Chapter 39 - The Fire and the Stone
The night exploded into blinding, unearthly crimson.
The magnesium flare ignited with a ferocious hiss, bathing the crumbling limestone walls, the ruined arches, and the petrified faces of Rochefort’s operatives in a brilliant, flickering red glare. The shadows of the surrounding pines danced wildly across the ground like lunging beasts.
Before the two armed guards could recover their night vision, Laurent burst through the laurel bushes, the ten-gauge leveled at Rochefort’s chest.
"Drop the weapons!" Laurent’s voice was an iron roar that shook the very dust from the chapel stones. "Drop them, or the proctor of Lyon dies in the dirt!"
The guards flinched, their rifles coming up instinctively, but from the darkness behind them, a second voice cracked like winter ice.
"I wouldn't," Dorothy Miller said, stepping out from the shadow of the stone arch, her .38 cocked and resting steadily over the forearm of her leather jacket. "My nephew might hesitate on account of family ties, Mr. Rochefort. I will not."
The drill inside the crypt abruptly died, plunging the ruins into a sudden, ringing silence broken only by the crackle of the dying flare in the trees.
Rochefort slowly lowered the satellite phone. In the red glare, his face was stripped of all consular poise. His aristocratic sneer was gone, replaced by the naked fury of a predator that had stepped cleanly into an iron snare.
"Mrs. Miller," Rochefort spat, his breath billowing in white clouds. "You are interfering with a sovereign recovery authorized under international seal."
"You are standing on Miller property with unlicensed automatic weapons and an illegal commercial drill," Dorothy replied, her hand steady as an anvil. "And you are attempting to rob an American grave."
From the woods behind Dorothy, the deep wail of a police siren began to rise from the valley floor. Blue and red lights flickered through the pine trunks, flashing off the underbelly of the low-hanging clouds.
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"I didn't just call the neighbors, Mr. Rochefort," Dorothy said, a grim, satisfied smile touching the corners of her mouth. "I called the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cultural Heritage Art Crimes Team in Charlotte. It turns out, when an international diplomat brings private mercenaries across state lines to excavate stolen WWII artifacts, the United States government takes a very personal interest."
Rochefort’s eyes darted toward the tree line, realizing for the first time that the logging road was blocked, the valley was sealed, and the game had turned completely against him.
