Uncharted The Fourth Labyrinth - By Christopher Golden Page 0,35
worried enough to hide something.”
Drake looked around the room. “The question is, Did they find it? Whatever ‘it’ is.”
Jada threw the sheets back on the bed, not bothering to make it up, and flopped onto the mattress again, staring at the ceiling. She crossed her ankles, making herself right at home.
“My father was a pretty smart guy,” she said. “If he had something important, something he was afraid other people might try to take away, he’d find a way to get it home safely.”
Sully chuckled and rapped his knuckles on the door frame as if for luck. “You can say that again. He did it more than once. But if Henriksen, or whoever killed Luka, thinks it’s here …”
He trailed off, thinking, then nodded to himself. “Maybe they burned his apartment to destroy records or notes he made since he got home, but if they’re still looking, they must be damn sure Luka didn’t bring whatever it is home with him. So let’s assume he did leave something here. Why would he do that? And where would he hide it?”
Drake had kept walking while they spoke, feeling the door and window frames, checking the curtains, testing the floor with his shoes. Now he paused and looked at Sully.
“He made it home alive,” Drake said, trying to infuse himself with the kind of fear and paranoia they believed Luka must have been feeling. “But if he thought he might not make it home—if he thought he might not make it out of Egypt alive …”
Sully nodded, pointing at him. “Yeah. That makes sense. Okay, so let’s say he did hide something, but like Jada says, he’s smarter than they give him credit for. Would he really hide it in this room? I’m going to say no.”
“Which puts us exactly nowhere,” Drake said. He ran a hand over his stubbled chin, confused and frustrated. Luka’s killers were way ahead of them, had so many more pieces of the puzzle. He and Sully and Jada were essentially starting from scratch, and they’d already nearly been murdered once.
Jada laughed softly.
Drake frowned and stared at her.
“What’s funny?” Sully asked.
She propped herself up in the bed, staring at the ceiling. She barely seemed to notice they were still in the room.
“Jada?” Drake said.
“This place is old. Faded glory, right?” she said. “But the ceiling fan—that’s pretty new. Quiet. You can barely hear it except for the swish of the air. No rattling or anything.”
Drake shot Sully a worried glance, then turned back to her. “And?”
Jada crawled onto her knees and then rose unsteadily to her feet on top of the bed. She bounced a little, smiling at them.
“Uncle Vic, turn off the fan.”
Sully made a beeline to the knob by the door, not stopping to ask why. It was clear Jada thought she was on to something.
“I talked to my dad the night before he came home from Egypt. I heard the—the fear in his voice, I guess. But at the time I just thought he was tired, y’ know? Wiped out. He was getting too old to be running all over the world at a moment’s notice. I told him I was worried about him, and he told me I had nothing to be afraid of, that he’d be okay as long as he didn’t dry up and blow away in a sandstorm. He didn’t like the heat.”
“Do you think he was trying to tell you something?” Drake asked.
“I didn’t notice it then, but yes, I think he was. In his way, without saying it, I think he was trying to warn me that he—that he might not make it back.”
She’d stopped bouncing, lost in the memory, her sadness painful to see. Sully moved to the edge of the bed and reached out, taking her hand. Drake said nothing, not wanting to interfere with a moment so intimate. This grief was between family members.
Jada looked down at Sully. “He kept complaining about the fan, Uncle Vic. I’d forgotten all about it, but now that we’re here—I’ve been trying to imagine I’m my dad, and I’m afraid and alone and talking to my daughter on the phone. I was watching the fan and thinking how quiet it is, and then I remembered.”
Drake looked up at the fan, its rotations slowing now that Sully had shut it off. He wanted to check it out, but this was Jada’s to do.
Tears had started to slip down her cheeks. She wiped at them, smiling sheepishly.