Nothing happened.
She let out a breath and jumped to the fifth tile.
Behind them, she heard her mother’s sharp intake of breath.
“We’re fine,” Lila called back.
“Are you sure about this?” Brian whispered beside her.
“No,” Lila admitted. “But it’s what Gran wrote, and everything else has been accurate so far.”
They moved forward slowly, following the pattern in the book. Step, jump, duck, sidestep.
A ball swung down from the ceiling.
“Down!” Lila yelled.
They both dropped flat.
The ball whooshed over their heads.
“We’re fine!” Lila called again, hearing the collective gasp from behind them.
“You’d better be,” her mother’s voice came back, shaky and terrified.
They got to their feet and kept moving.
The floor tile ahead of them looked exactly like all the others, but according to the book, stepping on it would trigger tear gas.
“Jump over this one,” Lila told Brian.
They jumped together, landing on the other side.
“How much farther?” Brian asked, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool basement air.
“Almost there,” Lila said, her eyes scanning ahead.
They were maybe ten feet from the cabinet now.
She could see it clearly. A sliding door. Behind it would be the safe itself.
They navigated around two more traps, one that shot rubber balls from the walls and another that would have locked their ankles if they’d stepped in the wrong spot.
“Great, mini dodgeball,” Brian muttered.
Finally, they reached the end of the vault.
Lila and Brian stood there, staring at the cabinet.
She opened the book with trembling hands and read softly.
“David knew he had to do something that he didn’t want to do.” She frowned as she saw the illustration. “He had to use the item his mother had given him. The one thing that connected him to home.”
“That looks like...” Brian said softly, his eyes widening as he looked at the drawing.
“The Heart of Isabella,” Lila whispered. Her hand went to the locket around her neck. “I knew there was more to the locket.”
They stood with their backs to the people watching from the vault entrance, their bodies blocking the view of what they were doing.
