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

Pang nodded his head in agreement. “Their past is colorful,” he said. “Where would you start?”

“With Jack Pantera. And when he gives us as little as he’s going to, I suggest we start when Bodie’s parents died, and work back.”

Heidi didn’t mind how long it took. Sooner or later, she’d tug at a thread that Bodie cared about.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Long days on the ranch became the norm. Bodie and the others did their best to make the ranch livable. On the surface at least, they grew accustomed to their new existence.

Cassidy hated it. Yasmine wasn’t happy. And Bodie—after just four days—was growing concerned.

Essentially, the lack of engagement in anything other than each other, the landscape, or a few curious wild animals, gnawed deep in Bodie’s gut. And worse was the knowledge that this wasn’t for one week, a month or even a year.

If they were to escape the attentions of the CIA, this was permanent.

With every good plan, it seemed, there came a dismal lining. Even throwing himself into manual labor fifteen hours a day and then crashing on an evening didn’t help much. With work came reflection... and with reflection came—ultimately—boredom.

This isn’t gonna work.

Cassidy had known it from the beginning of course. That girl knew everything. For Jemma and Lucie, things weren’t too bad. They passed their days making repairs or lost on the World Wide Web behind curtains of secrecy. Yasmine was an entirely different story.

The Moroccan kept inventing reasons to leave the ranch. She couldn’t stay still. Action and interaction were the sum total of everything that kept her wanting to live. She became the face of the ranch, the public persona—disguised to a degree—and with a mysterious husband at home that nobody had seen. All in all then, the team were a pressure cooker waiting to explode.

How to let off some steam?

Bodie counted the passing days. January became February. Weeks slouched by. Nothing much changed. They kept in touch with the world through news reports and social media, using the ghostlines that Miki had set up. They tried not to get involved, but the world moved on, drawing their attention.

A skyscraper in Los Angeles went up in flames. Two of the world’s most dangerous men—a contract assassin called the Devil and the man who’d shot US President Coburn, Luka Kovalenko, also known as the Blood King, were killed in a shootout at a casino in the Nevada desert. Both Lucie and Jemma expressed a wish to delve into the details of those incidents since rogue teams were involved, but decided they shouldn’t. The CIA would be monitoring all communications and internet activity, and nobody wanted to make the mistake of drawing undue attention.

Was there any way out of this lackluster hole they’d dug? In truth, it was better than agency servitude, but at least the CIA offered a certain amount of excitement with their enslavement.

On February 5th, Bodie—and the whole team—realized that their lives were about to change forever.

The day had been long and hard. He’d taken a shower, opened a beer, and was seated in a chair on the unfixed deck. A breeze was blowing in from the east: fresh, welcome and cooling. Jemma and Lucie were lazing around, whilst Yasmine and Cassidy had headed off for their respective runs about thirty minutes ago. Bodie had been considering a group chat, a discussion centered around how they might take more part in the world at large with new security backups in place. It was the best solution to their new and unforeseen problems that he could come up with.

And then everything changed.

Cassidy returned from her run, looking sweaty and red-faced. She took several deep breaths before nodding at Bodie.

“Enjoy that?” Bodie raised a bottle to her.

“You should try it. I see that spare tire growing around your waist.”

Bodie coughed and choked on his beer. “Are you kidding? I slave around here all day. Dawn till dusk. I—”

Cassidy snorted. “The only dawn you’ve ever seen is a girl from high school. How about a challenge then? Tomorrow, we’ll—”

A wildly gesticulating figure jumped into Bodie’s eyeline. He stared past Cassidy at an onrushing Yasmine.

“What the hell’s gotten into her?”

Everyone jumped quickly to their feet and rushed toward Yasmine.

“A whole parade of vehicles coming,” the Moroccan panted, slowing. “They filled the road out there. I spotted them from the hill.” She waved backward. “It doesn’t look good.”

Bodie stared from her to the horizon. “What kind of vehicles? And what do you mean by ‘parade?’”

“Black SUVs. All traveling together. Maybe six or seven down the main road. They were pretty tight.”

“Main road?” Lucie echoed. “But that doesn’t mean—”

“No, it doesn’t.” Bodie read her mind. “But it doesn’t mean they aren’t coming here either. Grab your bags.”

He didn’t want to leave anything to chance. The team dashed off, heading back into the house to grab their go bags, basically backpacks filled with essential items they might need on the run. Bodie darted into the hallway, collected his from behind the door and ran back out onto the porch.

“Rooster tails of dust there,” he murmured to nobody in particular.

“Yes,” Yasmine said from his right side. “They’ve turned off the highway onto our road.”

It was the tell-tale sign that no enemy could hide. Bodie knew they had time enough in which to make their escape. Right now, it didn’t matter who was coming; they simply needed to run.

“We good?” he asked.

Four affirmative replies were returned.

Bodie led the way across the porch and around the back of the house, tightening the backpack’s straps across his shoulders and scanning the eastern horizon. A swathe of darkness was out there, distant and still an hour away, but just starting to blot the blue skies like spilled ink.

Without another word, he jumped off the porch and hit