Innocent Blood Read Online Free Page A

message?”
    “It’s from Cardinal Bernard.”
    Surprised, she faced Nate more fully. For weeks, she had attempted to reach the cardinal, the head of the Order of Sanguines in Rome. She’d even considered flying to Italy and staking out his apartments in Vatican City.
    “About time he returned my calls,” she muttered.
    “He wanted you to phone him at once,” Nate said. “Sounded like an emergency.”
    Erin sighed in exasperation. Bernard had ignored her for two months, but now he needed something from her. She had a thousand questions for him—concerns and thoughts that had built up over the past weeks since returning from Rome. She glanced to the whiteboard, eyeing the half-erased line. She had questions about those visions, too.
    Were these episodes secondary to posttraumatic stress? Was she reliving the times that she spent trapped under Masada?
    But if so , why do I keep tasting wine?
    She shook her head to clear it and pointed to his hand. “What’s in the envelope?”
    “It’s addressed to you.” He handed it to her.
    It weighed too much to contain just a letter. Erin scanned the return address.
    Israel.
    Her fingers trembled slightly as she slit open the top with her pen.
    Nate noted how her hand quivered and looked concerned. She knew he was talking to a counselor about his own PTSD. They were two wounded survivors with secrets that could not be fully spoken aloud.
    Shaking the envelope, she slid out a single sheet of typewritten paper and an object about the size and shape of a quail’s egg. Her heart sank as she recognized the object.
    Even Nate let out a small gasp and took a step back.
    She didn’t have that luxury. She read the enclosed page quickly. It was from the Israeli security forces. They had determined that the enclosed artifact was no longer relevant to the closed investigation of their case, and they hoped that she would give it to its rightful owner.
    She cradled the polished chunk of amber in her palm, as if it were the most precious object in the world. Under the dull fluorescent light, it looked like little more than a shiny brown rock, but it felt warmer to the touch. Light reflected off its surface, and in the very center, a tiny dark feather hung motionless, preserved across thousands of years, a moment of time frozen forever in amber.
    “Amy’s good luck charm,” Nate mumbled, swallowing hard. He had been there when Amy was murdered. He kept his eyes averted from the tiny egg of amber.
    Erin placed a hand on Nate’s elbow in sympathy. In fact, the talisman was more than Amy’s good luck charm. One day out at the dig, Amy had explained to Erin that she had found the amber on a beach as a little girl, and she’d been fascinated by the feather imprisoned inside, wondering where it had come from, picturing the wing from which it might have fallen. The amber captured her imagination as fully as it had the feather. It was what sparked Amy’s desire to study archaeology.
    Erin gazed at the amber in her palm, knowing that this tiny object had led not only to Amy’s field of study—but also to her death.
    Her fingers closed tightly over the smooth stone, squeezing her determination, making herself a promise.
    Never again . . .

2
    December 18, 11:12 A.M . EST
    Arlington, Virginia
     
    Sergeant Jordan Stone felt like a fraud as he marched in his dress blues. Today he would bury the last member of his former team—a young man named Corporal Sanderson. Like his other teammates, Sanderson’s body had never been found.
    After a couple of months of searching through the tons of rubble that had once been the mountain of Masada, the military gave up. Sanderson’s empty coffin pressed hard against Jordan’s hip as he marched in step with the other pallbearers.
    A December snowstorm had blanketed the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, covering brown grass and gathering atop the branches of leafless trees. Snow mounded across the arched tops of marble grave markers, more markers