He had to think.He had to be careful, even as his heart screamed for him to start hauling away the stones and shouting to wake the dead.
Reveal nothing.Not the door.Not his connection to the people who might be trapped inside.Adam had to keep every advantage he could get—and pray it would be enough.
“Culpepper?”he called, his voice catching roughly on the false name as he waited desperately for an answer.
?
Thirty-One
Neil lay onthe ground beneath Constance in the near total darkness.At Adam’s call, she felt his chest fill as he drew in a breath to respond.
She clamped her hands over his mouth, whispering quickly at his ear.“Careful!”
Neil’s sword had gone out, tossed from his hand as they’d fallen into the narrow room carved into the rock at Hanuman’s back.Dust still coated Constance’s skin and hung thickly in the cool, still air.
A wall of rubble filled the space where the door had been.Whispers of light slipped through slim cracks near the top of the pile, providing just enough illumination for her to make out the ghostly circles of Neil’s spectacles.
He nodded.
Constance climbed free of him and picked her way over to the wreckage of the upper gallery.She kept her voice to a low hiss through the tiny gaps in the debris.
“We’re here!Everyone is fine—but don’t tell them anything!Lead them off, and we’ll dig our way out to come and find you!”
A sliver of Adam’s jaw came into view as he moved his head closer to the cracks.
“Sure about that?”he murmured back, his lips barely moving.
Constance glanced back over her shoulder at Neil, who had climbed up from the floor.His face was dusty, pale, and distinctly nervous.
“Absolutely,” she whispered back to Adam—ignoring the twinge of unease under her skin.
Borthwick’s voice echoed down to her from farther away.“Mr.Bates?”
Adam’s face disappeared as he moved away.“Nothing.I don’t see any way they could have made it.”
His voice was flat as though he were talking about the untimely demise of a pair of strangers.
Neil grasped Constance’s arm, his grip tight with worry.“What about Jacobs?”
Constance felt a quick jolt of fear.She had forgotten that the man who loomed above them could tell when someone was lying.
She waited for him to intervene—for that smooth, cold voice to call out Adam’s falsehood.
Jacobs said nothing.
“He needs Adam alive,” she reasoned aloud, still close by Neil’s side by the blocked door.“He can’t say anything or he’ll risk Borthwick deciding to shoot Adam on the spot.”
Neil didn’t look particularly reassured.Constance supposed that was fair.Their situation was admittedly a bit precarious.
Borthwick’s voice took on a tinny edge as it filtered through to where Constance stood on her toes, pressing her ear to the gap in the rubble.
“Pity.”
His clipped tone reminded Constance of what the colonel had said before aboutpersuadingher and Neil to reveal their secrets.
She felt queasy.
“Let’s move on,” Borthwick ordered.“I want us in that valley by sunset.”
