Countdown - Iris Johansen [137]
“You will be. You’ll be very interested before I’m done with you.”
“No, I won’t. You couldn’t make me do anything.” She stared him in the eye. “And you can’t make me remember something I never knew. You’re crazy if you believe that.”
“We’ll see. The more I’m with you the more eager I am to get started.” He opened the door and gestured for her to go inside the room. “You’re going to prove very interesting. How many women could have managed to kill Mario Donato? As for the gold, look at your behavior pattern in the last years. You’re completely fascinated by Cira. Those archaeological expeditions to digs in Herculaneum, your obsession with the scrolls. Every day you look in the mirror and see her. Perhaps deep down you want to protect her and her gold. Maybe you know where it is and are being selfish. Or you may have stumbled on the clue that can lead us to it and won’t admit it to yourself.” He smiled. “But I can correct that given enough time. I can do almost anything.” His eyes glittered with pleasure. “And then the fun begins.”
She felt a cold chill. He’d almost convinced her he could do it. And the frightening thing was that he didn’t know how close she was to Cira. He didn’t know about the dreams. . . . “Very flimsy reasoning, Reilly. I can’t believe you’d actually make a deal with Mario to bring me here when there’s no evidence I know anything at all.”
“Believe it. And there is evidence. Come look at Cira’s world.” He gestured at the softly lit shelves that gave off an ambient glow across the room. “I’ve been collecting artifacts from Herculaneum and Pompeii for the last twenty years.”
And it was an impressive collection, she thought, as she saw a multitude of various artifacts that included bowls, crude knives, scrolls, and stone reliefs depicting exaggerated sexual acts. “You’d have gotten a lot of pleasure from Julius Precebio’s scrolls,” she said dryly. “He was into porn too.”
“It was his right. The master always sets the rules. And I do identify with Precebio. We have a lot in common.” He led her forward. “But you’ve missed the most interesting exhibit.” He nodded at the stand in front of her. “Your personal contribution.”
“What the devil are you—” She inhaled sharply. “My God.”
Her sketchbook. The one Trevor had stolen from her two years ago. She’d only been concerned about the sketches of Trevor, afraid that it would reveal her feelings for him. She hadn’t remembered this sketch that Reilly had chosen to place on exhibition.
“Extraordinary, isn’t it?” Reilly murmured. “The detail is so minute that it would be incredible for at least part of it not to have been sketched from real life.”
It was a sketch of Cira, one of the many she’d done since she’d come back from Herculaneum four years ago. Cira was standing in profile in the doorway of a room with rocky walls and ledges on which various vases, bowls, and jewels were placed. On a ledge farther away, displayed by itself, was an open chest overflowing with gold coins.
She moistened her lips. “Real life? Sorry, I wasn’t around to sketch Cira two thousand years ago.”
“But you might have found where she hid that chest and sketched the place.”
“That’s crazy. The sketch was purely imaginary.”
“Perhaps. But I’ve been studying that sketch closely for weeks. I did a lot of research, and those striations in the rocks are found in formations in Italy near Herculaneum. As I said, the detail is truly amazing.”
“Where did you get my sketchbook?”
“Grozak stole it from Trevor’s hotel room and sent it to me. He thought it might intrigue me.” He smiled. “It did. It raised all kinds of interesting possibilities.”
“Listen, I don’t know anything about that gold.”
“We’ll see. In a few weeks I’ll know everything you know.”
He gestured at the glass case in the center of the shelf. “Some of those coins are worth a fortune, but I’ve never found the one that the whole world would envy me having. It’s been my dream for years. You just may be able to provide me with that final triumph.”
“What?”
“A coin from the purse given to Judas for betraying Christ could be among