icon, with its immense jumble of chambers, walls, scalloped towers, carvings, and statues. This temple alone covered five hundred acres, encircled by a wide moat.
But it was not their goal.
They were headed to Angkor Thom, another mile north. And while not as large as Angkor Wat, the walled ruins of Thom housed the great Bayon temple, considered to be the heart of all of Angkor.
A resounding bump shook the van.
Gray caught his own reflection in the rearview mirror. His cheeks were sunken, shadowed, his lips cracked, the stubble over his jaw and chin looked like a black bruise. Only his eyes still shone flinty and hard, fueled by his anger and vengeance. But deeper in his chest, there remained only grief and guilt.
Seichan, perhaps sensing him sinking into a numbing despair, gripped his hand in her own. It was not a tender gesture. She squeezed hard, nails biting, refusing to let him slip away, dragging him from the edge of that well.
Nasser noted her gesture. A shadow of a sneer appeared, then vanished away again. “And I thought you were smarter than that, Commander,” he muttered. “Is she fucking you yet?”
Gray focused back at him. “Shut the hell up.”
Nasser laughed, once, sharp, amused. “No? Too bad. If you’re being screwed over, you should at least get something out of it.”
Seichan slipped her hand from Gray’s. “Fuck you, Amen.”
“Not anymore, Seichan. Not after I kicked you out of bed.” Nasser’s eyes turned to Gray. “Did you know? That we were once lovers?”
Gray snapped a glance toward Seichan. Surely Nasser was lying. How could she…with the bastard who had just ordered his mother’s torture? Just the thought of his mother spilled more acid into his stomach.
But Seichan refused to meet Gray’s eye, glaring instead at Nasser. Her fingers curled into a fist on her knee.
“But all that ended,” Nasser said. “The ambitious bitch. We were both vying to rise to the next station in the Guild hierarchy. The last rung to the very top. But we came to a difference of opinion. About how to acquire you.”
Gray swallowed. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Seichan wanted to use her wiles to lure you into cooperating of your own volition, to help the Guild follow Marco’s trail. I, on the other hand, believed in a more direct approach. Blood and coercion. A man’s way. But when the Guild decided against her plan, Seichan sought to take matters into her own hands. She murdered the Venetian curator, stole the obelisk, and fled to the United States.”
Seichan crossed her arms, glowering back in disgust. “And you’re still piss-sore that I beat you to the prize. Again.”
Gray studied Seichan.
“So I followed her to the States,” Nasser continued. “I knew where she’d be going. It was easy enough to lay a trap.”
“Where you missed killing me,” she scoffed, “once again proving your incompetence.”
He pinched his fingers up between them. “By a fraction of an inch.” He lowered his arm. “Still, you kept to your original strategy, didn’t you, Seichan? You still sought Commander Pierce out. Only perhaps as more of an ally now. You knew he’d come to your rescue. You and Gray against the world!” He laughed coarsely. “Or are you still playing him, Seichan?”
Seichan merely sniffed in derision.
Nasser turned back to Gray. “She is nothing if not ambitious. Ruthless. She’d step over her own dying grandmother to rise up in the hierarchy.”
Seichan leaned forward, glaring. “But at least I didn’t kneel quietly while my mother was murdered before my eyes.”
Nasser’s face clenched hard.
“Coward,” Seichan mumbled, falling back into the seat with a satisfied sneer. “You even murdered your father while his back was turned. Still couldn’t face him.”
Nasser lunged at her, a hand going for her throat.
Gray instinctively knocked Nasser’s arm away.
Maybe he shouldn’t have.
Still, Nasser pulled back on his own, his eyes sharpened by hate. “Best you know who you’re in bed with,” he said savagely to Gray. “Should be careful what you tell that bitch.”
The combatants settled silently to their corners. Gray eyed Seichan, realizing that for all her bluster she had never denied Nasser’s statements. Gray reran the past days’ events over in his skull, but it was hard to concentrate with his head pounding and fear wormed deep into his belly.
Still, there were some realities that were hard to dismiss. Seichan had murdered the Venetian curator to get the obelisk. In cold blood. And when they’d first met years ago, she had even tried to kill him.
Nasser’s words echoed in his head.
Gray didn’t know.
Ultimately, he didn’t know whom to believe, whom to trust.
Gray knew only one thing for certain. There could be no missteps from here. Any failure threatened more than just his life.
Harriet struggled, sobbing in terror. “Please, no…”
Her wrist was clamped in the vise of the guard’s grip, pinned to the table, her hand flattened under the same guard’s fist. The blowtorch hissed a few inches away.
Annishen held the open jaws of the bolt cutter over Harriet’s splayed fingers. “Eenie, meenie, minie, mo…”
She lowered the jaws toward Harriet’s ring finger. The diamond on her wedding band glinted under the bare bulb.
“No…”
A loud
Harriet turned her head as Annishen straightened. Two yards away, the guard who had been cradling Jack’s chin, forcing her husband to watch the impending mutilation, cried out and stumbled back. Blood poured from the guard’s nose.
Jack lunged out of the chair, twisting away from where he had just head-butted the guard. As he turned, he yanked the guard’s pistol out of its holster and swung it around in his cuffed hands.
“Get down, Harriet!” he said, firing at the same time.
The guard who had been holding the pistol against Harriet’s cheek took a round to his chest. He flew backward. His gun skittered into the darkness.
The second guard released Harriet’s arm and went for his weapon.
—
From the corner of her eye, Harriet saw the man’s cheek and ear vanish in a mist of blood and gore. But her full attention was on Annishen. The woman had already dropped the bolt cutters with a clatter and snatched her pistol from the tabletop. She was whip-fast, turning on Jack.
Harriet, her arm still on the table, lunged and grabbed the blowtorch. She flashed the flame over the woman’s hand and wrist. Annishen screamed. Her gun fired. A wild shot struck the cement floor and ricocheted away. The woman’s sleeve caught fire as she fell back, dropping her pistol.
Jack fired again, but pain only made Annishen faster.
The woman danced to the side, kicked the table over, and dove with a trail of flame out a back doorway.
Jack fired another two shots, chasing the woman off — then was at Harriet’s side. He hauled her up, hugged her tight, then hurried with her toward the stairs. “Must get out of here. The shots—”
Already shouts rang above their heads. The blasts had been heard.
