The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,101

bar next door. Both tired and amped, she and Joe had gone over for a nightcap. But one drink became three. Then they retired to their own bedroom for a proper reunion, only falling asleep after three in the morning.

She glanced over to the driver’s seat. Joe clutched the wheel with one hand, his other elbow resting on the sill of the open window. He had a stogie clenched between his back molars. He leaned and puffed a stream of smoke toward the window, only to have it blow right back into the SUV. Still, the breeze gusting off the ocean helped clear her head more than the coffee.

Joe looked none the worse, refreshed even, better than would be expected for a guy who’d had only four hours of gin-soaked sleep. Not that they hadn’t catnapped on the plane. Still, she felt something had changed in him. They had slept naked, no sheets as it was too hot. Joe nestled against her, enveloping her smaller frame with his bulk, but it felt less possessive than it had a few days prior, more relaxed. She wondered if, over the past months, he had innately sensed the doubts growing inside her. It was as if the more she pulled away, the harder he had tried to hold her, which in turn only aggravated her more. It was a vicious cycle that had threatened their future together.

But that wheel had finally broken.

She knew it—and somehow so did Joe. She remembered where this trip had started. She had hoped that by taking Joe to see the young gorilla Baako, it would rekindle something between them, reopen those cracks in the man’s hard demeanor, revealing his more tender side. But she realized Joe hadn’t changed. There was always a steadfast well of empathy and compassion inside him, as much a core to him as his bones. It was Maria who had changed, letting her doubts come between them, forcing Joe to cling tighter to her.

She reached over and squeezed his thigh, silently thanking him.

He winced, almost biting off the end of his cigar.

“Sorry.” She had forgotten about his healing burn.

She pulled her hand away, but he let go of the wheel, grabbed her hand, and returned her palm to his leg. He patted it and returned his grip to the wheel.

She smiled and settled deeper into her seat, feeling much better, more grounded. Even her headache had passed. She turned to watch the scenery. Rolling white dunes and achingly blue water stretched on one side, and on the other, tracts of green farmlands climbed up in tiers toward the towering peaks of the High Atlas Mountains. They cut a jagged line across the northern sky, crashing into the Atlantic to the west and climbing higher to the east, where several of the tallest peaks—a few over thirteen thousand feet—still glinted with winter’s snow.

Closer at hand, the resort city of Agadir grew in size ahead, a lush oasis hugging a long, wide crescent of sandy coast. The resort’s colorful promenade—crowded with restaurants and more bars—faced the sea. Palm trees swayed throughout the town, as if beckoning them to rest their weary bones.

She had not expected it to be this green. She had always pictured Morocco as a country of red rocks and desert, but the Sous River valley was a fertile Eden, surrounded and protected to the north and south by the two ranges thrust upward by the clash of tectonic forces below.

From the third row of the SUV, Father Bailey commented on the history of these peaks and their ties to the Greeks. “The local Berbers called these ranges the Idraren Draren, or ‘Mountains of Mountains,’ but the ancient Greeks’ name for the place stuck. They believed it was here that the huge-shouldered god Atlas was punished by Zeus to hold up the skies at the edge of the world.”

Mac sat next to the priest. “And this is the edge of the world?”

“For the ancient Greeks, yes. Anything past the Strait of Gibraltar was no-man’s-land.”

And where they believed the entrance to Tartarus was hidden.

Maria stared up at the sharp line of ridges rising ahead. She read the deeper geologic past in the strata of purple, red, and white, the layers of sedimentary rock from prehistoric oceans. She noted the streaks of black basalt from ancient, long-dead volcanos.

Somewhere in that labyrinth of rivers, cliffs, and waterfalls was their goal.

But where?

Luckily, they had more to help them than just a shard of gold map with a ruby