21

Stonehenge

Charlie couldn’t contain his laughter, but he had the good grace to turn away from her until it was under control. Once he calmed himself, he faced her again. “I’m sorry. I know the best ideas come from brainstorming. It’s just that you caught me off-guard with that.” He indicated the clamshell she still held. “My mom used the same brand.”

Salem snapped it closed and shoved it in her purse. The tips of her ears grew hot. She swiveled and walked toward the nearest opening. She didn’t really have a destination other than away.

“Salem, I’m sorry! Don’t be like that. I shouldn’t have laughed.”

She was mad at herself for saying her stupid theory out loud. And now a guard was walking toward them. Their time was up. She had wasted their precious access talking. Glancing around, she sighed. It wouldn’t have mattered if they’d had all the time in the world. She didn’t have any idea what she was looking for. At least she’d gotten photos.

“No luck?” The guard, a different one, a female in her early sixties, asked as Salem exited through the same trilithon she’d entered.

“No, but thank you for letting us in.” The gray of the sky darkened. A possible storm.

Charlie was still trying to catch up with Salem.

“If you’re motoring back to London, you’ll want to leave soon, avoid congestion hour over lunch,” the guard said. “I take the train back to Piccadilly, near my house, but I saw you have a car.”

“Thanks,” Salem said. Charlie reached her side. They walked toward the private parking lot, heads lowered in misery.

The guard called after them. “You might want to pop in the visitor’s center if you haven’t yet. You can’t see it from here, but it’s only a short tram ride. You’ll find some pottery, jewelry, animal bones, the like, all from this site.”

“Thank you,” Salem said over her shoulder.

Charlie walked alongside her, keeping his distance. “You mean it, yeah? It’s a good idea. We’ll check out the center. I haven’t been since they built the new one.”

The need to save Mercy outweighed Salem’s shame by a long shot. She nodded curtly, then realized it served no one for her to ignore him. “If they have a museum, or information on the structure, we might be able to find where they could hide a code in a way we couldn’t see standing inside of it.”

“That’s right, now!” Charlie was visibly pleased. “I’m sorry again for that bit back there. It was dumb. Why couldn’t women have had input into Stonehenge? Pre-agricultural societies had less gender stratification, and a woman’s cycle would certainly have appeared mystical to a people without an understanding of anatomy. Maybe you are right about what the henge was built to represent. What do I know?”

“Sounds like we’ll have a better idea once we get inside,” Salem said.

“Certainly.” A new wave of Stonehenge arcana spilled from his mouth, stories of the explorers who’d discovered the stone, the men who’d come to measure it. The more he talked, the more Salem moved from her shame and toward a hunch. There was something inherently feminine about the site. Having Charlie laugh at the possibility had strengthened her belief in it.

They boarded the tram that would deliver them to the visitor’s center, Charlie still talking. She studied the monument as they pulled away. The feminine wasn’t obvious, but it was whispered in the way the stones rode the land and seemed to interact with the curves of the hill and the stain of the poppies. She felt it somewhere low in her hips, but her brain wouldn’t let her see it. It was programmed for data, facts, and codes.

“Here’s the plan,” Salem said, interrupting Charlie. She kept her voice pitched low even though their fellow passengers appeared deep in conversation. “With the Beale train, the codes were hidden by women throughout history. We’re going to look for the same thing here, for any evidence of women being connected to Stonehenge, and we’re going to follow it no matter how stupid it seems.”

“Salem.” Charlie stopped her by squeezing her shoulder. “I don’t think the feminine is stupid. I—” He glanced around, studying their fellow passengers. He must have seen something he didn’t like because he dropped his arm and shifted the conversation. “You tell me what to do,” he finished. “I swear I’ll do it, no questions asked. Let’s find your girl.”