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My steadiness seems to calm her down, and we empty both our backpacks and spread everything on the floor. I do a quick assessment. “We have enough food for three or four days, but water is going to become a problem much sooner. We’ll have to ration it.”
“Splendid,” Winter replies sarcastically.
I take a sip from my canteen and encourage Winter to do the same. We share a protein bar, allow ourselves another sip of water, and then I get up to better explore the walls of our prison, in the faint hope of finding some means of escape. But my systematic examination yields no results yet again.
Defeated, I sink to the floor and join Winter in leaning my back against the wall where the gold coin boxes were stashed. Two seconds later, the flashlight begins to flicker again.
“How long have we been in here?” I ask.
Winter shrugs. “A few hours?” She shows me her bare wrist. “I don’t have my watch. It was impossible to wear with the scuba-diving gloves.”
“Yeah, same here.”
The flickering of the headlamp grows more hectic.
“Death by starvation, trapped in a Thai temple,” Winter says grimly. “That’s not the way I figured I’d go.”
“You think of your death often?”
“No, only when I accept stupid jobs, in the stupid jungle, going after stupid lost cities, and oh-so-casually find myself stuck in a stupid treasure chamber,” she snaps back.
On that cheerful note, the flashlight blinks one last time and then goes dark.
13
WINTER
I’m so tired, but I can’t sleep. Even without the adrenaline flooding through my body—like a trapped animal who stays ready to attack the hunter—the silence alone is too great to allow any rest. Sometimes, I’ve lain awake at night and thought the quiet oppressive, but it was nothing compared to the perfect stillness of this place. It’s as if I could touch the darkness surrounding us.
Everywhere else in the world, a sound or motion, no matter how imperceptible, deadens the sharp edge of absolute silence. But here, there are none.
We’re buried in the bowels of a lost temple no one knows about, in a city of legend most don’t believe even exists. Outside, the jungle is teeming with life and creatures. The monkeys jumping vines, the exotic birds cooing, the wind rustling through the leaves, but not a sound of it reaches us down here. We’re separated by a long tunnel and five feet of rock even from the chamber with the statue of Buddha on his deathbed, and the dead make no sounds. In our living tomb, we’re cut off from every echo of the world—as if already in the grave.
I shiver.
“Logan,” I whisper. “Would you hold me?”
“Afraid of the dark?” he says.
Why does he have to be such a jerk about everything? “Forget I asked.”
A few seconds later, two strong arms drag me to the side. There’s some adjusting of limbs, and suddenly I’m engulfed in blissful warmth. Logan has pulled me against his chest and wraps himself around me like a blanket.
Human touch—such a simple thing, but one that can make all the difference in the world.
I let myself relax in Logan’s embrace and I’m surprised at how cozy it feels.
“Who are you thinking of?” Logan asks.
I don’t hesitate. “My sister. I can’t believe I’m going to die without having told her I forgive her. You?”
“For one, I’m not resigned to our demise being such a foregone conclusion.” He squeezes his arms around me a little tighter. “And two, there aren’t many people for me to think about. I don’t have any siblings, and my parents both died a few years back—”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“So, you’re a bit of a lone wolf?”
