“As much as you can find!”
Slater was quickly assessing this place they called the meeting room; to him, it appeared to serve as more of an office. There was a massive old slab of a desk, with papers and printouts spilling out of wire bins, and two, big-screen computer monitors. One was showing the screen saver—a towering cross, with a white wolf at its base, and the title Vane’s Holy Writ. But the images on the other one were a lot more intriguing.
When Bathsheba left to get the rope, Slater inched closer and saw an array of Russian icons, most of them featuring the Virgin Mary in a red veil, holding the Christ child in her lap. The headline read: FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE HERMITAGE MUSEUM, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA. One of them was the spitting image of the icon they’d found in the deacon’s grave.
If he’d had a shred of doubt about Harley’s complicity in the missing icon—or where he had just been—it was gone now.
As was any doubt about the sisters’ plans; they were going to hold him hostage there, along with Nika, as long as it took for the Vane boys to complete their getaway in the missing van.
“Where did they go?” he asked, noting, for the first time, a wet spot on the rug and the faint smell of vomit.
Rebekah’s grip on the shotgun tightened.
“You need to know some things,” he said, sternly. “My name is Dr. Frank Slater, and I am asking you, as a representative of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, in Washington, D.C., to put the gun down and answer my questions.”
Rebekah was listening, but the gun didn’t budge.
“If you don’t cooperate—if you don’t tell me, right now, where Harley and his brother have gone—you will face local, state, and federal charges. You will be brought to trial, I can guarantee you that, and you, and your sister, will both be sentenced to serious prison time.” He stared straight back into her pallid face. “This is your last chance to cooperate.”
“Town,” she finally blurted out. “They went to town.”
“That’s a lie,” Nika said. “We’d have passed them on our way here.”
Bathsheba bustled back into the room, trailing a length of rope on the carpet behind her.
“Although they don’t know it,” Slater said, “Harley and your husband are in great danger.”
“No more than you are,” she said, twitching the gun. “And what’s with those masks and rubber gloves? You look like a pair of burglars to me. That’s what I’ll say when they ask me why I had to shoot you.”
“They have to be heading toward Nome,” Nika said to Slater, as if they were alone.
“Then that’s where we’ll be going,” Slater said, ignoring Bathsheba, who stood by, fiddling with the rope, and Rebekah, still clenching the shotgun but plainly wondering what to do next. “Come on.”
He calmly, but with cool deliberation, tipped the rifle barrel to one side as Nika scurried out of the room, and then, holding his breath, he followed her out to the ambulance. They both jumped in, and as Nika threw the vehicle into reverse to back down the driveway, she said appreciatively, “Next time somebody needs a hostage negotiator, I’ll know who to call.”
“Just drive.”
But they were no more than halfway down the hill when Bathsheba, waving the rope like a cowboy, ran behind them, pressing her hands to the back bumper.
“Leave Harley alone!” she was shouting. “He didn’t do anything!”
Nika hit the brakes, but the ambulance kept skidding down the slope, pushing Bathsheba behind it.
“Leave him alone!”
Nika, swearing, pumped the brakes again, but the driveway was icy and the vehicle fishtailed. There was an alarming thump, and Bathsheba was sent flying into a snowdrift.
“Oh, no!” Nika said, pounding the wheel in frustration and finally bringing the ambulance to a complete halt.
Frank had unbuckled his belt and was reaching for the door handle when Rebekah came flying down the front steps, screaming like a banshee at the sight of her sister in the snowbank. To Slater’s shock, she lifted the shotgun and without hesitation fired a round straight at the vehicle.
As the right headlight exploded in a shower of white sparks and shattered glass, Slater reached across the seat and dragged Nika down under him.
The second shot crashed through the windshield and dented the roof above their heads. A hole the size of a fist had been punched through the glass, but the rest of the windshield, crazed with a thousand fissures, held together.
Slater heard the chambering of two new rounds, but he wasn’t about to wait for Rebekah to improve her aim. Throwing open the side door, he rolled out onto the snow. A tuft of dirt and ice exploded behind him as he dodged behind a tree. He heard the crunching of the snow under Rebekah’s feet as she ran after him, and when he glanced around the trunk, another shotgun blast tore a big chunk of bark loose, throwing chips and splinters into his face.