Page 165 of Blood Game

“What are you saying?” Marcus asked, incredulous. He did laugh then. “You cannot be serious! It is a priceless work of art. These scenes are an important part of history.”

“Your history!” Faridani told him. “Not mine! It is a blaspheme against God and it must be destroyed. It must never see the light of day.”

“You have a buyer, you told me,” Marcus exclaimed, still trying to understand. “To find it, after all these years...it is priceless! Why would you want to destroy it?”

But he knew. Kris saw it on his face, that moment when the stunned expression shifted and became anger. And she knew.

The secret, Vilette had told them about. If it was there, something to be feared, and destroyed? Something powerful?

She had studied religion, briefly, theology and faith handed down through the ages and across cultures, the true meaning of faith and how it had influenced civilizations. It was only her first two years of college, before changing her major to journalism after Mark died, when she questioned everything she had believed before, and had turned her back on things that seemed to have no place, no reality in the modern world.

But there were those who still believed in the power of faith, who were willing to kill and die in the name of their God, and would destroy anything that got in their way, including a seven-hundred-year-old artifact that might hold a secret that challenged everything?

Was it there? The secret that Vilette Moreau was so certain her ancestor had stitched into the threads of the tapestry after closing herself away in the abbey at Mont St. Michel? Or was itjust another myth that had been passed down from one century to the next, then lost in obscurity until their search began?

It didn't matter.

It only mattered that Faridani, or Malik, or whoever he called himself, was determined to destroy it.

Alyia Malik pushed past them. She knelt at one corner of the tapestry a long handled lighter in her hand.

“No!” Marcus lunged at her and struck the lighter out of her hand.

Gunfire exploded and Marcus staggered back. He stared down at the dark stain that spread across the front of his shirt. He made a sound, part gasp, all anger, and lunged toward Faridani. Another shot and his head snapped back. He fell to the floor of the chamber.

Kris pushed Valentine toward the doorway.

“Run!”

The blow came from behind, pain exploding as she was thrown against the wall, then another pain, sharp on her arm as she went down, Alyia Malik standing over her.

She would be next, she thought, even as she saw Faridani turn toward her. He shouted something, but she couldn't hear over the sudden explosion of gunfire from the entrance of the chamber.

James was through the doorway. He made a quick sweep of the room in the light of Faridani's flashlight and stepped over a body—Aronson by the white hair that was all that was left of his skull. Then a movement to his right, he spun back around aiming chest high at that shadow. Three rounds and Faridani's body spasmed. Then another, and he was down.

Faridani's flashlight hit the stone floor as he went down, the beam spinning crazily. A woman screamed, and someonecame out of the shadows at him, dressed in black cargo pants and turtleneck—Alyia Malik. Eyes wide, expressionless, like he'd seen dozens of times in Afghanistan, she lunged at him. The knife grazed his arm, throwing the shot off. A wounded sound and she fell into the shadows.

He swept the far wall, the beam from the flashlight exposing letters painted across the ends of boxes, the warning clear in any language, then a large rolled canvas. He scanned past, the beam playing across dark hair, pale features, eyes wide and dark with the edge of shock.

Kris heard her name over the ringing in her ears. Then a hand on her shoulder.

“Stay down,” he told her.

He swept the room again and nudged the bodies. Alyia Malik wasn't one of them. He bent down and pulled Kris against him.

Her arm went around his neck as she held on, her face buried in his shoulder, a hand fisted on his back.

“He killed Marcus...He tried to destroy the tapestry.”

She was losing it—that part that came after, when the adrenaline was gone. Like that night in London, when everything had fallen apart, and he was there.

“I've got you.” He held on to her. She was alive. He closed his eyes against the doubts, the raw fear that had him running through the passages like a madman.

“Can you walk?”

She nodded, clenching her teeth against the shaking in her legs. She winced.

“I think it's broken,” she said, holding her arm.