Assassin's Honor Read Online Free PDF Page A

message to pick up the medallion. She'd found it in Charlie's personal effects a couple of days ago. How the authorities had missed it when they'd searched through his things, she had no idea. She expelled a noise of disgust. The police had taken greater care with his belongings than hers.
                The coin was almost identical to the one Detective Shakir had shown her, except this one was far more weathered. When she'd first found the artifact, she'd been terrified to touch it. But when she'd finally succumbed to the necessity of it, she was relieved the artifact had only shown her images from the distant past, nothing recent.
                Emma tilted the coin so the overhead light outlined the profile of Constantine I on its head, before flipping it to study the Sicari icon on the reverse. The writing was indecipherable, but the icon was the same as the one she'd seen on the wall of Ptolemy's tomb. She frowned. The coin she'd touched in Cairo had been found near Charlie's body. She knew that because her vision had shown him holding it when he died. But this one--this artifact had been in his possession long enough for him to leave it with his belongings and return to the dig.
                She turned the coin over to study the worn text. Iter Sicari Domini factis, non verbis aestimatur. She frowned and released a sigh. The last six years had been spent reading hieroglyphics, and her Latin was really rusty. She'd need to download some translator software to verify a lot of the text. At least she recognized two of the words. Domini was Latin for "lord" and Sicari meant "assassin." Did domini refer to a deity or was it used in a different context here?
                A soft creak of wood echoed in the hall. She jerked her head up at the sound and her heart slammed against her chest. Had she forgotten to lock the front door? No, she distinctly remembered turning the dead bolt.
                God, when had she become so irrational? She rubbed her forehead with a sense of self-disgust. What on earth made her think the person who'd killed Charlie would come after her? As the memory of her parents' murder flitted through her head once more, she shivered. They'd died the same way Charlie had and with the same mark on their cheeks. It was stupid to think their deaths weren't connected.
                The Cairo police obviously thought they were. It was why they'd taken the easy way out and focused on her as a suspect. But what about the mysterious cloaked figure the locals had seen? An unidentified man carrying a sword. Emma could understand why the locals' story had raised eyebrows at police headquarters. It sounded worse than a B-movie plotline. A puff of air blew past her lips as she flipped the coin over to study the opposite side again.
                Even as far back as his college days, her father had believed the Sicari assassin order still existed. When he'd first met her mom, he'd been an intern for the Sorbonne in the south of France in Cathars territory. Even then he'd been searching for signs of the Sicari Order.
                Her father had been involved with another woman at the time, but the minute he'd seen her mother, there had never been anyone else. Their marriage had been one of deep love and trust. Something Emma never expected to have. Her parents' kind of relationship was far from the norm.
                The coin came back into focus, and her thoughts drifted back to the story the locals had told about the stranger at the scene of Charlie's murder. They'd made the man sound like some avenging monk from the Elizabethan era. Had the Sicari ever dressed like that? Maybe the man at the dig . . . she snorted with disgust at the wild notion.
                God, that had to be the most ridiculous thing she'd considered yet. She'd found an icon proving the Sicari had existed. She hadn't found one of them alive and