Garden of Lies

O
THER
T
ITLES
BY
J
AYNE
A
NN
K
RENTZ

Trust No One

River Road

Dream Eyes

Copper Beach

In Too Deep

Fired Up

Running Hot

Sizzle and Burn

White Lies

All Night Long

Falling Awake

Truth or Dare

Light in Shadow

Summer in Eclipse Bay

Smoke in Mirrors

Dawn in Eclipse Bay

Lost & Found

Eclipse Bay

Soft Focus

Eye of the Beholder

Flash

Sharp Edges

Deep Waters

Absolutely, Positively

Trust Me

Grand Passion

Hidden Talents

Wildest Hearts

Family Man

Perfect Partners

Sweet Fortune

Silver Linings

The Golden Chance

B
Y
J
AYNE
A
NN
K
RENTZ
WRITING
AS
A
MANDA
Q
UICK

Otherwise Engaged

The Mystery Woman

Crystal Gardens

Quicksilver

Burning Lamp

Perfect Poison

Third Circle

The River Knows

Second Sight

Lie by Moonlight

Wait Until Midnight

The Paid Companion

Late for the Wedding

Don't Look Back

Slightly Shady

Wicked Widow

I Thee Wed

Seduction

Affair

Mischief

Mystique

Mistress

Deception

Desire

Dangerous

Reckless

Ravished

Rendezvous

Scandal

Surrender

With This Ring

B
Y
J
A
YNE
A
NN
K
RENTZ
WRITI
NG
AS
J
AYNE
C
ASTLE

Sinister and Fatal

Desperate and Deceptive

The Hot Zone

Deception Cove

The Lost Night

Canyons of Night

Midnight Crystal

Obsidian Prey

Dark Light

Silver Master

Ghost Hunter

After Glow

Harmony

After Dark

Amaryllis

Zinnia

Orchid

G
.
P
.
P
UTNAM
'
S
S
ONS

Publishers Since 1838

A Penguin Random House imprint

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2015 by Jayne Ann Krentz

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Quick, Amanda.

Garden of lies / Amanda Quick.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-62104-2

I. Title.

PS3561.R44G37 2015 2014049767

813'.54—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

S
later Roxton was examining the strangely luminous paintings on the wall of the ornate burial chamber when the tomb trap was triggered.

Impending destruction was telegraphed in an ominous rumble and the aching groan of ancient machinery locked deep in the stone. His first thought was that the volcano that loomed over Fever Island was erupting. But one by one, massive sections of the ceiling of the passageway that led to the entrance of the temple complex slid open. Boulders rained down.

Brice Torrence's voice echoed from the far end of the corridor near the entrance.

“Slater, get out of there. Hurry. Something terrible is happening.”

Slater was already moving. He did not waste time collecting the lanterns, his sketches or the camera. He ran to the doorway of the chamber but when he looked into the long, twisting stone corridor that led to the entrance he saw at once that it was too late to escape.

More sections of the corridor ceiling slid open as he watched. Countless tons of the terrible hail crashed into the passage. The stones piled up rapidly, filling the tunnel. He knew that if he tried to make a dash to safety he would be crushed beneath the falling rocks. He had no choice but to turn back and retreat deeper into the unexplored maze of the tomb caverns.

He rushed across the chamber, grabbed the lanterns and headed into the nearest adjoining passage. The corridor twisted away into dense, unexplored night but no boulders rained down from above.

He ran a short distance into the passage and stopped, aware that if he went deeper he would soon get lost. He and Brice had not even begun to chart the complex of burial caves carved into the base of the volcano.

He hunkered down against one wall, bracing himself. The glary light of the lantern illuminated an eerie painting, a scene depicting an ancient, catastrophic eruption of a volcano. Destruction rained down on an elegant city built of white marble. It was, Slater thought, far too close to what was happening at that moment.

Clouds of dust wafted down the tunnel. He covered his mouth and nose with his shirt.

There was nothing for it but to wait for the thundering to stop. Dread swirled like acid through his veins. At any moment the ceiling of the cavern in which he was sheltering might give way, burying him in the rubble. At least it would all be over in seconds, he thought. He was not sure he wanted to contemplate his immediate future if he did survive. For whatever time he had left he would be trapped in a brilliantly engineered maze.

The storm of rock and stone seemed to go on forever. But eventually the temple caves fell silent. It was another eternity before the dust finally settled.

Warily, he got to his feet. He stood still for a moment, listening to the shattering silence, waiting for his pulse to calm. After a while he went to look out into the vaulted chamber in which he had been standing when the rock trap released its deadly cargo. Small stones littered the floor of the room but it appeared that they had bounced and rolled into the chamber from the massive heap that now sealed the passage that led back to the entrance.

He had survived, which meant that he was now entombed alive.

He began to calculate his odds in a surprisingly academic fashion. He concluded that he was still too shaken to absorb the enormity of his predicament.

There was no reason for Brice and the rest of the expedition team to believe that he had survived; nothing they could do to save him, even if they had some hope. Fever Island was an uninhabited chunk of volcanic rock covered in unexplored jungle. It was situated a few thousand miles from civilization.

The only resources available were limited to the supplies and equipment on board the ship anchored in the island's small, natural harbor. There was no way to acquire the machinery and the manpower required to remove the vast quantity of rock that clogged the temple entrance.

Brice would consult with the ship's captain, Slater thought. They would conclude that he was dead and they would pray that was true because there was nothing they could do to save him.

He put out one of the lanterns to conserve the fuel. Holding aloft the second lantern, he started walking into the maze. There were, he decided, only two possibilities. The first—and most likely—was that he would wander in the temple complex until he died. He could only hope that death would come before the never-ending darkness drove him mad.

The second possibility—extremely remote—was that he might blunder into a passage that would take him outside into the sunlight. But even if he was so fortunate it was unlikely that he would be able to find his way back to the ship before it sailed. They had been running low on supplies when they finally found the damned island after being thrown off course by a violent storm. The captain was convinced that another tempest was on the way. He would want to start the return trip to London as soon as possible. He had to think of his crew and the other men on the expedition.

Slater knew that if he managed to escape the maze he would find himself stranded on an island that was not a regular port of call for any known vessel. It could be years before another ship arrived, if ever.

He walked on into the night-bound caverns, his only guide the temple paintings left behind by the artists of an ancient civilization that had long ago been buried beneath rivers of molten lava.

He did not know exactly when he began to understand the meaning of the paintings, if, indeed, he actually did perceive the intent of the stories. He reminded himself that there was a very good possibility that he was already slipping into madness. The eternal darkness and the mesmerizing artwork were disorienting. A man in his situation could easily begin to hallucinate.

But eventually he thought he detected three distinct legends. He stopped when it dawned on him that each tale was a different path into the maze. One series of paintings depicted a tale of war. The second was a story of vengeance.

In the end he chose the third legend.

He never knew how long he walked or how far. At times he stopped, exhausted, and sank into a slumber that was splintered with images from the wall paintings that were his only guide. Occasionally he stumbled across small underground streams. He stopped to drink deeply from them. He tried to make the cheese and bread in his pack last but eventually they were gone.

He kept walking because there was nothing else to do. To stop would be an act of total surrender.

In the end when he staggered out of the caverns into a stone circle illuminated with daylight he almost continued walking because he was certain that he was hallucinating.

Sunlight.

Some part of his mind registered the reality of what he was seeing.

In disbelief he looked up and saw that the hot, tropical sunshine was slanting through an opening in the rocks. A series of steep stone steps had been cut into the rock. A long black cord dangled from the opening.

Calling on the last of his reserves, he grasped the rope and tested it to make certain it would hold his weight. When he was satisfied that it was secure he started up the ancient staircase, using the rope as a handrail.

He reached the opening, scrambled out of the temple caves and collapsed on the stone floor of an open-air temple. He had been so long in the shadows that he had to close his eyes against the brilliant sunlight.

Somewhere nearby a gong boomed. The sound echoed endlessly through the jungle.

He was not alone on the island.

—

A
YEAR
LATER
another ship dropped anchor in the small harbor. Slater was on board when it sailed. But he was not the same man that he had been when he arrived on Fever Island.

Over the course of the next several years he became a legend in certain circles. When he finally returned to London he discovered the great curse that befalls all legends: There is no place to call home.