working for? They had murdered Luka and Maynard Cheney and many others since to keep the location of the fourth labyrinth secret. That seemed clear. Drake had believed Henriksen’s denials-about those killings, at least. But the hooded men had taken Welch and now Sully. In both instances, the abductions had occurred only when the killers had realized they were about to be defeated. They had retreated to fight another day, apparently, and taken prisoners.
Though it did not slow him, he had the terrible feeling that the chambers ahead of them were empty and that even if they were able to find a way to open those recessed doors at the back of the chambers, the passages beyond also would echo with the stillness of the ages.
They heard the shush of water even before they reached the turn in the corridor. Dread curled tightly in Drake’s gut.
“Nate-” Jada began.
“No!” he said, sprinting the last twenty feet, almost outpacing the flashlight beam.
He rounded the corner, slowing before he would have entered the darkness ahead. He could feel the vastness, the emptiness of the cavern ahead and heard the ripple and wash of water, and then Jada appeared behind him and the scene illuminated by her flashlight surprised him. To the right, the labyrinth had collapsed. All that remained of whatever worship chambers had been there had fallen into a massive rift that had opened in the rock. Only the upper arch of a doorway was still visible to indicate that anything had ever been there.
But to the left, two worship chambers remained.
Drake ran to the nearest door and darted inside, taking care on the three steps to the chamber floor.
“Jada, the light!” he called, though she was right behind him.
She flashed the beam around the room, dispersing ancient shadows, and Drake realized he had been holding his breath. Now he swore. The writing on the walls was in Greek, the engravings of grapes immediately signifying Dionysus to him. He glanced at the massive slab of a door at the back of the chamber, tempted to test it, but instead he spun toward Jada.
“Let’s check the other one.”
The symbol on the altar upstairs had included four octagons inside four circles. That had to mean four labyrinths and one chamber down here dedicated to the primary gods of each. Two of those chambers had caved in and been eroded by seawater for more than half a century. The clues they needed might be lost forever.
Outside the last worship chamber, Drake hesitated a moment. As Jada entered, descending the three entry stairs, the shadows closed around him. He put a hand on the hot stone wall and watched her. For a moment, he thought he heard a rustle of whispers back in the corridor, but it might have been the undulating sea washing against the ruins down in the collapsed cavern.
Then he saw Jada turn toward him, a look of wonder on her face, and the only thoughts in his mind were of Sully. They had found it.
He ran down the three steps and joined Jada. Side by side they examined the walls of the worship chamber. The style of the painting on the walls was entirely different from anything they’d seen thus far, and he recognized the Far East influence instantly. The Minotaurs were there, but the most frequently repeated image was that of the flower that they had seen upon entering the labyrinth this morning. All around the images, on columns in the chamber, and on the octagonal altar at the center of the room were ancient Chinese characters.
“The fourth labyrinth-” Jada began.
“Is in China,” Drake finished.
They looked at each other and swore, sharing a chorus of profanity.
Drake followed Jada’s light as it traveled across the walls, and what he saw disturbed him profoundly. There were images of men being hung from wooden braces and skinned alive, being burned, and having long spikes hammered into their bodies. They were horrifying, all the more so for the paintings of the same flowers and other plants and tree branches decorating the hideous imagery.
“I don’t think I want to know what god they worshipped in the fourth labyrinth,” Jada whispered.
“Swing the light over here,” he said, going to the door at the back of the chamber.
For long minutes they searched for a trigger, but to no avail. The walls were hotter here than anywhere else they had been in this subterranean maze, and he wondered what kinds of vents might wait on the other side. His shirt, damp with sweat, stuck to his back and shoulders.
When Jada paused to take a drink of water from her pack, she looked as if she felt guilty, and when she passed the bottle to Drake, he felt the same way. But it was no use. Even if they found a way to trigger the door open, they weren’t going to find Sully.
A scuffing noise at the entrance to the chamber made them both spin, Drake reaching for his gun. Flashlight beams blinded them momentarily.
“Don’t shoot, Mr. Drake,” a deep, accented voice said.
Henriksen.
As the bright lights moved away from his face, Drake kept his gun aimed at the figure in the doorway while his eyes adjusted. Henriksen’s blood-soaked shirt had been torn open and the knife wound on his shoulder bound to stop the bleeding. The man looked pale, but his eyes were alert and glittering with a zealot’s joy. He descended the three steps into the room, smiling as he gazed around, totally unmindful of the gun in Drake’s hand.
Henriksen’s short, powerfully built sidekick followed him into the room, followed by the gray-haired Greek and then Olivia, who still managed to look beautiful despite her unruly hair and the sheen of sweat on her. Her features had a hard, flinty edge and her eyes had gone cold, but the moment she spotted Jada, she softened and seemed to wake from the haze of heat and fear that had entranced them all.
The old Greek’s surviving son stayed just outside the door, guarding the entrance with a gun in his hand and grief for his dead brother burning in his eyes. He wanted more of the hooded men to come. Drake had seen that look in the eyes of anguished men before. His loss hurt so much that he wanted to kill until it didn’t hurt anymore or die and end it completely. It was probably for the best that he remained in the hall. With that kind of rage, he could not be counted on to remember who his enemies were.
“China,” Henriksen said, shaking his head. “I never would have guessed it.”
“They let you live?” Jada asked, staring at Olivia. Her meaning was clear; she wished the hooded men had done a more thorough job.
Olivia flinched, and the innocence with which she had approached Jada all along fractured, letting a flicker of dark intelligence and hatred show through. Then the mask was in place again, but Drake had seen the cold, calculating face of the real Olivia for a moment, and now he was even more on guard. He still had his gun out, and the old Greek and the short sidekick were both also armed, their weapons aimed casually at the ground. The promise of bullets made the hot air in the chamber go still.
“We fought them off,” Olivia said softly. “Nico lost a son. Tyr lost one of his best men.”
Drake figured she must be referring to Buzzcut, and Nico was the old Greek.
“We lost someone, too,” Drake said.
That made Henriksen look up, his blue eyes somehow even paler in the glow of the flashlights. “Sullivan may still be alive. If they were going to kill him, why not just do it? Why bother abducting him? He only slowed them down.”
Drake had had the same thought, but he didn’t want to agree with anything Henriksen said. He nodded slowly, narrowing his eyes.
“So what now?” Drake asked. “These guys have a history of coming back in greater numbers. We drove them off this time, but they obviously would rather see us all dead than let us make it to the fourth labyrinth.”
Tyr Henriksen smiled, revealing sharp little teeth. Despite his handsome features, in that moment he looked more like a shark than a man.
“I’m a businessman, Mr. Drake, and I’ve been successful at it. That means I’m used to there being people out there in the world who would like to see me dead.”
Drake hesitated. His heartbeat pulsed in his temples, and his breath came in short, angry inhalations. The gun in his hand seemed to thrum with an urgency all its own, pleading to do its brutal work. Henriksen hadn’t killed Luka or Cheney and he hadn’t taken Sully or Welch, but someone had burned Luka’s apartment and sent gunmen after Jada in New York. The hooded men didn’t seem overly fond of guns, and it was clear Henriksen didn’t have a problem with killing when necessary. But where did all that leave them?
Henriksen watched him closely now, his instant fascination with the Chinese worship chamber set aside for a
