“Time to die.”
Chapter 28
Dane burst into the glowing cavern, his eyes taking in the scene in a split-second. Jade and Amanda wrestling on the floor, rolling precariously closer to the edge of the walkway and the dark water that waited below. A man with an upraised knife. Bones clutching desperately at the man’s arm.
His Walther useless, having expended his bullets fighting off the dark creatures that whose lair he had penetrated, he sprinted forward, leaping into the air and catching the man full in the chest with a flying side kick. The man fell onto his back, still clutching the knife. Dane tumbled to the walkway, catching most of the impact of his fall on his shoulder, rolled over, and sprang to his feet.
“Jarren! No!” Jade shouted. She and Amanda lay on the ground, their fight forgotten, both staring open-mouthed at Dane. Bones rolled over onto his stomach, choking and gasping for breath.
Jarren crept forward, his knife held low, a vicious look in his eyes, still panting from the fatigue of his fight with Bones. He chanced a glance behind him, apparently to gauge how long he had to dispatch Dane before Bones was able to join the fray. He sprang forward, slashing at Dane’s inner thigh, trying to sever the femoral artery.
Dane slipped out of the way just in time, the blade slicing a shallow cut across the outside of his thigh. He sprang forward, driving his elbow into Jarren’s throat. Jarren reeled backward, gasping, but immediately resumed the attack, stabbing at Dane’s midsection. Dane pivoted and, with an open palm, knocked Jarren’s knife hand to the side. As the blade thrust met empty space, Dane trapped Jarren’s elbow with his right arm and struck him twice in the side of the neck with vicious palm heel strikes. Jarren’s knees buckled and the knife clattered to the ground. Dane released his grip.
As Jarren staggered away, Bones stepped in front of him.
“I owe you this,” he said, and drove a devastating right cross into the man’s temple. Jarren’s eyes went glassy. He took two steps to his right, and then went limp. He tumbled like a rag doll over the edge of the walkway and into the water below. They watched the current carry him out of sight.
Bones grasped Dane by the shoulders and held him at arm’s length, looking at him like he had not seen him in ages.
“Bro, I thought I’d never see you again,” he said. His eyes grew suddenly hard and he whirled about, picked his knife up off the ground where Jarren had dropped it, and stalked down the walkway toward the women, who were standing and looking at him in trepidation. “All right, Jade. What do you want me to cut off first: your fingers or your toes? I would cut your eyes out, but I want you to watch yourself bleed to death.”
“Bones! What the hell are you talking about?” Dane shouted. He couldn’t believe his friend was saying this.
“She’s one of them,” Bones snarled. “She’s part of the Dominion. All along, it was her feeding information to them. As soon as Jimmy sent us the final translation, they sent men to kill us. They killed Saul and almost got us. She,” he pointed at Jade, “was supposed to kill you. She told them she had.”
Dane felt like a detached spirit floating in blessed unfeeling. He had not felt this numb since Melissa died. Everything fell into place. She had used him, used them, to help her find the clues she sought. When she didn’t need them anymore, she drugged him and left him to die in the desert, and left the others to be taken unaware by the Dominion men.”
“Don’t kill her,” he said in a voice like ice. He couldn’t bring himself to do that. “Find something to tie her up. We’ll figure out what to do with her after we find the treasure.”
“Dane, no!” Jade cried, her voice cracking. “You read my note, didn’t you? I explained everything!” Tears welled in her eyes, and she took a tentative step toward him.
“What note?”
“They wanted me to kill you, but there was no way I would ever do that. I gave you something to put you to sleep and left you somewhere safe I knew of, somewhere close by, until I could come back for you. I explained it all in the note.”
“You left me in the desert to die.” He said.
“I left you in a sheltered place with six bottles of water, a bag of trail mix, and a note telling you to stay out of sight until I came back for you because the Dominion wanted you dead. Don’t you remember when we stopped for coffee? The paper bag I carried out of the convenience store?” She was pleading now. “I tucked it between you and the wall of the overhang.”
Dane vaguely remembered her taking a paper bag out of the back of the car. He certainly could have missed a brown paper bag stuck in a shadowy overhang of red rock. Could it be true? He wanted it to be, but he didn’t know if he could trust her.
“Dane, if I wanted you dead, don’t you think I could have killed you while you were asleep? Why do you think I left you so close to Zion instead of out in the middle of nowhere? How could you think I could do that to you after we… after…” Her voice faded away. Tears now flowed freely down her cheeks, but she did not look away from him. “Please,” she whispered. “I really do care about you.”
He couldn’t take it. He had tried so hard not to let himself have feelings for anyone since Melissa had died. There had been Kaylin for a short while, and then after last night, he had thought… He turned his back on her and stared into the water tumbling from the center of Fray Marcos’ symbol and down onto the glowing terraces.
“Explain a few things to me, then.” Bones said, taking up the slack in the conversation. “You admit, then, that you’re in the Dominion.”
“No,” Jade replied. “Dane, please look at me. I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”
“Telling me everything from the start would have been a good idea,” he said, turning around to face her. “Now I don’t know if you’re going to tell me the truth, or a carefully crafted story.”
“I know. When I first met you, I didn’t want to scare you away by telling you. I actually knew your name, and yours,” she said to Bones, “from reading about what happened in Jordan. Then things got dangerous, and I was afraid you’d bail on me, and I was scared and I needed you. When I realized I was falling for you, it had been so long that I didn’t see how I could tell you after waiting all that time.”
“Fine, just tell me whatever truth it is you want to tell me.” He folded his arms across his chest and stared at her.
“My passion has always been solving the mystery of the Seven Cities. Saul was one of my students, and one day he approached me with something I had only dreamed of ever finding: the missing final page from the journal of Fray Marcos de Niza.”
“Great. Another journal,” Bones muttered, fingering his knife.
“Fray Marcos uncovered evidence of a “great and terrible” secret. That secret was somehow associated with an order that acted under the sign of the cross-and-clover, the one we now know as Fray Marcos’s sign. He journeyed through the New World and managed to confirm the truth of that secret. Seeing the depredations they committed upon the native people, and not wanting the Conquistadores to discover his secret, he concocted the story of the Seven Cities of Cibola, both to explain his wanderings and to throw the Spanish off. He did not, however, think it was his place to hide this secret from the world forever, so he and Estevanico concocted a plan. He remained in the southwest, planting clues in places he and Fray Marcos had chosen. Fray Marcos returned to Mexico, telling everyone that Estevanico had been killed, and spreading his tale of seven cities containing more gold than the Incas ever dreamed of.
“Unfortunately for Fray Marcos, Coronado couldn’t wait to get his hands on the gold. He took Marcos as his guide and set out to conquer the Seven Cities. When the Spaniards never found the cities of gold, Fray Marcos was branded a liar, and eventually died in disgrace. According the journal page Saul gave me, he hid a single clue that would unlock the secret. He hid it in a well in a remote outpost in Argentina.”