She swore. The monk was now moving quickly, darting across the railing where required to pass any tourists between them. It was the first proof that she wasn’t crazy or paranoid, he really was stalking her.
Elise raced down to the base of the Lion’s Stairs. At the bottom, she looked up to see how much of a lead she’d made. The steep stairs were still crammed full of tourists. Elise frantically scoured the rows of people meandering along the face of the giant stone, trying to find the monk.
She swore.
Because she’d lost sight of the monk.
Chapter Fifty-Six
It’s one thing to see your enemy, but another, much worse beast, when you can’t see him anymore. Elise looked toward the base of the stairs, half expecting to see him there, but instead she simply saw the throng of tourists.
She turned and started to run. She passed the Mirror Wall and kept running, as she descended each of the terraces that made up the terraced garden. On the last tier, just before she descended through the boulder garden, her eyes swept up toward the highest terrace — there, she spotted a monk, but he appeared much younger and more athletic than the one who was following her.
Even so, the sight spurred her into greater action. She turned and ran. This time increasing her pace to a sprint. There were few tourists to hinder her progress within the boulder garden. She breathed deeply and her lungs burned. Determined to reach her waiting driver before the monk caught her, she just hoped her driver was still waiting.
Taking three steps at a time, she ran through the first set of natural caves formed by giant boulders that leaned in on each other and then across a gentle slope, into a small tunnel. Where something caught her left leg.
She stumbled forward, without seeing what she’d tripped on and braced for the hard impact with the stone ground below — but it didn’t come. Instead, she fell into another tourist, who helped brace her, and stopped her falling.
Elise caught her breath and stood up again. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“That’s quite all right,” he said, his low voice accented but his English perfect. “Next time, you must walk slowly and be careful.”
“I’m sorry…” She was about to protest that someone was after her, when she felt the hard steel — of what she could only assume was the barrel of a handgun — digging into her spine just below her backpack.
“Walk this way, will you please?” he told her in a whisper.
Elise’s eyes darted across the tunnel, taking in the innocent group of people from a new tourist bus approaching. Her ears picked out the polyglot sounds of the crowd, and homed in on the higher voices of children. She might have been able to take escape if she was on her own. But here, it was too dangerous. He might shoot, and with others so close, someone else might be injured by the bullet that would rip through her. A struggle could start a chain reaction. Besides, she needed to survive if the fourth sacred stone was to be placed. Better to wait for another chance. She made her decision in a split second.
“All right. Take it easy,” she answered, her head turned down and her voice as soft as his had been. She began moving forward, careful to keep her pace steady, watching her feet. If she stumbled, he could take it as a deliberate move to escape. It might be her head that the bullet ripped through, rather than her spine. She felt his hard body crowding close, no doubt to conceal the weapon at her back. He was probably of average height, fit.
She kept walking.
Once outside the cave, he said to her, “Turn left here.”
She glanced to her left. There was no path in that direction. Only the gradually undulating slope with a thick forest of ancient Sri Lankan jungle.
She felt the pressure of the gun barrel increase, as her attacker tried to dissuade her from attempting to flee.
“Okay, okay… I’m going.”
“Good. Don’t be stupid. I can make this a lot more painful if you force me to.”
She kept walking. At the same time, she was searching for an escape, somewhere. The gradient increased and she wondered if she twisted, could she bring him rolling down with her? Not if she didn’t want to get shot first. She would need to keep going and hope something would come up. She could hear the thump of her pounding heart in the back of her head and she knew her options were getting slim.
She would need to take a chance. The first one she got.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“The same thing you want.”
“Really?” she smiled at that. “You want to save the human race from extinction, too?”
“Yes. Only, unlike you, I’m interested in saving those worthy of life.” He laughed. “All right. This is far enough. You can turn around now.”
She turned to face him. He had a strong face, big boned and fierce, with deep-set and somber blue-gray eyes. In the cover of tempestuous clouds that were slowly shrouding Sigiriya in darkness, his eyes appeared silver.
It was the same ghost who’d tried to kill Sam in the Great Blue Grotto.
“So, what do you want from me?” she asked.
“The sacred stone, of course.”
She paused. A sardonic grin formed on her lips. “Then you’re going to be disappointed. You’re a little early. Sam Reilly has it. My job was to scout out the fourth receptacle for the stone. He’ll be here by tonight if you’d like to wait around.”
“I’m afraid I don’t take disappointment very well. Never have. Even as a kid I had a nasty habit of erupting into violence when the other kids took a toy off me.” He matched her grin. “How about this instead. I shoot you now. Then I have a look in that backpack to see if you’re lying. Or, you could just hand it over.”
Elise slowly unshouldered the strap of her backpack. “It was worth a try.”
“No, it wasn’t. Now hand it over.” Her attacker pointed his handgun straight at her. He was close enough that it was impossible for him to miss.
Elise stepped closer. Her last chance was to use the metallic casing that stored the vacuum sealed sacred stone to somehow knock the gun out of his hand. It was a massive longshot, but it was all she had and she knew that the instant he received the backpack he would kill her.
She spotted something behind her attacker, up on the hill above them. It was the monk who’d been following her from before. He was moving at a sprint, silently. He placed a finger to his lips to say, shush.
Elise stopped. She needed to buy time. “There’s just one last thing before you kill me.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” he asked, with little curiosity.
“I thought you might like to know the electronic code for the sacred stone’s casing. It might take you some time to solve it, otherwise.”
“Okay. What’s the code?”
“Why would I tell you?” Elise asked. “You’re going to kill me anyway?”
He aimed the gun at her head. “Because I can kill you quickly. Or I could kill you slowly and trust me, no one willingly chooses the slow option.”
“All right.” Elise said, handing him the backpack. “The code is… go to hell!”
His lips curled upward into a cruel grin. “So you want to die slow?”
He lowered the gun toward her knee.
She held her breath.
The gun fired.
And the monk swung the small tree branch like a club.
The club connected the back of her attacker’s head with the crippling sound of a crunch. She had flinched and the shot went wide, scraping the side of her knee. She dropped to the ground.
Her attacker fell, rolling more than fifty feet to the bottom of the steep hill. Elise stood up, ready to run after him, but the monk gripped her shoulder to stop her.