Page 50 of Deadly Secrets
As he typed on his laptop, Brooke pointed at the individual sigils. “You can see that they share the same root—this line here.”
The main line was vertical, like a tree trunk, and each had a different line connected to it underneath some scrolling lines and dashes.
A new image appeared of the three sigils merged into one. Win had made each a different color so it was easy to see where they overlapped. Brooke used her finger to outline the center root. Then she picked up one of the markers and drew the sigil that haunted her dreams next to the projected one on screen. “This sigil was on a notecard left in my rental car last night. The same sigil carved into the forehead of my childhood friend twenty years ago.”
She used a different color marker to highlight the main line. “It has the same root.”
Mitch tapped his pen on the table. “Can you overlay that on the others?” he asked Win.
“I scanned the notecard before sending it off for prints,” Win said. “Give me a second to project it.”
More typing and then the scanned image appeared. On the smart board, it moved over the top of the merged images and dropped down.
Thomas, who’d had his long legs kicked up on a nearby chair, sat forward. “Whoa. Does anyone see what I see?”
“A swastika,” Nadia said. “Not a traditional one, but sort of a 3D version.”
Brooke took a step back, adjusting her view, and yep, there it was. A partial hooked cross that most people identified with Nazi Germany, only in this case, the lines were connecting on different faces of a cube. “This is actually an antahkarana.”
“What’s that?” Roman and Cooper both asked at the same time.
“A symbol used in Reiki—an eastern energy medicine for healing. The antahkarana is a cube, so that’s why these lines appear to be 3D and the sigils look like they’re connected by the center line.”
She pointed to one of the hooked lines. “If this were actually 3D and you turned it, you would see the lines continue to branch off. Fill in all the lines and you have a cube. The extraneous scrolling lines and dashes are extra. They don’t connect to this main sigil.”
“So those are more of the individual signatures—what makes them unique,” Emma theorized, “and there are more lines to come, because the other apostles have yet to add their sigils.”
Brooke nodded. “The hooked cross motif is an ancient pagan symbol seen as far back as Neolithic Eurasia. Most cultures consider it sacred, denoting life, good fortune, and well being. Hitler stole it, his followers adopted it, and the rest is history as they say.”
Emma made a note. “It continues to stand for the Aryan Nation and its subgroups.”
“Correct.” Brooke leaned against the smart board. “At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, famous archeologist Heinrich Schliemann linked the hooked cross he found on some German pottery to a similar design at a site in ancient Troy. Many Germans saw it as a symbol of their ancestors and took up the symbol for luck. Soon it became one of Aryan identity. Those who favor a racially pure state continue to use it.”
Roman sighed heavily. “Which fits with our killer’s end game to take out nonwhite immigrants.”
“He and his followers have bastardized the swastika once again,” Brooke added.
“Any sharpening of those images from the video on campus last night?” Roman called over to Shane.
The hacker, still at his desk, jerked out his earbuds. “Yeah. I’ll bring them up. Also, I tried tracking Dr. Heaton’s laptop digitally, but there’s no signal from it at all. The guy who stole it hasn’t turned it on.”
Well, that was one thing she could be grateful for.
Two new pictures appeared on the smart board, both from the campus video.
“I’m still running the guy’s biometrics through the TrackREC system,” Shane added. “It’ll take time.”
“Is that Emit Petit’s system?” Cooper asked.
Roman nodded. “I can’t figure out who’s smarter, Emit or Bianca.”
“Beatrice,” Thomas said. “Remember, she changed her name?”
“Right.” Roman saw Brooke staring at him with curiosity and he shrugged. “Top secret stuff you don’t need to worry about. The important thing is that the best minds in the country are helping us.”
Brooke eyed the masked man in the shot taken at her car. The still photo was from when he’d looked around, probably checking to make sure he was alone before he broke the window.
His eyes were the only thing clearly visible and her breath caught, her mind searching, searching, searching for any memory of those eyes.
