Relentless (31 page)

Thorne shook his head, his dark hair now sand colored and covered with dust, as was every bit of exposed skin. Isis knew she looked just as bad. “They would’ve considered that as a way out. Don’t waste your time; it won’t go anywhere.” He strode over and started tossing chunks of rock aside.

The flashlight winked out. Isis wanted to scream, nooooo! “Is that it? Are the batteries shot?”

He opened the back, did a guy thing with the battery, then shook his head. “Dead as a doornail. It was nice while it lasted.”

The dark was oppressive. The dark and knowing they were sealed in was
beyond
oppressive. “Those despicable bastards.” She wet her dry lips. “They’re gone, right?

“I heard the chopper in the distance. I doubt they’ll
come back to see if their work is done. Not till morning, anyway. See if you can coax that fire a bit.”

“Is that a good idea if we’re worried about our oxygen supply?”

“I don’t want flames, I just want the embers hot.”

Isis kicked aside a rock that she’d used to put the fire out moments before, then picked up several wrist-sized logs that had scattered on impact. Laying them across the coals, she bent down to blow on it a few times.

Crouching beside the feeble flames, she dragged her camera bag closer, then hooked the strap over her head before rummaging inside. She found the small plastic bottle of hand sanitizer and gave the fire a good squirt. The alcohol took immediately and the fire leapt to life.

“It could be a corridor into the tomb proper, and give us a better way out.” She gave the little flame another breath of air and watched it leap and glow. “The corridor could lead into an antechamber, and those sometimes have another corridor to get to the outside.” Using the end of her scarf, she flapped it a couple of times until the flames started taking hold of the half-burnt timbers.

The golden glow of the fire danced against the stone walls as she walked the three steps necessary to stand beside him. “It’s worth a try, don’t you think?” Before the fire and her panicked breathing ate up all the oxygen.

Dropping the brick in his hands, he straightened to look at her. “How far do you need to go before you realize that way’s blocked, too?”

“How many stones do you need to throw aside before
you realize that if you move all those in here, there’ll be no room for us?” Isis countered, wiping the dust-encrusted sweat off her forehead with her scarf, her gaze steady. “That’s heavy manual labor, and we have about two cups of water left. When the sun’s up, and if we
do
manage to get out, we have to walk all day. We’d need approximately four gallons each to survive out there in that heat. We won’t make it.”

“No,” he admitted grimly, dusting off his hands. “We won’t.”

“All I’m proposing is that we explore deeper into the tunnel rather than working ourselves to certain death.”

“Okay. Let’s see how far we can get in the tunnel. Drink the water before we go.”

Isis retrieved the plastic bottle, twisting off the cap. “Half for me, half for you. Don’t argue.” Tipping the bottle, she drank just enough to make her realize that she could drink an entire ocean. Two sips. It was warm, had a slight plastic flavor, and might as well have been nectar from the gods. She handed the bottle to him.

“You didn’t drink your share.”

“You outweigh me, and you’ll do more physical labor trying to break us out of here. Drink it and shut up; you’re wasting oxygen.”

Thorne laughed. “God, you’re bossy.” He drained the bottle, then hooked his arm around her waist and tugged her in for a kiss, giving her back some of the water he’d just drunk. Lifting his head he touched his fingertips to her cheek. “Swallow.”

Isis swallowed, giving him the evil eye, which he
missed as he walked over to their small campsite and started stuffing things in the duffel. “Gather what supplies you can find—” He saw her pick up his dress shirt and held out his hand. “Great, give me that.” He took it from her and ripped off several buttons.

“Breathe through your nose; it’ll prevent the membranes in your mouth from drying out, and suck on this.” Handing her a small button, he popped the other in his mouth. “Scarves pulled up as well; the dust is going to be a problem depending how deep the tunnel goes.” Even though he was prepared to go deeper into what Isis was sure was a tomb, he didn’t sound that confident that the tunnel would lead them anywhere.

She mentally conjured up some of the drawings of tombs her father had left lying around over the years. While she hadn’t formally studied Egyptology, she’d learned a lot from him by osmosis. Or so she hoped. Because right now, their lives might depend on her knowing how to navigate the labyrinth of passages and rooms, if this was indeed part of a tomb.

And at this stage of the game she didn’t care whose tomb it was, just that there was an exit of some kind.

And enough air to support them as they searched for it.

THORNE PICKED UP THE
sleeping bag, shaking off the rocks and debris. Half a dozen large scorpions dropped, tails curved over their backs as they scurried into the surrounding darkness. Four were the common variety. They’d sting, but the worst result would be a painful red
welt. Two, however were the fat-tailed variety, the most dangerous group of scorpion species in the world. Four inches of “man-killer.” Powerful neurotoxins in their venom could kill. Being stung by two while they’d been otherwise distracted could’ve killed them.

“Check your clothes and tuck in what can be tucked,” he told her grimly, not wanting to think how close the arthropods had been to their naked body parts. They’d been so consumed with making love, scorpions had been the last thing on their minds.

They both shook out what they were wearing. Nothing dropped out. “I’m okay,” Isis told him. “You?”

He thoroughly checked his own clothing, then helped Isis tuck her pants tightly into her socks, then did the same for himself. “Fine. Fire and we’re gone.”

Picking up a couple of the two-foot-long sticks, which were now red-hot and glowing, he handed her one to carry like a baton. Rolling several large rocks with the side of his foot, he smothered the small fire. “Let’s check out your tunnel.”

Isis put her hand on his arm to stop him. “Be careful where you walk. Don’t put your weight on your front foot until you’re sure you’re stepping somewhere solid. There could be hidden holes. My father thought they probably hid them under delicately balanced wood manhole covers, so the lightest step would tip the robber into a pit.”

“Lovely. An ancient burglar alarm. Except it was death instead of jail. Good to know.” He’d never been inside a tomb, but it already seemed like a fucking death trap
before they’d even started in. They walked side by side, but he made sure Isis was one step behind him. The smell of burning wood was accompanied by the smell of ancient dust as their feet kicked up little puffs of sand.

“Don’t worry about the powder toxins,” she said, almost cheerfully. “Those are too old to be effective anymore. You know about the fatal properties of ancient Egyptian medicines, right?”

“Everything I know you just told me,” Thorne said dryly. “They no longer work.” He walked cautiously and kept his eyes, ears—and now nose—open and looking for danger.

He carried his “torch” high while Isis kept hers low. For now the atmospheric red glow sufficed. The tunnel, running north to south, seemed to be dead straight.

“It’s strange that there are no paintings or mosaics in this section.” Isis lightly ran her fingers along the rough brick of the wall as she walked. Her soft voice echoed slightly on the hard surfaces. Clearly man-made, the completely bricked corridor was about five feet wide, nine or ten feet high, and disappeared into the darkness in front of them.

Every now and then they came across piles of limestone rubble with a broken potsherd and a few intact painted jars tossed in it like trash. “My father would be in his glory right now.”

Her father was probably playing bingo right then, but Thorne didn’t say so. “It’s an ancient landfill.”

“
Here,
but maybe deeper… Tomb workers were allowed to build their own ‘Houses of Eternity,’ ” Isis
told him, her soft voice filling the space. It was fine if she wanted to play tour guide to dispel the darkness as they walked. Thorne let his mind wander to their determined kidnappers.

“And since they were highly skilled, they usually made their last resting places beautiful, too. It’s possible that this was the burial tomb for the workers, although they usually decorated them as well as the royal tomb they were working on. I’ve been in several, and they’re charming and not as formal as the ones they built for their king or queen. But this? Not a pretty thing in sight. Looters could’ve stripped it of anything valuable. People here have been robbing tombs since the first dynasty.”

The piece missing for Thorne was that he knew to what extremes Yermalof would go to stop someone. Thorne had received Lynn Maciej’s tongue, then later watched Yermalof flay the skin off her breasts with his small, chillingly effective knife. By then Ayers was dead, and Thorne secured so that he could helplessly watch every cruel, agonizing slice as he was left to bleed out on the floor, just feet away.

“It made sense from a purely economic point of view,” Thorne said absently, being damned careful where he walked. “The kings and queens buried in these tombs were interred with all their wealth, effectively keeping all that gold and silver and whatever the most valuable commodity of the time was out of circulation. Tomb robbers put that wealth back into circulation.”

“I never thought of it that way.” Isis laughed softly. “An ancient savings and loan? It makes a weird kind of
sense. Even Husani turns a blind eye now and then when something is brought in by a robber. It’s hard to stop.” She paused, her steps slowing. “Do you think our kidnapping had something to do with your Russian bad guy?”

The floor started to slope, and he put a hand back to caution her. “If we’d been tortured and left to die slowly, yeah. But this whole thing was set up so that it looked like stupidity. An accident. Yermalof fences extremely high-end antiquities worth multimillions of dollars. Some priceless, which go for a hell of a lot more. S
mells
a little like him but doesn’t have the big impact he goes for. If he’s involved with the people who are looking for your Cleo, he’d want us alive, not dead. Unless he’s setting a trap—”

“He might not have to,” she reminded him practically.

“Yeah.” Thorne focused on what was ahead in the glow of their fire sticks. “He might not have to.”

But what could Yermalof gain by burying them in a hillside? It would get him out of the way for sure. But who, besides him, would benefit from that? For a moment Thorne contemplated his life. Being in the dark end of a tomb did that to a man.

Who else had he crossed, in an effort to win his father’s forgiveness over the years, and then for the military, that might want him dead and be willing to work with Yermalof to make it happen?

For several minutes they walked in silence.
Relative
silence. He heard her every breath and listened to her footfall with every step. Close enough to grab her if she
fell, near enough to dispel any wildlife that might drop from the ceiling. Or one of the throat-height wires the ancients were so damned fond of for decapitating robbers and felling them in their tracks.

Deep down, Thorne’s gut sank further. No matter how sweet Isis’s delusions of hope were, there was little chance that this was the way out. He was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to keep his promise. They were going to die, buried like so many beneath the sands of this valley.

“IF THE RUSSIAN GUY
is behind all this…” Isis skirted a pile of chipped and broken stones before squeezing sideways to get through a collapsed doorway. The strong smell of burning wood and dust tickled her nose. It was a good thing she wasn’t claustrophobic, because it felt as if the walls were closing in on them in the darkness beyond the red glow of their makeshift torches. “What would his purpose be?”

“Other than having his hands on a wealth of priceless antiquities?”

Every now and then she’d spread her arms wide to ensure that the walls were the same distance apart. “Well, yeah, there is that. No, I mean his purpose in trying to kill us?”

Using his torch, Thorne pulled aside a spiderweb drape at eye level. Isis’s meager fiery glow was shrinking, barely giving off any light at all. Hell, she was feeling her way through the tunnel more than seeing where they were going.

“The first thing I’ll ask when I catch up with him,” Thorne said dryly.

“Seriously. As you said, if your bad guy wanted us dead, we’d
be
dead. Which means he either made a mistake or there’s a reason he has us holed up in here. Or it’s not
him
at all. We seem to have a smorgasbord of bad guys after us, and we don’t have a clue who sent them.”

“Yermalof tends not to make mistakes,” Thorne told her, his words hardly reassuring. “And he’s had time to think this through.”

“Again. Not reassuring. This corridor seems to go on forever, so at least we’re not going to run out of oxygen anytime soon.” Sounding calm and practical was a strain, but panic was going to get them nowhere fast.

They’d been walking steadily downhill. The grade wasn’t steep, but
down
didn’t feel like
out
to her. This was possibly the worst idea in her life. But then,
down
meant there was more ahead. At least she remembered that much from her father’s work.

“And while I know we can go without food for a long time,” she continued a little desperately, “we can’t go without water.” She kept up the conversation because if not, her ears throbbed with the thick silence enveloping them. Talking kept the nerves at bay. “So eventually, if we don’t find a well-lit exit sign, we’re screwed. Right?”

God, she was babbling now, wasn’t she? Why didn’t he say something? Anything? She knew he was still ahead of her because of the regular intervals of his breath. Isis wished she’d been more engaged when her father had
been on a dig. She’d learned about tombs by osmosis. She’d been far more interested in framing the next shot and in the angles of light and shadow than in Egyptology.