did you miss that part?”
Sully gave him a devious smile. “No, I got that. I just like to rile you guys up. You deserve it after interrupting what could’ve been a beautiful—Wait. Why were you so worried? Did something happen?”
Drake opened his mouth, then closed it again. He glanced at Jada.
“We’re not sure.”
“What do you mean, ‘not sure.’ Either something happened or it didn’t.”
“It might’ve,” Jada said. “We might’ve seen one of the hooded men from the labyrinth up in the village, on a roof.”
“I guess it’s pointless to ask if you noticed anything weird or saw anyone skulking around,” Drake said. “Your attention being otherwise occupied by the lovely Gwen.”
Sully grinned. “Smokin’ hot, right?”
Drake gave a nod of appreciation. “No argument.”
“Okay,” Sully said, turning to Jada. “So you maybe saw something and you maybe didn’t. We’ll stay vigilant—”
Jada shot him a dubious look.
“We’ll work on our vigilance. Get better with that,” Sully corrected. “But since none of us has had their throat cut tonight, can we talk about something that’s actually important?”
“Like?” Drake asked.
Sully stabbed his cigar out in an empty hotel water glass, then made a beeline for Drake’s duffel. He dug through it and pulled out the maps and journal Luka had squirreled away for Jada to discover in Egypt. He set the maps aside and started flipping through the pages again.
“Before I went out for a smoke, I had a little wine and took a closer look at the journal.”
“We’ve been through the whole thing,” Jada said.
Sully found his page, stroked the paper with a finger, holding it open, and nodded to her. “I know. But sometimes things like this don’t make sense until you’ve gotten new information. When you look back through it, it’s like you’ve got new glasses on, and you can see things you didn’t see before.”
“How much wine did you have?” Drake teased.
“Two glasses,” Sully said. “I opened a beer, but it tastes like crap.”
“Focus?” Jada prodded, hands on her hips. Drake would have thought it difficult to look stern with magenta bangs, but somehow she managed.
“Right.” Sully nodded. “So I found a book about Akrotiri in the little library in the hotel—it’s out in the living room—and I was reading about the excavation there. If there ever was an Atlantis, I understand why so many people believe this was it. Atlantis was supposed to be advanced, right? Well, Akrotiri was so far ahead of the rest of the world for its time, it’s amazing. They only unearthed one tiny tip of the town. More of it is there, and some is underwater. But what they found—we’re talking multistory buildings, neighborhoods, looms to weave textiles that they exported. They had hot and cold running water. Think about that. Four thousand years ago, before anyone else, hot and cold running water. Then the volcano erupted, and it was bye-bye Akrotiri.”
“This is all fascinating,” Drake said, “but—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sully said, frowning. “I’m getting to it. The volcano wasn’t the only thing. They had a lot of earthquakes on Thera in those days, leading up to the big blow. But the earthquakes didn’t stop then. They’re not as frequent, but they still happen. There was a major one here in 1956—did a lot of damage to the modern village of Akrotiri, which is near the excavation but not right next door. The modern village had been built around a medieval fortress that stood at the top of a hill, but the earthquake in ’56 did a ton of damage, destroyed a lot of houses, and turned the fortress into unsafe ruins. They rebuilt the houses at the bottom of the hill, but the fortress has essentially been abandoned and off-limits for more than half a century.”
Sully smiled. “All interesting, right. But a hell of a lot more interesting when you consider this.”
He opened the journal to the page he’d marked with his finger. There were labyrinth designs and notes scribbled all over the two-page spread, so it took a moment before Drake noticed the sideways scrawl in the margins of the left-hand page.
“Quake of ’56,” Luka had written. “Under Goulas?”
“What the hell is ‘Goulas’?” Drake asked.
“I’m guessing the Greek name for this fortress you’re talking about,” Jada said.
Sully grinned. “Smart kid.” He beamed, almost as proud of her as he seemed of himself.
“Wow, look at that,” Drake said. “I didn’t think Victor Sullivan had ever done homework in his life.”
Sully flopped onto the bed, set the journal on his chest, and put his hands behind