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  Table of Contents

  THE ARKANA MYSTERIES: BOXED SET #1

  THE GRANITE KEY

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1 – Night Vision

  Chapter 2 – A Wake

  Chapter 3 – Prayer Meeting

  Chapter 4 –Sisters and Other Strangers

  Chapter 5 – Corvette and Model-T

  Chapter 6 – Compound Interest

  Chapter 7 – Key Issues

  Chapter 8 – Digesting the Information

  Chapter 9 – Lost in Translation

  Chapter 10 – Photographic Memories

  Chapter 11 – Bowled Over

  Chapter 12 – Power Tools

  Chapter 13 – Destiny’s Child

  Chapter 14 – Latte Questions

  Chapter 15 – Paranormal Antiquity

  Chapter 16 – Troublesome Relations

  Chapter 17 – Old School

  Chapter 18 – The World According to Maddie

  Chapter 19 – Conjugal Wrongs

  Chapter 20 – Underground Intelligence

  Chapter 21 – Damnation Motivation

  Chapter 22 – In Security

  Chapter 23 – The Object of My Rejection

  Chapter 24 – Motion Sickness

  Chapter 25 – Pythia Practice

  Chapter 26 – Linear Thinking

  Chapter 27 – Hunt for the Bones

  Chapter 28 – The Concordance

  Chapter 29 – Team Quirks

  Chapter 30 – Happy Hour

  Chapter 31 – Knossos

  Chapter 32 – Art and Facts

  Chapter 33 – Wining and Mining

  Chapter 34 – A Plot in the Country

  Chapter 35 – Psychro

  Chapter 36 – Cryptic

  Chapter 37 – Decoding the Past

  Chapter 38 – Rock and Roll

  Chapter 39 – Exit Strategy

  Chapter 40 – Site Unseen

  Chapter 41 – In the Name of the Father

  Chapter 42 – Double Trouble

  Chapter 43 – The Key to the Kingdom

  THE MOUNTAIN MOTHER CIPHER

  Chapter 1 – In the Beginning

  Chapter 2 – Pointed Questions

  Chapter 3 – Tabling the Talk

  Chapter 4 – Heavenly Mansions

  Chapter 5 – Revelations

  Chapter 6 – Tripping

  Chapter 7 – A Bedtime Story

  Chapter 8 – Run from Your Wife

  Chapter 9 – A Room with a View of the Past

  Chapter 10 – Flooded with Information

  Chapter 11 – Flight of Angels

  Chapter 12 – Consummate Deception

  Chapter 13 – Catal Huyuk

  Chapter 14 – The Lady and the Lions

  Chapter 15 – The Elephant in the Garden

  Chapter 16 – Religious Inexperience

  Chapter 17 – Father of Lies

  Chapter 18 – Ida Ho!

  Chapter 19 – Through a Glass Darkly

  Chapter 20 - Nomad’s Land

  Chapter 21 – Hope in Ruins

  Chapter 22 – Of Two Minds

  Chapter 23 – Relative Proximity

  Chapter 24 – Twinkle, Twinkle

  Chapter 25 – On Purpose

  Chapter 26 – Wedlocked

  Chapter 27 – Quartz Calendar Watch

  Chapter 28 – Duty Call

  Chapter 29 – Sting Operation

  Chapter 30 – Unmentionables

  Chapter 31 – A Little Night Music

  Chapter 32 – S-Bomb

  Chapter 33 – Mercenary Considerations

  Chapter 34 – Sleight Change of Plan

  Chapter 35 – Lyrical Interlude

  Chapter 36 – Captivating Companions

  Chapter 37 – Rustics Retreat

  Chapter 38 – Tourist Trap

  Chapter 39 – Installment Plan

  Chapter 40 –Ties That Bind

  Chapter 41 – Swap Meet

  Chapter 42 – Marital Affairs

  Chapter 43 –Bugs in the Design

  Chapter 44 – Cliffhanger

  Chapter 45 – Relic Redux

  THE DRAGON’S WING ENIGMA

  Chapter 1 – Look Out

  Chapter 2 – Hard Labor Day

  Chapter 3 – The Wait Staff

  Chapter 4 – Leavers’ Tryst

  Chapter 5 – Defensive Play

  Chapter 6 – Wifely Demotion

  Chapter 7 – All Up in the Air

  Chapter 8 – Freedom Rider

  Chapter 9 – Fugitive Thoughts

  Chapter 10 – Shopping for Information

  Chapter 11 – Head ‘Em Up, Move ‘Em Out

  Chapter 12 – Friend or Faux?

  Chapter 13 – Rumors and Board

  Chapter 14 – A Change in the Wind

  Chapter 15 – The Dating Game

  Chapter 16 – Bad News Travels Last

  Chapter 17 – Fishing with Dynamite

  Chapter 18 – Deep Cover Girl

  Chapter 19 – Man Trampled by Nightmare

  Chapter 20 – Feast of the Epiphany

  Chapter 21 – Tactical Oversight

  Chapter 22 – The Maltese Owl

  Chapter 23 – Touch and Go

  Chapter 24 – Motor Mouth

  Chapter 25 – In Plane Sight

  Chapter 26 – Bask in the Culture

  Chapter 27 – Boozin’ Buddies

  Chapter 28 – Hex Marks the Spot

  Chapter 29 – Doubtful Beliefs

  Chapter 30 – Witch Way?

  Chapter 31 – Aye, Spy

  Chapter 32 – Bee Line

  Chapter 33 – Son Rise

  Chapter 34 – Hic Sunt Dracones!

  Chapter 35 – Sleeper

  Chapter 36 – The X Factor

  Chapter 37 – What’s in a Name?

  Chapter 38 – Tipped Off

  Chapter 39 – Lost and Found

  Chapter 40 – Double Vision

  Chapter 41 – A Gifted Friend

  Chapter 42 – Grudging Assistants

  Chapter 43 – Summit Meeting

  Chapter 44 – Hard Time

  Chapter 45 – A Visit from the Reaper

  Chapter 46 – Asylum

  Chapter 47 – Locked Down

  Chapter 48 – Driving Progress

  Chapter 49 – Spirited and Lively

  Chapter 50 – Flight Plan

  RIDDLE OF THE DIAMOND DOVE

  Chapter 1—Dirty Deeds

  Chapter 2—A Naming Convention

  Chapter 3—Cold Case

  Chapter 4—The Riddler

  Chapter 5—Baggage

  Chapter 6—Plagued with Difficulties

  Chapter 7—School Daze

  Chapter 8—Food Fight

  Chapter 9—Head for the Hills

  Chapter 10—Stoned

  Chapter 11—Tea and Rookies

  Chapter 12—The Reel World

  Chapter 13—Traveling Worst Class

  Chapter 14—Who’s Who?

  Chapter 15—Sitting Pretty

  Chapter 16—Thumb Place

  Chapter 17—Accomplice After the Artifact

  Chapter 18—Winging It

  Chapter 19—Eyes and Heirs

  Chapter 20—Nativity Seen

  Chapter 21—Bad Blood Brothers

  Chapter 22—The French Connection

  Chapter 23—Don’t Hate the Playa

  Chapter 24—A Lack of Intelligence

  Chapter 25—First Tango in Rabat

  Chapter 26—Rude Awakening

  Chapter 27—Polygamous Perversity

  Chapter 28—Dunes Day

  Chapter 29—Trash Talk

  Chapter 30—The Arro
w of Their Ways

  Chapter 31—The Rattler

  Chapter 32—The Lady Banishes

  Chapter 33—Serpentine Logic

  Chapter 34—Starry-Eyed

  Chapter 35—Sounding Bored

  Chapter 36—Just Deserts

  Chapter 37—Tyro Maniac

  Chapter 38—Pinnacle of Success

  Chapter 39—Unsitely

  Chapter 40—The Ups and Downs of Treasure Hunting

  Chapter 41—Cache Out

  Chapter 42—Light at the End of the Tunnel

  Chapter 43—Two’s Company

  Chapter 44—The Odd Couple

  Chapter 45—Underhanded

  Chapter 46—Price Check

  Chapter 47—A Tall Tale

  Chapter 48—MMIA

  Chapter 49—Testing the Subject

  Chapter 50—Fugue in the Key of M

  Chapter 51—Crossroads

  Chapter 52—A Tame Wild Card

  Chapter 53—Clean Getaway

  Chapter 54—Connecting Flights

  GLOSSARY OF NAMES

  AUTHOR BIO

  BOOKS BY N. S. WIKARSKI

  OTHER USEFUL INFO

  IF YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK

  THE ARKANA MYSTERIES: BOXED SET #1

  Books 1 - 4

  by

  N. S. Wikarski

  The Arkana Mysteries: Boxed Set #1

  Books One Through Four – Arkana Archaeology Mystery Thriller Series

  http://www.mythofhistory.com

  Copyright © 2020 by N. S. Wikarski

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE GRANITE KEY

  The Granite Key

  Book One of Seven – Arkana Archaeology Mystery Thriller Series

  http://www.mythofhistory.com

  Copyright © 2011 by N. S. Wikarski

  Third Revised Edition 2017

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  Epigraph

  Until the lions have their own historians,

  tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.

  --African Proverb

  Chapter 1 – Night Vision

  Cassie felt herself sinking. She tried to jolt her sleeping body into action. “Wake up! It’s just a dream. This can’t be real, so move already!”

  She was standing in the shadows against the wall in her sister’s antique shop. The room was dimly lit by a green banker’s lamp near the cash register. Sybil was frozen in position in front of the glass showcase—a phone suspended midway to her ear. Her eyes were fastened on a man who had just entered the store. He was wearing a Stetson hat, and he was pointing a gun at her.

  “Where’s the key, sugar?” He spoke with a Southern drawl—his tone lazy, almost casual.

  “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sybil stammered. She put the phone down and began inching her way along the showcase toward the rear storeroom.

  The man shrugged. “Don’t make no difference to me, but you don’t want me tearin’ up your neat little shop just to find it, now do you?”

  “I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Sybil’s denial sounded unconvincingly shrill.

  Cassie wanted to rush forward to pull her sister out of danger. She tried to scream a warning, but all she felt was a rasp in her throat where the words should have been.

  The man advanced down the center aisle. He was over six feet tall, in his late twenties or early thirties. Cassie knew this had to be a dream because of his strange outfit. Aside from the cowboy hat, he wore a short denim jacket, a string tie around his neck, jeans, and snakeskin cowboy boots.

  The gun flicked slightly in his hand. “I tell you what. The service in this establishment ain’t very friendly.”

  He flipped his hat aside, and it landed on an oak sideboard. His dark brown hair was combed back in a high wave.

  “I guess if you don’t want to help me, I’ll have to roll up my sleeves and help myself.” He moved toward the glass case.

  Sybil darted past him and ran for the front door, but he was faster. He grabbed her by the arm.

  “Now, that’s no way to treat your customers, honey. Tryin’ to run off and shirk your responsibilities like that.” He twisted her arm behind her back.

  Cassie could see Sybil wince with pain. Her sister looked around wildly for some other way out. The man tightened his grip with one hand and drove the gun against her temple with the other. Sybil struggled, but he only wrenched her arm harder behind her back until she stopped struggling.

  “It seems to me like you can’t hear what I’m sayin’.” The man cocked his head slightly, considering the matter. “Maybe we should go someplace private where I can get through to you better.”

  As he shoved her toward the front exit, she twisted out of his grip and reversed direction. He lunged after her, tackling her. She fell head first against the showcase, sending shards of glass cascading across the room.

  Cassie could feel a cry of despair welling up in her throat, but no sound emerged. She willed her feet to move. They twitched slightly but nothing more.

  The man raised himself to a crouching position. A look of annoyance flitted across his face. He reached forward to check Sybil’s pulse, and the look of annoyance deepened to a frown.

  He let out a martyred sigh as he stood up, shaking bits of broken glass from his jacket. “Well, that ain’t no help at all.”

  In a flash, the scene changed, and Cassie was back in her dorm room. She could feel the mattress beneath her. “Wake up, dammit!” she commanded herself. This time, as she clawed her way up to consciousness, her mind obeyed her. She sat up shakily, her skin clammy with cold sweat. Tossing off the covers, she sat forward.

  On impulse, she grabbed her phone and started to call her sister. “It was just a nightmare, you idiot! What are you going to do? Wake her up in the middle of the night to tell her you had a bad dream?” She tossed the phone on the nightstand, disgusted by her own timidity.

  Gradually her breathing slowed, and she lay back down. Curling herself into a fetal position, she drew the covers up to her chin. “It wasn’t real. It was just a bad dream… Just a bad dream... Just a bad dream...” She chanted the words like a mantra for several minutes until she started to dose off.

  Then the phone rang.

  Chapter 2 – A Wake

  At about three o’clock in the morning, far outside the city, four people were staring bleakly at one other across a kitchen table. It was an old-style oak table in an old-style country kitchen. The kind with tin ceiling tiles and tall glass cupboards above the sink. A single yellow nightlight glowed from the wall.

  At one end of the table sat an elderly woman in a terrycloth robe and slippers. Despite the late hour, she had managed to roll her white hair into a neat little bun at the nape of her neck. She shook her head sadly. “This can’t be true.”

  “It’s true. Sybil’s dead.” The abrupt comment came from a blond man in his mid-twenties at the opposite end of the table. He slouched despondently in his chair, arms crossed. “When she called me around midnight, she sounded scare
d. She thought somebody was trying to break into the shop. Then the line went dead. I got there as fast as I could, but the cops beat me to it.” He rubbed his eyes wearily. “It’s my fault.”

  “How do you figure?” The question came from a middle-aged woman with bushy red hair sitting to his left. There were distinct frown lines around her mouth. She took a long drag on an unfiltered cigarette.

  The blond man glanced up. “If I’d gotten there five minutes sooner, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Maybe she’d still be alive.”

  “Did she give you a physical description of her attacker?” The question came from a young man in his early-twenties seated to the right. He spoke with a British accent.

  “Nope,” said the blond man succinctly. “For the past week or so, she had the feeling somebody was following her, but she never knew who it was.”

  “I think we all know who was responsible.” The elderly woman rose stiffly out of her chair. She walked over to sink, filled a kettle, and put it on the stove to boil.

  The other three stared at her in shock. Anger flashed in the middle-aged woman’s eyes. “Those bastards!”

  “Take it easy, Maddie,” soothed the blond man. “We don’t know for sure it was them.”

  The woman called Maddie snapped back at him, “Then who else?” She ground out her cigarette and immediately lit a new one. “What the hell was she working on? Didn’t she tell you anything about it, Griffin?” Her sharp eyes focused on the Brit.

  “No, nothing,” the young man whispered with regret. “Perhaps if she had, I might have helped her or persuaded her to stop.”

  The elderly woman shuffled toward the cupboard over the sink. “There’s still the matter of her sister,” she observed quietly. “Poor child, as if she hasn’t lost enough already. This is too cruel.”

  “Does the kid know anything?” The blond man at the far end of the table asked.

  The woman at the sink turned around to glance at him mildly. “Do you think you could find that out for us, Erik?”

  Erik sat up straighter, alert now. “What do you want me to do, Faye?”

  The kettle rumbled to a boil. The old woman rummaged around in the cupboard for cups and saucers. “I think you should follow her at a distance. Keep out of sight, but let us know immediately if anything unusual occurs.”