Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow (Tracy Whitney #2)(92)

A new lamb? A new covenant? Death on a cross? For a moment there Jeff had felt as if he had Cooper on the ropes, emotionally. But now he was losing him.

“Once the new covenant has been made, Tracy and I can at last be married. Our sins will be forgiven. We will walk hand in hand, pure and clean in the light of the Lord.”

“You want to marry Tracy?”

“Naturally. After the sacrifice.”

The sacrifice.

Death on a cross . . .

Jeff held his breath. Slowly, very slowly, the shoe was beginning to drop.

“After the sacrifice, Tracy will come to the tomb, like Mary Magdalen.” Cooper sounded positively cheerful now. “But like Mary, she will find it empty, but for a shroud. She will press the new shroud to her face and she will weep. Then, at last, she will believe. She will see her Messiah face-to-face and she will understand.” Jeff felt the hairs on his arms stand up and the bile rise in his throat.

The new shroud . . .

Daniel Cooper had never been planning to steal the Shroud of Turin.

He was planning to make a new shroud all his own.

He came to Seville to learn how to do it.

What had he said a few minutes ago?

“Do you know why you’re here, Stevens?

“Because you are the lamb.”

Jeff had shrugged off the words as lunatic ramblings. But now he knew what they meant. Panic gripped him like a frozen fist clenched around his heart.

“Your move.”

Jeff couldn’t breathe.

Jesus Christ.

Daniel Cooper’s going to crucify me!





CHAPTER 24



TRACY WAS AT HOME, reading, when the telephone rang.

“How are you with riddles?”

Jean Rizzo’s voice shattered her peace of mind in an instant, like a bullet through a windowpane.

“Terrible. I hate riddles.”

“You might want to improve your skills. Real quickly.”

“Yeah? Well, you might want to get lost. I’ve told you, Jean. Leave me alone.”

Tracy hung up.

Twenty seconds later the phone rang again. Tracy would have left it, but Nick was downstairs in the kitchen and might pick up if she didn’t.

“What?” she barked into the receiver.

“I need your help.”

“No. No more. You had my help and it didn’t help, remember? Please, Jean.”

“Daniel Cooper’s got Jeff Stevens.”

The silence on the other end of the line was deafening.

“Tracy? Are you still there?”

“What do you mean he’s ‘got’ Jeff?”

“Kidnapped. Abducted. Maybe worse, I don’t know. Cooper left a letter. It’s addressed to you.”

“It can’t be!” Tracy suppressed a sob. “Why?”

“I don’t know why. But I opened it and it’s a riddle, and I’m pretty sure that if you can’t help me solve it, Jeff Stevens is a dead man.”

More silence.

“I’m sorry, Tracy.”

After what felt like an age, Tracy’s voice crackled back onto the line.

“Read it to me.”

Jean exhaled. “Okay. This is it. ‘My dearest Tracy . . .’ ”

“He wrote ‘my dearest’?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“ ‘My dearest Tracy. I have taken Mr. Stevens hostage. I hope, for Mr. Stevens’s sake and for your own, that you will act on the instructions contained in this note. What I write below will make sense to you and you alone. Do what I ask and neither you nor Stevens will be hurt. And come alone. Yours ever, D.C.’


“Has he sent you messages like this before?” Jean asked.

“No. No messages. Never. I’d have told you if he had. What else did he write?”

“Nothing. Just the riddle. You ready?”

Tracy closed her eyes. “Go ahead.”

“Okay, so it’s sort of like a poem. It’s in four stanzas.”

Four stanzas? Jesus. “Okay.”

Jean cleared his throat and began to read Cooper’s words aloud in his soft, Canadian accent:

“ ‘Twenty Knights at three times three



Waiting for the Queen will be.



Her lover, husband, destiny



Beneath the stars, where God can see.’





“That’s the first stanza. Mean anything to you?”

Tracy sighed. “No. Nothing. Knights and queens, maybe something to do with a card game?” She realized she was clutching at straws. “Go ahead and read to the end. Maybe it’ll make more sense as a whole.”

“Okay.” Rizzo went on: “So then he writes:

“ ‘Thirteen lambs at altar slain,



Fourteen suffers daily pain,



Soon to end, his sins erased,



The shroud of old will be replaced.’





“Then:

“ ‘Dance the dance in black and white,



Where masters meet, the time is right.



Six hills, one was lost,



Here shall sinners learn the cost.’