“No.” His voice dropped off. The sound of metal hitting a stone pierced the stillness. The light in the room went out, and Andrew swore. Then there was a moment of struggle, grunting, heavy breathing, and whispers of strangled cursing. My pulse picked up.
“You okay?” I stood up and crept to the door. “Andrew?”
I didn’t want to chance sticking my head through the opening—with my luck, the door would shut at that moment. “Andrew?” I repeated louder. More grunting.
Screw it. I slipped into the crypt. The light of my flashlight fell on Andrew’s feet dangling off the ground, his body bending over the edge of a big-ass white marble sarcophagus as if something was pulling him in.
“Andrew!” I scurried down a short staircase, missing the last step and coming down so hard with my right boot on the floor that my joints painfully popped.
“Stop!” Andrew pushed off the edge, looking up at me wide-eyed. A thick layer of cobwebs decorated his hat and clung to his face.
I froze.
Under my boot, the ground sank an inch, and a metal bang went out like a shotgun. A mechanical racket erupted, gears turning and working, the scrape of a stone on stone.
This didn’t sound right.
Andrew lunged in my direction, his hat flying off. He took all three steps in one jump and threw his body into the closing door. His boots scraped the floor as the door overpowered him and sealed shut. Dead silence fell upon us.
fucked | f?k-?d |
VERB: [w/ object] have sex with someone. Nope, not at the moment.
[w/t object] Dr. Andrew Jones and Adriana Jones’s current circumstances.
ORIGIN: Possibly Germanic (Swedish dialect focka and Dutch dialect fokkelen) early 16th century.
Certainly Colombia, present day, ten thirty a.m.
I was half expecting the floor to shake, rocks to fall on our heads, and water to rush in like it did in movies about tomb explorers. But it didn’t happen.
Andrew pressed his forehead into the wall. “I thought I told you to stay put,” he said through what sounded like gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, my muscles so tense they hurt. Was it safe for me to move? The way Andrew had hurried, he didn’t care where his feet landed. “I thought you were in trouble.”
“I wasn’t.” He hit his forehead again and exhaled sharply. “Jesus Christ.”
Andrew snatched my flashlight out of my hand and marched to the side of the sarcophagus. He pulled himself up, bent over the edge, and a moment later jumped back, gripping his torch. He returned and handed me mine.
I dropped my chin, my gaze on the floor, unable to meet his eyes. I lifted my foot, and an outline of a square came into view.Shit. How could I have known there was a trap button? He could have warned me.
I mustered my courage and looked up. I wished I could say Andrew’s expression was unreadable. But it was quite the opposite. It was very comprehensible. His jaw was so taut, I’d likely hear his teeth cracking any second, and his usually kind eyes were ablaze with irritation.
“There’s probably a release shaft or something,” I whispered. He stared at me.
Andrew’s gaze went to my shoulder. His eyebrows pulled together. “Where is your backpack?”
I tilted my head in the door’s direction, a cocktail of guilt and stupidity slashing in my brain. “Out there.”
Half of our food and water supplies.
The rifle too.
Not that we’d need it in a closed-in stone box with two dead bodies.
Andrew dropped his head. “Bloody great.” He took a deep breath. I winced, getting ready to be on the receiving end of a shit storm of unpleasantries that was coming my way. “I placed the satellite phone into your bag,” he said in a low voice.
I needed a second to process that. He did what?
