“Thanks,” Jada said.
Massarsky nodded, but he wasn’t paying any attention to them. He and Garza and a few others were covering the flank, which meant they couldn’t proceed until Jada and Drake got moving. Drake reached for his own weapon-a ten-millimeter Glock that carried fifteen rounds-and unsnapped the guard on the holster. He hesitated only a moment and then drew the gun.
“What are you doing?” Jada whispered.
“Making sure I’m ready when the moment comes.”
“You’re certain there’s going to be a ‘moment’?”
Drake nodded. “There always is.”
He and Jada hurried after Olivia, ducking through the low exit. The others had gotten a distance ahead, and only the scuff of their boots and the bouncing beams of their flashlights gave away their location in the long tunnel. Drake picked up the pace. He heard Massarsky and the others behind them, equipment jostling as they, too, made better time.
The tunnel ended at a narrow ravine perhaps a dozen feet across at its narrowest and four times that at the widest. Its walls rose precipitously. High above, a glimmer of moonlight showed through, and when they shone their flashlights upward, they could just make out the shapes of thick roots that had burrowed their way through the stone. The walls a hundred feet above them were caked with moss and vines and dotted with the white blossoms Drake thought of as cave hellebore.
Narrow ledges had been carved into the walls above and below, walkways that zigzagged up toward those blossoms and down toward the dark depths of the ravine. The flashlights picked out jagged rocks far below.
“There was a bridge here,” Corelli said.
Flashlight beams illuminated the remnants of wooden supports that once had held up a footbridge that must have spanned the gap.
“Are you kidding me?” Olivia said. “We have to walk all the way down and then up the other side. On that?”
She pointed out the rocky ledge with her flashlight. The walkway couldn’t have been more than three feet wide.
“How do we do that?” she continued.
“Carefully?” Jada suggested.
Her stepmother cast her the darkest glance Drake had ever seen pass between the two women.
Drake glanced across the ravine, where a wide, diagonal split in the wall showed what he assumed was the door into the rest of the labyrinth. There were probably other torture chambers in the warren of tunnels that he presumed they would find on various levels as they climbed down into the ravine and up again, but the fact that a bridge once had existed suggested that their path lay ahead.
“We could jump,” he said.
Henriksen scoffed. “It’s too far.”
Drake wasn’t sure about that. The ledge on the other side looked wider, and it was a good six feet lower. If it weren’t for the fact that a fall onto the rocks below almost certainly would kill them, he would have been willing to gamble that with the right footing and trajectory, he could have made it.
“So we walk,” Drake said.
Olivia gave a pensive sigh and then raised her gun and took aim at Drake’s chest.
“Well, we do,” she said.
As Jada reached for her holstered weapon, Drake started to bring his Glock up to shoot her. All over the ledge there was movement, guns coming up, flashlight beams dancing around. Corelli let out a cry that sounded like a celebration.
Tyr Henriksen stepped between Olivia and Drake.
“Olivia, what do you think you’re doing?”
It seemed to Drake that she had removed her mask at last. The smile that lifted the corners of her mouth was cruel and lovely and tinged with madness.
“Finally disabusing you of the notion that you’re in charge here,” she said, raising the pistol and aiming it at Henriksen’s face.
Drake blinked in surprise even as Jada let out a small gasp. Neither of them had seen this coming. Apparently, Henriksen hadn’t, either. He stiffened, lifted his chin, and glared at her, then tilted his head toward his bodyguard.
“Corelli,” he said. “Try not to kill her.”
With a laugh, Corelli shuffled over beside Olivia, but his gun was trained on Drake and Jada. “Nothing to worry about on that score, boss. ”
Even as Henriksen absorbed this shock, the mercenaries took aim as if they were a firing squad, but all the guns were pointed at Henriksen, Drake, and Jada.
“You incredible bitch,” Jada said. “You killed my dad, after all, didn’t you?”
Olivia gazed at her with regret. “I know you’d like to believe that, but I actually really liked Luka. Sweet man. In the end, he was too innocent for me. I wanted him to be a part of this, but when he went off on his little crusade-well, somebody was going to kill him. It just didn’t end up being me. The protectors got to him first.”
“You knew they existed?” Drake asked.
“Not until Luka turned up dead. Then when I heard about Dr. Cheney, well, it was obvious someone didn’t want us to find this place.”
“Us,” Drake echoed.
Corelli smiled. “Us.”
Drake narrowed his eyes, feeling his hand tighten on the grip of his gun. “You came after us in New York. In the van. You set Luka’s apartment on fire.”
“I coordinated,” Corelli said, correcting him. He glanced at Perkins. “You can hire anyone to do anything if you know who to call.”
Drake turned to Perkins. “If those were your guys, they were pretty sloppy.”
“Not my people,” Perkins said. “This is my first time working for Mrs. Hzujak.”
Henriksen winced at the words, this confirmation that Perkins was taking orders from Olivia instead of from him.
“I’m the one who hired you, damn it!” Henriksen snapped at the mercenary commander. “How the hell is she paying you?”
“What you offered them is nothing compared to a cut of what’s waiting for us in the treasure chamber,” Olivia said, her eyes alight with greed and zealotry.
“It’s a calculated risk,” Perkins admitted. “We consider it an investment.”
Massarsky shifted uncomfortably. When Drake glanced at him, the huge ex-soldier shrugged.
“Sorry, man.”
“Yeah.” Drake laughed drily. “No hard feelings.”
“Enough,” Olivia said, tilting her head toward Jada. “Get the girl’s pack.”
When Corelli came forward, keeping his weapon trained on Drake, Jada started to shuffle away from him, dangerously close to the edge of the ravine.
“Give it to him,” Drake said. “She wants your father’s journal and the maps. They’re useless to us down here. Luka never made it this far. If he guessed the fourth labyrinth was in China, he didn’t write it down. There’s nothing in there that can help us.”
Olivia laughed. “Nothing can help you.”
“God, when did you become so cold-blooded?” Henriksen asked.
“Says the man who’d stab his own brother in the back to get what he wants,” Olivia said.
“Never literally,” Henriksen said. “I’ve never killed anyone.”
“Too bad you missed your chance,” Olivia said.
Perkins cleared his throat. “Can we just get on with this? It’s a long climb down and up again, and we’ve gotta do it again coming back.”
Olivia shot him an irritated look, then gestured to Corelli.
Corelli lifted his gun and pressed the barrel against Drake’s temple. “Drop the gun, dumbass. You’re slightly outnumbered.”
He snickered. That, more than anything, was what flipped the switch inside Drake.
“Dropping it,” he said. “Just don’t talk anymore. Your breath is terrible.”
Corelli shoved the gun against his temple. Drake held his gun away from him and bent down slowly, lowering it to the ground.
“This guy,” Corelli said, glancing over at Olivia. “Can I kill him now or what?”
The second his gaze shifted away, Drake knocked his arm back, throwing off his aim, and kicked him in the chest. Corelli staggered backward, arms pinwheeling, right over the edge of the ravine. He screamed on the way down and pulled the trigger twice, but the bullets vanished in the darkness above them.