Page 37

He rolled the jar back, and Hagen followed him between a line of broken ancient stones into a windowless passage that quickly turned left past another series of doors. A fluorescent light in the ceiling flickered. Hagen was starting to lose his sense of direction.

Lucas’s footsteps fell behind.

Hagen glanced back. “You coming?”

“Thought I saw someone.” Lucas waved him on. “Go on. I’ll catch up.”

Napp hadn’t slowed, so Hagen was forced to catch up. They took a couple more turns.

“How many pieces do you keep down here?” Hagen spoke loudly to make sure that Lucas could hear which direction they’d headed.

He’ll catch up.

“Oh, thousands. Hundreds of thousands, even, if you count all the coins and fragments of broken pottery. Here.” Dr. Napp stood in front of another door as nondescript as the last and fished his keys out of his pocket again. This time, he found the key he needed quickly and turned the lock.

Hagen paused and looked back for Lucas, but Napp wasn’t slowing down. Something was off.

He pushed his suit jacket back, making sure he could access his weapon quickly. “Lucas! We’re over here.”

Faster footsteps answered him.

“Come on.” Napp was pulling ahead.

They stepped into a windowless room about twenty feet deep and just as wide.

Shelves and what looked like a bunch of clutter lined the room.

Hagen noted a clay hippopotamus, a bronze sword, and carved seals in faded blue, green, and yellow.

Some of the clay pieces had been fashioned into the shapes of beetles.

The bottom shelves held a coil of rope, a ring light, and more blue boxes like the one Dr. Napp held.

Beyond the cluttered room was another, about the same size and shape, but far more sterile, reminding Hagen of a morgue. Dr. Napp headed inside.

Two large stainless steel tables and a single office chair filled the space at the far wall. A tripod stood folded in the corner.

Dr. Napp placed the box on the nearest table, opened the lid, and donned a glove to extract the tablet. He placed the clay slab on a Perspex mount beside a large ivory-handled magnifying glass.

“There. All ready to continue my work.” He kept his gaze on the tablet for a moment. It looked so small on that large surface, an object no bigger than Hagen’s notebook and yet capable of causing so much harm.

Dr. Napp turned away and headed back to the first large room.

Hagen still didn’t see Lucas.

“Here. Look at this.” Napp approached the shelves.

“This represents most of the kinds of artifacts my department has to display. Seals for signing documents. Weights. This thing…” He lifted a short rod with a stone ball mounted on the end.

“This is an ancient mace. Or what an ancient mace would’ve looked like.

It’s not much, is it? The Japanese collection has a twelfth-century Samurai dagger.

A beautiful thing. We have some lengths of old bronze and a rock on a stick. It’s all so easy for people to ignore.”

He placed the old weapon back on the shelf and stretched an arm toward the exit.

“Shall we? After you.”

Hagen hesitated. In a moment, Dr. Napp was going to walk out of the museum and head off to his event.

And while he was there, the murders would begin.

All across the country, people who believed the chicken scratches on an ancient clay tablet prophesized the future would take their knives and make their sacrifices.

Strangers would slash people they’d never met.

Boyfriends would stab their girlfriends.

Wives would kill their husbands. All in the hope that they’d survive the end of the world .

Hagen had faced murder before. He’d dealt with violent psychopaths and stopped crazed killers. But he’d never faced violence on such a scale.

He had no reason to arrest the man in front of him and no confidence that would stop the coming slaughter in time anyway. He had no one in custody, and time was running out before a wave of senseless murder swept the country.

And all because of an old lump of clay.

“Do you mind if I just take a look at that before I go?” He pointed toward the tablet.

Napp waved a hand.

Hagen stepped into the morgue room and studied that tablet. It might’ve been the slab that contained the prophecy, or as Dr. Napp had said, it might’ve been nothing more than a receipt listing some government office’s annual procurements. Hagen had no way of knowing.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the object. So much death had already been caused by something so small and so plain. And so much more was about to come.

Dr. Napp remained by the door. “Please don’t touch it. The material is quite fragile. Try using the magnifying glass. You’ll find it helpful.”

Hagen took the magnifying glass and examined the tablet.

Some of the symbols scratched onto the surface looked familiar.

He was sure he’d seen similar patterns of triangles and lines on the bodies of the victims and on the walls of the rooms in which they’d died.

But he couldn’t be sure, not one hundred percent. He hadn’t memorized the symbols.

He leaned in closer.

Behind him, the floor creaked.

Hagen snapped a picture of the tablet. A quick flick of the screens, and he sent the shot of the piece to the Dispatch group .

Immediately after Hagen hit Send, shadow seemed to fall over him. “Dr. Napp?—”

Too late.

The blow to his head landed hard. A sickening thud. Pain detonated through his skull.

He staggered back, vision splintering, the magnifying glass shattering against the floor. Blood rushed in his ears.

As he crumpled, the last thing he saw was Napp looming over him, mace in hand, his warm smile gone.

Just cold, clinical efficiency.

And behind Napp, another shadow moved—a second figure, stepping into the room.

Not Lucas.