I felt like screaming. “It had to be there,” I said. I yanked the chisel away from Elodie and tried to chip at another brick, but my sweaty fingers slipped on the metal and I nicked the side of my hand instead. I threw the tools to the ground with a curse and sucked on my bleeding finger.
“Wait,” Jack said. “There’s a museum here. What if they found it and moved it there?”
I pushed back the strands of hair clinging to my face. “There’s a museum?”
Moments later, we were making our way back down the mountain. I was trying to force myself to calm down. And then I stopped, and Jack came to a halt, too. “That’s them again,” I said, staring at the backs of two white T-shirts, one of which had a map of the Delphi site printed on it. “The guys I saw earlier.”
“They’re probably just tourists,” Jack said, but I saw his hand drift to his waistband, where I knew he had a gun hidden.
“Did you see how the one just turned around when I saw him so I couldn’t get a look at his face?” It was crazy, but—“What if they’re Order?”
“Then we should all get to the car.” Jack put a protective hand on my arm.
I shook it off. “You should get Luc to the car. They’ve already had the chance to kill me, and they haven’t. If they want to kidnap me, they wouldn’t be able to do it from a public place.” The idea wouldn’t get out of my head. “If they are Order . . . what if they know something? What if they know where my mom is?”
“Avery . . .” Jack’s voice was a warning.
I felt around in my bag. I had my knife. I thought I was being calm and collected about this, but after hearing my mom’s voice yesterday, and knowing that I now only had three days to save her . . .
I watched the guy’s blue baseball cap bob through the crowd and remembered all the times the Order had tried to kill me and Jack. Shooting at us on Mr. Emerson’s balcony. Cornering us at a market in Istanbul. Chasing us through the Louvre.
My hand tightened around my knife. I knew I wasn’t any good at fighting with it. Trying to chase a trained killer probably wouldn’t end well. And if I was wrong, and they did want to hurt me—
At the temple just below, both the guys had stopped. Next to them were two families. Two women and some little kids. Delphi T-shirt guy ruffled the blond curls on one of their heads.
I let out a breath through pursed lips. “Tourists,” I said under my breath. “Just tourists.”
Subdued, we kept going toward the museum.
• • •
Colette had beaten us there. “It’s a small collection,” she said. “I’ve already looked. There’s nothing like the bracelet there.”
“We should ask someone,” Stellan said, and flagged down a docent, describing what we were looking for.
“Actually,” said the woman, “we did have an item like that, years back, when I first started work here. A gold bracelet.”
My heart leaped, and I grabbed Jack’s hand. The woman glanced my way, and suddenly, I remembered the matching gold bracelet on my own arm. I surreptitiously slipped it off and into my bag, and luckily, the docent didn’t see.
“It was very mysterious,” she continued. “It wasn’t an ancient piece, so it must have been placed here at Delphi more recently. Then one of our archaeologists associated it with Napoleon Bonaparte, of all people. And almost immediately, it was taken from us back to France and is now in a private collection.”
We all glanced at each other. “Do you have a photo of the bracelet?” Stellan asked. The docent disappeared into a back office and came back minutes later with a file folder. She handed us a snapshot, and our collective intake of breath was almost comical.
“What is your interest in it?” the docent asked.
“We’re scholars of Napoleon history,” Elodie said, squinting at the photo. I looked over her shoulder. There was an inscription visible on it, just like there was on mine. Elodie read it out loud, in French, then translated. “Only through the union will my twin and I reveal the dark secret we keep in our hearts,” she said, and to the docent, “Do you mind if I take a photo of this picture?”
• • •
Back at the boat, we all leaned over Jack’s phone, which was on speaker in the middle of the table. Elodie had angled the photo she took to capture the file folder the docent was holding as well, and on the paperwork, there was the name and phone number of the collector who now owned the bracelet. The number was ringing. And ringing. Finally, an answering machine picked up. During the long message in French, everyone’s faces fell. “The collector passed away,” Jack translated after he hung up. “The items have been willed to museums or are being sold off to other private collections.”
I leaned my head back against the bench seat. “There has to be some way to find out where the bracelet ended up.”
“I doubt his estate would give out that information,” Colette said.
“What did the new inscription say again?” I said to the faux wood ceiling.
Elodie repeated it. “‘Only through the union will my twin and I reveal the dark secret we keep in our hearts.’”
I sat up and ran a finger over the matching bracelet on my arm. It had gotten dusty. “‘In our hearts.’ It sounds like there’s something inside the bracelets. Not just that we’ll get another clue when the letters line up.” I couldn’t imagine what would fit inside, but everyone else nodded. “Which means we have to physically have the other one, too. Seeing this clue on it isn’t enough.” I looked at Luc, who was perched on a bar stool, his shirt smudged with dirt. “The collector was French. Can’t you force whoever’s taking care of the collection to tell you where the bracelet is?”
He cocked his head to one side. “Probably, yes. I might have to go back to France and make some calls.”