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

Her shoulders trembled, and her face had turned crimson. “Of course I care!” she shouted and waved her arm around the room. “Do you think all of this— any of this—is going to bring Mom and Dad back?”
    The raw pain in her voice silenced him. He had never heard that tone in her voice. It scared him.
    She continued, “All this! Mom’s sketchbook, these treasures—to see them, to be near them—all it does is hurt .” She turned her back on the pyramid. “So why look? What good does it do?”
    Jake’s eyes widened.
    She shook her head. “I can’t stand it. Even you!”
    “What about me?” Jake asked, wounded.
    She swung toward him again. “Why don’t you cut your hair like everyone else?”
    Jake fingered the hair from his eyes, confused.
    “You look so much like Dad that I can hardly stand to look at you.”
    He remembered her earlier words. All it does is hurt .
    She sniffed and turned her back on him. “Sometimes…sometimes I wish you were never—”
    A sudden flash filled the room accompanied by a cracking boom .
    The floor jumped underfoot, and frightened screams echoed from the courtyard. Jake and Kady both turned toward the courtyard and stepped closer to one another. The overhead lights flickered and died.
    Blackness swallowed the room.
     
    “What happened?” Kady whispered in the darkness a moment later.
    Jake offered a guess. “Lightning strike. Must have hit the museum.”
    As their eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness, Jake noted a soft glow—coming from behind them. He turned and let out a surprised squeak.
    “What is it?” Kady gasped.
    Jake fumbled, grabbed Kady’s elbow, and turned her around. “Look!”
    A soft blue fire now bathed the pyramid. The flamesdanced at the feet of the dragon and spilled down the nine steps. Jake stared with his mouth hanging open. It took him a full breath to realize he had seen a similar display at a science museum.
    “Saint Elmo’s fire,” he said with awe. “Sailing ships used to see such ghostly flames along their masts during thunderstorms.”
    “But what’s causing it?”
    Jake stepped closer.
    “Be careful,” Kady warned, but still she followed him.
    Jake felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. “Don’t worry. It looks like it’s already dying down.”
    Like an ebbing tide, the fire receded, swimming and swirling away. Jake circled the pyramid and noted something strange.
    “Come see this,” he said, and pointed.
    The flames weren’t so much going out as they seemed to be draining down a round hole in the pyramid’s side. Curious, Jake bent closer. A curl of the stone dragon’s tail circled the hole. But the hole wasn’t really a hole. It was more of a shallow indentation in the gold surface—as if some jewel might have rested there but was now missing.
    The flames vanished away just as the red emergency lights kicked in and cast the room in a ruby glow.
    Jake straightened.
    Strange…
    Curious, he flipped open his mother’s sketchbook andfound the page with the pyramid’s sketch. In the weak light, he spotted the same hole portrayed on the drawing. It was just as blank.
    “Nothing’s here,” he mumbled, and tapped the spot.
    Kady leaned over him. “At least not any longer.” She reached out and felt the paper. “Look at how it’s smeared. I can still feel a faint impression in the paper. Something was once drawn here.”
    “You think it was erased?”
    Kady nodded. “Whoever did it, they did it in a hurry.”
    “Mom?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Jake lowered the sketchbook and stared at the gold pyramid. Why would their mother draw something, then erase it?
    He cocked his head and studied the hole.
    It was perfectly round, about the size of a—
    Jake slapped himself on the forehead.
    “Of course…” he mumbled.
    “What?”
    Jake didn’t answer. He closed the sketchbook and tucked it back away. He remembered another of his father’s lessons.
    Never assume something—that’s bad science—always test, then