Tear of the Gods by Alex Archer Page B

audience with his employer. He’d been working for Shaw long enough to know that while he disliked incompetence, he hated those who shirked personal responsibility even more. Jackson stood a better chance of coming through this alive if he delivered his report in person, as backward as that might seem.
    Surviving the next fifteen minutes was something he very much wanted to do.
    Motion at the head of the stairs caught his attention and he stood straighter as he saw his employer come into sight. Shaw was still dressed; that was a good sign. That meant Jackson hadn’t had the misfortune of waking him from one of his infrequent periods of sleep. In the back of his head, Jackson rated his chances of getting through this five percent higher than he had a moment before.
    But only five.
    “Do you have my property, Mr. Jackson?” Shaw asked as he descended the stairs.
    Nothing to do to play it straight.
    “No, sir.”
    That obviously wasn’t the answer Shaw had been expecting to hear. Jackson watched as a series of expressions crossed the other man’s face, everything from surprise to distaste, but thankfully outright anger wasn’t yet one of them.
    Knock that percentage up a few more notches.
    “Pray tell me why not,” Shaw said. His tone had gotten noticeably colder.
    Like the good soldier that he was, Jackson laid out the events of earlier that evening in clear, concise sentences. Shaw didn’t say a word until Jackson got to the part about the woman and the sword.
    “She actually attacked you with a sword?” he asked, though Jackson couldn’t tell if that was because Shaw didn’t believe him or if he found the whole situation as weird as it sounded.
    Settling on the latter, Jackson replied. “Yes, sir. While I’m no expert on medieval weaponry, if I had to hazard a guess I’d say it was an English long sword. Perhaps something they uncovered in the dig?”
    Shaw waved the question aside.
    “What did you do with this woman?” Shaw asked.
    “I shot her, sir.”
    “Dead?”
    Jackson thought about the way the woman’s body had flopped when they’d tossed it into the bog with the rest of them. “Yes, sir.” Though, now that he thought about it, he didn’t know what had happened to the sword.
    “A pity. Might have been an interesting conversation there. Go on.”
    Jackson explained how they’d tricked the team that had responded to the call for help, after which they searched both the camp and the bodies of the dead, but had been unable to find the torc anywhere. “Perhaps they packed it up and sent it back to Oxford before we arrived?” he ventured, looking for some reason, some excuse, why he was standing there empty-handed. He was not a man accustomed to failure and he particularly didn’t like the way that this assignment had turned out. It was always the easy ones….
    “Give me your assessment of the police response,” Shaw ordered.
    Jackson was prepared for the question and didn’t hesitate. “They have to send a team out to the site in the morning, sir. It’s standard operating procedure. They would have done so tonight if they’d had anyone reasonably close. The fact that the site is in the middle of nowhere played to our advantage.”
    His employer considered his assessment for a moment and then nodded. “I want you on the ground with that regional police unit when it arrives in the morning. If the torc turns up, I expect you to do what is necessary to recover it. Are we clear?”
    Jackson nodded. There was a reason he knew so much about the regional police; he’d been on the active duty roster for the past seven years, ever since mustering out of the regiment. He’d expected Shaw to give that very order and had already made sure that he’d be assigned to the duty in the morning. With dawn only a few hours away, it meant even less sleep than he’d expected to get, but beggars can’t be choosy. He was just happy to have escaped his employer’s wrath.
    “I want that torc, Mr.