back. “We need to get the hell out of here, love. I don’t want you to go, but I can’t fault your logic.”
Her eyes gleamed. “I’ll keep that hot shower and big bed in mind. It’ll keep me motivated.”
Thorne touched her wrist, angling the torch toward the ground, then gave it another squirt of hand cleaner so that it flared. He used the hem of his T-shirt to clean her glasses, then slid the earpieces through her hair and positioned the frame on her nose.
“Okay, Tomb Raider Librarian, don’t take any foolish chances, do you hear me?” He spoke against her mouth. “Talk to me every step of the way. I want to hear what you’re seeing and what’s happening. If anything feels off, you haul your arse back up here.”
“Yes, sir. Got it.” She started sliding sideways, then came back and gave him a quick, hard kiss. “We’ll be out of here just in time for breakfast.”
She left, taking the light and her warmth with her.
With a little difficulty, Thorne lowered himself to the floor, his hips wedged in the narrow opening, his legs inside the stairwell. “See anything interesting?” His voice echoed slightly off the roughly hewn rock. The red glow of the torch danced on the walls, casting macabre shadows as she walked.
“Nope. Just a straight shot so far. But you weren’t kidding about it being steep. The actual tread is shorter than my foot, by—I don’t know—I think this is only about six-ish inches. What’s normal?”
“Ten.”
“The riser is way high. Who did they think would be running up and down these stairs, short-toed people with long shinbones? I told you aliens were involved.” He smiled, leaning against the wall, his legs stretched out. God, it was good to sit down. His thigh had been begging for mercy for hours. Clamping his fingers around the worst of it, he tried to massage out the vicious knot. Isis had not complained once. Not about any of it.
“I don’t think they were thinking of people continually running up and down.” He raised his voice so she could hear him. “They were thinking of thieves.” Thorne realized he was braced for her scream. For her cry as some fucking ancient booby trap snared her. For her frantic yell for help. What the fuck had he been thinking to allow her to go down there alone? Down there at all.
“Make sure you extend the torch so you can see as far ahead of you as possible. And test every step before you put your weight on it.” He sounded like—like someone worried for someone else’s safety. Other than Garrett, Thorne hadn’t been worried about anyone else to this extent in his life. His heart beat a staccato rhythm as he listened to her footfalls scrape across the stones.
“Anything interesting?” After this he wasn’t letting the woman out of his sight. He was not a man to make small talk, or ponder the workings of a woman’s mind. He’d never given a flying fuck what made a lover tick, other than in the most basic sense, and yet here he was, listening to every footfall, every harsh breath, eyes straining to see what he knew damned well he couldn’t see in the darkness.
“Hmm. No marking on the walls.” Her voice echoed up the shaft. “Just rough stone—taking a jog to the right here. Uh-oh, the stairs are narrower on one side than the other…”
“It’s a winder so they didn’t have to carve out a landing.”
“Straightening out for a while. Crap. There’s a winder going left now.”
Thorne didn’t like it. He could no longer see even the lightest glow from the torch, and though her voice was clear, it was fainter.
“Talk to me.”
“It’s kind of hard to be going down three million teeny stairs and chat at the same time, Thorne.”
“Humor me.”
She continued the running commentary—loudly for a few minutes—and then all he heard was the grit of her rubber-soled shoes on sandy stone resonating up to him. “Isis?”
“Oh, crap. It ends at a wall.” Even with the echo, and from this distance, Thorne heard tears in her voice.
He got stiffly to his feet, his leg protesting directly into his cerebral cortex as if someone had taken a sharp knife and sliced him from skull to ankle. Oh, yeah. Someone pretty much had. “Take a breather and come back. We can—”
“Hold your horses…”
He wiped damp hands on his jeans and sucked in a breath, holding it so he didn’t miss any sounds she