The Secret of the Stones, Ernest Dempsey [popular books to read TXT] 📗

and his reply to the gaze sounded like an elementary schoolchild after being caught throwing food in the cafeteria.

“I warned you to be cautious, but you didn’t listen.”

“I said I was sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Glancing over, the driver replied coldly, “Well, that’s true.” Before the man even realized what was happening, there was a puff of smoke accompanied by the cough of a silencer. At first, the hole in the man’s head just looked like a black dot. Moments later, dark-red liquid began oozing from the wound as the head toppled over against the window, lifeless. Vacant eyes stared at the ceiling. Ulrich pulled the car over next to a church on Vine Street. He moved quickly to slip the body out of the car and onto the pavement. Only a minute passed before he was cruising down the street again. Glancing over at a small splotch of blood on the passenger’s seat, his only thought was that he was glad he’d got the leather package. It would be easier to clean than fabric.

Ulrich wiped off the stain with a handkerchief; satisfied it was gone, he simply tossed the cloth out the window and continued down the street, headed to where the beeping dot on the LCD screen indicated the direction of his quarry.

9

Atlanta

Detective Morris sat staring at his computer with a look of indignation. He had been there for hours poring over paperwork and searching international databases for anything about Sean Wyatt. Nothing he had found indicated anything unusual. The man had been everywhere on missions for the IAA, but he was apparently a ghost the few years before he worked there.

Born and raised just a few hours north near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Sean had attended a small private high school. His parents still lived in the area, experiencing the joys of retirement on the many beautiful golf courses the region had to offer. This luxury was certainly helped in no small part by contributions from Sean’s six-figure IAA salary.

After high school, Wyatt had earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, a master’s degree in archaeology four years later. Usually, a master’s program only took two to three years, but students had up to six to complete their coursework. During that time, Wyatt’s file claimed that he had been employed by a local businessman as his personal gardener/landscaper. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. No wife. No kids. Not even a girlfriend. A loner. That explained the motorcycles at least.

Trent leaned back in his black standard-issue fake leather chair and scratched his head. The blue-and-white striped tie he’d been wearing earlier had long since been discarded on top of mounds of paper. Leaning forward again, he took a deep breath and gazed at the file on Tommy Schultz.

Schultz had met Wyatt in high school. Their love of sports and history and a similar sense of humor caused them to be nearly inseparable, with the exception of when teachers had to actually separate them into different parts of the classrooms.

As it turned out, Schultz’s parents had quite a large sum of money they had kept secret. From the lifestyle they lived, no one would have guessed that they had possessed such wealth. The Schultz family home was moderately sized, and neither of Tommy’s parents drove fancy cars. Luxuries were few and far between to the outside observer. Yet when his parents died unexpectedly, he inherited a sum just over $18 million. With some keen financial guidance and shrewd investment maneuvers, that money had grown into just over $40 million in a little over a decade.

Thomas Schultz set up several charitable organizations, the primary nonprofit being the International Archaeological Agency. With seemingly unlimited funding, the IAA, established in 2001, had recovered an inestimable amount of artifacts in its first seven years of existence. The discovery of the Sahara Temple was one of the most fascinating. In a seemingly endless array of sand dunes, the IAA was able to uncover what was believed to be an ancient Egyptian colony for priestly training. In South America, an ancient Incan city was discovered in a part of rain forest thought to be completely vacant of any prior civilizations.

Perhaps their greatest achievement, though, came from last year’s amazing find. A ship, dating back to the early twelfth century, was located off the coast of Alabama. This was something that rocked the history world. Of course, most historians claimed it had been misdated or perhaps was simply the result of one European country being unable to keep up with evolving technology in sea faring. However, after intense study and analysis, it was confirmed that the ancient ship was indeed over eight hundred years old.

That was always the case. Whenever some kind of evidence came around that might shake up what everyone was taught in the history books, a throng of people was waiting to hide it, discredit it, or simply bash it into the ground. Heaven forbid the world had been taught an incorrect history up until this point. To some, it seemed ignorance was indeed bliss.

The more that Detective Morris read into the IAA, the more fascinated he became. This was not a group that searched the world for known archaeological locations or artifacts. It seemed that they specialized in finding things that were both lost to the eye and to history.

None of this was making sense. These two guys weren’t murderers. And Trent was fairly sure that Allyson wasn’t either. She was a reputable reporter: young, with a devoted following of readers yet not so well-known that she could just up and leave her current job. From the looks of her file, it didn’t add up.

He plopped the stack of paper down onto his