Touching Midnight

by Fiona Hood-Stewart

  Before the collapse, there had been a tunnel ahead with three splits; now there was nothing but solid rock. The walls and the ceiling had collapsed, sealing him into this part of the maze.

  But there would be a way out—there had to be—and he would find it.

  Systematically, Hathaway reorganized his pack to include the gold Ramirez had been carrying, then hefted it onto his back, groaning at the extra weight.

  Picking up the light, he began to walk.

  Quin’s flashlight stabbed ahead into a tunnel that was dead straight and built on a slight incline; they were climbing.

  It was the faint stirring on her cheek, the sensation almost imperceptible, that first alerted her. She turned to Jay, who was carrying Olivia. “I can feel a breeze.”

  “That’s it,” Olivia said shortly. “We’re almost out. You can let me down, I intend to leave this hole the same way I came in, on two feet.”

  As the beam of light illuminated a damaged section of the tunnel, an unexpected streak of color caught Quin’s eye.

  Bending, she picked up a red ribbon amidst mounds of rubble where a section of the roof had collapsed. The red was dull, the fibers so fragile the fabric crumbled as she held it, but for a moment the color seemed brilliant, the silk new.

  For a disorienting moment her mind shifted, touched on a memory that slid away almost before she could grasp it.

  Fingers combing through dust-coated, tangled hair, searching for the ribbon and not finding it. A throbbing lump on the side of her head. Hard arms coming around her. That dark voice soothing. His mouth on hers.

  Tears clouded her vision. Her fingers closed on the remnants of the ribbon, and abruptly the memory was as clear as if it was a part of this life and not the last. They had made it.

  “What is it?”

  She wanted to say, “We made it,” but that would seem even crazier than everything that had already happened.

  Hathaway rounded a corner, stumbled over the half-buried body of Ramirez and feverishly began hauling off rocks and digging him out of the rubble, hoping to find the second flashlight—and anything else that might help him survive.

  He’d scoured the maze for some evidence of how Lomax and Olivia had managed to escape and come to the conclusion that the way out must be in the passage that was now blocked by the collapse.

  He’d walked in circles for the past hour, and now his batteries were low. If his flashlight failed, he would be walking in the dark. He might not get out before the whole place came crashing down, and he had to get out. He had fifty million reasons for leaving here alive. With that kind of money, he could buy a new identity, a new life.

  “Come on, come on,” he muttered. “You’ve got to have something useful on you.”

  The pockets came up empty except for a flick knife. The pack contained a bottle of water, extra magazines for Ramirez’s handgun and a loaf of some strong-smelling bread. His jaw clenched so tight that his teeth began to throb. “No batteries.”

  He kept the water and the food, and left the rest. He was already armed, and if anything down here moved, he would shoot to kill. Not that anything was likely to move in the dim light that was all his flashlight would throw out. Nothing lived down here: no rats or mice, no insects—nothing. The place was a tomb.

  He kept walking, studying the glyphs, committing the collapsed piles of rubble to memory. When he came upon Ramirez’s body for the third time, he kicked viciously at the corpse. Simultaneously, the frail beam died, so that the last image that was burned onto his retinas was Ramirez’s dust-coated face.

  Hathaway froze, staring at utter blackness. Panic clutched at his bowel. He hadn’t noticed the silence before, but now it pressed in, crushing him, as absolute and smothering as the darkness.

  Twenty-Seven

  Quin focused the beam of her torch on a glyph. “This is it.”

  She pressed the center of the glyph, then stepped back so Jay could push against what looked like a wall. Stone grated on stone as the apparent dead end opened outward, yielding a few inches before progress was halted. Daylight spilled through the narrow aperture, the glare blinding after the endless night of the maze.

  Jay leaned on the door, straining as he forced it wide enough that they could squeeze out into an overgrown tangle of shrubs and vines.

  Quin helped Olivia through, supporting her as they picked their way through a spongy mass of undergrowth, their feet sinking ankle-deep in mud.

  Jay went first, pushing back branches and vines to clear the way until the undergrowth thinned and they found themselves at the edge of the massive slip.

  Baked soil and clay shifted like marbles beneath their feet as they worked their way down to the first line of terraces, and Quin shielded her eyes from the sun as the vista of the ruined city opened up beneath her.

  Jay vaulted down, then helped both Olivia and Quin. He didn’t let Quin go immediately. “So where is this cloth merchant’s house?”

  Distracted by his closeness, Quin closed her eyes and tried to call up an image. She could remember the paved courtyard, the lines of drying cloth, as clearly as if she’d crept through the merchant’s backyard just days ago. Turning slightly in his grip, she opened her eyes. The line of the terrace was correct, but little remained of the structure beyond the blurred outline where the house had once been. “There.”

  She stared at the outline and wondered what had happened to the people who had lived there, and all the other families who had grown crops and built houses—raised children….

  “Don’t,” Jay said curtly.

  Startled, Quin caught the touch of his mind, feather-soft as he withdrew. She couldn’t help the past. It was gone, and it was the now that was important. And if the “now” was a bit confusing, then at least with Jay she didn’t have to explain a thing; he could read her mind.

  A shout went up as they worked their way down the hill to the temple entrance, where Luis was still working with a team of men from the village to open up the entrance that Hathaway had closed.

  Luis whooped and wrapped Olivia in a hug, lifting her off the ground. “Hannah’s running the search-and-rescue operation from the house. There’s another team working at the other entrance, but it keeps caving in. How did you get out?”

  Jay spread the map out on the ground, anchoring it with rocks, and pointed out the entry points to Luis and Jorge. “Watch all three entrances, just in case Hathaway, Ramirez or Cortez makes it out under his own steam before the police team arrives.”

  “Don’t worry.” Luis drew a gun from the small of his back. “If either of them so much as makes a peep…Bam!”

  Quin stared at the familiar shape of the Browning and suppressed a groan. The gouge in the hand-grip looked even bigger, and part of the firing mechanism actually looked rusted. “I think I need to sit down.”

  Jay held out his hand. Reluctantly, Luis handed over the gun.

  “Take this instead.” Jay exchanged the gleaming black Glock for the Browning. “It’s more likely to work.”

  “Did you see that?” Luis murmured to Jorge as he watched wide-eyed while Jay ejected the magazine from the Browning and slid both the weapon and the ammunition clip into his backpack. “I told you he likes me. He just gave me his gun.”

  Quin rolled her eyes. Tell me the Browning’s going to disappear forever.

  Down a deep well.

  Jorge offered to drive Olivia back to the house, but Quin and Jay preferred to walk. After the grim darkness of the maze, they craved sunshine.

  As they walked down the terraced slope to the river flat, a helicopter skimmed over the rim of the valley.

  The machine hovered briefly, the turbulence from the rotors shivering over the water and bending the reeds that sprouted in thick clumps at the river’s edge as it settled clear of the slip on a grassy piece of turf.

  Two men and a woman climbed out, ducking beneath the still spinning blades as the whine of the engine died back to an idle, then cut out altogether.

 
; The men were tall and dark—one with hair cut close to his skull, the other with long hair pulled back in a ponytail. If Quin had seen them in a crowded street, she would have known who they were instantly, the resemblance was so strong. Jay’s family.

  Jay’s gaze swept the people walking toward him, then settled on the helicopter.

  It was a Black Hawk, dark and sleek and mainly used by the military. He knew that in the way he knew other technical information—like the back of his hand—and as abruptly as if a door had just been kicked open, he knew what he’d been, and where: a hostage rescue expert for the SAS—the Special Air Service. He’d operated predominantly out of Australia in the Pan Pacific, Asian and South American theaters, although he’d put in time with the British 22 Regiment, working Ireland, Afghanistan, even Chechnya.

  The recollection after years of blankness was subtly shocking, kicking open the door to other, older memories. In the first few seconds the people walking toward him had been strangers, but suddenly he could remember the man with the long hair as a hell-on-wheels teenager, the pretty woman as a cute toddler, the quieter, short-haired man—

  He’d seen him before—remembered him before—wearing a wet suit and grinning, but now something that had always been missing connected and fused in his mind, and the emotions that went with the memories were swamping. Hannah had always said that the reason he couldn’t remember was probably psychosomatic—an emotional blockage. What had happened to him had been so traumatic, his mind had simply shut down every memory that related to that event.

  A large, tanned hand closed on his, the handshake firm, the gaze that went with it intense.

  “Hi, Jake.” The voice was low and laced with a Down Under drawl. “My name’s Gray Lombard.”

  Jay studied dark eyes so like his own that it was like looking into a mirror, and felt his world shift and slide. “I know who you are.” And abruptly, the blankness in his mind dissolved.

  An hour later, after Hannah had dispatched Olivia to bed, and Jay’s family and the helicopter pilot had been settled in the guest quarters, Quin levered off muddy boots, peeled off her socks and walked through the kitchen in bare feet.

  The police had arrived and taken over the search-and-rescue effort, along with an agent from Interpol, who was inordinately interested in both Hathaway and Cain. Apparently the Honduran government had pressed charges, and Hathaway was also wanted in several other countries, under a number of different aliases, for fraud and embezzlement.

  Ramirez’s body had been recovered just minutes ago, along with what was left of his vital organs—all packed in separate plastic bags for identification. He had been tough and wily, terrorizing a large chunk of the cordillera and evading the law for years, but he’d made the basic mistake of turning his back on Hathaway, which only went to show it was the middlemen who got you in the end.

  Quin paused at the door to the library. She was bone tired, barely capable of keeping her eyes open, let alone moving. If she could climb the stairs to her room without falling asleep, that would be an achievement—but something about Hannah’s very stillness stopped her. As calm as Hannah was, she was seldom still, and she never just sat.

  The afternoon sunlight glowed off an envelope in Hannah’s hands. “This came for you—from England.”

  Quin’s heart thumped as she crossed the narrow, sunny room, took the cream vellum envelope and perched on the edge of the couch facing Hannah. The top left-hand corner contained a discreet logo, which stated that it had originated from a law firm called Aristotle and Sons in London.

  Carefully, she slit the heavy envelope and unfolded the single sheet inside. The message was brief and to the point. The writer, Phineas Aristotle, had been informed by a private investigator who had been retained by his client, Lady Mallory, that Quin was alive and well and presently residing in Valle del Sol, Peru. He requested the pleasure of a meeting at her earliest convenience, concerning the estate of her deceased father, the late Earl of Maldon, Lord Jonathon Edwin Rudyard Mallory.

  “It’s a letter from my father’s solicitors.”

  Hannah’s hands jerked in her lap.

  Quin handed the letter to Hannah. “It’s all right, we don’t have to worry any longer—he’s dead.”

  Olivia appeared at the door. “Thank God.”

  Hannah put the letter down as Olivia hobbled over to sit beside her on the sofa. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”

  Olivia peered at the letter. “Suddenly, I’m feeling a lot better. If Mallory’s solicitor wants to talk about the estate, he must have left Quin something. Who would have guessed that John Mallory would have developed a conscience before he died?”

  Hannah’s voice was dry. “I doubt the conscience belongs to him. I’d wager this originates from the poor girl he married after Rebecca.”

  Olivia looked startled. “How do you know anything about her?”

  Hannah’s expression was calm. “I didn’t trust John Mallory an inch. I kept tabs on him through a colleague in London. I knew the family of the girl he married—the Wimbledon Bradshaw-Smiths. Nice people.”

  Quin felt a tug on her plait, followed by the familiar frisson that ran down her spine whenever Jay was near. The fact that she hadn’t felt the frisson before the tug demonstrated how tired she was. Even her radar was down.

  The couch depressed as Jay sat beside her; then she found herself scooped onto his lap. A small silence reigned as he settled her firmly against him. As a statement about how things stood between them, it was profound.

  A long finger stirred a strand of hair, which was stuck to her cheek. “So you’re a lady?”

  “Apparently.” Quin brushed the strand behind her ear and grimaced when she realized she had just smeared more mud over her face. Not that that would make much difference; if she was as coated as Jay, it probably wasn’t possible to get any dirtier. The title “Lady” had always seemed as illusory and distant as England itself, with no more substance than the fairy tales the aunts had read her when she was little, but it was real. “The eldest daughter of the Earl of Maldon.”

  “That’s a fairly large skeleton to fall out of the cupboard.”

  “Nowhere near as large as yours.” Jay, it turned out, was a Lombard, the eldest son of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the Southern Hemisphere, and when he’d been kidnapped, he had been engaged and on the point of marrying. When Jake’s memory had flooded back, he’d had to cope with both his inability to save Rafaella’s life, and his grief over her death. Ten years might have passed, but that hadn’t made the emotions any easier to deal with.

  “But then, a skeleton, is just that,” he said flatly. “Dead and gone.”

  “Like John Mallory,” Olivia chipped in with satisfaction.

  Twenty-Eight

  Australia, two months later

  Quin’s grip on the telephone receiver tightened, her expression growing stony as she listened. “Ever heard the saying, ‘A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing’? Live by it, buddy.” Calmly, she set the phone down and removed the phone jack from the wall.

  Someone had talked, and they had been found. Not that the leak was surprising. Ever since she and Jay had arrived in Australia, they’d been news. It wasn’t every day that the heir to a substantial portion of the Lombard empire and the daughter of the missing Duchess of Maldon returned from the dead. But, after years of lying low, providing the media with her inside leg measurement and brassiere size didn’t come easy.

  “Who was that?” Jay strolled into the lounge, chest bare and hair still wet from the dip he’d just taken in the ocean that fronted his family’s beach house at Noosa.

  “Some crackpot industrialist wanting the inside story on the diamond.”

  And before that it had been a magazine columnist, a film director, someone hosting a television game show and, according to the answering machine, every news reporter born since Adam was a baby.

  Ever since Hathaway and Cortez had been brought out of the ruin in
cuffs, the press had gone wild over the jewel that had been extracted from Hathaway’s pack, excited by its antiquity and the legend attached to it, entranced by its size and rarity. As the saying went, “There is only one…”

  Except, in this case, there were two.

  Not that the press or anyone but Jay, herself and Olivia would ever find out that piece of information. Quin had been as surprised as Olivia at the presence of the second jewel. Spectacular as it was, it had come out of left field. She had no “memory” of it, and she was almost certain that in ancient life no one else had had the slightest clue it was there. Like the real Eye it was a mystery, and likely to remain so.

  The real Eye was tucked away at the southern end of Valle del Sol, closer to the village, in a small limestone cave whose entrance was hidden beneath the surface of the Agueda. The cave, which Quin had found as a child, was clean and spare—nowhere near as beautiful as the pyramid—but infinitely safer.

  Jay and Olivia had refused to have anything to do with deciding where the jewel went, claiming it was Quin’s responsibility—as it had been in that strange, vivid last life. In the end, she’d decided that as precious and important as the jewel was, it didn’t belong to a government, a museum, or to any one person, it belonged in the valley where it had been for millennia, and where it could continue to do what it had done since time immemorial: quietly radiate its healing power.

  Jay perched on the corner of her desk and picked up the newspaper she’d discarded before the phone had gone crazy. “By the way, according to the Peruvian government it’s not a diamond,” he said absently. “One too many carbon atoms in the structure. And it’s not quartz, either—no silicon present.”

  Quin shuffled the sheets of notes she’d compiled while Jay was swimming and slipped them into a folder. She was supposed to be taking a break from all the ancient sleuthing, but Achaeus was one topic she hadn’t been able to drop. At first she had been sure he’d been Greek. He’d had iron weapons, when there were none in South America in the time period in question—around 1200 B.C. The earliest records she could find for Greeks possessing iron were indeterminate but did date as far back as 1400 B.C. Then again, as Achaeus had been a seafarer and a mercenary, he could have obtained his iron armor and weapons from Egypt—and the sun motif suggested that he had probably done just that. The clincher for pinpointing Achaeus’s origins had been the name of his city, Ilium.