Finally.

It was the real reason she had stayed out in the cold. She removed the phone and flipped it open.

"Speak," she said.

"Do they still have the package?" The voice on the phone was calm and assured but crisp at the edges, with an American accent. It was her sole point of contact, a woman named Krista Magnussen.

Seichan bridled at having to take orders from anyone, but she had no choice. She had to prove herself. "Yes. The artifact is secure. They're meeting with the contact right now."

"Very good. We'll make our move once they're at the excavation site in the mountains. The team set the charges in place last night. The fresh snowfall should cover up any evidence."

"And the objective?"

"Remains the same. To light a fire under them. In this case, literally. The archaeological site is now more of a liability than an asset. But its destruction must appear natural."

"And you have that covered."

"We do. Leaving you free to focus fully on your objective."

Seichan read the threat behind the words. There would be no excuse for failure. Not if she wanted to live.

As she listened to the mission specifics, she continued to watch the hotel window. Not focusing on Gray any longer, she stared at the Italian woman seated beside him. Rachel smiled at something the professor said, her eyes sparking warmly even across the cold distance.

Seichan held nothing against Rachel Verona-but that would not stop her from poisoning the woman.

11:11 A.M.

Rachel listened as the conversation continued. While the professor's history lesson was intriguing, she sensed something deeper going on here-in regard to the story of Father Giovanni and something else, something yet unspoken. The man's gaze kept lingering on her, not lasciviously, but more like he was sizing her up. She had a hard time maintaining eye contact with him.

What was going on?

"I still don't understand," Gray said beside her. "What does this Doomsday Book have to do with your discovery up in the mountains?"

Wallace held up a hand, asking for patience. "First of all, the book's true name wasn't Doomsday, but rather Domesday. After the old English root dom, which meant 'reckoning' or 'accounting.' The book was commissioned by King William as a means to assess the value of his newly conquered lands, a way to assign tax and tithing. It mapped out all of England, down to every town, village, and manor house, and took a census of the local resources, from the number of animals and plows in the fields to the number of fish in its lakes and streams. To this day, the book remains one of the best glimpses of life during that time."

"That's all fine," Gray pressed, plainly wanting to hurry him along. "But you mentioned that a single entry led to your current excavation. What were you talking about?"

"Ah, now there's the rub! You see, the Domesday Book was written in a cryptic form of Latin, compiled by a single scribe. There remains some mystery as to why this level of security was necessary. Some historians have wondered if there might not have been a secondary purpose to this great compilation, some secret accounting. Especially as a few of the places listed in the book are ominously marked with a single word in Latin that meant 'wasted.' Most of those locations are concentrated in the northwest region of England, where the borders were constantly changing."

"By the northwest," Rachel asked, "you mean like here, the Lake District?"

"Exactly. The county of Cumbria was rife with border wars. And many of the spots listed as wasted were sites where the king's army had destroyed a town or village. They were noted because you couldn't tax what no longer existed."

"Really?" Kowalski asked, scowling at his two glasses of ale. "Then you never heard of the death tax?"

Wallace glanced from Kowalski to Gray.

"Just ignore him," Gray recommended.

Wallace cleared his throat. "Closer study of the Domesday Book revealed a bit of a mystery. Not all of the wasted sites were the result of conquest. A scattering of references had no explanation. These few were marked in red ink, as though someone had been tracking something significant. I sought some explanation and spent close to ten years on one of those entries, a reference to a small village up in the highland fells that no longer exists. I searched for records to this place, but it was as if they'd been expunged. I almost gave up until I found an odd mention in the diary of a royal coroner named Martin Borr. I found his book up at Saint Michael's."