13th Apostle by Richard F. Heller, Rachael F. Heller Page A

asked.
    She shook her head.
    â€œDoes Ludlow know about it?”
    â€œHe did,” she said softly. Her face tightened.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Gil asked.
    He waited for her answer, knowing she was about to put into words what he already suspected.
    â€œLudlow’s dead,” she said simply and turned to slip the browned piece of paper back into its zip-lock bag.
    Gil grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her to face him. The fragile piece of antiquity fluttered to the floor. Sabbie gasped.
    â€œWhat do you mean, he’s dead?” Gil demanded.
    â€œHe’s dead, okay? He’s dead. That’s all there is to it.”
    â€œNo, it’s not okay and that’s not all there is to it. I have a right to know what happened to him, you know. I mean, after all, I knew the old guy. You can’t just say he’s dead and leave it at that,” Gil retorted.
    Sabbie’s heart pounded in her neck but her voice remained steady. Her face betrayed no emotion whatsoever.
    â€œFirst of all,” she began, “you only met Ludlow once, that’s all. You didn’t know him. If you could even think of him as ‘the old guy,’ you didn’t know him.”
    She stooped and carefully retrieved the brown piece of paper from the floor. Still, with gloved hands, she lovingly sealed it in its thin plastic bag.
    She continued in the same irritating cool manner. “Second, in your self-indulgent temper tantrum just now, you could have destroyed the very thing ‘the old guy,’ as you put it, gave his life for.”
    Gil stared at the ancient paper. He wanted to know all that she wasn’t telling him. Asking her was useless. Worse than useless. Whatever Sabbie knew about Ludlow’s death, she wasn’t about to reveal to him. Whatever she was feeling, she was not about to reveal either. Always in control. Oh, how he’d love to see her break. Just once.
    Apparently finished with the conversation, Sabbie turned and walked to the other side of the room to return the ancient paper to the wall safe.
    Images of Ludlow lying dead from a dozen causes flashed across Gil’s mind. A deep sadness washed over him. Poor old guy .
    Remembering Sabbie’s belittlement of the phrase, Gil raised a third finger in the air toward the back Sabbie had turned toward him. It was a stupid, impotent gesture but, save for smacking her in the head, it was all he had available to him at the moment.
    God, what a bitch she was.

Chapter 18
    Later that morning
Office of the Translator
    It only took four steps to cross the tiny office. Gil had been pacing for an hour and, as far as he could figure, he must have covered the same ground several hundred times.
    Where the hell is she? She can’t keep disappearing like this.
    He had found Elias’ message! It was right there in the message he had hidden in the binding. Not a number substitution, not a word frequency count. Nothing a code breaker would have looked for. This was a cybersleuth’s kind of pattern. It made you work for the pleasure of the discovery and, once you nailed it, it put you to work all over again.
    The sound of the door opening stopped Gil mid-pace.
    â€œWhere the hell have you…”
    â€œUh uh uh,” DeVris said as he entered. He shook his index finger in mock rebuke. “Thou shalt not curse within these hallowed halls.”
    â€œSorry, I didn’t expect you.”
    â€œObviously.”
    DeVris sorted through a stack of books on the floor. He opened each volume and riffled through the pages.
    â€œEverything okay?” Gil asked. He had not seen the Director since his first day at the Museum. At the time, he had seemed quite imposing. Now, outside the confines of his richly decorated office, DeVris looked a great deal less impressive.
    â€œDo me a favor,” the Director said, pointing to Sabbie’s old oak desk. “Reach into the top right-hand drawer and see if there’s a