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He peered at it, getting as close to the corpse as he could without disturbing her.
Inside the opening in the wall hung a rope.
Driven by the sheer puzzle, Adam grasped hold of the loop—and pulled.
The paving stone on the floor beside him dropped, sinking three inches into the ground with a thunk that captured the attention of everyone in the room.
It hung there… looking for all the world as though it had been built to slide neatly out of the way.
Dawson whirled toward him. Pacheco and Lopez looked up with surprise as Staines’s eyes went wide.
“Aw hell,” Adam blurted.
Dawson ran over.
“You found it.You found it!” He burst out with a slightly hysterical laugh. “Must be something more than just rubble in there—eh, Mr. Bates? You—boys!—move this out of the way.”
Dawson flapped a hand at Pacheco and Lopez, and then waved dismissively at the crumpled corpse of the priestess as though the body were a mere inconvenience—as though the woman who had died to conceal the secrets of her people was nothing but debris to be swept out of the way.
Adam’s fury snapped to life. The feeling was as clear as the winter air… and it was going to make him do something irreversibly stupid.
Something like stepping between Dawson and the dead woman on the floor.
“I don’t think so,” Adam said flatly even as another, saner part of him groaned in the back of his head.
“Excuse me?” Dawson stammered as his eyes went wide with surprise.
At that moment, a voice rang out from the plaza below, breaking through the silence of the temple.
“This idiot has lost the woman!”
The words were a catalyst.
Adam realized that Ellie was gone… which meant that nobody could hurt her for whatever Adam might take it in mind to do with himself.
And Dawson realized exactly the same thing.
The professor’s eyes locked on Adam, sharpening with a well-justified panic.
“You—you!” Dawson shouted urgently as he waved his hands at Staines. “The gun!Point the gun at him!”
It should have been the end of the line for Adam. And it would have been… had Dawson ever bothered to actually learn the names of the people who worked for him.
It took Staines a crucial extra second to realize that Dawson’s ‘you’ meant ‘Mr. Staines.’ By then, Adam had already launched himself from his crouch on the floor.
His shoulder took Staines in the ribs. The guard’s breath whooshed out at the impact, and the rifle fell from his hands. It skidded across the floor as Staines himself slammed into the wall.
Pacheco and Lopez watched with gaping mouths from over by the shelves of artifacts. Pacheco’s hands loosened on the fragile mask he was holding. Lopez darted down instinctively to catch it before it hit the ground.
Dawson stumbled back into the corner of the room, pressing himself against the stones as though he hoped they would swallow him.
“Get Jacobs!” Dawson shouted. “Go!Now!”
Since Dawson hadn’t bothered to specify, both Pacheco and Lopez happily bolted from the temple.
Adam wondered whether the pair of them would actually fetch Jacobs, or just high-tail it into the bush—and then forced himself to focus on what the hell he was going to do with Staines.
Shock and nerves had dulled the guard’s reaction, but that didn’t last. Staines slammed his clasped hands down onto Adam’s spine, and Adam hissed with pain.
