if he, too, could hear that the music had stopped for now. “Ready?”
She stood up. He deemed himself fit to drive, even after he’d polished off two tall glasses of Pilsner. Jane watched him for a few miles, judging for herself, but he managed the turns back up to the freeway easily. No weaving across the middle line, so she sat back and watched the scenery go by, forests dotted with villages, fields of stubble.
Soon she realized she was humming again. She let her mind go dark, forgetting what she sang, whether it was a part of her new composition or scraps of Christmas carols and old folk songs, some about romance. David joined in, adding his rich baritone to her phrases in counterpoint or harmony.
“No, that’s not how it goes,” she said when David hummed her new composition. “It should be this.” And she sang what she heard in her mind.
David listened, then replicated the phrase perfectly the first time. A quick ear.
She started at the beginning, the first blush of dawn in the sky, the quickening of a bulb that had slumbered beneath the earth all winter. Then David joined in, a low whisper, repeating what had come first, then adding ground, something to rest the ethereal promise of the first phrase on.
Jane smiled and continued, David improvising, her correcting, suggesting, until they had discovered the first ten minutes of the piece.
“There’s more,” Jane said to him, face beaming. “I hear horns, French horns, and violins. Maybe a harp, but I can’t hear that part yet.”
“I play French horn,” David said. “Passably.”
“I’d love—”
“Look.” He pointed to a sign.
Fulnek 40 km.
Jane sat forward, eager, her composition forgotten for the moment. “How many miles is that?”
“What? You haven’t gotten used to the conversion yet?”
“After all my years traveling, I should have.”
“It’s about twenty-five miles.”
“We’re almost there.” She pulled out her Blackberry and started looking for a hotel. After a minute, she asked, “Hotel or guesthouse?”
David shrugged. “You decide.”
“There’s a wellness guesthouse, where—and I quote, ‘you are prepared closet with a view of the castle, TV, internet connection, bathroom. Salt cavern, wellness, massages, beauty salon, exercise room available. Pension Relaxko,’” she read out.
“Closet?”
“Probably a small room. Glitch in the translation software.”
“Salt cavern? Like in a cave?”
“I don’t know. Want to find out?”
“Let’s just stick with the basics. We want to go out, see the Hussite sites, find your ancestral estate.”
“Okay.” Jane poked a few more buttons. “There’s a picture of this one. Looks good. On the town square. Hotel Jelen.” She hit the translation button. “Deer Hotel.”
“Deer Hotel it is.”
Jane punched the address into the GPS and the little British lady’s voice said, “Calculating.” For some reason they both burst out laughing.
By midafternoon, they’d checked into a nice room, somewhat Spartan compared to Knight’s lavish suite, and were standing in front of the concierge asking for information on the Hussite sites in town. The concierge only knew a few English words, but he and David pieced enough together in German to get directions to the Church of Unitas Fratrum. They had a memorial room to Jan Amos Komenský.
“I’m learning Czech,” Jane declared, tucking her hand under his arm.
David smiled. “We’re coming back?”
The town also featured the Suchdol nad Odrou, a museum of Brethren missionary work. They’d get directions to that from the church. Maybe they’d learn something about Comenius, but Jane wasn’t hopeful about the missionary museum.
David opened the car door for her.
“So you’re my driver now?” she quipped.
He stopped, mild alarm on his face.
“I’m teasing.” Jane slipped into the passenger seat. “I’ll be chauffeured around, but let me know if you get tired.”
He threw the keys in the air and caught them deftly. “I love this car.”
The church had one room dedicated to Komenský, better known by the Latin Comenius, with busts reminiscent of Herrnhut, samples of his work, a nice timeline and biographical information, but the man who showed them through insisted that Comenius had taken nothing with him into exile. “His house was burned. His family died.” David translated as he spoke. “Then again when he was older. This is his tragedy.”
“Thank you for showing us around,” Jane said. “It’s wonderful to see something from our history.”
David translated this, and the man’s forehead wrinkled, somewhat bemused. Europeans took their history for granted. They lived surrounded by it. David talked with the man a while longer, so Jane gave the room another quick look searching for any clues of artifacts. But she knew she wouldn’t find anything.
Looking around, she was again struck by how the Europeans accepted Comenius as a mystic and an educator. It seemed to be common knowledge. Not in North Carolina. Maybe Uncle Pat and his ilk had managed to repress this aspect of Moravian history with their fire-and-brimstone fundamentalism. Maybe their neighbors just grew tired of attracting wrath. Or maybe it came from the Moravian connection to Calvinism that had happened after Comenius. Either way, fundamentalism had been wide spread when she was a child, politely looked down upon as a bit backward by many in her church. Not something you’d say out loud, especially in front of children, but she’d picked up this attitude from her father. Her mother had been eager to escape her own family and those ideas.
Once back in the car, David announced, “I got directions to the Sterne family estate. He said the family is defunct. That they fled long ago, probably into Poland. Someone was living in it about two hundred years ago, but now the place is a ruin.”
Jane sank back in the car seat suddenly as flat as three-day-old pop, the elation of discovery fizzing away. “So there’s no one. Nobody to ask about an artifact. No chance of reconnecting to that branch of the family.”
David patted her hand. “It would have been fun to meet living relatives. Hear the history from someone directly connected to it.”
Jane tried to smile.
“He said the missionary museum would be closed by the time we got there today. That we should wait until tomorrow, but he didn’t think we’d find anything about ancient artifacts.”
“I don’t either.” Jane looked out at a darkening sky, rag-grey clouds low and hanging.
“What do you say we go back to the hotel and find somewhere to eat?”
Jane frowned.
“What?”
“It’s just—”she shook her head “—I was hoping we’d discover something. I want to be able to go back to Miss Essig’s house.”
“They may let you still.”
“Why would they?”
“Didn’t your name come up in the lot? That means something to them. If you apologized, say that you regret your mistake, demonstrated you’ll be honest with them in the future.”
Jane felt a stab of irritation. “They lied to me, too.”
“Somebody’s got to be the first to offer reconciliation.”
“Maybe.” She shook her head. “Some Bohemian Brethren I am.”
“What do you mean?”
“They lost their homes. Their families and friends were killed. They didn’t sit in a fancy Italian sports car feeling sorry for themselves.”
David chuckled. “I think you just need some borsch.”
“We’re not in Poland.” Jane fought the smile threatening to break through.
“I’ll bet they eat it here by the gallons.”
“Liters,” she corrected.
✬ ✬ ✬
The Sterne family castle looked intact from the road, an orange roof just like she’d seen on so many other Czech buildings, then a round tower of grey stone rising on the right side. But as they drove through the winding curves of the road, holes in the wall appeared, shaking off the illusion of a home still lived in. A lone wall rose clean and straight, one last assertion of order, but empty windows framed tree branches beyond it. Jane drove across a low stone bridge—“Oh my God, there’s a moat.” She pounded David’s arm—that led to a flat courtyard, part flagstone, part weed patch. She parked here and leapt from the car. David followed close behind.
“Hello,” Jane called out. They’d been told the place was abandoned, but just in case.
No one answered.
She called once more, then blindly groped behind her for David’s hand, found it and pulled him beside her.
There was a nip in the air here in the foothills of the Hrubý Jeseník Mountains, but she didn’t feel the chill, not after last night’s heated evening and her long, satisfied sleep beside David. He was the warmest human she’d ever slept beside, toasty as a tile stove, but softer. She knew this giddiness wouldn’t last, but that just helped her relish it more.
The main entrance hall rose, two stories of unbroken stone before it sheared off in a jagged peak to one side. Blocks from the wall lay scattered in front of the building, knee high, some broad enough for them to lie on top of side by side. Above the gap in the entrance where the massive doors would have stood, the Star Family crest gleamed from the darkened stone, inlaid white marble, eight points with an equal armed cross in the middle.
They crossed the threshold side by side and skirted around a square block of stone in the middle of the entryway, moving farther into the house. A staircase scaled the east wall, ending in a pile of rubble, but the roof was intact toward the back of the house. Jane ducked through a doorway and down the hall.
“Careful, now. We don’t want the place falling in on our heads,” David called after her.
She turned a corner into a flurry of wings and speckled bodies. She shouted in surprise, jumped back, hand over her face. Brown and white birds made short flights or ran, long tail feathers dragging across the stones, escaping through a ruined kitchen into the bushes.
“What?” David arrived breathless behind her.
“Pheasants, I think,” she said, pointing toward the kitchen. “Do you hunt?”
“Used to with my uncle. I don’t really care for it.”
“We could have a good meal out here if you did.”
They headed down a long, stone passageway that led toward the tower. The first room they came to was mostly intact, a round library by the looks of it. Shelves ran the length of the interior wall, the straightest one. Empty windows framed a garden, some beds still discernible. Jane went over to the shelves and picked up a book, leafed through mouse-nibbled pages. It looked like Latin. “Can you read any of this?”
David took it from her, reached into his pocket and settled reading glasses on his nose. Carefully turning the pages, he peered close, then sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “Musty.”
“It’s damp. I’m surprised they haven’t molded away.”
“Look.” David pointed to a series of illustrations. “It’s a book on herbs.”
Jane picked up another book that fell into tatters in her hands. Pellets of mouse droppings littered the shelf and a wad of paper in the far corner suggested a nest. She left it undisturbed.
Toward the middle of the room stood a work table filled with odd instruments. A mortar and pestle, easily explained by what must have been an herb garden just outside. Several bowls of varying sizes rested to one side, two broken completely, one with just a chip. One glass bulb with a long, thin nozzle lay on its side next to a candle holder, a small hand mirror and—Jane sucked in her breath.
“A skull.” David blew some dust away from the grim face.
“What do you make of all this?”
“Looks like an alchemist’s lab to me,” David said.
“Alchemist? Like turning lead into gold?”
“That’s a common misunderstanding. It has more to do with the transformation of human consciousness, although they did experiment with transmuting metals. Did a good deal of healing, some of them.”
“What’s with the skull?”
“The Masons use it as a meditation tool.”
“Meditation?” She gave a little theatrical shiver.
“Well, to contemplate death. That this life is temporary. You see skulls in portraits of alchemist’s laboratories.”
“Cheerful bunch.” Jane smiled despite her wry tone.
“Yeah,” he said, acknowledging this. “This proves one thing, though.” His eyes gleamed.
“What’s that?” Jane looked around at the jumble.
“Your ancestors were alchemists, trained in the mysteries.”
She toed a loose stone on the floor, then squinted up at him. “Yeah?”
“Definitely.”
“So they could’ve had an artifact.”
“It’s more than that. It shows again that the Brethren and metaphysics were not in opposition.”
“Leinbach said that the aristocracy studied it—or patronized those who did.”
David nodded his concession. “This is in their house—” He pointed back at the passageway to the main quarters “—or at least the tower attached to it. Perhaps this person was in their employ, but they were open to the mysteries if not students themselves.”
Jane drifted out of the room and climbed a few steps. The next one shifted under her weight. She tested the next step and found it solid, but around the curve of the tower, the way forward was blocked with a pile of rubble. She turned and picked her way over the shifting flagstones until she reached solid ones. There she found David standing with one arm on each wall blocking her way, a rakish smile on his face.
“Isn’t this just . . .” She shook her head. “I mean, my grandmother’s family came from this very place.”
He nodded.
Jane walked into his arms and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her flush to him. The kiss deepened and she felt his body respond. She started to pull away, but he groaned a complaint. In a flush of heat, she reached for his belt, unfastened it, stopped. Then his hand found the skin of her back.
“But where?” she whispered. The Fiat was too small. Too exposed. Although there was no one for miles.
In answer, he angled her against the wall, moving down another step.
“Oh,” Jane’s laugh was lustful. “This would work. But it’s cold,” she managed to say against his lips.
Her boot-cut cargo pants fell over her shoes, and he lifted her, wrapping them both in his great winter coat.
The cold turned out to be no problem. In fact, she emerged from this intimate cocoon sweating. She opened her blouse and fanned herself. David admired the view, then bent to kiss her nipples through her bra. He stirred again, but then with a grunt of disappointment, said, “I guess we’re not teenagers anymore.”
“Sex on the stairs once is adventure enough for me,” she said, then lolled her head against the rough stone wall.
“You are so beautiful,” he said.
She smiled, languid, content.
His eyes grew wide. “It is cold,” and he bent to cover his bare bum.
She straightened her clothes, ran her fingers through her hair. “Now what?” she asked with a breathless laugh.
He tilted his head toward the bottom of the stairs. “I think the steps go down. Let’s see if they’re solid.”
Jane felt her way around the curved stairs, testing each step, hands on the smooth stone walls. Around the next turn, it grew dark. David switched on the flashlight they’d brought, illuminating the steps below, which ended after one more turn. Jane moved into a rectangular room, her steps echoing back to her. She walked forward and David followed, shining the light on the walls.
“Oh, my God.” Jane’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Wow!” David shone the light along the wall.
They were covered in illustrations, like the temples in Egypt, but instead of hieroglyphs, these were drawn. Spirals, stars and other geometrical figures. In the middle of each wall an eight-pointed star shone out, each with an equal armed cross in the center. They moved closer. Jane touched one spiral, then looked at her finger in the beam of light. No smudge. “What do you think these are drawn in?” she whispered, for some reason reverential.
“Don’t know.” David matched her tone.
He shined the light into the middle of the room. A larger star, embedded in the floor, winked in the light. From the ceiling hung the remains of a rusty metal star with tiny pinprick holes.
“What do you think this place was?” Jane asked.
“Looks like a ritual room to me. Maybe a place to teach the mysteries during the persecutions.”
They moved to the opposite wall. Next to the large star was a smaller one. The illustration that followed showed a row of thirteen points laid out in a line. In the next illustration another row, thirteen again, was laid out, until at the end of the wall they found a figure that looked very like a nautilus shell.
“This reminds me of something,” Jane said, cocking her head, trying to remember.
David shone the flashlight on the opposite wall, where the illustrations were reversed, ending with another large Advent Star intact.
She snapped her fingers. “Blake. There was a pencil sketch in Miss Essig’s Blake collection just like this.”
David bent close. “There’s something written here, but I can only make out a little of it.”
Jane crouched close to him. “What language?”
“Latin, I think.” He bent close, then grunted. “Would you hold the light?” She shone the beam on the script. “Okay, the first letter is ‘L’. I can’t read the next, but after that might be an ‘X’.” The next word is completely obliterated.”
She shifted the light slightly.
“Next comes another ‘L’ two blank spaces, then “is.” Then an ‘in’. Means the same in English. Then a smudge and ‘men’.” He moved, still bending. “Something here. It’s not decipherable. The last word looks like ‘Deu-’. Probably ‘God’.”
“So, what do we have? Wait, let me find something to write on.” She fished in her pocket, came out with a pen. “Paper?”
David pulled out a matchbook from the restaurant they’d eaten at last night. Jane took the cap off the pen, opened the matchbook and almost dropped the flashlight.
David reached out. “I’ll manage the light.” He read out the letters and spaces again.
“Got it.”
A gun fired somewhere outside.
They both froze.
David switched off the light.
Jane stuffed the paper and pen in her pocket. Found David’s hand.
Silence.
Jane took a breath to whisper, but heard the scrap of footsteps outside. Then voices. The language sounded like Czech.
David switched on the light inside his jacket, letting it shine down, just a pool of illumination at their feet. They crept to the stairs. Started to climb, careful to make no sound.
Another gunshot, this one closer.
They shrank against the wall.
A dog barked, moving away from the house.
David glided up the remaining stairs and reached the main floor. He stepped out into the ruins of the kitchen, Jane following. She blinked in the sudden sun.
In the bushes outside, a brown and white retriever pointed, body quivering. Two men moved branches aside. One bent and picked up the body of a pheasant. Held it up to the other. They started to head back toward the woods.
David stepped out from behind a stone. His foot scraped against loose pebbles.
The men turned. One held a hand over his eyes, then smiled. The other waved. The first man held up a brace of birds.
Jane pulled her phone out of her pocket and clicked a picture, then waved.
“Hunters,” she murmured.
“Looks like it.”
The men walked closer, speaking Czech.
“English?” Jane spread her hands.
“Deutsch?” David asked.
They shook their heads. The man with the birds held them up again and said something. The other touched the rim of his cap, and they followed their dog back into the woods.
“Whew!” Jane said.
“No kidding,” David said. “For a minute I thought we were goners.”
“I never thought to ask Ivar for a weapon. After Ronneburg, that was stupid.” Jane slumped against a pile of stone.
“But he said Philip was gone.”
“And another guy had taken his place.”
“One who would just watch us,” David said.
Jane just shook her head. “I don’t even know how to shoot a gun.”
“I do,” David said, “although I’d prefer not to.”
She looked at the picture on her phone, pushed a few icons. “Okay, I sent it to Ivar. He can check their faces. See if he recognizes them.”
“Maybe we should get out of here.”
“I completely forgot.” Jane walked back through the house and out to their car. She opened the back and pulled out a picnic basket.
“The pheasant made you hungry?”
She laughed. “No, silly. The camera. Let’s document that room. This is much better than my cell.”
“And the alchemist’s lab.”
“We’ll take pictures of the whole place. My family will be delighted.” She stopped for a moment, thinking of Frank, wondering why he hadn’t returned her calls. David was right. To them what she’d done had looked like attempted theft. What had she thought, moving eighteen century sketches? But they’d just been casually piled against a wall. She should have asked permission. They might have said no, but then maybe Lois would still be alive.
They spent what remained of the afternoon taking pictures, first in the ritual room as they came to call it, then the lab, finishing with all the other rooms and half-fallen walls, the family crest outside and long shots of the house and area. Satisfied, Jane put away her camera as the sun began to settle behind the rolling hills to the west. She threw the keys to David.
His eyes lit. “I get to drive?”
She chuckled. “Men and their toys.”
“Hey, you seemed to enjoy the way she clung to the curves—” David heard what he’d said and blushed furiously.
“Like I said, boys and their toys.” She smiled as she got into the passenger side.
Ivar called Jane while they were still driving toward Prague. They’d decided to check out of their hotel in Fulnek. “If someone’s going to shoot me, I’d rather it be in a big city,” Jane declared.
“Tell me what happened.” Ivar’s gravelly voice gave her confidence.
Jane recounted the story, then asked, “Did you identify them?”
“On the government computers. Found their drivers licenses. Ordinary citizens. Probably out hunting, just as you thought.”
“Where’s the guy who works for Coche?”
“Still in D.C.”
“And our tail?”
“He’s about a kilometer behind you.”
Jane looked out the back window, but saw several sets of headlights. “Should we have a gun?”
“You know how to use one?” Ivar asked.
“David does.”
Ivar grunted. “I’ll leave a small one in the room for you when we get back.”
“We?”
“You didn’t think I’d let you leave Prague without cover, did you?”
“Of course.” Jane tapped her head. She was a terrible spy. “Thanks,” she mumbled.
Ivar’s raspy laugh filled her ear for a second. “You are welcome.”
Jane pulled out the matchbook cover and studied the Latin phrase they’d discovered on the diagram of the star. She found a Latin translation site and began typing in words to see what she could figure out.
“This first word looks like it’s missing a vowel.” She looked over at David. “I don’t mean to sound illiterate, but are the Latin vowels the same.”
David shrugged.
“Great. Here’s where we could use a Catholic.” She tried all the vowels. The words with ‘a’ added extra letters and did not match the wall. The next three vowels produced the same results. She added ‘u’ and came up with ‘light’.
“The first word is ‘light’,” Jane said.
“Good,” David said.
“The last word is obviously ‘God’. The next word ends in ‘men’. Probably a common syllable.” She poked around on the site for a long time, trying various combinations. Frustrated, she pulled out the camera and studied the pictures of the wall, magnifying the image. The word started with what looked like a straight line. She looked for other lines at the top or bottom or even coming off the middle. There was a shadow at the bottom of the letter, but she couldn’t tell if it was something written on the wall or a real shadow.
Deciding to go with ‘L’, she typed in vowels. The only one that produced a word was ‘Lumen’, meaning ‘light’ or ‘lamp’. She told David.
He chewed on his lip. “Maybe one’s a verb and one’s a noun. Or we can go with lamp.”
“Then it reads ‘Light lamp in blank God’.”
“Must be ‘in God’ or ‘of God’.”
“Probably, but we’re missing one word.”
“We’ve found four.”
Jane switched off her phone and leaned her head back against the headrest. The lights of the city drove back the dark of the countryside. “We’re almost back.”
They drove in silence, deciding to turn in the car in the morning. In Knight’s suite, a gun sat on the desk waiting for them. David told her what kind it was, a name that did not stick in her head, and showed her how to aim it and work the safety. This she remembered.
He took two steps toward the master bedroom, then stopped, an uncertain look on his face.
“You can sleep with me if you’d like” Jane said.
His blue eyes lit with his smile. “I would.”
Jane felt a tug of desire, but sleep is exactly what they did.