The Time Collector Page 25

  At least he wouldn’t be tempted to call Melicent and hear her voice. He also wouldn’t continue to feel guilt while watching the number of voicemails from his mother rack up. Neither of them would approve of what he was doing.

  His father might.

  Was that why he was pushing himself so hard now? To find out if his father was right? Had his gift been worth the demise of their family? Tomorrow he hoped to find out.

  He changed and met Sun downstairs in the courtyard. She looked just as she had in New York in her tunic jacket and pants. Roan felt a wellspring of emotions when he saw her. If Sun hadn’t given him her fan, she would have remained a stranger. He might have even suspected she was behind the psychometrists’ disappearances. But Sun inherently understood how vital it was they trust each other, and she had foreseen the best way to do that.

  How different his world might have been if a psychometrist like Sun had been his teacher. He’d lived his whole life closed off from people, even from his parents, if he was honest. But Sun had opened a door and pushed her way in.

  “Shall we walk?” she asked him.

  She took off without waiting for an answer, just like she had on their first meeting in New York, and the moment began to take on a dreamlike quality. Roan might be a four-and-a-half-hour flight from New Orleans, but today was the farthest he’d ever been from home. And tomorrow would be the equivalent of sailing off the edge of the world.

  He and Sun made their way toward the town square right as dusk finished its fall. Near the church a dance rehearsal was under way. A dozen couples were spinning and weaving in complex patterns while onlookers clapped, and a little girl in fairy wings ran around them. The sleepy town was an assortment of old pickup trucks, men with cowboy hats, and colorful buildings nestled between the hills. Roan and Sun passed a flamenco studio and a bright purple painted restaurant on the corner.

  Roan brought Sun up to speed on his conversation with Stuart, who was en route and meeting them tomorrow afternoon at the site. He’d been able to book a flight to Chihuahua in time.

  “Does he know who is behind this?” Sun asked. Her arms were crossed and she had a worried frown on her face.

  “He doesn’t. They were keeping him in a warehouse off the docks on the Isle of Dogs. He managed to get away when the guards left.”

  “Or they let him get away.”

  The same thought had crossed Roan’s mind. He studied Sun’s closed expression, her face unreadable, and yet, after holding her fan, Roan could read her expression better than anyone. She was gravely concerned.

  “I’m sorry about the fire,” Roan offered. They had yet to speak of it. “Have they discovered anything?”

  Sun waved her hand with a dismissive air, not wanting to discuss it.

  When they reached the gazebo in the square, Roan knew it was the time to give the fan back. He took the box out of his pocket. Her eyes flashed in response.

  “Thank you.” Roan tried to convey the depth of his feelings, his voice solemn. “I’m honored you entrusted this in my care.”

  Sun took the box with a nod and it disappeared within the voluminous folds of her jacket. A guarded look remained in her eyes, an unspoken question. He had not given her anything yet in return. Her absolute trust in him was not guaranteed—and he needed it if he was going into a cave of ancient crystals with two ooparts in hand.

  Roan had brought his coin with him for that purpose. Handing it to her was in essence handing her a book of his life. He never thought he’d share his lucky coin with anyone, and now he was about to give it to a seventy-eight-year-old psychometrist, in the middle of a desert in Mexico. Life never ceased to amaze him.

  Sun took Saint-Gaudens’s model coin in her hand and gazed at it, her eyes turning inward.

  Roan looked up at the stars beginning to blanket the sky and waited patiently for her to read the imprints. His eyes landed on a nearby lamppost. It was a striking design with two sculptured lions on top, each holding a light and facing away from each other.

  The pair of lions made him wonder what Melicent was doing right now, what she was feeling after his desertion—what she had found of his to touch.

  He missed her.

  He’d made the wrong decision by leaving her behind. He’d shut her out, just as he did to everyone who got too close, no matter how noble his intentions. And he made a vow that no matter what happened tomorrow he would come back to her.

  Sun shifted and opened her eyes, finished with the coin. She handed it back to him and folded her hands over his gloved ones. Sun now knew intimate details about him, the thoughts and feelings he had carried in his pocket for so many years. But strangely enough, he didn’t mind. He felt free.

  “Your greatest fear is time,” she said with startling precision. “The immensity of it, its vastness, its weight. Time has given us our power and yet time stopped your heart.”

  Roan found himself holding his breath as he listened to her go on.

  “The Earth is billions of years old and our lives are less than a century. Every new century is built on the ruins of the old, adding to the weight of our collective memory, like gravity. What will the memory of your life be? What will be its weight?”

  Her eyes brimmed with understanding.

  “Cosmic time is something we all search to understand. In ancient Korean philosophy we believe in the cosmic year. One year of the universe is 129,600 years on Earth. One month of the universe is 10,800. Our recorded history is less than a week, and our own story begins in the final seconds. This whole life is but a blink in cosmic time. We all want to feel like there is a reason behind the time we live in. Our ability makes us more aware. It’s why we’re here.” She motioned to the desert. “Why we followed Stuart and Miguel on this journey. The ooparts are speaking to all of us.”

  Roan took the coin back and put it in his pocket. “Why aren’t you ever afraid of what you might see?” he asked.

  She measured her words. “Because I cannot pick and choose what to see, just as I cannot choose the time I lived in. So I must see it all.” Roan knew she was talking about her childhood, the war and the deaths of her family. Sun stared into his eyes with certainty. “But if there’s one thing my life has shown me, there is a place beyond the world that pain and darkness cannot reach. After you experience that place, you can touch anything.”

  36. THE LAPTOP

  THE SOUND OF THE PHONE RINGING in one of the warehouse’s offices was incessant. It wouldn’t stop. After four rings and a delay for voicemail, it started up again.

  “Should we get that?” Parker yelled to Melicent from the opposite side of the warehouse.

  “I don’t know.” Melicent shut the door to another room filled with heirlooms she’d been investigating and followed the sound.

  When she turned on the lights to the office, the ringing stopped. She went inside, sure the caller would try again. A brilliant ruby Persian rug covered most of the floor and a smaller circular rug in the back corner looked like a meditation mat. Melicent walked over to the desk made of contemporary chrome and glass and saw Stuart’s laptop. She’d found Roan’s office.

  When the phone rang again, she picked it up abruptly. “Hello?”

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  Melicent recognized Jocelyn’s voice right away and cringed. “Dr. Matthis—Jocelyn. I’m so sorry. You surprised me. It’s Melicent.”

  “Why are you answering Roan’s office line? Is everything all right?” She sounded frantic. “I’ve been trying to reach him all day.”

  “Roan’s … not here,” Melicent hedged.

  “But is he all right?”

  “What do you mean?” Melicent was getting alarmed by Jocelyn’s tone.

  “I couldn’t sleep last night, worrying he might do something foolish again to find Stuart. He had an incident before where he touched something he shouldn’t have.”

  “What do you mean he touched something he shouldn’t have?” Melicent asked, all the while thinking He has done som
ething foolish—he’d gone off without her.

  “Roan had a heart attack,” Jocelyn said flatly. Melicent’s breath caught as Jocelyn went on to explain what had happened at Gobekli Tepe. How Roan believed it was the age of the stone that had triggered it.

  “He told me about Gobekli Tepe,” Melicent said, “but not that he almost died.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be livid for my telling you. Do you know where’s he gone? Why he’s so unreachable?”

  Melicent tried to focus on answering Jocelyn’s string of questions, still reeling from the revelation of what had happened in Turkey. “Roan’s gone off to find Stuart. I don’t know where he is and he isn’t returning my calls either.”

  The words began to bubble out of her. Melicent didn’t question the impulse to tell Jocelyn everything—starting with the Breguet watch and Antiques Roadshow. She wanted Jocelyn to know the whole story.

  By the time Melicent had gotten to the YouTube fiasco, Jocelyn couldn’t have sounded more shocked. “You mean, you have the same ability?”

  “Not as strong as Roan, but yes.” Melicent could hear the wheels turning in Jocelyn’s mind.

  “I see” was all she said.

  Melicent’s voice held a slight tremor when she recounted the fire and the imprint of the man who had set it. She explained how Roan had helped them and then they’d come to London. Roan had picked up another ominous imprint in Stuart’s house. After that Melicent knew he’d started keeping things from her. “A psychometrist in New York had her home set on fire too. It was the fire in Manhattan on the news. I don’t know if she’s okay.”

  “My God. I can’t believe he kept me in the dark about all this.”

  Melicent felt a twinge of guilt that she’d gone against Roan’s wishes and told Jocelyn everything—but dammit, he’d gone against hers too. Where was he?

  “Do you think he went to New York?” Jocelyn asked. “To see if this other psychometrist is all right?”

  “Maybe Holly knows.” It had been the one question Melicent had been loath to ask. Even though she no longer harbored the same insecurities she’d had when it came to Roan’s childhood friend, it would still hurt if Roan had confided in Holly and said nothing to her. Melicent was planning to pin Holly down for more information in the morning, but now it couldn’t wait. Jocelyn thought so too.

  “That’s it. I’m flying over there,” Jocelyn said. “I’ll book an early flight this morning and be there by tomorrow.” London was six hours ahead, so although it was eight P.M. in New Orleans it was two A.M. in England.

  Melicent hung up and sat down in Roan’s chair, feeling as galvanized as Jocelyn. If Roan thought he could exclude them and go off by himself to save the damn day, then he had another thing coming. She wasn’t going to sit there and wait either.

  She picked up the phone and called Holly, who answered on the first ring. “Roan? What are you doing back? The tour’s not until tomorrow.”

  Melicent hesitated. Well, she’d just gotten her answer. Holly knew exactly where Roan had gone. It stung, but not as much as she thought it would.

  “Holly, it’s Melicent.”

  “Oh.” Holly sounded flustered. “What are you doing in Roan’s office?”

  “The phone kept ringing, so I answered it. It was Jocelyn trying to reach Roan.” Melicent could sense Holly’s unspoken question: Why were you in the warehouse? But Holly didn’t say anything.

  “Here’s the deal.” Melicent found herself adopting Holly’s no-nonsense style. “Jocelyn is worried that Roan’s going to have another incident like Turkey,” she said, showing Holly she knew more about Roan than Holly thought. “He’s not returning either of our calls. I’m seriously worried too. Where is he?”

  Holly became flustered. “Look, Roan is on a trip, investigating something for Stuart, and he’ll be back. I’m sorry he hasn’t called you yet. If it means anything, I did tell him to.”

  Melicent was surprised to hear that and used it to press her point. “Can you at least tell me where he’s gone? Please. Jocelyn is getting on a plane right now she’s so frantic.”

  “Well Dadgummit,” Holly muttered, sounding more Southern than ever.

  “I’m pretty sure you know Jocelyn well enough that you’re going to have to tell her where he is.”

  Holly sighed. “He’s in Naica, Mexico, at the Crystal Cave. I have no idea why. You know Roan. He’s so secretive. But it’s got the oldest or the biggest crystals in the world—I had to pull serious strings to get him inside. He said it would help him find Stuart and the answer to everything, whatever that means.”

  At Holly’s words Melicent sat there frozen, unable to move. She knew what Roan was planning to do. Her eyes watered and a feeling of helplessness filled her. Roan had discovered something within the oopart map that led to the cave, and then he’d kept it from her. He was going to risk his life to find out what happened to Stuart and why someone had tried to kill her. It’s why he had written her that note, why he’d given her the Breguet.

  He didn’t know if he was coming back.

  Holly was busy saying how Roan would be back soon.

  “Holly.” Melicent stopped her cold with her voice. “Don’t you see? It’s why he won’t talk to me or Jocelyn. He’s going to try and touch the crystals and read the imprint.”

  * * *

  By two A.M. Melicent couldn’t sleep; she was too filled with anxiety. After their phone call earlier, Holly had been keeping her abreast. Holly couldn’t reach Roan either, which wasn’t a good sign. She was making arrangements to get them to Naica as quickly as possible the next day. Jocelyn was in the air and would land in New Orleans before noon.

  By morning, Melicent crawled out of bed to get ready. Parker was still asleep. He had talked her into letting him come with them, and she’d agreed. She understood how it felt to be left behind.

  She went downstairs and made coffee. The inviting aroma helped her wake up. She took a cup to the computer room behind the kitchen and sat down at Roan’s computer to research the Crystal Cave.

  When she clicked on the pictures that came up, the images of monstrous selenite pillars boggled her mind. That was where they were going?

  The more she read, the more she wondered how Holly had gotten Roan inside the cave. The Crystal Cave was off-limits to the public and even to the miners from Peñoles. The entrance was locked away behind a great steel door, and anyone who went inside needed to wear a special suit packed with ice. Even with the ice suit, humans couldn’t survive the heat or the 90 percent humidity for long. The dangerous conditions were almost the equivalent of going to the moon.

  Melicent heard Holly’s car pulling into one of the cargo bays and went to the warehouse to meet her.

  Holly gave her a brisk greeting and headed into Roan’s office. “I left word with Roan’s contact at the cave for him to call right away when he arrives for his tour this afternoon. I stressed it was urgent.” Her cell phone rang.

  Melicent sat down in Roan’s chair, watching Holly pace as she talked. Jocelyn was due to arrive in two hours, and they’d be rendezvousing at the airport to fly by charter direct to Naica. From what she could gather, Holly was on the phone with the head of Peñoles, talking him into letting them use his private airstrip.

  Holly had painted their arrival as a simple late addition to the tour, a flighty mistake on her part in her efforts to coordinate the group, and she cajoled him into not only letting them use the private airstrip next to the mine’s entrance, but into having a representative ready on the ground to escort them to the cave, where they would join Roan and Sun’s tour before it began. The goodwill that accompanied a million-dollar purchase went quite far.

  Melicent turned to Stuart’s laptop sitting out on Roan’s desk. She wanted to find where Naica fell on the oopart map.

  When she opened it, the screen immediately powered up. Using the touch pad, she scrolled through the files to find the map. As her hands rested on the keyboard, an ominous feeling began to circle her wrist
and coil up her arm like a snake. Her throat constricted and her heart sped as a whirlwind of imprints entered her mind. This can’t be true.

  She couldn’t take her hands off the computer. The thoughts and images were coming hard and fast at her, each one like a physical blow.

  Stuart had intentionally planted his computer in the safe for them to find. There was a spyware program on it to track the laptop and view its activity from a remote location.

  Stuart had been using the tracking app to monitor Roan and know where he was at all times. He’d also planned to steal Jocelyn’s cell phone and use her tracking app too, knowing Jocelyn and Roan had their phones linked.

  Roan hadn’t touched this laptop without his gloves on, or he would have felt the same calculating intention.

  The thoughts from the keyboard continued to bombard her. Suddenly everything in the world seemed upside down. The man they’d been trying to save was at the heart of the darkness. She took her hands off the keys with a cry.

  Holly hung up the phone. “What is it? What happened?”

  Melicent looked at Holly, her whole body sickened. “It’s him.… It’s him,” she could only keep repeating. “He’s the one.”

  “Who?” Holly stared at the laptop in confusion, trying to catch up. “Whose computer is that?”

  “Stuart’s.” Melicent tried to voice what she’d felt, what she’d seen, but she couldn’t. She’d just met the man who set her house on fire. “He’s behind all of it.”

  Melicent had seen Stuart’s face clearly for the first time, and she recognized him. The man in the imprints was the man in her nightmares.

  “What are you talking about?” Holly had become frozen.

  The words tumbled from her in a panic. “Stuart’s after Roan. He lured Roan with the disappearances, the threats—they were all to get him to decipher the ooparts. He needed Roan to figure out the connection because no one else could.”