He noticed she did that a lot—blamed something on “them” instead of taking any responsibility for her involvement.
“Are the guards loyal to you or the dead guy?” He needed to know the level of threat they were going to face leaving the temple.
Christine diverted her attention away from Kinley to glare at him. “You ask a lot of questions.”
Shane held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I’m just worried about what they’re going to do when we leave here and they find out their boss is dead.”
She stared at him for several minutes. Had he taken the hapless boyfriend act a bit too far?
“They’re loyal to getting paid. Now shut up.” She returned to watching Kinley.
He waited and watched. Just when her shoulders began to relax, he asked, “When was the last time they got paid?”
“I swear to—”
“They’re prayers,” Kinley interrupted. “They’re all prayers. This isn’t a tomb, it’s a sacrificial chamber—that’s it.”
“Bullshit.” Christine sneered. “We are in the precise center of the pyramid. This is where all the important tombs were found in the existing pyramids and this is where Aapo’s tomb is, so find it.”
“It’s not here! Look.” Kinley turned back to the wall behind her. “God of maize.” She pointed to the large medallion in front of her then stepped to her right. “Goddess of birth and fertility. God of rain. God of sun. Goddess of family. God of life.”
She pointed at the large, gold-covered medallion in the center of the wall directly across from him. “God of death…and the afterlife…”
“What? What is it?” Christine asked.
Shane joined Kinley in front of the wall. She didn’t say anything but went around the room and scanned the medallions, one hand tracing each one without touching it, while she mumbled to herself.
“What is it?” Christine asked loudly.
Kinley’s head whipped around, her ponytail swinging with her. “That medallion is upside down.”
“Is that important?” Shane asked.
“Maybe.” She returned to stand in front of the medallion in question. “This symbol here”—she pointed to the bottom of the circle—“is at the top of all the other medallions.”
Christine pressed her face against the wall next to the stone circle. “There’s a gap. It looks like it’s attached to the wall instead of carved from it.” She stepped back and looked at Shane. “Turn it.”
“Uh. I’ve seen this movie. I turn the big Mayan wheel of death and the afterlife and poison darts shoot from the walls, the floor drops out, the ceiling collapses, and we all die. No thanks.”
“That only happens in movies,” Kinley said. “There has never been a tomb found with booby traps.”
Shane crossed his arms. “Don’t care.”
Christine took a more hardline approach to convincing him. Taking a step away from the wall, she pointed the gun at Kinley. “Turn the wheel.”
Kinley stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. Fuck. He didn’t have a good feeling about this. Not that he thought the ceiling would actually collapse or a giant boulder would roll on top of them, but he had no doubt Christine would kill them both the moment they outlived their usefulness.
“Step to the side,” he told Kinley. Wiping his hands on his pants, he grasped the edges of the medallion. The gap was too small to fit his fingers in, so he gripped it like a rock climber and hoped the Mayans adhered to lefty-loosey.
He strained against the wheel for almost a minute. Just as he made the decision to try the other direction, it shifted a hair with a fall of dust. He snatched his hands from the stone and looked at Kinley.
“It moved,” she said. Her green eyes shone with excitement and he grinned.
“Keep going,” Christine said behind them.
For a moment, he’d forgotten they weren’t alone. Judging by the way Kinley’s joy dissipated, so had she. Gripping the stone, he tried to get it to turn again, succeeding in getting another inch before having to take a break. Over the pounding of his heart, he heard three short taps.
“What was that?” Christine asked.
