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She had to know and had no way to contact Ace for confirmation.
Gunfire sounded from inside the house.
Her pulse was pounding so loud inside her ears that Jasmine could barely hear anything else.
She focused on calm, breathing in and out, until she was in control. Then she ran toward the house, coming at it from a side with a garden. She ran along the twisting path through bushes and flowers until she reached a set of French doors. A pile of broken slats and vines lay on the ground, partially blocking access to the door.
Jasmine twisted the handle. It was locked.
More gunfire sounded.
She glanced around, found a decorative stone about the size of a soccer ball and tossed it through the glass beside the handle. The sound of the crash coincided with more gunfire, muffling the sound of the splintering glass and the loud thump of the stone hitting the floor.
Footsteps sounded through the broken glass.
Jasmine ducked back a little and peered through the other glass panels on the door.
A man carrying a rifle stepped through the door at the opposite end of the room. He looked around, pointing his gun as he went. When he paused in front of the stone and looked at the broken window, Jasmine eased back, away from the door.
If the man came out, she’d launch herself at him, knock him down and take his weapon.
A shout from deeper inside the house made the man turn and run out of the room, back into the corridor.
Hunching low, Jasmine moved back to the door, reached her hand through the broken glass and twisted the deadbolt.
She carefully brought her arm back through the glass and pushed the door open.
Walking lightly over the broken glass, she hurried to the other side and peered around the doorframe into a hallway.
More gunfire sounded at the rear of the house.
Jasmine eased through the rooms nearest her, searching for any sign of her son and finding none.
With the fight going on toward the opposite end of the house, she headed for the staircase. A man lay crumpled at the base of the staircase, blood pooling beneath him, his eyes open, staring into space. Dead.
Jasmine’s stomach roiled. She hurried past the dead man and climbed the stairs to the second floor. She moved from one room to the next.
The first room she came to was directly over the one through which she’d entered the house. It was a small room with comfortable chairs and large picture windows—and no indication that her son was there.
She went through a door on the side of the sitting room and entered an office. A large desk sat in the middle of the room. Bookshelves lined the walls, along with glass cases containing ancient artifacts. The desk had a map of Egypt and its surrounding countries lying across the wooden surface.
The map and artifacts had to be Bertolli’s efforts thus far in locating the hidden treasure.
Jasmine walked from that office back out into the hallway and entered the room beside it.
The massive bed in the center barely filled the huge room. There was a chaise lounge in one corner, a table and chair by the window and a long low dresser against a wall.
She hurried through to the adjoining bathroom with its marble tile floor, a free-standing tub and a shower.
It had to be the master suite. Not a place where he’d hold a little boy hostage.
Jasmine left the bathroom, crossed the bedroom and moved on to the next.
This door was locked.
How she wished she had her file to pick that lock. Instead, she looked around for a key. She ran her fingers over the top of the doorframe and felt something cool and hard.
The key.
