Uncharted The Fourth Labyrinth

8



The sun went down as Drake drove them into Fayoum City, the sky becoming a vast indigo field of stars. They passed the ancient waterwheels that kept the narrow canals moving in the city, then crossed a bridge into the city proper.

Drake tapped the brake when he spotted a police car parked beside a building that resembled an upside-down pyramid. In some parts of Egypt it was customary for Westerners to be accompanied by police in the larger cities. Chigaru had assured them that the insignias he had pasted on the bumper and the dashboard would keep most cops away. Either he had been as good as his word or this particular cop didn’t feel like rousting Westerners. The police car remained where it was, and Drake kept driving.

The desk clerk at Auberge du Lac had given them directions, which meant Drake wasn’t sure if they would end up in the right place until he actually had pulled into the parking lot. He had half expected the little man in the red jacket to send them the wrong way on purpose, but the directions turned out to be impeccable. The only distraction was the small black van that had picked them up as they passed the waterwheels and stuck with them as they drove through the city.

“You see it?” Drake asked.

Sully, in the passenger seat, glanced back. “Got it.”

“Keep an eye on it.”

Jada stole a quick glance as well. Though she said nothing, her body language spoke volumes, and when they turned onto Halma Street and the van kept going, she visibly exhaled. Drake felt the same relief but couldn’t shake the feeling that they had been observed almost from the moment of their arrival in Egypt. It was impossible, of course. They had driven across wide expanses of nothing where a pursuing vehicle would have been impossible to miss. Even so, he felt the pressure of malign eyes on them as he drove.

The restaurant was tucked into the corner of the lobby of the Queen’s Hotel, whose general shabbiness was a persuasive argument for why Luka had chosen to stay outside the city. Despite the dingy interior of the hotel, the restaurant seemed almost cheerful. The rich aroma of spices and cooking meat filled the place, and Drake found his stomach rumbling as he realized how long it had been since he had had a proper meal.

“I could eat a horse,” Sully murmured as they entered, scanning the place for Ian Welch.

“From the looks of the place, change that to camel and you might get your wish,” Jada muttered.

Drake spotted a thin, edgy-looking man—one of the few Westerners they’d seen thus far in the city—sitting by himself at a corner table, his clothing and overall mien giving him away as American. Welch had chosen a table set apart from most of the dining room, the better to discuss things they would all rather not have overheard.

“I don’t know,” Drake whispered to the others. “Add enough spices and camel might be pretty tasty.”

A uniformed waiter walked toward them, but Sully waved him off, making a beeline for Welch. Drake and Jada followed, and Drake noticed her glancing about the restaurant uneasily.

“Feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone,” she said into his ear, her hot breath on his neck. “Lilting Middle Eastern music and an entire restaurant of people staring at me.”

“This isn’t Cairo,” Drake said. “And it’s no tourist destination. They don’t see a lot of Westerners here and even fewer pretty young women with streaks of magenta in their hair.”

Even with the dim lighting of the restaurant, he could see Jada blush.

“It’s not very manly to even know the word ‘magenta,’ never mind being able to recognize the color,” she said.

“I’m a new breed,” Drake assured her.

They arrived at the table smiling, but Ian Welch’s grim expression sobered them both. He looked nothing like his younger sister with an unruly mop of dark hair, round spectacles, and a deep tan acquired from months in the desert. Wiry and intense, Welch shook hands with all three of them as introductions were made, but his focus was on Jada.

“I’m so sorry to hear about your father,” the archaeologist said. “When Gretchen told me about his murder—and then Dr. Cheney …”

Welch trailed off, then shook his head, at a loss for words. He gestured to the chairs. “Please, sit. I’ve ordered some tahini and pita to start. The waiter will bring water as well. But, tell me, please—what can I do for you?”

Sully slid his chair back to give himself the best view of the restaurant. Welch had taken the corner seat, but Drake knew Sully would be on guard and let them know if trouble might be coming. The shooting in Manhattan had left them on edge, and the constant feeling of being observed gnawed at Drake, but he would let Sully worry about that for the moment. His focus had to be on Welch.

“There are two things, Mr. Welch,” Jada said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “First, we have some questions and we’re hoping you can enlighten us. There’s so much we don’t know.”

“I’ll do my best,” Welch said, nodding.

“Second,” Jada began, “well, we’d like to get in and have a look at the dig, but with as few people knowing we’re there as possible.”

Welch started to reply, brow furrowed, ready to shake his head. Then he stopped himself, perhaps thinking of the murders of Luka Hzujak and Maynard Cheney. He glanced at Drake, then back at Jada.

“You really think this all has to do with something your father figured out after he came here?”

Jada nodded. “We do.”

Welch took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, exhaling. “I’ll see if I can make it happen. In the meantime, what can I tell you about the work we’re doing?”

The waiter arrived with glasses of water for all of them, and then a second appeared and set the tahini and pita on the table. Drake would have rather had nachos, but as hungry as he was, the sesame paste and soft bread would do just fine.

“All right,” Drake said before taking a bite. “Tell us about Daedalus and the three labyrinths.”

Welch sipped his water. “That’s the biggest thing to come out of the dig so far. How much do you already know?”

Drake chewed, trying to swallow so he could reply. Jada jumped in.

“My father talked about his work a lot,” she said. “The way I understand it, he believed that Daedalus was an actual person, not a mythological character, and that he designed not only the labyrinth at Knossos—as most stories tell it—but also two others, including the one you’re excavating right now.”

Welch nodded all through her statement. “Oh, there’s no doubt about it now. Look, most scholars will agree that the most enduring myths eventually prove to have had some real-life antecedent. The ancient Greeks, for instance, believed that the Trojan War had taken place and that Troy was an actual place. In modern times, historians had basically decided the whole thing had been made up, that it was just a story, right up until a German archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann actually discovered the ruins of Troy in 1870. So much for the people who dismiss myth as just stories.

“The thing about ancient Greece is that the people who tried to write the histories tended to pull from a variety of sources. A Mycenaean ruler might be confused with a figure in some older Phoenician story, and two pieces of truth might get jammed together, through oral tradition and exaggeration and superstition, into something else. My job as an archaeologist is to try to unravel the threads that time has wound together.”

Drake glanced at Sully, whose attention was on the other guests and the waitstaff. To someone who didn’t know him, he would look bored and disinterested, just a guy hungrily anticipating his dinner instead of a guy ready for a fight. Sully had Luka’s journal and maps stuffed into the rear waistband of his pants, right next to his gun. They had agreed it would be unwise to leave it back at the hotel, but Drake felt constantly aware of its presence among them. More than anything, it explained why Sully was so on guard. But Welch didn’t seem put off by Sully’s ignoring him at all.

“All right, so—Daedalus?” Drake asked.

“He was real?” Jada said.

Welch took a breath, reached up and removed his glasses, and began to clean them with the hem of the tablecloth.

“In the late Bronze Age, there was an inventor and builder considered to be one of the cleverest men in the world. Stories were told about him in many languages and cultures under many different names, but the one that seems to have stuck is Daedalus. He was a craftsman, an artisan, and the labyrinth of Knossos was long considered his greatest achievement.

“There is a great deal of disagreement in academic circles about whether or not the palace discovered at Knossos in the 1870s is actually the labyrinth Daedalus designed,” Welch went on, replacing his glasses and reaching for his water glass. He looked intent now, lost in the history inside his mind. “The structure contains thousands of interlocking rooms, but many, myself included, have maintained that it was not the labyrinth itself, that the actual maze was located somewhere nearby.”

The waiter arrived, interrupting him, and they all gave their orders. Welch waited only moments after the waiter’s departure, eager now that his story had begun.

“What you have to understand is that our current excavation—the labyrinth of Sobek—essentially proves that theory. The main palace of Crocodilopolis, the Temple of Sobek, has been a given for decades. But the labyrinth is a separate structure, not far from the temple. The Cretan labyrinth at Knossos must have been the same.”

Drake shook his head. “Wait,” he said, holding up a hand. “You’re saying they’ve never found the labyrinth at Knossos? The one with the Minotaur? King Minos, the whole thing?”

Welch smiled, scraping a bit of tahini onto a piece of pita. “Amazing, isn’t it? This stuff is legend, but it gets mixed up in the public consciousness. People don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. So here’s what is real.”

He took a bite, chewed a few times, and swallowed, barely conscious of the action.

“The palace at Knossos is there. But an English gentleman, Sir Arthur Evans—an amateur, because there weren’t a lot of professionals in those days—oversaw the excavation of the palace. During the process, he hired people to ‘restore’ the place.” Welch made little air quotes with his fingers. “Some of that restoration included taking entire rooms and having artists paint frescoes on the walls in what he claimed was the style of the Minoan civilization—Minoan for King Minos, right?—only it was all bullshit. Instead of restoring what was there, Evans’s restoration team covered it all up, ruining a huge opportunity. A lot of what might have been learned was lost, which is part of the reason no consensus has been able to be formed about whether or not the palace at Knossos and the labyrinth of King Minos are one and the same.

“But our dig—well, it makes a pretty persuasive argument that there’s a separate building somewhere at Knossos. Not only that, but every day we’re finding more and more evidence connecting the labyrinth of Sobek to the labyrinth at Knossos and to a third, as yet unidentified labyrinth. We’ve found tablets with writing and markings in sacred chambers, most of them written in Linear B, that establish pretty firmly that Daedalus designed three of them and Knossos and Crocodilopolis were two of the three.”

“Not four?” Sully asked, startling them all by speaking.

Welch frowned, turning to him. “I’m sorry?”

“My father left some notes,” Jada said. “We got the impression he thought there was a fourth labyrinth.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Welch said. “No, all of the writings we’ve found talk about ‘Three Labyrinths of the Master Builder.’ Notations elsewhere make it pretty clear Daedalus is the Master Builder, and we’ve been going on that theory.”

Movement caught Drake’s attention out of the corner of his eye, but it was only the waiter bringing a plate of oven-fried cheese that Sully had ordered and a glass of Coke for Jada.

“Luka’s notes talked about ‘honey,’ ” Drake said when the waiter departed. “Something about ‘the Mistress of the Labyrinth’ getting the most.”

For the first time, Welch lit up with real excitement. All of his sympathy about Luka’s murder and his concern were thrust aside by enthusiasm.

“That’s both one of the greatest finds of our dig and one of the biggest mysteries as well,” Welch said, eyes bright behind his spectacles. He looked almost like a little boy in that moment, his grin beatific. “A tablet found during the original excavation at Knossos referred to the Mistress of the Labyrinth. Yes, there’s the legend of the Minotaur, but set that aside for a second. The tablet told of honey being brought as an offering to the gods in the temple at Knossos but also said that worshippers brought some to the labyrinth as an offering to its mistress. She received enough to equal that given to all of the other gods combined.

“We’ve found the same thing here in the labyrinth of Sobek. The people feared crocodiles, and Sobek was the crocodile god, so offerings to him were plentiful. But the rule about the honey and the Mistress of the Labyrinth existed here as well. And in the third labyrinth, wherever that was. Each labyrinth had a mistress who had to be propitiated.”

Drake stole a bite of Sully’s fried cheese. The lights had been dimmed a little and the lilting music turned up as the evening wore on.

“But we’re not talking about ordinary honey,” Drake said.

“I agree,” Welch replied. “Though my whole team’s been arguing for weeks about what it might have been. Of course it might have been honey, but it might have been some concoction, even a drinkable opiate or some similar drug. On the other hand, I lean toward the other extreme, which is that it was something far more tangible.”

The archaeologist had a strange weight to his words, as if he had just reached the point in the story that he had been building up to all along, some turning point that he presented as a riddle, as if he expected them to be able to fill in the rest on their own. But Drake was too tired for riddles, and he knew his companions were as well.

“Such as?” Drake said.

Welch swirled the ice in his water glass, glanced around to be sure no one was listening, and leaned over the table, forcing a new intimacy into the conversation. Even Sully pulled in nearer.

“Gold,” Welch whispered. His eyes were still bright, but he was no longer smiling. There could be no doubting his sincerity.

Jada stiffened, glancing at Sully and then Drake. She said nothing, but she did not have to. Luka Hzujak had written that Henriksen was after the treasure of the fourth labyrinth. Welch might not know anything about a fourth labyrinth, but here was at least a theory about treasure.

“Have you found gold in the dig?” Sully asked quietly.

“Not as much as I’d expected,” Welch said. “The cult of Sobek used it in their worship, even in decoration of their sacred chambers and the crocodiles. But there’s little of it in the labyrinth.”

“So where’s the connection?” Jada asked.

Welch sipped his water. “Back up a second. You need to understand that many scholars believe that Minos might not have been the name of the king but a title, the way that Caesar became a title for the emperors of Rome. So the king for whom Daedalus built the labyrinth at Knossos, the king who was the father of Ariadne, whom Daedalus loved, might not have been named Minos at all.”

Drake shrugged. “Okay. So?”

“We’ve found evidence that he had another, more familiar name. That his sons and grandsons scattered to Anatolia and Phrygia and Thracia and Macedonia, all taking his name, causing historians a massive amount of confusion. But there’s a tablet in my boss’s office at the excavation site that tells a familiar story with a different setting and gives a name to the king of Crete, the founder of Minoan civilization.”

Sully snapped. “For God’s sake, man, just spit it out!”

Glasses clinked. Conversations stopped. People paused in their dinner to stare at the rude Americans. Drake smiled awkwardly and gave a friendly wave to the people at the nearest occupied table, a pair of silver-haired Arab businessmen, maybe Saudi or Bahrainian.

Welch looked hurt.

Jada reached across the table to put her hand over his. “Mr. Welch, I appreciate your excitement. My father shared it, I have no doubt—”

“He did,” Welch agreed, nodding.

“—but we’re trying to find out who killed him, and your sister’s boyfriend, Dr. Cheney, as well. Before we left New York, someone tried to kill us, too. So I hope you’ll forgive us if we’re not in the mood for any additional suspense.”

Drake stared at her, wondering if he’d had half her poise at the age of twenty-four. He seriously doubted it.

“Of course,” Welch said. “Sorry. I was just trying to lay a foundation for what at first blush you might find a bit astonishing.”

Drake leaned in and lowered his voice, just as Welch had done. “Astonish us.”

Welch smiled, and the four of them became conspiratorial again. “We have evidence to suggest that King Minos of Crete and King Midas were one and the same.”

Drake stared at him. The music seemed to grow louder, and the susurrus of conversation in the restaurant ebbed and flowed. He tore his gaze from Welch’s face only to glance at Sully and Jada and saw surprise and disbelief that mirrored his own.

“That’s—” Sully began.

“Remember, Mr. Sullivan,” Welch said, “most legends have a core of historical fact, some precedent. I’m not suggesting a man existed who could turn base metals to gold with the touch of a finger, but there was a King Midas, well known for his hoarding of gold. Stories in different cultures refer to him, though we now believe most of them are references to his sons and grandsons of the same name, and that the patriarch of the family, Midas the First, if you will, was the father of Ariadne, the monarch of Cretan civilization—Minoan civilization—at the time the labyrinth was constructed by Daedalus.”

Jada had gone pale, her gaze lost and distant. Welch seemed about to go on but then noticed the look on her face.

“Look, I know it’s hard to accept the idea that something so widely viewed as a myth could be real—” he began.

“It’s not that,” Drake interrupted, a frisson of excitement making the hairs rise on his arms. He glanced at Jada. “Tell him.”

Sully had lost several seconds just gaping at Welch, but now Drake saw his mind working behind his eyes as if puzzle pieces were falling together inside his skull. Drake thought that was exactly what it felt like. They didn’t have all the pieces, not by a long shot, but suddenly the puzzle had a little more shape than it had had even a few moments before.

“Mr. Welch,” Jada started.

“Ian, please.”

“Ian, then,” she said. “My father’s research style was pretty immersive. You could even say obsessive. At the time of his murder, he had buried himself in research on two subjects that were obviously related, but when I went through his notes and things, I could never figure out how. One of those was obviously labyrinths. He had been here, and he had been talking frequently to Dr. Cheney in New York.

“The other subject was alchemy.”

Welch nodded. “That’s perfect, yes. That makes sense.”

“Luka thought there was some connection between Midas and the great alchemists of history,” Sully put in.

“There may be,” Welch said. This time he looked almost nervous as he glanced around. Drake figured he was worried that the wrong people, overhearing him, might think there was treasure up for grabs at the dig and that could lead to theft and violence.

“Alchemy is impossible,” Jada said, her frustration showing. “Gold is what it is. It doesn’t start as something else.”

“You know that, and I know that,” Welch said. “But there have obviously been times in history when people believed in alchemy and some pretty charismatic individuals who claimed to be alchemists.”

“The trick was in having the gold to back it up,” Drake said.

“Exactly,” Sully agreed, scanning the restaurant, talking to them while at the same time acting as their sentry. “All of those guys—St. Germain, Fulcanelli, young Nathan’s friend Ostanes—their claims would never have been believed if they hadn’t had gold to show for their efforts. Enough to be amazing.”

Welch raised his eyebrows appreciatively. “It seems I won’t need to educate you all on the history of alchemy.”

“Back to Midas,” Sully prodded.

“And to the labyrinths,” Welch agreed. “On the tablets we’ve translated so far, there’s a story that establishes that the designer of the labyrinth of Sobek—obviously Daedalus, though he’s not named—paid the workers in gold and was said to have been able to transform stone into gold with a touch.”

Drake frowned. “Wait, it says Daedalus had the touch, not Midas—not the king?”

“Exactly,” Welch replied, smiling thinly. “It’s written that the designer had a great stockpile of gold at the center of the labyrinth, that the workers built from the inside out, and that they would have to go and see him to get paid. He never left the labyrinth, but he paid them their wages in gold.”

The archaeologist looked at Jada. “Your father helped me translate that tablet. He and I both believed this story referred to Daedalus. It went on to say that thieves attempted to steal from him constantly, even after the labyrinth had been completed. There are references to the Mistress of the Labyrinth and her honey and to a monster as well.”

“A monster?” Jada asked. “This is here in Egypt, not on Crete?”

“Yes,” Welch replied, clearly enjoying his revelations. “There are references to all three labyrinths having guardians. Monstrous men. Maybe scarred and certainly huge, but obviously not man-bulls like in the myth. It seems that Daedalus lived in the labyrinth here, and the mistress and the monster were also living inside it. But at some point, a group of builders banded together and attacked the cult of Sobek, killing many people and invading the labyrinth. The would-be thieves found no trace of gold or of Daedalus. Both had apparently vanished. Maybe when we figure out the location of the third labyrinth, we’ll solve that mystery, too.”

Jada started to ask him more, but then the waiter arrived with their dinner and the conversation halted while he served them. When he’d gone, Drake turned again to Welch.

“I can see why this would be like Christmas for you, Ian,” Drake said. “This dig has turned up more information about the ancient world than anything found in a century. You and your boss will have your careers made by this. You’ll write books and go on talk shows. You’ll be set. But as cool as a lot of this is—and believe me, to someone like me, it is extremely cool—I haven’t heard anything yet worth killing over.”

Welch shot Jada an apologetic look. “Whatever your father discovered, whatever connection he made that put him in danger, I have no idea what it is. And maybe it makes me a coward, but I confess I’m glad I don’t know.”

Sully slid his chair nearer to Welch. “Be careful, Dr. Welch. Cheney didn’t know, either—or at least your sister didn’t think Cheney knew whatever secret Luka had discovered. But Cheney’s still dead. You’ve gotta be on guard until we figure it all out.”

For the first time, Welch looked frightened. “But I don’t know the secret, either. If there is some kind of treasure and we don’t find it during this dig, I have no idea where it could be.”

“Just be careful,” Sully said, taking a bite of his koshari.

“Maybe we’ll find some answers at the dig tomorrow,” Jada suggested. “If we can put this puzzle together and prove who killed my father and why, then you’ll be safe.”

Welch nodded. “Let’s hope so,” he said, but he had gone rather pale and seemed to have lost much of his appetite.

As soon as he could get away without seeming rude, Welch excused himself and left his dinner half eaten at the table. He didn’t even wait to have coffee with them after the meal. For several minutes after he departed, the three of them said nothing, finishing up their dinner, lost in their own ruminations.

Drake’s first hint that something was wrong came when Sully started choking.

“Uncle Vic?” Jada asked, worried.

Sully coughed, taking a sip of water to wash down whatever it was he had swallowed wrong. But Drake knew him too well to think the food had been the only problem. He saw the worry in Sully’s eyes and the way Sully had sat up, making sure the journal was hidden under the tail of his shirt but that he could reach his gun if he needed it.

Drake glanced at the entrance to the restaurant and saw a woman walking toward them. A beautiful creature, she had blond hair to her shoulders, stylishly cut, and Drake put her in her early forties, though she could have passed for younger with less makeup. Her dress was long enough not to offend the Egyptians, but there was no mistaking the allure of the body beneath it.

“Jada,” Sully whispered behind his water glass. “Your stepmother just walked in.”

Chair legs shrieking, Jada slid back from the table and stood, barely controlled fury on her face. Drake snatched her wrist and held on tight, forcing her to look at him.

“You’re in public, in Egypt, and we’re all carrying guns,” he whispered through his teeth.

She took a deep breath, wet her lips, and gave a single sharp nod. Sully stood slowly and took up a position beside her, providing her with moral support. Drake stole Jada’s Coke and took a long gulp, but he didn’t rise. Anyone in the restaurant would think they were greeting the new arrival to their party despite the distress on the faces of both Jada and her stepmother.

“Oh, I’m so glad I found you,” Olivia Hzujak said as she threw her arms around her stepdaughter.

Jada stood frozen, her gaze cold, as she endured her stepmother’s embrace. Olivia took a step back and looked at her at arm’s length.

“When I found out you were here, I just thought—my God, it’s like fate,” Olivia said. Her lower lip trembled, and she brought a hand up to halfway cover her face as tears began to spill down her cheeks. “Jada, I can’t believe he’s gone. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”

Her voice shook with grief. Drake stared at the woman. Whatever he had expected from Olivia Hzujak, this was not it. A glance at Sully told him that his old friend had had the same reaction. Yes, the woman fit the mold of classic older femme fatale, but life didn’t follow the rules of old Humphrey Bogart movies. If this woman’s pain wasn’t real, she was a damn fine actress.

Jada, though, did not seem convinced.

“What are you doing here, Olivia?” she asked.

Olivia flinched at the steel and ice in her stepdaughter’s voice. She let go of Jada’s arm and retreated a step, pushing her bleached hair away from her face. The older woman searched the eyes of the younger for understanding.

“I know what you must think,” Olivia said.

“Really? I’m not sure you do,” Jada replied.

Olivia glanced at Sully. “Victor. Thank you for taking care of her.”

Sully arched an eyebrow. “Somebody had to.”

Again Olivia flinched. She nodded slowly, wiping at her tears, but Drake saw the effort it took for her to get herself under control and still thought her grief had to be genuine.

“I couldn’t stay in New York, Jada,” she said. “Your father—when he first turned up missing, I suspected the worst. But when the police called to say they’d found him and—how they’d found him—I feared for my own life.”

“Come again?” Sully said. “Why would you think you were in danger?”

Olivia shot him a hard look. “Don’t be obtuse, Victor. I know why you’re here. You and Jada and Mr. Drake.” She glanced at Drake. “I assume this is your friend Nathan.”

Drake raised Jada’s Coke glass in a toast. “Hey.”

The woman turned back to Jada and Sully and lowered her voice. “Please, let’s work together on this. Tyr is here in Egypt as well. His men have been following me. I’m afraid they’ll kill me like they did Luka. I came here in the first place because I thought the only way I would be safe is if I could figure out what he was trying to keep secret and make it public. If it’s out there, if it’s not a secret anymore, there’d be no point in killing to keep it quiet.”

Sully tilted his head, studying her, stroking his mustache. “You’re not working with Henriksen on this?”

Olivia paled, looking stunned. “Luka was my husband.”

“Oh, please,” Jada snorted. “You treated him like a dog who messed on your rug.”

“That’s awful,” Olivia said, her lip trembling again. She shook her head. “I know you never liked me, Jada, but you weren’t in our home. You didn’t see our relationship the way it was, only the way it inconvenienced you.”

“Really?” Jada said, her voice low. One of the waiters had started to approach but thought better of it and retreated. “That’s the story you’re sticking to? The loving and misunderstood wife?”

“Jada,” Sully said warily.

“No, Uncle Vic,” Jada snapped, raising her voice just a little, trying to control herself. “Don’t tell me you’re buying any of this crap. How did she find us, huh? That’s what I want to know. We’re in a restaurant in a random hotel in Fayoum City. How the hell did she know where to even start looking for us?”

Olivia stared at her. “I’m staying in the same hotel. It’s where Luka stayed. I was out most of the day, but when I got back, the desk clerk mentioned there was another guest named Hzujak, and what a strange coincidence. You asked for directions to get here, which is how he knew where you were going.”

“You couldn’t have waited for us to get back to the hotel?” Sully asked.

“I couldn’t know when you’d be back,” Olivia argued. “And I told you, I think I’m being followed. Now, are you going to invite me to sit so we can talk about this, or should we all just stand here looking more and more conspicuous.”

Drake watched Jada’s face, then glanced at Sully. He saw the hesitation there, and he understood it, but Olivia’s explanations seemed at least halfway believable, and he didn’t like the attention they were drawing.

“She should sit down,” Drake said, looking at Sully. “We’ve got too many eyes on us right now.”

Jada swung around to stare at him. “You can’t be serious.”

Drake returned her gaze. “We can’t do this here, Jada. Or do the words ‘international incident’ mean nothing to you? We don’t have an exit strategy. So please, sit down.”

Jada turned and stared at her stepmother. Olivia’s expression was almost pitiful, even more so in a woman who seemed so practiced at projecting an air of aloof sophistication.

“Not a chance in hell,” Jada said. She glared at Drake and then turned to Sully. “You want to make nice with her, have a blast. But don’t be surprised if you’re the next one who turns up dead.”

She turned on her heel and made a beeline for the exit. Sully and Olivia called after her, but Jada didn’t look back. When Sully started to follow, Drake stood up quickly and grabbed his shoulder.

“No. You stay with her,” he said, indicating Olivia. “I’ll get Jada back. Whether she likes it or not, there’s a conversation that needs to happen here.”

Drake took off after Jada, all too aware of the eyes on him. Most of the people were watching his quarry, however. An attractive young American woman with magenta streaks in her hair would have gotten a lot of attention even if she hadn’t been storming off like a spoiled teenager.

That’s not fair, Drake thought, catching himself. If their positions were reversed and he truly believed Olivia had had a hand in killing Sully, he wouldn’t stand there and listen to her spin lies, either. But Jada had hated Olivia even while her father was alive, so Drake had to make her see that she might not be viewing things objectively. He had to make her see that if there was a chance she was wrong, they’d be leaving an innocent woman alone in the path of a killer.

As he emerged from the restaurant into the lobby, he caught sight of Jada leaving the hotel. There were lights outside the doors, but their glow did not reach very far into the darkness, and he quickened his pursuit.

Pushing out into the night, he paused outside the door, squinting at the night.

“Jada!” he called, wondering in which direction she’d gone.

Back to the car, he thought. She was stubborn, but she wasn’t stupid. That meant to the left, where the parking lot was three-quarters full. He picked up his pace, scanning the cars, and caught sight of the people struggling beside a dark sedan.

His eyes adjusted to the starlight, and he saw magenta.

Jada screamed and struck one of the dark-suited men, trying to break free, and then Drake saw the glint of a gun barrel. Reaching for his gun, he started to run.