Relic Hunters Taskforce Box Set Read online

  Relic Hunters Taskforce 4 Book Box Set

  Ruth Hartzler

  Relic Hunters Taskforce 4 Book Box Set

  Prequel + Books 1, 2, & 3

  Copyright © 2020 by Ruth Hartzler

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The personal names have been invented by the authors, and any likeness to the name of any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All translations are the author’s, apart from the Herodotus quote inscribed on the James Farley Post Office in New York City which was by Professor George H. Palmer.

  Contents

  Inscription

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Scroll

  FACT

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Papyrus

  FACT

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Codex

  FACT

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Connect with Ruth Hartzler

  Other Books by Ruth Hartzler

  About Ruth Hartzler

  Inscription

  Relic Hunters Taskforce (Prequel)

  1

  No one would miss Dr. Abigail Spencer.

  Stark smiled. The inscription wasn’t far. He could sense it. He would find it. And Abigail Spencer would retrieve the priceless artifacts for him.

  He slit the man’s throat with a swift stroke of his blade. The fool deserved it, double-crossing him by arranging to sell the inscription to Vortex.

  The inscription in the man’s possession wasn’t the one he was after. Stark knew what the words ‘Urim and Thummim’ looked like in ancient Greek writing. He had committed them to memory. This stone tablet had no such words. Vortex had tasked him to find the Urim and Thummim, but Stark intended to keep the stones for himself. His hunger grew stronger each day.

  When he found the inscription, he would have supreme power.

  Once he had his hands on the Urim and the Thummim, nobody and nothing would stand in his way. Not even Vortex, which only wanted to store the stones away with their other stolen, priceless treasures. No. He, Romulus Stark, would have the same power as the high priests of Israel. Maybe he would even hear the voice of God.

  Stark couldn’t believe his luck when the stone inscription had turned up in an insignificant college. All would have gone well if this low-life hadn’t gotten in his way.

  He clicked the professor’s lifeless body.

  Slowly, he wiped the blade on the professor’s jacket before returning it to his pocket. With his gloved hand, he opened the door a little before removing his gloves and placing them in a baggie.

  Stark shouldered the door open a little. He walked down the corridor, his heels clicking on the tile.

  Soon, he would be invincible.

  2

  “Abigail!”

  Abigail spun around with a smile on her face to see Mary Yoder hurrying down the steps of the Amish Bed and Breakfast to her. “I baked you some whoopie pies. You really shouldn’t be going to work on a Saturday.”

  Abigail chuckled. “How can an Amish person say such a thing? Everybody knows you Amish are hard workers.”

  Mary shook her head. “Nee, you should let it go and trust in God. If it’s not God’s will for you to keep your job, then so be it.”

  It’s easy for you to say, Abigail thought. The faculty was cutting back staff. She knew Harvey Hamilton would retain his job because of his relationship with Dean Susan Sewell, despite the fact he could only read Latin and not Greek. The news of their clandestine relationship was all over campus. It wasn’t fair, but as Abigail knew, sometimes life never is.

  She gave Mary an impulsive hug and caught herself when she remembered the Amish don’t like public displays of affection.

  Abigail couldn’t afford to lose her job. She was not trained for anything but academia. Job openings for Latin and Greek scholars were scant, with faculties all over the country cutting back on staff. A particularly unpleasant man, Harvey Hamilton often made spiteful remarks to her. She had even caught him in her office one day trying to download one of her unpublished papers. If she hadn’t caught him, she had no doubt he would have published it as his own work. She had complained to the Dean, but that was before she had discovered the Dean’s relationship with Hamilton.

  It wasn’t a pleasant work environment, but at least it was work. Abigail wished she had a stable career. She enjoyed living in the little house behind the Amish Bed and Breakfast. She envied them their simple way of life and their strong community.

  Her faculty was on the outskirts of the campus, in the oldest building. Decades earlier, a new building had been built on the other side of the campus, but the ancient languages faculty was left to decay.

  Abigail groaned aloud when she saw Harvey Hamilto
n’s car in the parking lot. She killed the engine. While she was fetching her takeout coffee and the plate of whoopie pies, a black car pulled into the other side of the parking lot. Abigail stopped in her tracks. She didn’t recognize the car. With a shake of her head, she continued on to her office.

  Just as she reached her office, her phone rang. She put her coffee on the ground and checked the Caller ID. It was the museum curator.

  “Abigail, could you come right away? Hurry!”

  “Sure,” she said, but he had already hung up. She unlocked the door, put her coffee and purse on her desk, relocked the door behind her, and hurried down to the museum. It was not far—downstairs and around the corner.

  Dr. Chris Stanford was waiting for her. He grabbed her elbow and pulled her inside before locking the door. “I think we have trouble!”

  Abigail was taken aback. Dr. Stanford was a meek, elderly man who never spoke out of a whisper. He was certainly riled up about something. “What happened, Chris?”

  “I had campus security here this morning. They only just left. I was working when I heard someone break in. Whoever it was set off the alarms.”

  “You’re kidding! What were they after?”

  “The metal tablet,” he said in little more than a whisper.

  “The metal tablet?” Abigail repeated. “Who would want to steal an inscription? We have plenty of other ancient texts here. What makes you think they were after that one?”

  “There was an article on it last week in the local paper.”

  “Yes, I read it. You sent them a press release.”

  Stanford nodded. “After the article, I had a call from a man offering to buy the tablet. Of course, I told him it was the property of the university. But Abigail, it was on my private home phone. No one has that number. And here’s the thing—he asked me to name my price.”

  Abigail gasped.

  “Abigail, you need to take it. Someone wants it. I don’t think it will be safe here.”

  She held up both hands, palms outwards. “I can’t take it. I don’t have security at home, and the museum does.”

  “You didn’t hear that man. He sounded desperate. If someone has that much money, they’ll be successful on their next attempt to break in here. Take it home with you. They won’t know you have it. Don’t let anyone know you have it.” He spoke in short outbursts, punctuating each sentence with a wheeze. “And there’s something else.”

  Abigail waited for him to catch his breath.

  “The morning after I told the man I wouldn’t sell it, Harvey Hamilton came to my office. He insisted I give him the tablet. I called the Dean, but she backed him up. I gave him a similar stone tablet.”

  “And he can’t read Greek, so he didn’t know the difference,” Abigail said slowly.

  Chris nodded. “Anyway, it was obvious to me that he was going to sell it to the man who called me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Chris sank into the nearest chair. “I didn’t want you involved at the time. Now, you’re the only option.”

  Abigail was doubtful. “Well, if you’re sure.” She followed him into a back room. He indicated the small bronze tablet lying on a table surrounded by pottery shards.

  “Why would someone pay so much for it?” she asked him.

  Chris simply shrugged. He wrapped it in brown paper and tied a piece of string around it. “Don’t let anyone know you have it,” he said again.

  Abigail was mystified. Why would anyone want to buy this particular inscription?

  She took the tablet and went back to her room.

  3

  Her door creaked open. “Dr. Abigail Spencer?”

  Abigail looked up from the volume open in front of her, Deissmann’s treatise on papyri and inscriptions from first-century Palestine. She had started translating the tablet and knew it was about the Urim and Thummim. She had been checking a rare word that had reappeared in the later Greek dialect.

  And her door had been locked.

  She tensed. What if these were the people who had tried to break into the museum earlier? What if they knew she had the tablet? Her eyes strayed to the tablet. It was behind her desktop computer, out of the line of sight of anyone entering her door.

  Standing before her was a man whom she estimated to be in his late thirties, wearing a somber gray suit. He entered the room and flashed a badge, as did the man behind him. They weren’t FBI or police, and she didn’t recognize the agency on the ID.

  “You are Dr. Abigail Spencer?” The voice held surprise.

  Abigail all but rolled her eyes. People always told her she didn’t look like a Latin and ancient Greek scholar. They always expected her to be older, and maybe a man. Luckily, she had put her hair up moments earlier—that took away some of her youthful looks, she mused, if you could call thirty youthful.

  “I’m Special Agent Carter Worth,” he said. “And this is Special Agent Steve Stark,” he said.

  “You’re from the government?” Abigail’s mouth went dry. She grabbed her Styrofoam cup and took a deep gulp of the bitter liquid, now cold. Surely they weren’t here about the attempted museum break-in. “Has something happened?” The last time authorities had turned up, unannounced, was to break the news her grandparents had been killed in a motor accident.

  Stark stepped forward and cleared his throat. “We need your help to solve a mystery.” It sounded more an order than a request.

  Her brow furrowed. “I think you have the wrong person,” she said. “Sounds like you need someone in science. My field is lexicography of the ancient Greek language, although I also teach Latin here.”

  The agent who had introduced himself as Worth quirked one eyebrow. “Lexicography?” he repeated.

  “Word meaning,” she said. “Lexicographers work on dictionaries—it’s different with ancient languages. We discover what ancient words really mean.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Worth said.

  Abigail thought she had better play along. She was certain they were there about the tablet, but why would the government want an ancient inscription? “Please have a seat.” She gestured to the two faded green chairs in front of her desk.

  “We don’t have much time,” Stark said. “What do you know about the Urim and Thummim?”

  Abigail did her best not to look shocked. This was about the tablet. She attempted to deflect. “I think you need a Hebrew scholar. The Urim and Thummim are from the Hebrew Bible, you know, the Old Testament. My field is the New Testament.”

  “But there is an ancient Greek version of the Old Testament, is there not?”

  Abigail studied the man once more. He seemed dangerous somehow. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he was an assassin. And why would a government agency possibly be interested in the Urim and Thummim?

  She nodded slowly, all the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. “The Septuagint is an early translation of the Old Testament books into Greek.” That wasn’t the full story, but she had long since learned not to bore laypersons with all the facts.

  “And?”

  Abigail stared at the man for a moment. “Oh, the Urim and Thummim? Yes, of course. They’re objects—stones or jewels, no one really knows for certain—the high priest wore on his breastplate. He used them to hear the will of God.”

  “You don’t have any family, is that right?”

  She bristled. Couldn’t see what business it was of his. Nevertheless, she said, “Yes.”

  “No close friends, not even within the academic staff?”

  Abigail shook her head. “I’m on good terms with the other academics, but I’m not friends with anyone in particular.” She was friends with people within the Amish community, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. After her grandparents died, Abigail had thrown herself into her work, until she married another academic. He had divorced her and married one of his students. Ancient manuscripts couldn’t break her heart.

  After that, Abigail had preferred to keep to h
erself and had moved to the little grossmammi haus behind the Amish Bed and Breakfast. She had electricity and internet, as well as peace and quiet. “What’s this about?”

  “We need you to translate a text for us.”

  So they did know. “What sort of text?”

  “Confidential,” he said. “It’s a matter of national significance. I can simply tell you it’s an ancient Greek text.”

  Abigail shook her head. “How can an ancient text be of national significance?”