Page 40 of Light Me Up

Details of the cross’s carvings appeared on the screen. The scholar tapped a button on the media controls to zoom in on magnified images of the Last Supper and began to talk. Caro’s mind was too scrambled to understand any of it.

She looked up at Noah. “It’s over,” she whispered. “I’m OK now.”

“Like hell,” hemuttered back.

Caro suddenly realized that he’d deactivated the shield protection on his lenses. His eyes glowed luminous amber. She must have scared him half to death to make him go bare-eyed in a place this public, even for a moment. He looked tense and worried.

“Shield your eyes,” she murmured. “Really. I’m fine.”

Noah looked down for a second, and when he looked up, his eyes were black again. He put his arm around her. “Babe. Want to leave?Because I do.”

“What?” Her gaze had drifted to the cross before he spoke, and she stared at it, suddenly confused. Blinked. Stared at it again.

No way.

“Noah,” she whispered. “The cross.”

“What about it?” His voice was impatient. “Right now, I could give a flying fuck about the cross, Caro. I’m worried about you.”

She barely heard him, she was so focused on the spotlit cross. “It’s dead.”

Noah narrowed his eyes. “Meaning?”

“Inert, I mean. There’s nothing. I feel nothing. No buzz, no hum, no force field like I usually get with an art masterwork.”

“Oh.” He pondered that for a moment. “Huh. Looks pretty damn impressive to me, but whatever you say. Getting back to my question, does this mean we can leave now? Because I am down with that.”

An older lady, dressed in pink and draped in twinkling jewelry, scowled over her shoulder and shushed them loudly.

Caro pulled Noah closer until his ear was closer to her mouth. “You don’t understand,” she whispered fiercely. “There’s no way that thing is the product of sixteen years of obsessive work and spiritual devotion.”

“Ah. So…you’re saying that this isn’t Orazio’s cross?”

“Right. It’s a fake. An incredibly convincing fake.”

Chapter 11

Noah looked up at the ornate cross of blazing gold that loomed over the room. Caro’s words had given him an ugly chill. “Maybe so,” he said. “I’m glad it’s not my problem. Consider this possibility, babe, even if it hurts you. Maybe Orazio just didn’t have the stuff.”

“No. I would have felt the energy he put into it. Even if his technique was weak.” She looked up at the cross again. “Which it is definitely not.”

Noah blew out a frustrated sigh. “This is making me tense.”

“Me, too. It would cost a fortune to make a fake that good,” Caro said. “Someone must have had a really compelling reason.”

That thought made his neck crawl nastily. “Maybe,” he said. “But I don’t want to ponder that reason tonight.Let’s just go.”

She tightened her grip on his arm. “We should tell them first.”

“Who, exactly? And tell them what? Why would they believe us? We’re not on their team. We’d just create a lot of confusion and possibly wind up in the deepest of shit.”

“Morelli, at least,” she urged. “He’s Asa’s friend. Just a heads-up.”

“I’ll text him from outside,”Noah conceded.

“Let’s tell him now,” she urged. “Something’s really wrong. Tell him now. I havea bad feeling.”

“Tell me about it,” he said fervently. “I’ve had a bad feeling ever since we got the invite.”

---