"Rhys!" I shouted—or tried. Turns out there was cloth tied across my mouth. I inhaled deeply through my nose, smelling damp, musty air. It proved that I was at least alive. I also wore a blindfold. My hands were tied behind my back.
And somebody nearby was arguing. In Arabic.
Lie still, I thought, carefully testing my wrists against the strength of the fabric that bound them. Let them think you're still out.
But footsteps sounded, hollow on some kind of wooden planking. My aborted shout must have gotten their attention.
"Tsk tsk, Mrs. Sanger." I thought I knew that voice—deep and cultured and tinged with a British accent. "Have you been feigning all this time?"
Mrs
. Sanger?
Then I remembered the damned ring I got from Lex. I should have left it at the hotel…or at least in my passport case.
Hands sat me up—my feet, at least, weren't tied—and tugged at the gag, pulling my hair. From his voice, at least four feet away and above me, I knew the hands didn't belong to the speaker. "My men assure me they did nothing to render you unconscious."
They didn't have to, if Tala had. "Where's Rhys?"
"His safety depends on your cooperation."
Instead of taking my cue—
cooperation with what
?—I took a fairly large chance. I had to find Rhys. "We might as well ditch the blindfold, too. I already know your face, don't I?"
He laughed and said something else in Arabic. Hands pulled at the second knot behind my head—wrenching my neck slightly and taking more hair—and cloth fell away from my eyes.
Where the hell were we? It was almost as dark as when I'd worn the blindfold. Underground dark. Hugely dark. For a crazy moment I thought—
a pyramid
?
But I'd never heard of a pyramid in
Alexandria
…and I doubted one could be this roomy. Two swarthy men beamed flashlights into my face. But even squinting against yellow light, I recognized the man in the business suit, standing before me. It was Sinbad. From the airport. From the bazaar.
Hani Rachid.
He still had an Eye-of-Horus design painted on his cheek.
And he had at least four people with him I could only call henchmen. The implications didn't escape me. It looked like Hani Rachid was some sort of crime lord.
"
Imshee
," I told him, using his own word for piss
off
.
Again, I tugged at the bindings on my wrists. I thought I felt them give, just a little.
He laughed. "Your husband may be a weakling and a fool, allowing such disrespect. I am neither. You will stay away from my family or suffer the consequences, you and this false priest."
Only when he pivoted and kicked did I see Rhys lying, blindfolded and bound, in the shadows near Rachid's feet. My friend's gag didn't fully muffle his cry at the kick.
I feared it wasn't the first. "Leave him alone!"
"Do not presume to order me about."
"And you wonder why your marriage crashed and burned? If I were Jane, I would have left you, too."
His eyes narrowed, and he took a furious step forward. Good—closer to me was farther from Rhys. But when I merely glared upward, refusing to flinch, he stopped himself—then turned and swung a vicious foot into Rhys's ribs.
Rhys rolled back with a grunt. Another of Rachid's men darted quickly behind him and kicked him from that direction.
Somewhere far below and beyond Rhys, I heard pebbles plop into water, as if the wooden plank we gathered on was some kind of platform. The echo was incredible. Even more incredible was a glimpse I got, when one of the henchmen briefly flashed his light across shadowy pillars and arches.
Colonnades. Definitely too roomy to be a pyramid.
So where the hell were we?
Wherever we were, it was time to leave.
With a tiny lurch, I wriggled my hands free of their ties. Now all I needed was to watch for my chance.
Five men, total. Not good odds. But if they kicked Rhys again…
"This is your only warning, witch," insisted Rachid. Again with the
witch
! "You and Tala may think you are powerful, but I know ancient secrets, as well. Leave
Egypt
while you can, or suffer the consequences. As an example—"
To my horror, he turned back to Rhys. "This man pretends to be a priest, in order to insinuate himself with my wife. That was a deadly mistake."
"He
is
a priest," I protested, before Hani could kick him again. My words echoed back at me from who-knew-where. I usually didn't think of Rhys that way—it sure made me feel guiltier about how attractive I found him—but it was the truth. He'd petitioned to leave his clerical duties in order to marry, a petition that was tragically granted a few days after his fiancée died. But technically… "I swear he is."
"This does not excuse his familiarity with my wife."
"Your ex-wife. He
counseled
her." But I might as well have been arguing in a cone of silence, for all that Hani listened to me. He drew back his foot to kick my helpless friend—and I had to risk it.
I surged to my feet, stumbling slightly as circulation returned to my blood-deprived legs. Plank flooring bowed under my shifting weight—if this was a platform, it was a cheap one. I showed my freed hands. "I said, leave him alone."
Then I bent my knees slightly, centering my balance the way I would at the start of any tai chi exercise. To-night, however, I meant to incorporate less well-known, combative aspects of the normally gentle art.
Several of Hani's helpers backed away, saying something in Arabic. Hani snapped back at them in the same language, then said to me, "They think this is part of your magic. I think they simply did not tie you well."
At least he wasn't hurting Rhys. "Who says I
need
magic?"
He swung—and I easily dodged the blow. When he stepped forward, I stepped back, leading him even farther from my friend. Scowling, in the darkness, Hani swung again.
Again I ducked. Once I got him far enough from Rhys, I would use the force he was putting into his punches against him, perhaps throw him across this plywood flooring, hopefully frighten the others into running. But for now…
Suddenly, unnervingly, Hani grinned—and surged forward with another punch. Again I ducked and backed from it—and stumbled off the edge of the plywood, onto crumbling rock.
And nothingness.
I went completely still, balanced on the one foot that still had purchase.
The platform seemed to stretch between rock braces, over who-knew-what kind of drop. The space beyond Rhys wasn't the only edge.
Only my tai chi stance, honed after years of practice, kept me from falling into the surprise abyss. More pebbles plopped into water, far below.
Where the hell were we?
Even now, with at least three flashlight beams in my face, my perch was precarious at best. All my weight and balance rested, for a moment, on the ball of one sandaled foot, braced on old, crumbling stone.
Hani's smile widened. "You will need all your magic," he warned. "If you defy
me
. Now fly."
There was too much of him and nowhere to duck, nowhere to leap. Like a schoolyard bully, he simply pushed me.
And for the second time that day, I found myself plummeting backward in freefall, skirts wrapping my legs. But this time, I didn't even know what I was falling to.
It was a void.
For a moment, I felt sheer terror.
When the black surface met me, I hit in a splashing backflop. Darkness and water swallowed me. Not a second later, I impacted a stone bottom that may well have killed me if not for that few feet cushion of water. As it was, I couldn't hold back a grunt of pain and, worse, the inhale that had to follow it.
I surged up, clawing, panicked—and stood in waist-deep water and blind nothingness. I thought I saw the yellow of flashlight beams to one side, but then even they were gone, and I was too overwhelmed to look closer.
I was choking so hard that my back and neck hurt, so hard that I was almost doubled over. Air dragged into my lungs and I gagged out more water, spitting, gasping. Eventually I could breathe again. Eventually I could hear above my own coughing, rasping inhalations.
That's when I heard Rhys's muffled shouts, far above me. I couldn't understand any of it at first, except that he was still gagged and apparently desperate.
"Rhys!" I called back.
My voice echoed in the sudden silence with that unique, brittle texture that bounces off underground water. Great. Like I hadn't had enough submerged caves in my life—and the absolute, pressing thickness of the black that surrounded me was
definitely
like being in a cave. Except…
I remembered colonnades. The water that I'd choked on wasn't salty or, thank heavens, sewage. In fact, it tasted remarkably benign. So where the hell—
"Rhys?"
His muffled return had two syllables with a
g
in the center…even a gag lets you make
g's
. I realized it was my name. Then more garbled syllables, ending with "kuh?"
As in,
okay
?
"I'm fine," I called. "There's water down here. It broke my fall."
I thought I heard a rush of relieved breath, though I may have imagined that part.
"How are you?" I asked. My concern echoed hauntingly back at me.
Ooo? Ooo
?
I didn't like that he said nothing. They'd kicked him pretty hard and, considering that Hani seemed to have been jealous, they hadn't been playing nice. Rhys could have broken ribs, internal injuries. "Rhys?"
No way could I understand his muffled response, but at least he was conscious.
"I'm going to try to call for help," I announced, hoping the leather of my fanny pack had protected my phone enough that it would work. Wet. Underground. Okay, so it was a long shot but, if nothing else, I wanted the comfort of the lit display in this thick, suffocating blackness.
I still cursed, loudly, when I realized the phone was gone. So was my change purse. "Son of a bitch!"
Rhys's next muffled noise was inquiring.
"That son of a bitch Hani stole my cell phone.
And
the cash I had on me." I patted my chest and sighed in relief. "At least he didn't take my passport, but still… "
Oh, no! In the darkness, I clapped my right hand over my left—and sagged in relief to sense the ring still there. I might well resent it… but that didn't mean I wanted to lose the damned thing.
Rhys's response was a single grunt, like
Oh
.
"I'm going to try to find a side to this… this wherever I am. Maybe I can climb back up to where you are."
Being blind sucks. Heaven only knew what I was wading through as I headed in the general direction that I'd heard Rhys, but when I called again, his return noise sounded farther away. I realized by my own echo that I was apparently under something and had to backtrack. Through an extended call-and-response exercise, like a deadly serious game of Marco Polo, I finally bumped into what felt like a column. It seemed to have enough pits and cracks in its stone face for me to tentatively climb.
I tied my wet skirt up around my waist and started up, scrubbing my open hand across a curve of unseen rock for every grip, not allowing myself to imagine what kind of dirt I felt, gritty, under my palm. I was about ten feet up when one sandaled foot slipped off its supposed toehold, and I plummeted backward.
Stupid stupid stupid
.
Again I splashed, submerged—and had to, with Rhys's help, start over. This time I took off my sandals, too, stowing them in my open fanny pack. I concen-trated on Rhys as I climbed, groping blindly for each finger hold, sliding the sole of each foot across curved, unseen rock for each toehold. He was still tied, and probably injured. He needed me to do this, damn it.
My legs and arms trembled from the strain. At times like this, I wished I
were
magic.
Higher…had I gone fifteen feet? Twenty? Higher…
"Rhys?"
His response sounded comfortingly nearby, just over my head… and sure enough, my reaching hand slid over the edge of the drop-off from which I'd fallen.
I grasped crumbling rock and then the edge of thick plywood. I said a little prayer to
Isis
and whoever else could help me past this last precarious maneuver, and used the leverage of my feet to drag myself over the edge.
I only allowed myself a moment to flop wetly onto the planking that had welcomed me back to consciousness, panting. Then I pushed up onto my knees. "Rhys!"
He responded with three weary syllables. Probably, "Over here."
I crawled in that direction and—blessedly—my hand reached warm, dry flesh. Yes!
Except that he couldn't swallow back his groan from my touch. He
was
hurt! I tried to be as gentle as possible as I felt down the length of one long, corded arm to where his wrists were bound. The knots fought me; I finally had to lean across him, trying not to put too much weight on him, and bite the damned material to start it ripping. He felt so solid under me, and I felt so wet. And then—