“You are one freakylooking gal,” she muttered. “So what are you supposed to represent? And why have you been given a bangle of gold?”
Pulling a sheet of paper from the printer tray behind her, she grabbed one of the pencils from the cup on the desk and began sketching the figure. She was deep into her work when the building erupted into a cacophony of shrieks.
Stunned, she sat therefor a moment to assess what was happening. It was the burglar alarm, not the fire alarm. Someone had breached the premises after closing. She glanced down the hallway to make sure she had closed the main door. Reassured she’d locked it, she knew she wouldn’t have to leave. And at least one guard knew she was on the site. Breathing a sigh of relief, she looked back down at the idol…
And black despair sunk its claws into her stomach. The idol lay in two parts. Somehow she’d broken the head off of the body. Frantic, she searched for the missing piece, finally discovering it lying in her lap, between her thighs. She breathed a sigh of relief, until the gravity of what she’d done hit her like a blow to the gut. She’d destroyed a rare and irreplaceable piece of ancient Egyptianart, and she was about to become violently ill from the guilt.
The tiny gold band rolled between her fingers and fell onto the paper sketch.
Brielle blinked as her mind tried to comprehend what she’d just witnessed. The gold ring wasn’t part of the figurine?
Turning the idol upward toward the light, she noticed the slender opening in the thing’s neck.She picked up the head with her other hand and placed it under the magnifying glass. There, clearly, an extension jutted from beneath the skull.
“A stopper.” She caught herself starting to hyperventilate from the discovery. “This isn’t an idol. It’s a vial. This thing is a—”
The museum curator part of her brain took over, and she fought the inclination to sniff theminiature container. Holding the body back under the light, she peered through the lens. The interior wasn’t large. Plus, there appeared to be some kind of dried up residue left at the bottom.
She started.Residue?
“Oh, shit!”
Jumping up from the chair, she rushed over to the cabinet on the other side of the office and grabbed a couple of sterile swabsfrom a drawer. Taking them back to the desk, she broke one from its plastic wrap and carefully daubed the inside of the vial. After sealing that swab back into its wrapping, she repeated the act with the second swab. When she was finished, she placed both swabs inside the top desk drawer. They would go straight to research to be analyzed in the morning.
Picking up the gold ring,she set it back on the body, where it nestled perfectly in its miniature groove above the shoulders. And when she replaced the head, it also fit snugly and securely in place. The head was the cork for the body, and the ring sealed them together.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“That remains to be seen,” a strange voice spoke from the doorway.
Brielle glanced upin horror to find a black-clad man standing there, a pistol with a silencer pointed straight at her.
