to help the others, but somehow he’d allowed Sydney to convince him to go against his instincts. He’d placed his trust in her and he’d let the others suffer as a result. And once again came the thought that history was repeating itself.
He had no one to blame but himself.
He didn’t trust anyone else, she didn’t trust herself. They were quite a pair. “I take it you have real issues with the dark?”
When she didn’t answer, he wondered if she was ever going to speak to him again, until a few moments later, she said, “If I told you I sleep with a night-light on, would you laugh?”
“Doubt it. Why?”
“Nightmares. From when my father was killed.”
He recalled her dossier, the background he’d done on her. She’d been only thirteen when she’d witnessed her father’s murder. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m afraid of enclosed spaces. Claustrophobic.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Do I look like the sort who kids about that stuff?”
“Can’t tell. It’s too damned dark.”
“The only reason I was able to climb into this hole is because it’s huge. If it was small, enclosed, you’d be on your own. The narrow tunnels we came down through? Just about killed me to do it. And back in the columbarium? In that tunnel underneath the steps? Trust me. I was not doing well.”
“Great. I don’t like the dark, and you don’t like enclosed spaces. You know what that means? We’re up shit creek.”
He couldn’t help but smile.
“You think we can recover that ladder?”
“I’d rather not have my head blown off, trying to find the damned thing.”
“You think they’re up there?”
“Who knows.”
“I think they think we’re toast, so why bother.”
“Maybe we are,” he said.
“I’m not ready to die…Wasn’t Xavier talking about how soft tufo is? Maybe we can dig our way out. Assuming you can handle climbing through some skinny tunnel.”
“I really, really don’t like enclosed spaces.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like me.” Sydney switched on her light.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for a shovel. Or maybe something we can toss up, try to hook that ladder.” She reached for her pack, then stood, slowly. “Uh, Griffin? You might want to take a look at this.”
He turned. Saw what she saw. What they hadn’t had time to see when they were being shot at. The rock behind them wasn’t the solid mass of tufo it appeared to be. In fact, had Sydney not moved to the side, shone her light just so in looking for the shovel, they might never have noticed the outcropping that hid the tunnel behind it. “You think that arrow you saw in the cavern above was pointing to this?”
“Xavier said he looked down here. There was nothing,” she said. “But if he continued down that ladder past this ledge into the cistern, he could very well have missed this. The ledge isn’t very big, and from where the ladder was situated, you’d never see this.”
“Beats trying to dig our way out.” Griffin scooped up his pack, and followed her between the outcropping and the tunnel hidden in the V of it. “One problem I see.”
“What’s that?”
“It barely looks big enough to fit through.”
“Yeah, well unless you have a better idea…”
He wasn’t kidding about the tight spaces. He hated them. But he’d trained himself over the years to get past the absurd fear that he’d get stuck. He would have never made the ATLAS team otherwise. And hell if he was going to let Sydney show him up. “After you.”
“By all means. Brawn before beauty.”
He hesitated, took a deep breath, then entered. Though tall enough, it was narrow, so narrow in places that Griffin’s shoulders hit the walls, and he had to turn to his side to pass through. The entire passageway was much rougher than the tunnels off the cavern above, as though this particular area had been excavated more hastily, and perhaps, judging from the outcropping that hid it, on the sly to keep it from being discovered. At one point, they had to snake through on their bellies, and he concentrated on his breathing, the better to keep his mind off the confining passageway. “Hard to imagine anyone going to this much trouble for a burial chamber.”
“If we get out of here,” Sydney said from behind him, “I never want to be in another fifty-degree underground chamber again.”
“I’ll second that.” After several more feet, the floor in front of him dropped sharply into a wide cavern that looked like a massive honeycomb of stalactites and stalagmites.
He crawled out,