He stared back at her, his gaze drifting to her chest, to what was hidden beneath hard armor. “So Eve herself believed in the Garden of Eden when she listened to the snake and stole from the Tree of Knowledge.”

“Ah,” she sighed, leaning closer. “You mistake me. I am not eve. And it is not the Tree of Knowledge I seek-but the Tree of Life.”

Slipping a dagger from her belt, she quickly stood and drove the blade to its hilt under the prisoner’s jaw, lifting him off his knees with her strength of will. In that single thrust, the endless march of centuries came to a bloody halt-along with the danger he posed.

Godefroy gasped, stepping back. “But is this not the man you came so far to find?”

She yanked free the dagger, spraying blood, and kicked the body away. She caught the staff before it fell free from the prisoner’s slack fingers.

“It was not the man I sought,” she said, “but what he carried.”

Godefroy stared at the length of olive wood in her hand. Fresh blood flowed in rivulets down its surface, revealing a faint carving along its length: an intricate weave of serpents and vines, curling around and around the shaft.

“What is it?” the knight asked, his eyes wide.

She faced him fully for the first time-and drove her blade into his left eye. He had seen too much to live. As he fell to his knees, his body wracking itself to death in ghastly heaves upon her dagger’s point, she answered his last question, her fingers firm on the ancient wooden rod.

“Behold the Bachal Isu,” she whispered to the centuries to come. “Wielded by Moses, carried by David, and borne by the King of Kings, here is the staff of Jesus Christ.”

Fourth of July:

Five days from now

The assassin stared through the rifle’s scope and lowered the crosshairs to the profile of President James T.