Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,106

escape that she’d failed to notice the temple rising high above them. The fifth and final gate stood before them, open like the others. Sara took a step back. She had no desire to enter the temple. She knew it was the end of their trip and the beginning of her nightmare. But with the gun to her back, what choice did she have?

She walked through the open thirty-foot-tall arched gate, noticing the restoration work on its two massive doors had yet to be completed. No longer blocked by the fifth gallery wall, the temple stood boldly before her. Rows of balustrades surrounded the outer perimeter of the structure proper. Each vertical column featured a serpent wrapped around it, each different from the next. An entrance lay just beyond the balustrades. They walked through it, into a long courtyard featuring palm trees and flowering bushes. Lit by the colorful crystals above, the lush inner court erased the dire emotions brought on by the rows of snakes outside.

But Sara’s sense of dread remained regardless of the inner temple’s beauty. Weston had fallen silent when he should be talking the most. This place was no doubt home to a thousand stories worth telling. Yet, Weston simply pointed the way and kept his jaw clenched tight. Now he was distracted by his thoughts . . . by his plans. Was he simply hoping to change her heart by the power of the place, or was he taking her to a cell? There was no way to know.

She decided to see if the man could be softened, or at least understood. As they walked across the courtyard, she said, “Tell me about your family.”

“They’re here, with me.”

“I mean before . . .” She waved her hands around at the city. “. . . all this. Before Vietnam. What were your parents like?”

Weston glanced at her, suspicion filling his eyes. He forced a grin. “My father was an alcoholic, abusive prick.”

Strike one, Sara thought.

At the end of the courtyard, a steep staircase rose fifty feet up to where a massive rectangular entryway beckoned them into the temple’s innards. Above the entryway, the five towers—arranged in a quincunx, like five dots on a die—jutted toward the chamber’s ceiling, now only one hundred feet above. The five layers of each tower curved up and in, coming to a point. They looked more like serrated spear tips now than they had from above. The place screamed of danger. Stunning to look at, but hiding an inner darkness. Perhaps there was a reason humans had turned on their Neanderthal counterparts?

“Up,” Weston instructed when they reached the stairs. Each step was a foot tall and a half foot deep. She took the stairs slowly, using her hands and feet to keep from falling back.

“What about a wife? You’re wearing a wedding ring.”

Weston stopped. She looked back at him. His frown said it all: this topic was off-limits.

She quickly switched gears. “What about your mother?”

Weston’s voice sounded lighter when he spoke. “My mother . . . was an angel. And a good cook. Not at all concerned with health, though. Her cure-all for anything from the common cold to the nastiest flu was apple pie, vanilla ice cream, and a chocolate frappe. It’s a wonder all that sugar fueling the virus or killing my immune system didn’t land me in the hospital.”

“Was she a stay-at-home mom?”

“At first, until my father left. Then she put her biology degree to good use and became a zoo caretaker. She fostered my love of the natural world.”

At the top of the stairs Sara looked into the open maw of the temple. The hallway stretched forward for fifty feet, where it stopped under the central tower. Several skylights lit the hall with cubes of light. She turned toward Weston as he finished ascending the stairs. “What species did she care for?”

“Gorillas, actually. Magnificent creatures.”

“Huh,” Sara said. “Ironic.”

As soon as the word hit her own ears she realized the implication and closed her eyes.

Strike two.

“What?” Weston blinked like he’d been slapped. His voice rose. “What did you just say?”

He stepped toward her, his face flushing. “Ironic? Ironic! You take my children for apes? They can speak. They can think. They have a moral code. That’s more than you can say for most of the human race!”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Yes . . .” He took her shoulder in his meaty hand and pushed her around. “You did.”

With one more shove they entered the hallway. Two doors on either side