The Illuminati Sanctum (The Relic Hunters 6) by David Leadbeater (best mobile ebook reader .txt) 📕

Situated south of Casas Grandes, the property covered many acres, most of it fallow field. There was only one obvious entrance: a circuitous dirt road that could be easily tracked and observed from afar. They could plant unobtrusive sensors around the property’s borders for added security. After all, Bodie thought, both he and Jemma knew what worked well and what didn’t. They’d had experience with most early warning systems in their time.

Was this the beginning of their retirement?

Ties cut. Contacts left behind. Lives unalterably changed. The ranch represented the radical new beginning of a vast lifestyle change.

There was no turning back.

CHAPTER SIX

Days passed. Bodie adopted the builder’s look, walking around with a tool-filled utility belt slung low at his hips, a baseball cap and boots. They cleared out an area close to the ranch house’s front door and erected ten internal walls to make five separate rooms with external doors in the shape of a small ‘n.’

It wasn’t hard work, although the daily buildup of heat inside the house and Cassidy’s constant grousing didn’t help. He fixed timbers to the floor, attached drywall and didn’t bother plastering the makeshift sleeping area. Once that was done, he directed Jemma and Yasmine to erect the beds they’d had delivered, whilst he turned his attention to the kitchen and the plumbing.

Cassidy contented herself with sorting out their security needs, which suited Bodie down to the ground. He made sure the Wi-Fi booster signal was working, that it was strong, and left her to it, hoping to see progress in the form of working alarms and a feed from a network of security cameras on their phones and laptops within days.

At first, it was surreal. Bodie found himself working, sweating, and thinking he might be dreaming more than once. The days were an endless blue, the fields smoldering and shimmering from horizon to horizon, blanketed by one of the deepest, most profound silences Bodie had ever experienced.

When he looked toward the front gate, far away and out of sight at the end of the dirt road, he realized the dust plumes marked a vehicle’s movement as well as any alarm. Cassidy had taken the Chevy down there, refusing to walk, along with six Desperados—of the bottled variety.

The house still looked beaten half to death, but it was starting to shape up inside. Bodie knelt to replace the final length of drainage he’d been working on that connected the house toilets to the septic tank, and smiled. The nastiest job was out of the way.

What’s next?

Bodie doubted he’d ever faced a project as big as this. There were services still to sort, plus lighting, the roof, and a thousand other jobs. The trick was to tackle them one at a time.

Cassidy’s mood improved considerably when Bodie proposed a full-on evening barbecue. Their internet capabilities were high, necessarily so out here, so they were able to order anything for delivery from the nearest large town just seven miles away. On a late afternoon at the back end of January, they took the night off their construction chores to unfold five cheap garden chairs in the middle of a rough, marked-out rectangle that would one day be their back yard.

Bodie fired up a brand new, gas-powered, premium barbecue with ten burners, side tables and side grills, after donning a dodgy apron with the body of a male stripper on the front. The metal spatula completed the look.

A hot sun blazed down, the endless blue broken only by large birds riding the thermal air currents, drifting back and forth. A large builder’s bucket, full of ice, was home to dozens of beer and water bottles.

Jemma and Lucie stacked the meat and salad onto oval plates and brought them from the oversized fridge freezer they’d bought to store months of food in. Cassidy was happy fetching condiments, everything she could think of from good old-fashioned ketchup to delicious steak sauce and spicy tabasco. Yasmine was in charge of the music, syncing her smart phone with Amazon Music and flicking through for an appropriate playlist.

Finally, with Cassidy’s help, Bodie cooked the food and dished it out. Seeing everyone gathered around, seated on garden chairs, brought an old memory to the surface. Jack Pantera had taken a young Bodie under his wing at an early age, teaching him the tricks of the trade along some of London’s most notorious streets. But on Sundays... it was all about friendship and solidarity.

It was the best part of Bodie’s week when he joined Jack and his friends for a barbecue under a hot summer sun; no tension, no risk, just uncounted hours of camaraderie and—conversely—a certain stillness. When six days of your week consisted of nerves, exhilaration and fear, the lack of any emotion but amity came as a soothing balm.

Now, he thought of his old friend, Pantera, and imagined the old troublemaker kicking back near Miami, no longer in a safehouse but staying close to his family. Pang would have men watching him, no doubt, but it’d be a perfunctory guard. No way would Pang assume Bodie was stupid enough to visit. Thoughts of Pantera inevitably took his mind to Cross and Gunn, both members of the old crew and now both dead.

One of the dilemmas of relic hunting and then absconding was that you couldn’t attend funerals—they had no idea what happened to Gunn’s body after his death at Dürnstein Castle, in view of the mighty Danube.

As he passed Yasmine a bread roll, he noticed Jemma with her laptop balanced across her knees, busily tapping away at the keys. The sight wasn’t unusual... the recipient was.

Hey Jack... the email began.

“Testing the ghostlines?” he asked tentatively.

“Not really. Miki set us up very well. I know you want to check in with Jack so I’m drafting a quick message for