The man must be Armando, who appeared unbothered by the fact he was lounging on a sacrificial altar. Kinley suppressed a shudder.
“Who cares if there is a hole in the wall? Or every wall?”
“I care. Because I still need to be able to write up the find and I can’t exactly do that if it looks like I looted the damn place first.”
“Again—who cares? We’re going to be so damn rich you’ll never have to beg for scraps from a bunch of intellectual rejects again. We’ll blow it and be out of this fucking jungle before the end of tomorrow.”
Christine pulled a handgun from the small of her back, pointed it at Armando, and shot him.
Kinley screamed and slapped her hands over her ears as the sound echoed off the stone walls.
“I am sick and tired of men telling me what I can and cannot do.” Christine looked at her. “Figure out how to get into the tomb and we’ll both make history.”
All she could do was stare at the woman she’d admired and trusted for so long. What had happened to her?
Christine raised the gun and pointed it at Shane. “I just killed the man I’ve been fucking for almost two years. Don’t think I’ll hesitate to shoot your boyfriend to get you to cooperate.”
Kinley spared a glance at the man sprawled on the altar, his blood creeping toward the channels that would drain it from the top.
“Okay,” she whispered. Looking up at Shane, she held out her hand. “Can I have my notebook?”
“Kin.” His eyes were trying to telegraph a message, but she didn’t know what. All she knew was the best way to get them out of there was to solve the puzzle.
“It’s okay,” she assured him.
Shane pulled her notebook from his cargo pocket and handed it to her. She managed a tight smile and faced the wall closest to the entrance. It was time to actually analyze the carvings instead of just looking at them.
She could do this.
Christine might kill them as soon as she did, but maybe she could give Shane time to devise a plan. He’d snapped an armed man’s neck—here was hoping he could disarm a woman having one hell of a midlife crisis.
CHAPTER13
“Can we get some food in here?” Shane asked. He’d leaned against the wall closest to the chamber entrance.
“No,” Christine said. She was pacing in front of the wall to his right, her gaze never leaving Kinley, who was working on the wall directly across from her, with the altar in between them.
“How about some water?” he asked.
“No.”
“So your plan is to starve and dehydrate us. Got it.”
Christine checked her watch. “We’ll break for the day in two hours. You can eat and drink then.”
Two hours, plus the hour or more they’d already spent there, should be plenty of time for Leonidas to send in the team. He regretted ditching the satellite phone, not that it would have worked under the tons of stone above their heads, but he felt naked and vulnerable without a way to communicate with them. He had some glint tape stashed on his clothes, but the only way to place it anywhere as a signal was to leave the pyramid and he wasn’t about to leave Kinley alone with the crazy lady.
Christine had calmed down once Kinley started working and kept her full attention on Kinley while she muttered and jotted notes in her notebook.
“How did you guys get in here? I didn’t see a clearing large enough for a helicopter.” Which meant the one they’d heard yesterday had been just a coincidence, unless it was dropping supplies to the camp.
“They bulldozed a road through the jungle and drove in.”
Kinley turned around. “You bulldozed a road through the jungle?”
Shane thought that was a ballsy move as well.
“Not me,” Christine said. “Them.”
