Free Deadline by Craig McLay Page B

more to this guy than he presented at the newspaper every day.
    “I got you a coffee,” she said as he emerged from the bedroom. “I didn’t know what you took in it, so I just got a double-double.”
    “Thanks,” Colin said, taking the coffee and motioning her towards the kitchen table. “So what can I do for you?”
    The two of them sat down. Janice immediately opened her backpack and started rummaging through it, pulling out a textbook that looked larger than a medieval version of the King James Bible. Colin noted the title:
The Crusades (1095–1270)—Origins, History & the Foundations of the New Europe
by somebody named Zenit Olgcharanov.
    “I wasn’t there,” Janice said as she flipped to a bookmarked page. “CJ tried to describe it to me, but you’re the only one I know who saw it for sure.”
    Colin frowned and sipped the coffee. It was bitter and had the metallic taste of sweetener. He thought about pouring it down the sink and making himself a cappuccino instead, but that would be rude. He would wait until Janice left and then do that. He put the coffee back down and leaned forward. “Saw what?”
    Janice found the page she was looking for and flipped the book around on the table so Colin could see it. She was pointing to an illustration on the inside corner of page 605. Colin pulled the book towards him so he could see it more clearly. It was a crudely drawn illustration, but there was no mistaking that it was the same one he had seen three times in the previous day: a cross inside two interlocking strands.
    “Wow,” Colin muttered.
    “Is that the symbol that was on the package with the hand in it?” Janice asked, making no effort to disguise the urgency in her voice.
    Colin nodded. “Yeah, that’s it.”
    “Somebody said it was in the forest somewhere, too,” Janice said. “But the cops have blocked that entire area off.”
    “It was there,” Colin said. “I saw it painted on a tree close to where they found the first body. It was also painted on the locker where I found Terrence Devane’s severed head in the rec centre last night. What is it?”
    “That,” said Janice, “is the official seal of the Knights of the Holy Thorn.”
    “Okay,” Colin said. “And who are they when they’re at home?”
    “They were formed in Antioch in or around 1192,” Janice said, speaking quickly in her excitement. “Just after the fall of Jerusalem.”
    Colin took a sip of coffee. There was nothing else to drink and his throat was suddenly dry. “Wait a minute. Correct me if I’m wrong, but did you just say
eleven
ninety-two?”
    Janice nodded.
    “As in, almost a thousand years ago.”
    Janice nodded again. “Do you know anything about the military religious orders that arose during the Crusades?”
    Colin was having trouble keeping up with all this on so little sleep. The coffee, despite being terrible, was helping slightly. “The what now?”
    “There were dozens of them,” Janice said. “Maybe hundreds. You’ve heard of the Templars? The Hospitalers? The Teutonic Knights?”
    “I’ve heard of the Templars,” Colin said.
    “Most people have,” Janice said. “They started what basically turned into the modern banking industry. The Knights of the Holy Thorn didn’t do anything like that.”
    Colin’s curiosity was piqued. “So what did they do?”
    “Well,” Janice said. “A lot of these groups organized themselves around holy relics. They were a big deal in those days. They gave you power and attention. Sort of like Hitler trying to get his hands on the lost ark of the covenant in that movie.”
    “
Raiders
.”
    “Right. Well, the Knights claimed to have the original nails used during the crucifixion,” Janice continued. “There were a lot of pieces of the so-called ‘one true cross’ floating around, but only one set of nails. Those are the ones you see in their symbol. They supposedly kept them in a special, three-sided box. Each side was supposed to represent one