Part 3 (1/2)
And she knew. She knew before she saw the chip close up, before she dared to touch it and lift it to her eyes.
She knew exactly how it would match her own pendant, how it would be the other half of a whole once broken in two. When she pressed the irregular edge of the chip against that of her own, it fit like a hand in a glove.
”Oh, G.o.d,” she said hoa.r.s.ely. ”It can't be. The world doesn't work this way.”
No. Life didn't do things like thisa”make it so easy, so convenient, giving you a guide to lead you right to where he'd died, so close to Tikal, in a place a hundred others would have seen before you. This could not be Liam O'Shea.
But she knew it was. She knew with a certainty beyond reason.
”Liam,” she said, tasting the name. This was all that remained of that handsome, arrogant, alive young man she'd seen in the photo.
She'd done what Homer had asked, and more. She'd found Perry's partner. The man he'd murdered.
She felt as if she'd been kicked hard in the solar plexus. Her knees buckled. There, face-to-face with hard reality, she bent her head and mourned. And, in her hands, the two halves of the stone chip burned and burned.
The brief ceremony she'd planned was no longer something simple and far away. It was as real and inescapable as Liam's bones.
What now, Homer? Do I bury him along with the pendant, and hope that will be enough? But she knew it wouldn't be, somehow. Even apologies would never be enough. Now she understood the weight of guilt Homer had felt near the end, as if Peregrine Sinclair's evil act had come to rest on her own shoulders. And only she could set it right.
Mac rose shakily. It was so d.a.m.ned hard to think of Liam O'Shea as this pile of bones. She didn't take out the photo, though she wanted to. As if that could bring him to life again.
She forced herself to turn back to the wall. She needed to clear her mind. There was something regular and soothing about the glyphs and ritual figures carved into the limestone surface. Repet.i.tive and patterned, yet elegant and profound. Eternal, as human life was not. She followed each line of glyphs from right to left and back again, trying not to think of Liam O'Shea.
Had he been afraid when he died? Had he cried out for someone to care, someone to hold his hand as Mac had done with Homer?
Had he cursed the Sinclairs with his dying breath?
She laughed a little and leaned her folded hands against the wall, one stone chip still nested in each palm.
”I wish I could undo it, Homer,” she said. ”His death, the curse, everything. Maybe you'd still be alive. Maybe Dad, and Moma”Oh, this is insane. But if I could go backa”
In her right hand, Perry's stone chip flared like a burning brand. In her left, Liam's did the same. A wave of overwhelming nausea caught her by the throat and twisted her innards, propelling her away from the wall. Her fingers spasmed helplessly around the pendants even as they seared her flesh.
A black stab of pain shot into her skull, and she knew she was going to faint. She flailed blindly for the wall again, catching the brim of her cap and knocking it from her head. Her fists struck something solid, and the impact drove the broken edges of the pendants into her palms with enough force to pierce the skin.
The slow welling of blood startled her into a moment of lucidity. She opened her hands. At the precise moment the pendants dropped to the ground, the wall she was leaning on vanished.
She fell. It seemed she traveled toward the ground for a much longer time than distance or gravity could account for. The nausea redoubled, accompanied by a pounding in her skull that drove out anything resembling a coherent thought. When she hit the floor it was as if she landed on something soft rather than unevenly laid stone. A moment later she felt the impact and rolled into a compact ball, waiting for the temple to crash down on top of her.
It didn't. She straightened carefully. The sickness and pain were miraculously gone, but she was in total darkness. Her flashlight had been knocked from her hand; she couldn't tell where the tunnel walls were, or how far she'd fallen. Logic dictated that it couldn't have been more than a few feet. But what in h.e.l.l had happened to the glyph wall?
”Hidden trap doorways?” she murmured, getting to her hands and knees. ”Never heard of those, either.” She kept up a steady stream of talk, listening to her onesided conversation echo back from unseen walls, reminding herself that she'd never really been afraid of the dark. She'd grown up in a big echoing house with a thousand rooms full of mysterious and often scary objectsa”or so it had felt to a child.
She checked her backpack by feel; okay. Her body was still in one piece. Watch still functioninga”she'd been in this place for almost an hour. Next thing was to find the flashlighta”and Homer's cap, which she'd been clumsy enough to knock from her own head.
As for the pendantsa”they, too, were gone, and the ceremony of repentance had yet to be performed.
She groped along the floor, sc.r.a.ping her hands on rough edges where blocks met unevenly. She felt up and to the side and connected with a walla”flat and damp and uncarved. She oriented herself by that and crawled in what she thought was the way she'd come.
No carved glyph-wall met her searching fingers. But the flashlight rolled against her knee, and she grabbed it with a gasp of relief. A quick test showed that it was still working, though it had been switched off sometime in the fall.
She swept the beam ahead of her, pus.h.i.+ng to her feet. Sure enough, the walls were there on either side of her, exactly the same as they'd been before. But the glyph wall wasn't there, and neither were Liam's bones nor the pendants. Either she'd gone flying yards into the tunnel, or she'd become totally disoriented in the darkness.
Panic was not a familiar emotion, or one she had any desire to become better acquainted with. Okaya”the glyph wall had to be either one way or the other. Once she b.u.mped into it, she'd know where she was.
She played a quick mental game and chose one of the directions. After a minute she knew it couldn't be the right one. She turned around and marched back the other way with a speed that was just a bit reckless in the dark.
When she hit the next firm, hard surface it was definitely not a wall. Her hands came up to steady herself and pressed against warm, damp fabric covering equally warm and unmistakable contours. Hard, sculpted contours. Masculine. Definitely masculine. And they didn't belong to the skinny boy who'd guided her to this place.
The smell of sweat and green and earth and man filled her nostrils. Deep, harsh breathing gusted past her ear. She dropped her hands and backed away, holding the flashlight low so as not to blind him.
”Am I glad I ran into you,” she said. ”I've been wandering inside this tunnel for what feels like hours.” She heard the rapid patter of her own words and realized how nervous she sounded. She had absolutely no idea who this guy could be. ”Ia seem to have gotten myself turned around. I thought I was alone here.”
He gave a low grunt. In the faint illumination radiating from the flashlight, all she could see of him was solid height, light-colored clothing, and a glitter of eyes.
”What are you doing in here, boy?”
She stiffened, every other concern momentarily wiped clean from her mind. The lapse was brief. How many times had this happened to her during childhood? It wasn't such an easy mistake to make now that she'd grown, but in all fairness she knew she contributed to the problem because of her preference for loose, comfortable, practical clothing.
This guy couldn't see her clothing, or much of the rest of her. She knew her voice was husky and low, a little rough now with nervousness. That must account for it. She made herself relax and decided that perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea to let him think she was male. At least for the time being.
A hard, very large hand caught her arm. ”You're American. How did you get here?”
She held her arm very still in his grasp. ”Yeah, I'm American.” As if it's any of your business, buster. ”I came to see the ruins. I walked. I didn't know this tunnel went so far.”
The man felt up the length of her arm. ”Just how young are you? Where's your party?” His voice was deep, with an edge of roughnessa”eminently masculine, like his grip and size. She began to feel more than a little annoyed.
”Party? Did I miss the celebration?” she quipped.
He gave a bark of laughter, but in the dim glow she could see his eyes narrow. ”Who did you come with? I didn't see anyone else in the jungle. The Indians said no one's been here for months.”
No one here for months? She snorted and pulled her arm free. ”Look, friend, I don't know who you are or where you've been, but if you go a mile or so south of here you'll run right into Tikal. Which is where I intend to be very shortly.” The minute I've finished what I came here to do, that is.
”Tikal,” he repeated. ”I would have known if anyone else was here.”
Great. She'd had just the luck to run into a lunatic in a very dark tunnel. She backed away. ”Whatever you say. If you don't mind, I have business to take care of.”
She calculated how best to slip around him and had gone a few yards when he reappeared beside her. His footfalls were eerily soundless; the hair stood up on her neck.
”I'll join you, lad. My lantern broke, and I'll need your light.”
Great. ”Well, uh, that would be fine except I have something to do before I leavea””
”Nonsense. This is no place for a child.” His hand fastened around her arm again before she could dodge out of the way. The masculine scent of him, as primal as the jungle itself, nearly overpowered her. His strength was irresistible, though Mac had never been weak. Fighting him didn't seem like such a good idea just now.
”You can take me to your camp when we're out of here,” he said, steering her along. ”I have supplies to replenish, and I want to see who arrived without my knowing about it.”