in the open. That wouldn’t make sense. Not if the Brotherhood was as careful as they seemed to be.”
Allison looked at the mouth of the cave. “What about the entrance? Could they have concealed it with rocks and branches?”
“That’s possible,” Jones conceded. “But unless they did it just right, it wouldn’t have looked natural. And if you’re trying to hide something, that’s a dead giveaway.”
Payne stared at his friend, who had the slightest hint of a smile. “Hold up. Do you know where the treasure is?”
Jones shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Payne shined his light on Jones. There was a gleam in his eye that hadn’t been there a moment before—and it wasn’t a reflection of the flashlight. “You bastard! I can tell from your face that you know where it is.”
Jones laughed. “I’m not positive, but I do have a theory. Ironically, if I’m right about it, I just gave you a clue.”
“You gave us a clue?”
He grinned. “If you had been paying attention, you would’ve noticed it.”
“You gave me a clue?”
Dial, who had been listening from the rear of the cave, spoke up. “He said dead.”
Payne turned and looked at him. “Dead?”
Dial nodded. “He said dead giveaway. He’s talking about the skulls.”
Jones whistled, impressed. “Score one for Nick Dial! How did you figure that out?”
“It wasn’t anything that you said,” Dial assured him. “It was something that Nicolas said before he died. He claimed the Brotherhood brought the skulls up here to honor them. But that goes against everything that Marcus and I learned at Metéora. The monks don’t keep skulls to honor them. They keep the skulls to remind them how fragile life is.”
He glanced down at Nicolas, who was lying on the ground underneath the blood-soaked blanket. “One minute you’re here, and the next you’re gone.”
“Okay,” Payne said. “I get that. But what does that have to do with the treasure?”
Dial continued. “Nicolas didn’t come up here to die. He came here to protect the treasure. And the only way he could do that was by convincing us that the Brotherhood had moved it somewhere else. Then he killed himself before we could ask him any more questions.”
“You seem pretty sure of that.”
Dial shrugged. “He’s lied to me before. I started to recognize his patterns.”
Allison asked, “So what does that mean? They didn’t move the treasure?”
Dial shook his head. “They didn’t have time. The Spartans killed them before they could.”
75
Payne studied the large pile of skulls stacked haphazardly against the wall. There were hundreds of them, several centuries’ worth of dead monks who had sworn to guard an ancient treasure. If his friends were correct, the monks still protected it—even in death.
“Explain this to me again,” he said to Jones. “You think the treasure is under there?”
“Not the treasure itself. But I think the skulls are hiding something. A fissure or a passageway.”
Payne smirked at his friend. “A minute ago you were making fun of me when I said there might be a clue somewhere in the cave. Now you’re telling me there’s a secret passageway?”
Jones nodded his head. “Yep. That’s what I’m saying.”
“That sounds kind of crazy.”
Andropoulos cleared his throat. “Actually, sir, it’s not that crazy. Director Dial and I found a secret tunnel at Metéora. It was hidden behind a large tapestry in the monks’ barracks.”
Payne glanced at him. “You found a tunnel? What was inside?”
“Stairs and an underground vault with several carved shelves and a fancy stone altar, but whatever had been stored in there had been moved long ago.”
“The room was empty?”
“Yes, sir. It was empty.”
Dial corrected him. “Actually, that’s inaccurate. We did find something important.”
Payne asked, “What was that?”
“The severed heads of the Brotherhood.”
“Are you serious? The heads were down there?”
Dial nodded as pieces of the puzzle slowly fell into place. “The Spartans slaughtered the monks, and then stacked their heads on the stone altar. At the time, we assumed that they were sending a message, but we didn’t know what it was. Now I have my answer.”
“Which is?” Payne wondered.
“One of the monks—one of the seven members of the Brotherhood—must’ve revealed the treasure’s location before his death. The stacked heads were the Spartans’ way of bragging about it.”
Jones added, “Which would explain their presence on the mountain. They knew where the treasure was hidden, and they were coming to get it.”
“It appears that way, yes.”
Payne glanced at Dial. “It appears that way? Do you have another theory?”
Andropoulos said, “He always has a theory.”
Dial smiled. The young cop was learning. “For some