Read The Megiddo Mark, Part 1 for Free Online Page A

on?” Elizabeth mumbled from under the covers.
    “Nothing. Go back to sleep. I’ll take care of it.”
    “Surr . . .” Elizabeth snored.
    “Okay, I’m coming out.” She eased open the door and let out a relieved sigh as she saw the constable. An exhausting day had just morphed into a hell of a night. She felt soul weary and about ready to snap.
    “Are you hurt?”
    “No, just scared.” She sagged against the hallway wall.
    “Are you alone?”
    “No, my friend is asleep.” Malena nodded to the door she’d closed behind her.
    “Looks like a burglary. Can you come take a look to see if anything is missing? Then we’ll need to wake your friend to question her.”
    She pushed away from the wall to walk downstairs to survey the open kitchen-living room layout of the ground floor. Her purse and briefcase lay overturned on the floor. She strode over to see if anything had been taken. Rifling through her wallet, and the contents of her briefcase, she looked up at the officer standing over her. “They didn’t take anything. Not my money. Not my passport. Not even my plane ticket back to America.”
    She took another survey of the room. The desk had been wrecked, all the papers tossed on the floor. Books had been fanned and then thrown aside. Someone had been looking for something.
    The officers questioned her, filed their reports, and finally, after what seemed like hours, left her alone to clean up. She shooed Elizabeth back upstairs to bed. The grandfather clock chimed three o’clock in the morning.
    Malena glanced around the kitchen. Nothing else had been touched in here. Turning around, she came face to face with the empty bulletin board.
    The poem was gone.
    The handwritten copy she’d made before bed had vanished.
    Malena shivered.
    They’d been after the poem?
    Someone had been looking for the poem hidden in the book. At least she still had the original in the nightstand beside her bed. But now someone else had a copy. Should she inform the police? Was it even important? Who would want a copy of a poem?
    She couldn’t believe the precise timing of the break-in. She’d purchased the book at auction this morning in Oxford. No one else knew the poem even existed. Yet in that short time someone had broken into her house to steal it. A house she’d just moved into today.
    Why would anyone else be interested in Flights of Fancy or the hidden poem? The day had gone from bizarre to surreal. She didn’t even want to think about what would have happened tonight if she hadn’t been awake when the break-in occurred.
    Someone else wanted this book and its secrets.
    Now, more than ever, Malena needed to figure out the poem. And according to her conversation with her dreamscape aunt, Malena needed to start at the bookshop. In normal circumstances, she wouldn’t give credence to her dreams, but what did she have to lose? Someone wanted the poem badly enough to ransack her house. Those clues meant something very real to someone. The poem spoke of a murderer. The stakes were bigger than she’d ever imagined. Malena hoped she was wrong. She couldn’t shake the niggling feeling of uneasiness that settled in the pit of her stomach. She had to find answers, quickly. She only hoped she could do it before something terrible happened.
    As she grabbed her overturned purse, Malena saw the card the man in Oxford tucked into her pocket that afternoon. She’d told herself she’d throw it in the trash when she arrived in London, but instead she’d dropped it in her purse without even glancing at it. Now she stared at the white rectangle, flipped upside down on the floor. He wanted the book and he knew she had it. She picked up the card. His precise, slanted writing identified a restaurant for their meeting later that evening. She turned over the business card. Glossy letters listed Wade Acquisitions as the company owned and operated by Cullen Wade.
    Wade. She’d gotten it all wrong. She thought he’d introduced himself as