Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow by James Rollins Read Free Book Online

curator lifted an arm toward the audience. “Everyone stay where you are. We’ll get the lights back up in the courtyard in a moment. While we wait, maybe it’s best we let the Ransom children enter the exhibit first, to have a private moment among the treasures that their parents discovered.”
    Murmured Ah s and How touching s flowed up from theaudience, along with some soft clapping.
    One voice, though, rose above the others, full of scorn. “ The treasures their parents discovered? Bah! More like stole !” The last word cracked across the courtyard like a rifle shot.
    Stunned silence followed.
    The man continued, “What about the rumors that the Ransoms are still alive in South America! That they staged their vanishing so they could abscond with the most valuable of the treasures!”
    Jake’s heart climbed to his throat. His cheeks burned with anger.
    “Hear, hear,” said the curator. “We’ll have none of these foul aspersions—”
    He was cut off with a bellow. “Richard and Penelope Ransom are nothing more than right common thieves, I tell you!”
    Lights flickered back on in the courtyard.
    Jake took off his eclipse goggles and picked out the man in the crowd. It was the toadish reporter from outside, the one who had been eating a doughnut.
    Jake took a step forward, ready to leap down and make the man take back his words—but a large palm stopped him and pushed him up onto the second-floor landing.
    Morgan Drummond gently shoved Kady after him. “No need for you to hear this ugliness. Go on into the exhibit.”
    Behind him, the curator called for security. The exhibit’s guards ran past Jake and Kady and pounded down the stairs.
    Still, he raved on. “Thieves! Charlatans! Blood is on the Ransoms’ hands!”
    Each utterance was a knife to Jake’s heart.
    Drummond gave him a push. “Go. I’ll join you in a bit.”
    Kady glanced at him. Her eyes were wide, stunned, scared. “Jake…”
    He had to get her away. “Let’s get going.”
    They hurried into the room across the landing. Jake stumbled along, half blind with anger. He was well into the exhibit before his brain finally registered the wonders around him.
    He stopped. Kady did, too.
    “It’s Mom and Dad,” Kady said.
    They had both halted in front of a giant poster. It was the same as the picture Jake had in his notebook. Their parents smiled goofily into the camera, dressed in muddy khakis and bearing aloft a block with Mayan carvings on it.
    Behind him, shouts still echoed from the courtyard.
    More lies about his folks.
    Jake stared up into the faces, blown up to life size. It was too much. He turned away. A particularly loud bellow reached him.
    “Murderers and thieves!”
    At that moment, Jake remembered something: how the toadish man had nodded to Morgan Drummond asthey had entered the museum.
    It was as if the two had known each other.
    The nod.
    Like it had been some planned signal.
    Jake remembered Drummond’s earlier revelation. Could this outburst be just another way to whip up more publicity for the show, to create some controversy around the exhibit, to sell more tickets?
    Or was it something more sinister?
     
    For another three minutes, Jake wandered through the exhibit, lost in his thoughts. Kady also circled the room. She kept her arms hugged tightly around her chest, as if fearful of touching anything. They moved through the room in separate orbits, like two planets that dared not cross paths.
    As Jake walked in the room, his worries began to fade. Wonder cooled the heated pounding of his heart. All around he spotted artifacts and relics as sketched or described in his parents’ books, like the double-headed snake from the brochure. In person, the strange serpent was even more dazzling, brightly lit under halogen lights. The snake’s eyes were rubies. The scales were carved with great detail into the gold. The fangs were made of slivers of ivory or perhaps bone.
    Jake reached into his vest and pulled out his father’s