Free Sacrifice In Stone by Patricia Mason

Chapter One

 
    Mara’s fingertip stroked his forearm,
tracing the hard bulge of the muscle. Finally! After five excruciating years of
searching, she’d found him. The knot that had been a fixture in her chest for
so long unfurled and she breathed deeply. Her fingers played along his wrist
and then down the hand. She couldn’t help touching him over and over.
    “Wow.” Her friend Lucy spoke at Mara’s
side. “He’s magnificent in all his naked glory—well, semi-naked anyway.
Too bad the sculptor didn’t lose the pants. I bet the rest of him is wow to the
second power.”
      “Yes, wow,” Mara said absently, barely registering her
friend’s bubbly tone.
    A statue of a man, with a body rivaling
Michelangelo’s David, was positioned in profile, a block of marble at his back.
His outstretched right hand grasped at the air. A dagger was gripped in his
left hand at waist level. Below the knee, the figure’s legs were mired in
marble. The figure seemed to strain to emerge from the block, as if at any
second he would step out and continue to walk across the room.
    Displayed in a dimly lit back corner of
the art museum, far from the traffic of patrons viewing a visiting exhibit, the
statue stood virtually hidden. A spotlight shone down from the overhead track,
illuminating the shoulder.
    Only by a chance reading of a magazine
article extolling the little-known tourist sites in Savannah, Georgia, had Mara
figured out where he was. Even then, she had not been certain she’d found him
until five minutes ago when she’d walked through the door.
    “‘ Sacrifice
in Stone . Unfinished sculpture in marble. Age unknown. On loan from an
anonymous private collection.’” Mara read out loud from the plaque on the wall.
She knew Mr. Anonymous was her uncle, the patriarch of her wealthy family,
Hobart Rushworth.
    “Now what?” Lucy asked.
    Good question. Mara couldn’t bring
herself to tell even her best friend the crazy tale of how her obsession with
this statue had begun.
    “Now we go back to our hotel.” Despite
her words, Mara couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. “I grew up with the
statue at our family’s estate. Then one day he was gone and my uncle wouldn’t
explain what had happened to him.”
    After a few moments of silence, Mara
glanced at her friend. Lucy was staring at her with a glare that screamed, You
are so full of it.
    “Really,” Mara said for emphasis. “I just
wanted to see Sacrifice again one
more time.”
    “Come on. Try to sell that line to
someone who doesn’t know you.” Lucy perched her hands on her hips. “You didn’t
drag me all this way just to look at a statue for five minutes and then go
home. You’re up to no-good. You’ve got ‘caper’ written all over you.”
    Dang. She should have known she couldn’t
bullshit her best friend.
    “All right,” she said. “You’re going to
go back to the hotel. I’m going to hide in here and stay overnight.” This was
Sunday and the place would be closed Monday. Time enough to accomplish what she
wanted to do.
    “Kumquat.”
    “Huh?”
    “Oh, I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “I thought we
were just spewing out nonsense.”
    “It’s not nonsense. The security in this
place is minimal. They don’t even have interior motion detectors.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Do you see any mounted in these rooms?
No. The only sensors are on the doors and windows. I won’t get caught.”
    “That’s not the point.” Shaking her head,
Lucy pulled Mara to a seat on a bench at the center of the room. “Spill, girl.
I’ve waited a long time to hear what it is about this thing that fascinates
you.”
    “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
    “No I won’t. I may think you’re brave,
loyal, compassionate, caring, and that you can be reckless and foolhardy when
you’re trying to protect someone you love, but I won’t think you’re crazy.”
    “Yes. You will.”
    “Have I ever said you were crazy for
standing up to your uncle? That guy is a