Deadly Little Lies

by Jeanne Adams

  “Here, have at least a few sips,” she said, pressing the canteen into his slack hands. She was worried about him; he could hear it in her voice, feel it in the trembling of her hands.

  “It is the darkness,” he said, knowing that he would pay for shoving his fear down into his gut.

  “I know. I don’t have the experiences you do and it’s getting to me too.”

  They shared the canteen back and forth, each taking judicious sips until it was half empty.

  “We should get moving again,” he said, wishing with all his heart that it wasn’t true, wishing they could stay put or better yet, be miraculously whisked back to San Francisco. “The longer we stay here, the harder it will be to go on.”

  “You’re right,” she said, and he heard fear and resignation. Somehow, her despair was a lifeline for him. It made him know that he could not give up.

  Carrie had to live, to be free.

  “Up we go then,” he said, trying to inject a note of energy in the words. “Come, my love. Somewhere around here, we’ll find treasures that will make your gallery owner’s heart go pitter pat, yes? Gold and masks, weapons and ceremonial tools, pottery and artifacts galore.”

  “Sure, sure, promise me the moon,” she responded to his feeble attempt to raise her spirits. “I’m sure this was looted long ago.”

  “Not necessarily,” he countered. “May I point out the disgusting state of this passageway as possible proof that it hasn’t been discovered or mined or whatever you call it when looters make away with the goods.”

  “I believe it’s just called looting, or raiding,” she replied, but he heard the smile. She carefully waved the light back and forth across the floor ahead of him, close, then two feet out, then a bit more, before coming back to do the same thing again as he took a step.

  “Ah, the technical term. Perhaps we’ll find the treasure trove and we can use that space to rest, sleep and get a fresh start in the morning.”

  Her hand tightened on his belt. “I don’t want to stay down here,” she confessed.

  “Neither do I, believe me. I am, however, running out of steam, as the saying goes. I wonder where that term comes from?” he asked idly, before continuing. “We left in the late afternoon, yes? As the sun was going down?”

  “Not going down quite, but it was after four when we started down the tunnel.”

  “Yes. And we have been working through this for at least several hours. Though I know time will seem different in the darkness like this, I’m fairly sure that we have been going for a while.” It was good to talk, to hear her voice. It kept him grounded. Thinking it through helped too, focusing him on the solutions rather than the dark.

  The light flashed ahead of him, then back to his feet. Away again, flickering on the stone, then back to his feet.

  When it flashed forward again, it didn’t reflect on stone.

  “Wait. Stop.” He put his arm out to the side, blocking her forward motion. “Run the light along the floor. I think there is another pit.”

  The beam traveled out four feet, then disappeared. They inched forward to the edge, only to find a step down. A wide circular area about the size of a car lay before them. As Carrie outlined its edges with the light, it reminded him of a trampoline in its perfect circularity.

  “This is unusual,” he commented, for lack of anything more original to say. “You stay here and hold the light. I will step down and explore this area. This may be a place to stop for the night.” He smiled at her in the beam of the light. “It is a larger space, just as you requested, my lady.”

  Her smile was small and tense. “Be careful, Dav.”

  “I will do that. Come to the edge and shine the beam ahead.”

  He sat on the stone, easing his feet over the edge and carefully testing the surface with his weight. It stayed stable and there was no sound of grating or crumbling, so he let his entire weight settle onto the stone circle.

  Moving to the left, clockwise, he started around the circle. Halfway around, his questing hand on the wall met nothingness and he staggered sideways.

  “Dav?” Carrie’s voice was a half shriek as she saw him fight for balance. “Dav, are you okay?”

  “Fine, fine,” he said, cursing softly under his breath in Greek. “There is a hole in the wall. Let me come on back around to you, then we will explore, yes?”

  There were two more holes in the wall around the circle, but the floor was solid. When he returned to Carrie, he helped her to climb down onto the lower level as well.

  “I think we should get some sleep, my flame. If we are tired, we will make mistakes. I think these are tunnel branchings. Perhaps, in the day, some light will come from one of the tunnels, give us a direction to take, yes?”

  “I want to keep going,” she insisted. “What if there’s a way out, just beyond this? What if there’s another door?” She stopped suddenly and he heard her draw in a shaky breath. “Oh, my God, Dav, what if it’s a dead end?”

  “Carrie.” He kept his voice firm in the face of her rising panic. “I will not allow you to die. I have told you this, yes? We will find a way out. Now. Come, let us sit down on our stone bed and tell one another stories of our childhoods again. You can tell me your secrets and I will tell you mine.”

  “I don’t think I have any more secrets to tell,” Carrie said, the quiver in her voice subsiding a bit. “I’m sure you do, though. Maybe you can tell me the secret to getting rich.”

  He led her to the center of the ring and knelt, easing her down with him. “Ah, now that is a long story, but a good one. Come, I will tell you.”

  “Can’t be that long a story; you’re not that old.”

  “Older than you, my dear, but thank you.”

  “I like a good story.”

  “Oh, it’s tedious, but that will help you sleep.” He stuffed their belongings behind him, tugged her down so her head was on his chest. It was something he’d thought of, to have her this way, with him, trusting him, but he would give it all up to alter the circumstances. “I will tell you a secret now, if you like.”

  “Okay.”

  “Turn off the light and close your eyes, Carrie. Let your mind drift, yes? Let me tell you a story.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Perfectly.”

  With obvious reluctance, she pressed the button to turn off the flashlight. The inky blackness surrounded them instantly.

  “Once upon a time,” he began, and she laughed. “Do not laugh, it is a fairy tale, so it must begin this way, I believe.”

  “Not laughing,” she said, though he could feel her doing just that. He smiled in the darkness and closed his own eyes.

  Focusing on the story, he continued. “There was a man and he saw a woman he admired, but she was unavailable. He waited a long time, then suddenly she agreed to lunch. Then the man got the woman in lots and lots of trouble.”

  “Oh, you did not,” she protested. “You’re not responsible for this; whoever did it is. Your brother or whatever, not you.”

  “Thank you for leaping to my defense, Carrie-mou, but this is because of me.”

  “Oh, please. Don’t be a martyr. We’re in it together,” she muttered.

  “I was wondering, earlier yesterday, or was it the day before? At the gallery.”

  “Two days, maybe three. I’m losing track. What were you wondering?”

  “If you would think I was a stalker or a”—he searched his mind for the English word—“weirdo, for having thought about dating you for nearly ten years, only to finally do it and get you abducted.” He sighed, knowing that no matter what she said, it was his fault.

  He felt her hand on his chest, pressure as she levered herself up to loom over him. He couldn’t see her, but he could feel her.

  “Let me show you what I think of that,” she said. The moment of waiting in the dark was a-tingle with suspense. What was she talking about?

  Her mouth closed on his and her hands began to roam over his body, leaving no doubt a
bout what she meant.

  Sweaty, dirty and scared they might be, but their attraction for one another hadn’t waned in the least. Rising up, he pulled her onto his lap and she straddled him, stripping down fast and pulling his hands to her breasts as she ravaged his lips.

  “My beard,” he protested, between kisses. “I will scratch your beautiful skin.”

  “I don’t care,” she growled, her mouth leaping back to his. She yanked his shirt up and ran her hands over his flesh. Every trial and tribulation forgotten, he feasted on her, reveling in the power and glory of her body, the sheer joy of being alive.

  Their coming together was fast and furious, a coupling of heart and mind and body in a blinding flash of passion. Panting, with hot tongues and racing hands, they drove one another to the heights of pleasure.

  When she arched back in his hands, crying out, and her body clenched around him, he followed her over the edge with a hoarse roar of completion.

  “Carrie!” he cried her name, rocketing his hips upward, leaping to fulfillment as they came together in a blinding, furious explosion.

  There in the dark, their murmured words and caresses a luscious aftermath, he knew that he would never let her go.

  Niko eased the truck up to the hidden gate at the dig site. Everything was quiet and he motioned Sam to open the gate.

  “Stay alert,” he warned as he, too, got out of the Jeep, covering his man as Sam dragged the iron gate open, hooking the lock into the ring of the post.

  “No worries, compadre,” Sam muttered, backwalking to the passenger side door. The two men eased into their seats and Niko let off the brake and slowly proceeded through the gate and down the rough track to the camp.

  “Niko!” Sam exclaimed, pointing to a rise of vultures from the edge of the trees where a front sentry would have been posted.

  “This is not good.” They found the first of their team at the edge of the woods. What was left of him after the animals and birds had been at him, that is.

  The rest of the team lay where they had fallen. The clouds of birds and insects surrounding the bodies were a noisy testament to the dreadful manner of their deaths and the speed with which the jungle reclaimed everything.

  Walking slowly, and covering one another’s backs, Niko and Sam reached the pit. Niko turned over Carlos’s body and peered down into the dark hole.

  “Davros? Are you down there?”

  Nothing answered him. Their presence had scared the vultures into the trees, but the birds were still there, lurking noisily, waiting to resume their feasting.

  “Look.” Sam pointed down into the hole as he spoke. “There’s no one in there.”

  “Do you think they escaped?” Niko examined the ground around the grate, noting the delicate feminine footprints that only pointed toward the grate, not away from it.

  Sam shook his head in the negative. “Nah, one way in, just like you wanted.”

  “Apparently not,” Niko said, spotting the doorway. “They found a way out.” He scanned the jungle. “This was an ambush, Sam, but whoever it was didn’t come for Dav. They just killed the team. They didn’t even come into the camp.”

  “Agreed. You got an enemy, or we got in someone’s territory and didn’t know it.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. Let’s back on out of here and call this in, eh?”

  “Plan.” His answer was monosyllabic, and heartfelt as he backed toward the Jeep.

  At the Jeep, they reversed course. Miles up the road, at a slightly higher elevation where they could see the entrance to the road, but not the camp itself, Niko pulled out a satellite phone and made a call.

  “No, they weren’t there,” he said, in response to the question. “I’m going to go in and check, yes, after I get some backup here.”

  He waited as the word came through that backup could be there in a matter of a few hours.

  “Good, we’ll wait. My whole team’s dead. Yes. Okay.” Anger filled him at the thought of his men, all of them loyal, all of them veterans of campaigns with him all over the world. Emergency measures were in effect now, and he’d take all the necessary precautions he and his team had agreed upon. “I’ll wait on the signal.”

  He hung up and turned the Jeep, pointing it back down the way they’d come. “We’ll wait here for backup. A few hours, supposedly. You okay with that?”

  “Better than being at the clearing, yeah?”

  “Yeah. Good. Let’s get some rest.”

  When he hung up the phone, leaving Niko expecting backup, he was smiling. Having isolated the man, separating him from his mercenary troop, then disposing of them, he took the next step in exacting his revenge on all the Gianikopolis men. Now, he would be able to step into Davros’s place in the world market, and if Niko came through this, he’d have the older brother as his hit man, a fitting end for both sons of the notorious father.

  “Good news,” he said to the men who guarded him. “Everything went as planned.” He frowned. “With one slight exception. Evidently there is a way out of that cell, some kind of doorway in the structure itself.” Trust Davros to find it, the lucky son of a bitch. He’d always managed to squeak out of every trap set for him. It was infuriating. “Now we’ll see if Niko is cut out to be one of us, permanently, or if he too needs to be culled from the herd.”

  That Davros had somehow escaped continued to annoy him. He wanted to shoot something, or smash something. Just thinking of killing something, tearing someone or something limb from limb, eased his wrath, so he was able to release the tension with the exercises he’d learned, clenching and unclenching his fists as he thought of pounding them into soft flesh.

  Yes. That was better.

  Davros was of no matter to him now. There would be nothing for him, in the end. When he found his way out, if he ever did, he would find a bullet waiting. His man was still watching the camp where Niko had found his team. He had reported Niko’s movements, so Niko’s call had been anticlimactic. After all, he’d arranged the carnage, so he’d had to fake his distress at Niko’s losses.

  As to Davros, if he didn’t emerge, well that was good too. Thinking of Davros, dying in the dark in a hole, further eased his wrath.

  “Are you ready to move out?” he asked the leader of his second team. The man’s coiled strength was legendary, yet he stood at perfect ease by the ornate doors.

  “As ever.”

  “Then execute the plan.”

  “With pleasure,” the man said, giving a half salute as he turned and left. Without a doubt, he would be in place, his sniper rifle at the ready, when Niko—or Davros—turned up again.

  “Make sure the jet is stocked as usual. We leave in twenty minutes.” He tossed the order to one of the other men over his shoulder as he too left the room. All would be in order and he would see to this final stage personally.

  After all, Belize was so much warmer this time of year than Colorado.

  Chapter 12

  Staring through the scope of the long rifle, Jurgens could see the bodies where they lay, saw the vultures, saw the Jeep as it arrived and then left. When the men in the Jeep had focused on a body on the far side of the clearing, moving it with care to stare downward, beyond it, they gave him the answer to the riddle.

  “A rat in a trap,” he murmured, thinking of the elegant Davros Gianikopolis down in a hole. Not good. It had been several days now. He and the woman were either dead or close to it. The three men who had killed the returning team from a distance had not gone into camp, nor had they lingered in the area. He had tracked them back down the road toward Belmopan, losing them as they picked up speed heading away from the scene.

  Only one remained, on another hillside, watching the camp just as Jurgens did.

  It was a puzzle.

  He was certain that if Dav had been visible, the newcomers in the Jeep would have shot him. Instead, they checked the hole, discussed briefly, then backed away, to drive a distance and wait. Jurgens slipped off long enough to find them. The run had
done him good after lying so still. When he returned to his hidden nest the other watcher was still there, holding his place, evidently unconcerned about other activities. Killing more watchers was not in his orders then. Davros perhaps, should he come out of the hole, but no one else.

  That they were waiting said Davros was still captive, or contained somehow.

  He narrowed his eyes, thinking. He’d done his research on the Gianikopolis family. In this generation, there were only the two brothers, Davros and Niko. He guessed, from the look of him, that the man in the Jeep had been the older one. Niko.

  “Lazarus risen,” he muttered, tapping a note into a small device, under the cover of his camouflage. Something had troubled him about the job offer long before he’d discussed it with Caroline and chosen to refuse it. Once they’d refused and he’d set about protecting Davros, both he and Caroline had continued to dig.

  Far away from home, on borrowed equipment untraceable to him, Jurgens had begun to track the man who’d wanted Davros dead. That man was an unknown, a cloaked piece on a chessboard littered with deceit and death.

  The hidden player had a high stake in this. Worse, he was manipulating the game to an end Jurgens had yet to uncover. Evidence of his deceit lay rotting in the intense sunlight. Niko’s presence, his waiting stance said even more, at least to Jurgens.

  Play within play. Game within game. And, he believed, for Niko, betrayal.

  Everything about the killing in the clearing, Niko’s arrival and easy departure said: setup.

  Someone had positioned the older Gianikopolis brother to capture the younger and was now playing an incredibly dangerous and delicate game of cat and mouse with the older brother. And Niko seemed unaware he was being played.

  None of the maneuvering boded well for Davros. Not at all.

  When night fell, as it was rapidly doing, he would contact Caroline. She was continuing the search. It was her special gift, research. The information she could find astounded him, every day.

  She astounded him.

  A flicker of movement caught his attention and he focused through the scope once more. Two men crept through the thick brush, coming up from the road in a shifting, careful pattern. They carried military-style gear and were heavily camouflaged, just as he was. He saw no markings on their clothing, no indication of their loyalties. They worked quickly, laying a trail of land mines on the road into the compound.