Swallowing a wave of sickness, Louisa walked toward the door. The three men followed her back to the artifact room. She unlocked the door with a swipe of her ID card. Inside, she pulled on white gloves and scanned the shelves for the boxes she wanted. The first three she checked held Iron Age daggers. Only one was engraved, but the carvings didn’t match. She grabbed the next box containing a Bronze Age specimen. She moved it to the center table and raised the lid. The corroded blade was encased in a thick patina of verdigris and rust. She pointed to the curved guard that separated the blade from the handle. “It’s hard to see on the original piece, but the engravings were spirals and knots. May I see the photo again?” Though that was the last thing she wanted to do.

Please don’t match.

Jackson pulled out the picture and held it next to the artifact. “All I can see is rust.”

She slid a magnifying lamp from the center of the worktable and positioned the flexible gooseneck over the dagger. Worn down by time, the engravings were faint, but her experienced eye visualized a mirror image of the marks on the victim’s skin. She compared the symbols to the marks in the photo in Jackson’s hand. Not every symbol had made a distinct impression, but the ones that were visible matched those on the ancient weapon.

With questions whirling in her head, she stepped aside.

Jackson leaned over the magnifier. He stiffened, then straightened and knuckle-slapped his partner on the arm. “Take a look.”

Ianelli stared through the lens and grunted. “Damn. That looks close, but like Dr. Hancock said, there’s no way in hell that blade killed anyone. Looks like it would crumble if you touched it.”

Dread flooded Louisa’s belly. Her blood chilled, flowing through her limbs like the Atlantic in January. “The museum commissioned a reproduction of this dagger.”

“You had it copied?” Jackson asked.

“Not exactly. The reproduction is made to show how the knife would have looked when it was new.” Louisa returned the artifact to its box and shelved it. They left the collection storage room and walked down the hall to the elevator.

“Collection storage space is always an issue,” Cusack explained as he pressed the button for the third floor. “Maintaining a controlled environment to protect artifacts from deterioration is quite expensive. Items not of historical value are stored separate from artifacts.”

The elevator dinged, and they emerged from the elevator into an empty industrial-looking hall of ugly green paint and scratched gray linoleum. The museum spent the majority of its budget on the parts of the building that were accessible to the public. The third floor was a hodgepodge of small rooms. Halfway down the hall, Louisa opened the door and swept her hand over the wall next to the doorframe. Overhead florescent lights flickered and then held their brightness.