SUPERSTITION
Team Indigo
PROLOGUE
Gage Deveraux curled his fingers around the amulet, felt the incredible energy sealed within the hammered brass, and shuddered. In the wrong hands... He would just have to make sure it didn’t happen. "Thank you," he said to the old cleric who had placed it in his hands with great care. "I will guard it with my life."
"No!" the old man shouted. "Do not guard it. Destroy it. Take it away in your helicopter and drop it into the depths of the ocean. Do not keep it. It will destroy you."
But Gage didn’t hear him over the roar of the blades that churned up the desert sand and flung it into his face. He waved and jogged toward the chopper, scrambling aboard as it lifted into the air and swung away towards the base camp.
He settled into the seat next to the pilot and watched as the old man grew smaller, merely a speck against the sand. Something nagged at him, but he wasn’t sure exactly what it was. How had the old man known he’d be in this place, at this time? Why had he entrusted him with an ancient Babylonian treasure that supposedly held such tremendous power? And what was he going to do with it, now that he had it?
"ETA twenty-seven minutes, Captain," the pilot said through the headset.
Gage nodded without taking his eyes off the amulet. It still pulsed within his hand. Heat radiated from it, warming the skin of his palm. Maybe the best thing would be to destroy it so that no one could ever attempt to use its power. But this entire mission was about stopping those who were stripping Iraq of treasures just like this one. He would be going against orders if he destroyed it.
Still, even a strong man could be tempted by power such as this...
CHAPTER ONE
It was a terrible day to scatter ashes. The night was rainy and cold, miserable with the storm whipping the ocean into waves that thundered and crashed against the shore behind her. But Caitlyn Deveraux had missed the last two chances because she hadn’t been ready to let Gage go. Now that she’d made up her mind, it had to be tonight. She couldn’t stand to look at the urn on her mantle until the next full moon. A full moon, exactly at sunset. He’d left precise instructions in his will.
Standing at the end of the Santa Monica pier, Caitlyn clutched the cold brass vase to her chest as a gust of wind tried to blow her back from the railing, yanking at her coat and tossing her hair around her face. She brushed it out of her eyes and tucked the strands beneath her collar. The rain soaked her face, mixing with the tears on her cheeks, numbing them. Cold. So damned cold. Drawing on the courage of her ancestors, even though she continued to pretend they didn’t exist, she removed the lid and looked inside. Ashes. All that was left of Gage. All that was left of her family. Of her life.
It was time.
Caitlyn leaned over the railing, fighting the dizziness. She hated heights, even though there was a sturdy rail between her and the water, and only her love for Gage kept her in place. It took two tries to let him go. Before she could lose courage again, she turned the urn upside down, shook it, and spoke the strange words he’d written. Words of the Anasazi, the lost ones--who couldn’t be lost enough as far as she was concerned.
As his remains drifted toward the ocean, a gale-force gust of wind took her breath away. The ashes blew back in her face and she gasped, inhaling the acrid residue.
Caitlyn dumped the last of the ashes from the urn and fled, gagging, back across the pier, stumbling along the boardwalk to her car.
Oh God. To breathe in Gage’s ashes…
