Behind the Walls (32 page)

The Nahual listened, waiting silently, gathering his fury and strength. Assessing the severity of his wound. Testing each limb, refusing the pain. He never should have gotten involved with these philistines. Never should have trusted that their lust for monetary gain could interface with his for spiritual growth. No, it had been a mistake, but he would correct it here, today.

He was bleeding, though. Leaking strength. He’d need to act soon, before the moron Angus returned with his cart. He wasn’t sure, given a choice, with whom Angus would side. Angus had known him decades longer; they’d grown up together. And he’d been the protégé of Angus’ father. But Joe had all the money. And Angus, being a fool, might go either way. Given his condition, he didn’t want to risk facing two opponents.

Not to mention the woman.

He’d injured her throat, had felt her windpipe collapsing under his grip. But she was already recovering; he heard her ragged coughing. Heard Joe rambling, apologizing that he had to kill her. Talking about honor, about family. As if his family had such a thing as honor. As if anyone did in this era where the earth itself was spat upon and defiled, where revered beasts were slaughtered, starved or caged. Joe’s family, indeed. How did this insignificant creature have the audacity to think that he and those who’d spawned him had the capacity to possess such a thing as ‘honor’? Honor belonged to the ageless spirits, the creatures of death and sky and rivers and mountains and wind. It didn’t belong to petty criminals and thieves. No, he should never have gotten involved. But Joe had offered – no, had
promised
– him access to the relics, that he could select among them for his studies.

The Nahual played dead, lying still as Joe finished simpering about murdering his sister. He watched as the woman bludgeoned him and ran for the rope ladder, as Joe moaned and stumbled, chasing after her. Recognizing his moment, the Nahual chanted softly, calling upon the spirit of Joe’s sister, and he felt it stir within him, raging, seeking revenge. He called up the spirit of the dead male from the tunnel, too, and summoned all the creatures he’d ever embodied, and then he drew a breath, drawing fury from his own pain. Finally, he pulled the power of all those spirits together and leapt to his feet, hurling himself at Joe with a warrior’s cry, landing a crushing blow to the base of his skull. Knocking him down. Standing over him with a triumphant bellow. Dragging him to the altar where he would take his life, his heart. And his spirit.

She was weak, sore all over, her neck felt sprained, and air scraped like dull razors in her raw throat, but Harper made it to the rope ladder and, by the time Salih had chased her to the bottom, she’d pulled herself up into the passageway. Spent and wheezing, she stopped to glance back. Damn – Salih was already halfway up the ladder. She turned, ready to run. But before she’d taken a step, she heard a shout, a thud, a groan. Harper stepped back, looked down the ladder once more. Salih lay flat on his back on the ground, staring up at her exactly as Rick had. And exactly as Rick had, Salih began sliding away. Someone was dragging him.

Harper couldn’t see who it was. Angus? Had he gone after Salih and slugged him? She lowered herself on to the floor of the passageway, stuck her head out the opening. And saw the Nahual – Professor Wiggins – the knife still in his back, holding Salih by his armpits and pulling him across the cave.

Salih seemed conscious. His eyes were alert, open, fixed on her as Wiggins moved him. And when Wiggins stopped to rest, Salih rolled over and jumped to his feet, fists flying. Wiggins fought back with amazing vigor. Punching and grunting, they moved out of her view. Leaning further down, careful of her neck as she lowered her head, Harper saw them again; the Nahual costume now ripped, the jaguar head dangling loose, Wiggins stumbled toward the ramp with Salih close behind. Salih reached, took hold of the hilt of the blade and twisted it before pulling it out. A gut-twisting scream resounded through the cave as the Nahual fell to his knees, both of his heads bent, the back of his feathered jacket blood-soaked, his arms raised to the sky. Salih stood behind him, raised the blade high with both hands and unceremoniously shoved it down into the Nahual’s back, piercing his heart.

Salih remained there, breathless and bloodied beside the pile of feathers until Angus came in with a wheelbarrow.

‘Hey, how’d he get all the way over there? Shit, Joe. Your face looks like—’

Harper couldn’t hear Salih’s response. But she saw him pointing toward the house, gesturing emphatically, showing Angus where to go. Damn. He was sending him to the other end of the passageway, to Rick’s broken wall. The only way Harper knew to get out.

‘Shit. This just gets worse and worse, man. Jake’s gonna find out and then we’ll all be dead.’

Salih said something, gesturing again, and Angus rushed up the ramp, cursing and whining.

Slowly, Salih lifted his gaze to the top of the rope ladder, meeting Harper’s eyes.

Faster, she told herself as she yanked at the ladder. Hurry. She tugged on the thick, heavy ropes, taking them up rung by rung, expecting at any moment that Salih would pull down from the other end. But he didn’t. The ladder was difficult to maneuver and weighed more than she’d expected, but, sweating and wheezing, she managed to pull it all up and gather it into a pile. Favoring her neck, she lay flat beside the rope and peered down into the cave for Salih. Saw the wheelbarrow, the dead Nahual. The vessels of burning oil. The altar  . . . And finally, Salih, apparently returning to the cave after stepping out for supplies. He was lumbering across the cave with his arms full, carrying an extension ladder and a flashlight. On his shoulder, she saw a holster.

OK, time to go. Harper got to her feet and turned, gazed into the passageway. Saw a well of total darkness. Damn. This time, she had no flashlight, would be completely blind. But Salih had a gun. She had no choice.

Harper plunged into blackness, her hands on the walls, feeling for the trail of X’s she’d carved with a nail. Hearing the clunk of the ladder against the opening, Salih’s heavy footsteps on the rungs. His panting as he climbed into the passageway. His voice calling, ‘Harper?’

She kept moving blindly, cautiously, testing the floor with her feet, following the wall with her fingers. Was that an X? Or just a random scratch? She traced the line, touched the intersection in the middle – yes, it was an X! She wouldn’t get lost if she stuck to the trail.

‘Harper, stop. You’ll get lost. Look, I’m a businessman; we can negotiate.’

Harper hurried away from the voice, deeper into the passageways, trying to remember the turns, the dead ends. Remembering with dismay that the X’s didn’t lead to an exit; they led to the spot where she’d found Chloe Manning. Following them was useless. Oh God, what if she got lost again, this time in the dark? Familiar panic bubbled in her belly. What a joke. After escaping against all odds, she’d come back to die here after all?

Shut up, she told herself. Stop whimpering and just go. Salih was not far behind; she could hear his steps. Imagined his bloody breath on her neck, his gun at her ribs. She hurried on, suddenly felt the air shift. Just ahead, her fingers felt empty air. A gap in the wall. Was this a turn in the passageway? She didn’t remember one so close to the rope ladder, but she’d been exhausted, half-delusional and dehydrated, might not have noticed. And the wall definitely had a gap. So the tunnel turned. Except, no – she felt gaps on both sides. So the tunnel divided left and right. She stepped forward, arms outstretched. Found no wall ahead either. She was at a crossroads, could go straight, left or right. She couldn’t take time to think; Salih was too close. Needed to choose and move. Oh God. Harper had no idea where she was. Taking a breath, she chose without a reason and turned right. Her hand skimmed the surface of the wall, feeling her way. Counting her steps in case she had to retrace them.

At the ninth step, Salih called again, his voice not as close. ‘Harper – there’s no point wandering. There’s no way out for you. Come back. We’ll have a bottle of wine and talk things out.’

A bottle of wine? Really? Harper kept moving. Counting steps, she turned and zigzagged blindly, feeling oddly calm. Gradually, Salih’s voice became more distant. After a while, she didn’t hear it at all.

She’d lost count of her steps somewhere after two hundred thirty. And she’d forgotten the sequence of her turns, even though she’d tried to make a marching song out of them: right, right, left, right, left. But she couldn’t remember them, wouldn’t be able to find her way back if she had to. Harper wandered lost, listening for Salih, not hearing him. But soon, she heard other voices.

‘Mrs Jennings?’ A man.

‘Hoppa!’ Hank?

And the barking of a dog.

A dog?

Harper stopped walking and shouted to them, but her voice was thin and hoarse. And using it, she began to cough again. Could they hear her? She waited until they called again, tried to identify their direction, to go towards them. Running, stumbling on the uneven floor, turning corners she wasn’t sure would take her closer, she called out as loudly and often as her throat would allow until, finally, she saw a glow of light ahead. Squinting, shading her eyes from the brightness of flashlights, Harper stopped walking and let herself sink to the tunnel floor.

A golden Lab pulled on his leash, dragging the officer behind him; when he reached Harper, he sat beside her. Panting. And Harper sat panting in unison.

‘Mrs Jennings?’ The officer aimed his flashlight at her face, blinding her. ‘It’s OK, Mrs Jennings. We’ve got you.’

‘Hoppa? Hoppa – OK?’

She couldn’t see him, but Hank’s winded voice came to her from somewhere behind the policeman. And then, as the officer talked into a radio, Hank was moving in front of him. And around the dog. And as he reached for her, Harper half jumped, half fell into his arms.

Hank handed her up through the hole in the wall to the EMTs who’d been waiting. He stood on Rick’s pile of broken crates and smashed relics. They’d set up lights down there, illuminating a whole section of the passageway, but Harper couldn’t bear to look. Didn’t want to see the wreckage of relics on the ground.

The EMTs placed her on a stretcher. Began checking her out. Frowned at her face, her torso. Her throat. Conferred with each other then asked if someone had choked her. She started to nod, but the older one stopped her. ‘No, no – don’t move your head. Stay still.’

Harper kept still, but moved her eyes, searching for Hank. ‘How’d you know where—’ she started but her voice again broke, instigating a fit of coughing and alarming the EMTs.

‘Leslie,’ Hank said.

Leslie?

‘Called. Said you. Shown up. Not.’

What? Shown up where? Harper tried but couldn’t remember anything about Leslie. Couldn’t even recall how she’d gotten to Langston’s.

‘Thank goodness you’re all right, Mrs Jennings.’ Detective Rivers climbed out of the hole in the wall, talking as she strained to lift a German shepherd out and helped an officer climb after her. ‘We’ve been scared sick about you. Especially after we got to Mr Salim’s hotel and saw what was in his room.’

His room? Harper pictured it, the suite, its well-stocked bar. Wait. Her memories were resurfacing – she’d gone to Salih’s hotel to give him Zina’s bracelet, and he’d offered her a drink. ‘Just one,’ because she didn’t want to be late. Wait – late? Oh – late for Leslie! Yes, she’d had an appointment with Leslie, but hadn’t shown up.

Even so, why had Leslie called Hank? If Leslie had a concern, she should have called Harper. Except that maybe she had. Harper wouldn’t have answered her phone, didn’t even know where it was. And, given Harper’s role in the headlines of the last week, Leslie would have worried when Harper hadn’t shown up and wasn’t answering her phone. Which would explain why she’d called Hank.

Harper’s head hurt, resisted thinking. Something pierced her arm. She looked down, saw one of the EMTs – the younger one – inserting a butterfly needle into her arm. Damn. They were giving her an IV.

‘I don’t need that!’ She started to sit up, tried to push him away. Didn’t want to go to the hospital.

‘Lie back, ma’am. It’s just in case.’ He connected a saline bag to her arm while his partner strapped cold packs to her torso.

Detective Rivers was still talking.

‘ . . . your motorcycle outside and your leather bag in his room. But that wasn’t all.’ She folded her arms. ‘We found over a dozen relics in there, packaged and ready to go. Do you know anything about those?’

Harper tried to shake her head but couldn’t. They’d put something around her head and neck, immobilizing her. When had they done that? How, without her noticing? Cold fluids streamed into Harper’s arm. Breathing hurt. The detective talked on.

‘ . . . my untrained eye, Mrs Jennings, those relics look to be Pre-Columbian, and I suspect they might belong to the Langston collection. Given that Mr Salim’s sister used to work with the collection, and that her body was found at the Langston house, and that these relics might have been stolen from there, I thought I should stop over there and see what was going on.’

Harper was still confused. How had they known to search the passageway? Why would they think she was in there?

‘When we arrived, we saw a van parked outside that cave you showed us. We went inside, and, Mrs Jennings, there was a lot of blood in that cave.’

Blood? Wait. Not Wiggins’ body? The EMT was checking her blood pressure, distracting her.

‘Frankly, with so much blood, I feared the worst, but your husband – he’s a keen observer – he noticed something odd: the rope ladder to the passageway had been pulled up. So we thought – we hoped – you’d skedaddled up and taken it up with you.’

‘Enough.’ Hank put a hand up, scolding. ‘Hoppa. Hurt. Talk later not more now.’

The older EMT nodded agreement. ‘We’re ready to roll.’ He rechecked the stabilizing equipment around her neck.

‘One minute.’ Rivers stopped them. She eyed Harper. ‘Mrs Jennings, please. If you know, tell me: where is Salih Salim?’

Harper pointed to the passageway, mouthed, ‘In there.’