It was then that Matthew noticed that the wall in front of them was lowering into the ground.
-
Chapter 44
THEY FLASHED THEIR LIGHTS INTO the space where the wall had receded into the ground. It was another tunnel with stone brick walls and a dirt floor. But the ground wasn’t as smooth.
“What the hell are we waiting for?” Kevin pushed through the group.
Matthew tried to reach him, to stop him, to pull him back, but he flew past.
Kevin’s scream was nightmarish—and short. There was no way to save him. His body spasmed against the long spear that skewered his center, its tip sticking out of his throat. The twitching lasted long enough for Matthew’s eyes to meet Kevin’s and witness the light extinguish from them.
Robyn and Cal turned away. Matthew wanted to, but he remained fixed on Kevin.
“God, what the hell just happened?” Ian’s hands alternated between cupping his head and gesturing toward Kevin’s body. “Seriously, what the hell?” Ian came to within a few feet of Matthew.
Matthew glanced at the Bolivians, who looked as shocked as Robyn and Cal, but not to the extent that Ian was.
“Simple answer. A trap,” Matthew said.
“No shit, Sherlock. I mean, what the hell.” Ian thrust out his arm, pointing at Kevin.
“When the Spanish conquistadors came after the Incas, they made these types of traps to swallow man and horse,” Matthew answered.
“The stupid idiot had to bring up booby traps. What, aren’t you going to take his picture?” Ian verbally jabbed Cal, who didn’t give him the satisfaction of acknowledgment.
Beyond Kevin, the tunnel’s safety fell into question. Matthew wagered more traps would be staggered without a predictable layout. One false step and someone else could die.
Matthew leaned over the hole, thinking about retrieving Kevin’s gun, but he couldn’t see it. The weapon must have fallen to the bottom of the pit. It would have to be left behind.
Straightening up, a subtle breeze swept across Matthew’s skin. But it wasn’t coming from the opened tunnel ahead of them. It was hitting the right side of his neck.
He took off down the tunnel on the right.
“Matthew?” Robyn followed him, as did the others.
“I feel a draft. Something else must have opened up when this wall did. We never would have heard it, either.”
“You think it’s another tunnel?” Cal asked.
“I don’t know,” Matthew said. He reached the point where the tunnel took another sharp turn to the right and spotted a rectangular opening in the wall. It hadn’t been there before the other wall had lowered into the floor. He shone a light inside and saw a rope. He reached in and yanked on it.
Another tunnel opened in front of them with fewer dramatics than the other had.
“I don’t have to remind any of you what happened the last time someone went running ahead.” Matthew received a smug glare from Robyn for his trouble.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget,” Robyn lamented.
“I might need counseling,” Cal added.
Their flashlight beams showed nothing immediately dangerous. Again, the floor was dirt and the walls were made of the same brickwork.
“I’ll go in first,” Matthew said.
Robyn touched his arm, as if to stop him.
“I’ll be fine,” he said softly. It was another promise he hoped he could keep. If he were a religious man, this would have been another good opportunity to pray. Instead, he took his first step inside, bracing himself—for the floor to fall out from beneath him, for the walls to shoot poisonous darts, for anything, really. But nothing happened. “Looks good.”
Robyn came in next, then Cal, followed by the Bolivians with Ian at their flanks.
Cal let out a deep breath and Matthew glanced back at him.
They took each step slowly, deliberately. But not precisely enough, Matthew realized, when about twenty feet in, the floor shifted under his feet and his hands shot out to the walls to steady himself.
“What was that?” Ian asked.
The mountain shook again, and Matthew spun, realizing what it meant.
“The door! We have to get to—” He plowed into the others, urging them to get out, but it was too late.
Their way out was sealed shut. No doubt it was masterful engineering and design that was responsible for putting the pressure switch at the location it had been placed.
Matthew went back to where he had inadvertently activated the switch. He remembered the feeling of it under his boot. Maybe if he could push it again, the door would reopen.
But no such luck. He found the switch—a rectangular button about five inches long by three inches wide. It was still depressed, sunken into the ground. There’d be no reversing what had happened.
Ian slammed his palms against the stone blockade. “Now we’re going to die in here.”
Matthew was thinking the exact same thing but phrased it less dramatically and placed a positive spin on their predicament. “Well, there’s no turning back now.”
“Yeah,” Cal said. “Literally.”
-
Chapter 45
DANIEL’S CELL PHONE RANG AND jarred him, but it wasn’t because he was sleeping. A third video had come in somewhere around one in the morning. He glanced at the clock on his desk before answering his cell phone. It was now five. Not that it seemed to matter. The hours had blurred together ever since all this had begun.
He massaged his forehead as he answered. “Hello.”
“Daniel?”
“Yes, Justin. Who else would it be?” Daniel shook his head as if the kid could witness the mockery.
“You did tell me to call you any time of day—morning, noon, or night. Right?”
“Yes.” Maybe it was the combined effects of little rest and redundancies, but Daniel’s mood was sour. “What is it?”
There was a pause on the other end, as if Justin was taken aback by Daniel’s cool reaction.
“I was able to isolate the man’s face in the photograph. I haven’t gotten any further than that, but I—”
“Justin, send the picture over.”
“It should be flying to you through cyberspace as we speak.” Justin paused to chuckle and cleared his throat when he realized Daniel wasn’t amused. “I just thought maybe if you saw the man’s face, there might be a chance you’d recognize him.”
Daniel opened his e-mail program and clicked SEND/RECEIVE ALL FOLDERS. He wasn’t waiting a second longer than necessary.
E-mails filtered into his in-box, including spam, but it was easy to spot the one from Justin. The subject was IMPORTANT INFORMATION.
Justin was still droning on when Daniel double-clicked to open the message.
“…Liam Neeson,” the kid said.
The name seemed to come out of the blue, but when Daniel opened the attachment, he understood the correlation. He could have sworn he was looking at a photograph of the actor himself.
“What do you think?” Justin asked. “Have you seen—”
“Assuming this isn’t the guy from the movies—”
“Yeah, see? I told you. He looks a lot like him.”
“What about his identity?”
“Sadly, I will need more than a picture to determine that.”
“All right. And what about identifying the lights outside the window?” Daniel inquired. “Are we anywhere with that?”
“Not yet.” The bit of confidence that had rung through Justin’s voice at isolating the man’s face had disappeared.
“And the GPS on the phone?”
“No luck yet.”
Daniel hesitated to forward Justin the latest video. Maybe he shouldn’t have dragged the kid into this after all. What if the police found out that Daniel had been in posses
sion of these videos all this time? He shook the notion aside. Surely any well-intentioned cop would understand following the directive of a killer.
“I got another video,” Daniel said.
“Send it over, and I’ll get to work on it right away.”
“Will do.”
“And Mr. Iver—Daniel?”
“Yeah, kid?” he said with a sigh.
“It sounds like you could use some sleep.”
“I’m pretty certain you’re right about that.” At the admission, his body sagged a little deeper into the chair and his eyelids grew heavier. “’Night.”
He ended the call and exchanged the chair for his bed. There were many things to be done around the house, but they’d have to wait.
As soon as he shut his eyes, the images from the videos appeared again. But this time it didn’t take long for them to disappear from his consciousness as he drifted into a deep sleep.
-
Chapter 46
ROBYN WAS DOING HER BEST to keep pace with Matthew. Cal was behind her. They were going on twenty-four hours. Her watch read 6:10, the exact time they had left camp yesterday morning. She was the type of person who thrived on eight to ten hours of sleep a night. Her eyelids were gritty like sandpaper, but there was too much going on for her to sleep now. With Kevin having succumbed to the spear trap, it was enough to keep her eyes open and her legs moving. It confirmed they were the first ones here since the Incas had built the tunnel system.
Their flashlights revealed nothing ahead but more tunnel.
“This is feeling too easy again,” she said.
Her comment received moans from the men.
“You know what happens whenever people say things like that, right? The opposite comes at them.” It was Cal giving her the lesson, but all she did was look back at him and smile in response. “Anyone else getting tired?” he asked.
“God, yes,” Matthew said.
Robyn looked forward again and ran right into Matthew’s back.
Her body formed to his, and her cheeks heated. “Maybe you could warn a girl the next time you decide to just stop moving.”
Matthew smirked over a shoulder. “And why would I do that?”
She narrowed her eyes, but she couldn’t fight what she was feeling. She was too tired to play mad, and he would see through the pretense anyway. Even in the dim light, fire sparked between them.
“Hey, lovebirds, let’s get to the City of Gold, shall we?” Ian called out from the very back of the line. Ever since he’d realized he was armed and none of them were, it seemed as though the status quo returned to his favor, and it had gone to his head.
“We’re not lovebirds,” she voiced.
“I don’t really give a shit. Let’s get this over with.”
She really disliked that man. If it wasn’t enough that he had kidnapped their friend and was responsible for this expedited mission to Bolivia, now he was prying into even more personal territory.
Robyn brushed past Matthew, and he yanked back on her arm.
Two small spears shot out of the walls, missing her by the fraction of an inch.
“Holy shit!” Robyn cried out.
He pulled her to him. It seemed that he realized how close they were at the same moment she did, and he released his hold on her.
“More traps,” Matthew said.
“This means we are on the right path.” Any tiredness that had threatened to claim her washed away with the realization.
“What did you do?” Cal asked, pushing between her and Matthew.
“All I did was take a step,” Robyn said.
“There must be more pressure switches.” Matthew took off his backpack and tossed it onto the floor in front of them.
Numerous spears shot out of the walls, heading from left to right, right to left.
“Here. Give me your pack.” He turned to her. She was already working on getting it off.
When she did, he tossed hers a bit farther than he had his and more deadly spears fired from the stone bricks. Then he took Cal’s pack and repeated the process. It happened again.
Next was Juan’s pack, but when it landed past Cal’s nothing shot from the walls.
“We must have made it to the end of the gauntlet,” Robyn said.
“Just to be sure. One more.” Matthew pitched Lewis’s bag and it too met with no reaction. “All right, I think we’re safe to go.”
He took a step, and Robyn took his hand and squeezed. She couldn’t lose him like this. He nodded as if he had received her silent message to be careful.
He’d just made it to Cal’s pack when he said, “It’s safe. Come on.”
The rest followed his lead, Robyn first, then the others.
They all reclaimed their packs, careful to keep to the area where they had landed to avoid setting off any more flying spears.
With all of them geared up again, they proceeded for about ten feet before the ground swallowed them whole.
-
Chapter 47
WILLIAM HAD MADE IT INTO the office by eight, but again, his mind wandered from his responsibilities. He was starting to bear the guilt of being what the masses accused politicians of being: paid suits executing their personal agendas from behind a podium.
What the public failed to understand, though, was what it took to keep a city running, to keep everything moving along smoothly. They weren’t aware of the long hours sacrificed at the expense of a personal life. Maybe if he had spent more time caring for such things, he and Matthew would have a better relationship. So in a way he was due some time to concern himself with other matters.
Even though the house was sufficient with its twenty-six thousand square feet, when his boy was home, the walls felt as if they constricted and pressed them together. It was as if a stranger were residing in his house, roaming the halls, eating breakfast and dinner at his table. And in essence, that’s what his son was to him—a stranger, an enigma. In response, William’s tendency was to flee and pour himself more heavily into the obligations of his mayoral position.
But to have the police chief approach him as if Matthew were involved in a crime, or had knowledge of a crime, was an insult. Matthew was his blood and, thereby, incapable of such things. And to harm a friend? There was no way Matthew possessed the ability to hurt anyone physically, let alone someone he considered a friend.
William tried numerous times to reach Matthew on his cell phone without luck. Each of the five attempts resulted in him being sent straight to voice mail. Defeated, he settled for leaving a sternly worded message.
While he might assign innocence to his son, he demanded an explanation. Having the police chief show up at his house was enough to start the rumor mills rolling and swirl the consternation in his gut. The most important things to a politician were reputation and image. He didn’t need his name associated with a police investigation and, as his predecessor had, have it smeared across page one of the Toronto Star.
His phone buzzed. It was Ashlynn.
“Mr. Connor, I made that connection that you had asked for.”
“Patch them through.”
“Yes, sir.”
A moment later, he was connected with a man named Marshall Abbott. He was the head of the archaeological dig in Rome.
“Mr. Abbott, this is William Connor. I am the mayor of Toronto.” He paused, expecting the man to respond in some manner. Instead, he was met with silence. “I’m trying to reach my son, Matthew, in regards to an urgent family matter.” Really, that wasn’t much of a stretch.
“Mr. Connor, you said?”
“Yes.” William adjusted his tie and moved around some items on his desk.
“And you said Matthew was your son?”
“Yes.” William was quickly losing his patience.
“Well, there’s not a Matthew on this di
g. Are you sure you have the right one?”
“Rome, Italy, correct? In search of lost Roman roads?”
“Yes.”
William didn’t appreciate the derision that echoed back at him. “Well, you must be mistaken. My son headed out there three days ago.”
“And I can tell you for a fact that he’s not here.”
William’s neck tingled and his skin heated.
Mr. Abbott continued. “We’re just getting organized. It’s possible he’ll be coming with the rest of the team in a few months, though I highly doubt it. I review every applicant and I have a pristine memory, and he doesn’t sound familiar.”
“You know, from memory, after looking at a long list of archaeologists, that there’s not a single Matthew?” Mr. Abbott was obviously delirious.
“No Matthew. No Matthew Connor.”
William was being beyond diplomatic. Until now. He slammed down the receiver, the sound so loud and sharp he may have cracked the plastic. Not that he cared enough to look.
Where the hell was Matthew?
It was as if William was living someone else’s life right now. A scandal was being born and taking its first breath. He had to suffocate it before it caused real damage.
He picked up the phone again and dialed the number he had found for Justin Scott. There was no need to get Ashlynn involved any more that he already had.
“Good day, Justin Scott speaking.”
He plastered on a huge smile before he spoke. “This is William Connor.”
“Oh, Mr. Connor. I was speaking with—”
“Yes, and that’s fine.”
“You’re not calling about Gideon Barnes?”
Hearing the name poured more salt on his proverbial wound. It pained him to answer. “No, I’m not.”
When Justin continued, his tone was lighter. “All right, then, whatever you would like, Mr. Connor?”
“I need you to locate my son.”
His request was met with silence, and William imagined Justin thinking, You don’t know where your son is? He gave it another few seconds. “Are you there?”
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