With a heavy sigh, Ascher then paged through the book until he came to what he was looking for. He pointed out a specific paragraph, said, "Have you a disagreement with this?"

Annja read the paragraph. It stated Charles de Batz-Castelmore's bloodline had indeed been extinguished when both his male grandchildren died, without progeny.

"Just because it's written doesn't make it historically accurate. Scholars have disproven historical texts throughout the centuries. And d'Artagnan did have a sister who survived his death, as well as Paul, his brother, who lived to the amazing age of ninety-four. No matter, we still can't keep found treasure," she said, finishing on a yawn.

"You should lie down, Annja. I will get a blanket for you to rest. I've a private guest room upstairs. The sun will rise in a few hours, and then we will attempt to unroll the map, oui? oui?"

Ascher left her again and called back he was getting a blanket.

"Sure," she said, but absently, she wasn't even aware of her mouth moving. The bergamot steam from the fragrant tea should waken her senses but she wasn't feeling it.

She shrugged a palm up her arm, feeling fatigue plunge upon her like a mallet. It had been a long day, but well worth it.

The sudden loss of light startled her to alertness.

The piercing scream of an alarm bit into the back of Annja's neck.

An alarm? Had someone broken into the house? But who-?

Instantly, she knew. The gunmen. They must have followed them from the dig site.

The sword dupe must have been discovered. And if someone had been cruel enough to rip out Ascher's kidney in warning, then they likely wouldn't stop until they held the real prize in their hands.

The rapier was in danger.

The kitchen was small and in the center of the house. Darkness unhampered by windows disoriented Annja. The hallway was about ten paces to the left, she knew.

Stepping around the last bar stool, she slunk forward. Sliding her palms across the chair rail that dashed waist level along the wall, she found the main hallway that led to the front door. The den had been to the left of the entrance. Narrow decorative windows hugged the front doors, but no light shone through for it was still dark outside.

The alarm chirped loudly. Annja wondered if it was connected to a security office somewhere in Sens. Would the police soon arrive? That could either be a good thing or not so good. You see, Officers, we have this map-which we were going to follow to a treasure without reporting it to the state of France...

That was Ascher's plan. But not hers.

Annja arrived at an open doorway. The den. The pervading scent of earth lured her to the cool marble table. Paper crinkled at her touch. The rapier blade was cool beneath her palm. She grabbed it-no time for gloves-then carefully felt around for the pommel and the map. She didn't feel anything. A cursory check of the sword proved the pommel had been screwed back on. She was sure she'd left it off, setting it against the map to protect it from rolling to the floor.

A twist easily removed the pommel. Blindly poking about inside the grip, she did not feel anything.

Rushing toward the doorway in the foyer, Annja saw a shadow move outside.

"You think so, huh? Not on my watch," she muttered.

She pulled open the front door. There were no yard lights. But there, to her right, footsteps crunched across the pebbled gravel driveway.

Transferring d'Artagnan's rapier to her left hand, she then willed Joan's sword into her right. Annja got a strange thrill to note she held swords that had once belonged to two remarkable historical figures. Who would have thought the two would ever combine forces?

With a sure grip about the hilts, she rushed out and ran after the dark figure.

The night had cooled considerably. Stars sprinkled the sky, yet the moonless dark made everything appear as gray shadows and unedged ghosts.

She got close enough to the intruder to hear breathing and called out, "Stop!"

The shuffling of gravel ceased. Annja could make out the silhouette of a person standing about twenty paces from her. Dressed all in black, he was probably wearing a mask for the lack of definition to the face. To her left stood a building, which might have been a sort of barn.

A brief glint rising before the intruder's shoulder set off Annja's instincts.

Lunging, she slashed low, aiming for wrist or hip, but the powerful sword merely cut air. The thief had dodged into black on black. Footsteps were no longer audible. There must be a stretch of gra.s.s along the gravel. Yet Annja knew he-or she?-had not left the area.

The sound of steel hissing through the night alerted her two seconds before the cool kiss of a blade struck the outside of her elbow. Not a cutting blow, but it did electrify her funny bone.

The thief had come armed with his own sword? Or had he stolen one from Ascher's collection?

Bending forward and low to avoid the next sweep of blade, Annja, balancing awkwardly with d'Artagnan's rapier thrust out behind her, moved in to strike the black silhouette, yet missed again.

A great sweep of her opponent's blade whooshed past her face, but it was too far away to do any harm. Did the night steal the thief's prowess, or did they not intend to harm? Anyone could have made that strike, even in the dark.

"The property you stole belongs to France," Annja tried. She lunged and her blade connected.

Her opponent grunted, but in a manner that clued her he'd not taken grievous harm.

A tremendous creaking alerted Annja to something outside the immediate duel range. A whoosh whoosh and the feeling of impending danger made her dodge to the left. Something struck her cheek with quick, lashing strokes. and the feeling of impending danger made her dodge to the left. Something struck her cheek with quick, lashing strokes.

Annja staggered. She brushed the back of a fisted hand across her stinging cheek. The crash of a wooden pallet landed but a foot from where she stood. Startled off balance, Annja went to her knees. Dry hay shards rained about her. She spit out a stray bit of straw.

The nondescript building she hadn't been able to physically see must be a barn. A pallet of hay had been dangling overhead from the pulley system, in wait of storage in the loft. The thief had cut the rope.

Annja spit more hay from her mouth. She snapped out her right hand in frustration, literally throwing Joan's sword back into the otherwhere.

"Luck is not with me this evening."

The map was gone. Along with a bit of her pride at such an easy defeat.

Annja slashed through the air with d'Artagnan's rapier. The musketeer's presence hadn't helped the medieval warrior to succeed. He and Joan would have never made a good pair, anyway.

She wasn't sure what to believe anymore. Was this a futile quest for a mere artifact? She could only make conjectures to what the map was worth. Anyone who knew about it would take a chance to get their hands on it. But very few did know about it. Or so she suspected.

Unless a certain treasure hunter had been babbling about his find online. Or if he was working with someone who had a bead on his only remaining kidney.

Said treasure hunter was strangely missing at the moment. Where is Vallois? she wondered.

Shaking her shoulders and brushing them with her free hand to remove the loose hay, Annja then transferred the rapier to her right hand and stalked back into the house.

There was more to this. Annja felt it in her very bones.

And now the most valuable piece of evidence had been stolen.

HIS MEN WORKED all hours of the clock. They had no concept of night and day and when a man should be sleeping or even eating, for that matter. They were machines. They slept when there was opportunity, and if there was not, they did not.

Jacques Lambert now paced before the two men he had sent to retrieve the sword from Ascher Vallois.

"Such a simple task," he hissed. His alligator loafers clicked crisply across the marble floor. "And you actually admit you allowed a woman to get the upper hand over the two of you? Three-hundred-pound behemoths with guns?"

He eyed both men, but they remained silent. As they should.

Jacques walked to the wall and stopped, eye level with the exquisite sword he'd obtained two years ago off the Spanish coast. An eighteenth-century saber of blued steel inlaid with gold. A real pirate's booty. "Which of the two of you is responsible?"

Silence.

And then.

"He is, Monsieur Lambert." Thornton had spoken. From the corner of his eye, Lambert could see he hung his head so eye contact was impossible.

Gripping the hilt of the Spanish sword with his left hand, Jacques tore it from the rack. Turning in a swift spin, he thrust the blade through the center of Thornton's heart. He pushed the blade steadily, stepping forward as it glided through flesh, thick muscle and cartilage as if through an aged soft cheese.

Thornton's mouth gaped. His eyes went wide, unseeing. Blood drooled from his mouth. But he still stood. Jacques did not have to support his weight. Yet.

"See how the blood runs down the center of the blade?" Jacques said. "That divot in the blade is called a blood groove. There is a misconception that it is there to allow the blood to flow down the blade. But in fact, it is there to prevent suction when removing the blade."

The other man had nothing to say. Until-"But...he was right. It was my fault."

"Magnanimous of you to confess, Manny." Jacques slowly withdrew the blade from Thornton's chest. "There. You see? A flat blade would have given a struggle to remove." Blood spattered his wrist and the front of his white Armani shirt. Such a bother.

"Why didn't I kill you instead, you wonder?"

The man nodded, a cross between a yes and a no.

"I'm not much for tattlers, truth be told. There now, catch him as he falls. And do carry him out before he bleeds on the floor. Italian marble is so difficult to clean."

The man caught Thornton as, indeed, his body teetered forward. It was an obvious struggle to contain the behemoth, but Manny managed to hook him under the arms and drag him from the room.

"No mistakes next time," Jacques called as the door closed.

He drew up the sword before him and observed as the blood pooled at the base of the blood grove and drooled over the swept hilt. "I'd preserve this DNA evidence if the idiot weren't such a loathsome individual."

Drawing the blade across the sleeve of his opposite arm, he cleaned away the blood then returned the sword to its position on the wall. A closet with a dozen clean white shirts waited in the adjoining room. He walked inside and sorted through the shirts, all identical, and each bearing a simple white embroidery of the pirate's skull and crossbones just over the left breast.

"A woman, eh?"

Manny had described her as young, athletic and gorgeous. Also, she had been fearless.

"This adds a new twist to the adventure."

8.

Rapier clutched firmly in hand-no way was she letting it out of sight now-Annja stalked into the foyer of Ascher's home.

The lights were on.

From around the corner, and inside the den, Ascher dashed out. "Are you safe? I took chase after the thief..."

"So did I." She crossed an arm over her chest, but held firmly to the sword in her other hand. While not exactly angry with Ascher, she was troubled. "Where were you? I didn't see you outside."

"You have the rapier!"

Annja wasn't feeling the Frenchman's elation. Nor did she trust him at this moment. "Where were you?"

"I took after a man out the back door. It was wide open. The thief must have entered that way."

"But I I chased someone through the front yard and over in front of the barn. Do you think there were two of them?" chased someone through the front yard and over in front of the barn. Do you think there were two of them?"

"Annja, your cheek. Are you hurt?" He reached for her face, but she flinched.

"Rope burn. You're so cavalier about this, Ascher. Your house has been broken into. You've been robbed. How are the lights on?"

"It was the circuit breaker. Someone must have thrown the switch."

While Ascher had gone to get the blanket for her? And then to get to the sword so quickly and not run into Ascher, who should know his own home in the dark? There must have been two of them.

The same two she'd battled outside the forest? Annja hadn't given either any capacity in the brains department-at least not to plan so successful a heist.

"The map is gone," she said.

"It is?" He stepped back into the den, and Annja heard a growl, and what sounded like a fist punching into the butcher's paper. "I thought they wanted-b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

"It's probably crumbled to flakes by now," she muttered. "There is no way a thief could have had the forethought to know what the map would be like and what precautions would be required to keep it in one piece."

"Annja..." Ascher rubbed a hand over his tousled hair. Sweat glossed his forehead.

"Did you see me fighting the thief out by the barn?" she asked.

"No. It was too dark, but I heard struggling. Is that how you were hurt? I'm so sorry."

"I'll live. So you heard commotion?"

"Oui. I thought I heard someone run by me, so I took chase. I gave up at the edge of the property. The neighbors grow wheat. There's a freshly plowed field that edges my property. Impossible to run through the clods of dirt with any speed. I figured I must have been chasing a ghost." I thought I heard someone run by me, so I took chase. I gave up at the edge of the property. The neighbors grow wheat. There's a freshly plowed field that edges my property. Impossible to run through the clods of dirt with any speed. I figured I must have been chasing a ghost."

"I didn't hear a vehicle. Whoever it was had to have parked far away. Your driveway is very long."

"Yes, but the main road is half a mile to the east, across the wheat field. If the thief had a flashlight, he could have made a quick escape."