Ancient Echoes

CHAPTER 7



Jerusalem

AT THE SOUND OF footsteps running toward her, Charlotte’s uneasiness from earlier in the day combined with her ICE and terrorism training kicked in. She lunged inside Al-Dajani’s building to seek a secure position.

Behind her, the guard shouted. Then, a sickening pop, the sound of a silencer on an automatic handgun.

Down the hall she found a narrow side corridor and spun into it. Heart pounding, she slid her hand into her shoulder bag and gripped her Glock.

“What's going on?” Al-Dajani flung open the door of his office at the end of the main hall.

A stranger with frizzy, close cut black hair, an olive complexion, and wearing tan slacks and a black sweater stepped into view. The .357 magnum in his hand looked like a cannon.

With no word, no hint of danger, no warning, he lifted it and fired.

“No!” Charlotte shouted. She pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession, her unsilenced handgun loud and reverberating in the hallway. The stranger fell.

She ran to Al-Dajani. He lay on the floor, the top of his head a gaping black hole of hair, blood, and white matter.

Bile rose in her throat. Unbelieving, her gaze darted over the office where she'd sat with both joy and curiosity that very morning. Blood had splattered over the walls, furniture and floor. Then she turned to the gunman. She'd never shot a man before. Had never killed. Her head swam. Something about him...had she seen him earlier? Near the Wailing Wall? She wasn't sure. But what if she had been followed that day? There was no “if,” she realized. How else could the gunman have been so close behind her when the guard unlocked the door?

If she had acted faster, shot to kill sooner, would her friend still be alive? Had she hesitated? The thought crushed her. If she could have saved Al-Dajani...

A police siren sounded in the distance.

With sudden clarity, she realized she had to get away. To become involved with the Israeli police investigating a triple homicide verged on madness.

The siren grew louder, closer.

On top of Al-Dajani's desk she saw a stack of papers about alchemy.

His words flooded her…alchemy, the American professor, Dennis…and she found herself snatching up the papers, clutching them tight against her chest as if they might contain some answers. As she turned to run from the office, she remembered hearing a slight jingle of keys as Al-Dajani walked. His jacket lay draped over the back of the desk chair, a surprisingly normal and homey touch considering all that had just happened. He had always parked his car in a small lot in the back—a perk for those with offices in this building. She reached in one pocket then the other before she found his keys.

At the door to the office, she checked to be sure there wasn't a second gunman in the hall.

She ran to a stairway then paused, clutching the cold steel of the railing, and listened for footsteps on the staircase. All remained silent. She plunged down.

“What I've found is incredible,” Al-Dajani had said.

He complained about his office being broken into, and feeling he'd been followed. Foolish paranoia, he'd called it. But it wasn't paranoia.

The only thing that connected her and Al-Dajani was the reason he had called her—the subject Dennis investigated before his death. Did that cause Al-Dajani to die?

A thought, unbidden and terrifying, hit her. If someone killed Al-Dajani now because of Dennis’ investigations thirteen years earlier, could Dennis’ death have been—

No! She couldn’t think that. His death was because he’d been in the wrong place…because of bad luck.

Or was it?

Al-Dajani had said she might want to know the truth.

He was right. She did.

As she exited to the street, she pushed the remote, and saw the welcoming flash of the headlights on an older Mercedes.

She got in, and as she started the car, a tall, muscular man, with short blond hair, a thick jaw, ran towards her from the back of a neighboring building. He aimed his gun directly at her.