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She checked the map on her watch and thought about Kira, taken as a pawn in a game she’d never agreed to play.
Ninety minutes at minimum.
Help is on the way, Kira.
She’d have given anything to know help was coming on that last day in Jordan.
“It’s the construction site.” Chris didn’t know if he should curse or cheer. Each location came with its own problems, but no one had really expected the half-finished museum and retail store would be the winner in the destination lottery.
It wasn’t nearly as secure as the estate, and not as confined as the warehouse, and there were fewer places to hide a terrorist or a hostage during working hours.
By the time Mason Gardner parked inside the fenced lot—with concertina wire topping the temporary fencing—it was only midafternoon. Surely workers would still be there?
Or had construction been halted for some reason?
Chris pulled over in a park a half mile from the construction site, forced on the sidelines while Diana made her offensive move to follow the Gardners into the museum.
They listened to father and son bicker as they climbed from the vehicle. “Let me check on her first,” Mason said.
“No. After the meeting, we’re heading home. You never should have brought her here.”
“Would you rather I brought her to the estate, where the staff would recognize her?”
“Kira,” Rand whispered.
Chris nodded.
At least they knew she was here.
The voice feed from the car went silent. After a long interval, they heard Diana speak into her headset. “I’m climbing out.” She let out a soft groan.
Chris knew it was the first time she’d been able to stretch out after hours in the trunk and vowed to give her a therapeutic massage later tonight.
Just a few more hours, babe, and this nightmare is over.
The next hour would probably be more dangerous than any she’d spent in Jordan.
Diana left the headset in the trunk of the car—she didn’t want to advertise she had backup—and approached the museum. She discovered new frontiers of fear as she faced the ornate double doors on the work-in-progress museum. Her heart pounded as she pushed open a door. The Gardners hadn’t bothered to lock it or rearm the alarm, thank goodness.
But then, they had no reason to expect a Trojan horse. Once she was inside, she released a half dozen drones. Some could fly. Some crawled. They were tiny and programmed to seek out humans. Once they found them, they would hide and record video, which broadcast on a live feed watchable by anyone with the secured link.
The museum interior was further along in construction than she’d expected. Walls and corridors were installed, and they’d begun work on the decorative elements. Half-finished columns from Ancient Greece gave way to the toes of the Sphinx.
She paused to admire the concept. It was a one-to-one scale of the Sphinx paw. Say what you will about the Gardners, but they understood the point of a replica was to inspire awe of the original.
This wasn’t a two-story-tall Statue of Liberty, or a half-sized Eiffel Tower.
From there, she moved on. A pyramid mural gave way to a slot canyon. She entered the maze and was deep inside when her stomach dropped. She knew exactly where she was.
This wasn’t a generic slot canyon from a generic Middle Eastern desert, this was the canyon where she’d been taken that first day.
It was beyond brazen of the Gardners to have duplicated this place when they could have just invented a setting. They’d had this built while she was a prisoner. They must’ve known she’d seen it.
They hadn’t planned on her returning from Jordan alive.
Behind her, she heard the sound of someone racking the slide on a handgun.
“Raise your hands, and turn slowly.”
