Celtic Fire. Alex Archer

to get out before the police showed up. And even then she had to move quickly. But like it or not, the weight slowed her down. She hadn’t bargained on that. But then, how could she have known how heavy it would actually be?

      She pushed the back door open again, leaning into it, and hitched her burden a little higher, trying to run across the gravel until the fire in her legs became too much to bear. The alarm grew progressively louder. Every dog in the neighborhood tried to compete with it. She couldn’t hear anyone shouting to silence them. She couldn’t hear any footsteps or wailing sirens of police cars.

      Perhaps someone was looking out for her, after all.

      Awena staggered the last few strides to the wall, and as much as she wanted to drop her burden, at least for a moment to catch her breath, she knew if she did there was no way she’d get it up and over the wall. Momentum was vital. All she could do was grit her teeth against the rising tide of agony and push on until she’d strained every single muscle in her body to lever the treasure up and onto the top of it.

      She braced herself against the wall, balancing the treasure while she struggled to catch her breath, then hauled herself up and rolled off the wall onto the roof of her Land Rover. She’d parked it right up against the rear wall. It meant leaving tire tracks, but she’d switched the wheels out that evening, using a set of radials meant for a much smaller vehicle. She’d switch them back tomorrow. Awena lay on her back looking up at the moon as clouds drifted across it, then pulled the weight after her, putting it onto the roof beside her, then slid down the side of the car. She’d lost track of time. She couldn’t waste so much as a single second checking her watch.

      She managed to get her prize into the Land Rover—hiding it on the floor behind the driver’s seat—just as she heard the sound of a siren in the distance.

      Even with the weird night acoustics of the town, she could tell the patrol car was still making its way through the one-way streets. Close but no cigar, she thought, grinning for the first time that night.

      She fired the engine up and threw the car into first, pulling away from the grass verge without turning on her lights.

      The police siren was closing in, but instead of turning right and following the road out of town, she drove straight across into Broadway, a narrow lane that led only to the Roman amphitheater and the rugby field. There, without so much as a streetlight to guide the way, she had no choice but to turn on the lights so she could navigate what amounted to a dirt track.

      It was a calculated chance. She knew how the police thought. They’d expect her to run. Hiding in plain sight wasn’t in their playbook. Hiding out in the parking lot outside the old Roman amphitheater was not logical, so it was her best shot at getting away with the robbery. She’d watched the parking lot over the past week, making sure that it wasn’t unusual for cars to be left overnight. Every night there’d been a handful of motors in there, left by people who’d spent the evening in the rugby club and decided to return to collect their car in the morning.

      She pulled into a space beyond the last vehicle and turned off the engine.

      She sank back into the soft leather bucket seat and closed her eyes, tension flooding from her body.

      She’d done it.

      She gave herself a minute to savor the fact, then climbed onto the backseat and settled herself beneath a picnic blanket to wait for morning.

       Chapter 2

      Daybreak began somewhere over the horizon.

      The faint glow in the sky signaled the start of the day.

      For the curate, there was more than enough time before the 8:00 a.m. service to unlock the doors of the cathedral and make the preparations for Communion.

      He hurried along the path in the slowly brightening gloom, enjoying this time of the morning as he always did, when God’s glory was there for all to wonder at. He was a simple man who enjoyed simple pleasures. Anyone who had ever heard him in the pulpit knew that. The curate crossed the old wooden footbridge spanning the brackish water of the narrow River Alyn before it moved out to the sea. The man in the shadows knew that it wouldn’t be long before he arrived—the curate was a creature of habit—and like it or not he was going to have to give up his search for now if he wanted to slip away unnoticed.

      He had already spent a couple of days checking the grounds, examining individual gravestones, crossing them off on the rough map he had sketched out to be sure he didn’t return to overlapping areas of the bone garden.

      But he still hadn’t found what he was looking for.

      More than once he had been approached by staff and clergy of the cathedral asking if he was all right, or if he needed any help looking for a particular grave. Each time he smiled politely, said thanks but no, and they left him to wander the huge grounds. It was more attention than he wanted to draw to himself, but it was of the natural sort, in keeping with what the staff saw every day. That was the trick, to remain inside the ordinary, not to do something outside of it that would be remembered. There were tourists doing wax rubbings of some of the older gravestones, school groups being given a guided tour of the noteworthy dead and told the stories of the old town in hushed voices.

      The curate’s shuffling figure drew closer, the man looking like something out of a cartoon as he held up a hand, conducting the nature around him in time with the music he was humming, and the man knew he’d have to stay where he was now until the holy man had gone inside. He was a genuinely happy man. There were so few of those in the world. He almost skipped as he came through the lych-gate, his footing sure on the cracked and broken cobblestones that lead up to the main cathedral doors. A huge weeping willow overhung the path. Its long thin dagger-leaves rustled in the breeze. To hide from the curate, the man had taken to the deep shadows the willow cast rather helpfully.

      He was silent, still, allowing the shadows to shroud him. That meant he was as good as invisible to the curate.

      As the curate neared he took a single slow step back, allowing the tree trunk to come between them.

      When his heel came down it was on something harder than grass, but as he placed his weight on it a sound cried out.

      A strange noise...

      A voice calling?

      The curate stopped in his tracks, his head cocked on one side as he looked directly at the man even though he couldn’t see him for the protection of the shadows.

      “Hello?” The curate waited for a response, his eyes scanning the shadows for any sign of movement, which proved he couldn’t see the man hiding there. The man didn’t answer. “Who’s there?”

      The man held his breath, readying himself in case the clergyman moved closer.

      He would hate to have to kill him.

      Mercifully he stood still, too.

      He had no idea what had caused the “voice”—the sound of stone grinding against stone. Some sort of echo effect caused by being so close to the great cathedral?

      “If you need food or shelter you are welcome,” the curate called. “I can get you a hot drink as soon as I have done my duties inside. Would you like that? Tea? Coffee?”

      The man tried hard not to laugh.

      There was something about do-gooders that brought out the worst in him. Put them in the robes of the church—which they stupidly believed gave them a cloak of invulnerability—and they were insufferable. He decided to have some fun. “I could murder a cup of tea,” he replied in a voice more gruff and deeper than his usual tone. It masked his accent. “Thank you.”

      The cleric waved in his direction, the smile on his face broader than the simple act of boiling water warranted, and made for the main door of the cathedral with his keys jangling in his hand. The curate was clearly a trusting soul. But then why would he imagine the man would need anything more than that? Why would