The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)

He bit his lower lip. “I think I’m getting to know her better.”

I was saved by a Louvre security guard in navy blue. He escorted us past the line and inside the pyramid.

I wasn’t expecting it to look like this. The pyramid acted like a giant skylight, flooding the Louvre lobby with sun.

I glanced at the brochure we’d picked up. There were three massive main wings, all with some permanent and some rotating collections, plus a temporary exhibit.

“Since that bracelet said ‘my twin,’ I wonder if we’re looking for jewelry,” I said. “That would have to mean it’s something that’s been here since Napoleon’s time. But if Fitz had this clue and then planted something for us, it could be anything.”

Jack’s eyes darted over the list of collections. “We’ll just have to search as quickly as we can for anything that seems like a possibility.”

As we started down the wide spiral staircase, something caught my eye, and my heart clawed into my throat.

Scarface, the redhead, and the rest of the Order crew marched past the pyramid outside.

I grabbed Jack. He stiffened.

“How did they find us?” I said. “We ditched our phones. We’re in a whole other city.”

A school group pushed and giggled and scrambled around us down the stairs. Jack pulled me to the side, something more like worry than surprise on his face.

“What?” I said, and then I thought of something. “Wait. Could one of the other families track your plane? What if they’re not Order after all?”

“The other families can track our plane,” he said under his breath, and then, “They’re Order. But if they can track our plane . . . that wouldn’t be good. I don’t know. We don’t have time to think about it now.”

We hurried into the lobby, and Jack stopped short at the bottom of the stairs. “Or maybe them showing up here was a lucky guess.” He pointed to a cheerful black, white, and red banner hanging down into the atrium.

NAPOLEON HALL

Temporary Exhibit:

Alexander the Great and the Ancient Greeks

“Think this might be where we’re going?” Jack said.

“It does seem like an awfully big coincidence if it’s not.” I darted a glance back outside, where the Order was cutting the line.

“It has to be,” Jack said. “In Paris. In Napoleon Hall. In an Alexander exhibit, for God’s sakes. The Dauphins put this exhibit together searching for information about the mandate. What better way to find ancient Greek artifacts than encourage every small museum in the world to submit artifacts to the Louvre? And Fitz could hide it the same way he did at the Hagia Sophia.”

I glanced around. We couldn’t do anything about the banner, but a standing sign at the bottom of the stairs had an arrow pointing in the right direction. “This is officially the cheesiest, most cliché distraction ever, but hopefully it’ll buy us a few more minutes.” I spun the arrow so it pointed the opposite way. “Let’s go.”

We hurried down the stairs and merged with the crowds, darting glances behind us the whole time. When we got to the exhibit, Jack and I split up.

I found a bust of Alexander the Great, a slab of marble under a thick pane of glass, a head wreath made of golden vines. Next were various metal tools, and I got excited when I found a display of jewelry, but the pieces and their corresponding descriptive plaques didn’t look out of the ordinary, and on the ring and the gargoyle, the symbol had been obvious.

I glanced across the room to see Jack, hands in his pockets, interested in some ancient coins, then part of a stone wall. When he turned, I raised my eyebrows at him, and he shook his head.

The next piece would take a minute to check, so I read its plaque first. Ivory Sarcophagus, depicting scenes from the life of Alexander the Great. On loan from the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

Istanbul. And in the plaque’s bottom right corner, the swirling symbol I knew so well.

“Jack,” I whispered loudly. He strolled over like we were normal tourists, but his eyes danced with excitement.

I crouched in front of the sarcophagus, studying the mural, and Jack crouched beside me. “It’s Alexander. And Aristotle, I think—he was Alexander’s tutor.”

I glanced over my shoulder, expecting to see Scarface at any second. I liked to think he wouldn’t try to kill us in a public place, but that hadn’t seemed to bother him in the Istanbul market.

Jack peered around the back of the sarcophagus until a guard across the room barked a warning and he had to step away.

The crowd of little kids we’d seen earlier came into the room, their shrill voices echoing off the vaulted ceilings. No Scarface yet.

“It’s got to be something more than the scenes carved on here.” Jack stared at the plaque. “Wait. The Istanbul Archaeological Museum. Fitz volunteered there, too. Did you read all the info?”

“What info?”

Jack grabbed a laminated sheet from a stand that held details on the piece in six languages. We both scanned it.

“There,” I said. The middle of the second paragraph read: “This is an especially interesting sarcophagus,” says Emerson Fitzpatrick, volunteer docent. “The false bottom was unique for the time, likely used to smuggle goods under the guise of a funeral procession.”

“False bottom,” I whispered.

The sarcophagus was raised on four squat, round legs, so there was about a foot and a half of space underneath. If the Louvre had been as deserted as the Hagia Sophia had been, it would have been easy to get under it.

It wouldn’t be easy here.

My eyes darted around, searching for an answer. The group of kids was making their way to the golden crown.

“Trust me?” I asked Jack. Without hesitation, he nodded.

I wondered what it would be like to be able to put your trust in somebody that easily. I couldn’t deny that from this side, it felt pretty good. And it made me really not want to mess up.

As the group of kids moved between me and the guard across the room, I dropped to the floor and slid under the sarcophagus.

It was lucky I wasn’t claustrophobic. The tons of stone hovering over me was bad enough, plus it was too dark to see. The rough stone caught on my fingertips as I felt around. So far, the bottom was uniform aside from a sticky spiderweb in one corner.

But here. Near the center. A long crack that, when I followed it with my fingers, made a square. And on one edge, a shallow trough. It felt like an old jewelry box I had. Rather than being on hinges, the top had slid open, using the same kind of fingerhold.