pulsed in his temples, and his breath came in short, angry inhalations. The gun in his hand seemed to thrum with an urgency all its own, pleading to do its brutal work. Henriksen hadn’t killed Luka or Cheney and he hadn’t taken Sully or Welch, but someone had burned Luka’s apartment and sent gunmen after Jada in New York. The hooded men didn’t seem overly fond of guns, and it was clear Henriksen didn’t have a problem with killing when necessary. But where did all that leave them?
Henriksen watched him closely now, his instant fascination with the Chinese worship chamber set aside for a moment. The so-called businessman must have been able to see the indecision—the temptation toward violence—in Drake’s eyes, because he took a step forward, closing the space between them.
He waved at his men, and they holstered their weapons. “Mr. Drake,” he said. “You can put the gun away now. The danger has passed.”
“Has it?” Jada asked, never taking her eyes off her stepmother.
Olivia ignored her, taking out a camera and beginning to photograph the writing and the paintings that decorated the worship chamber. Nico used his flashlight to help dispel the shadows so that she could get the clearest shots. There were shelves of jars there as well, and the short man began to lift them one at a time for her to photograph.
Henriksen looked meaningfully at Drake. “These men, whoever they are, clearly do not want to squander their lives. In a conflict where they don’t see the possibility of achieving their goals, they withdraw and await another opportunity. They are gone, Mr. Drake. They have given up on the idea of preventing us from learning what we can about the fourth labyrinth from this chamber. If they had more men with them, we would all be dead. Instead, they have taken your friend Sullivan. Why they took him and didn’t kill him, I don’t know, but for the moment let’s assume he’s alive. You have two choices.
“You and Jada can continue to be obstinate and hostile, working to find the fourth labyrinth on your own—as finding the killers who strive to protect its secrets is your only hope of locating Sullivan—or you can accept that we are all seeking the same answers. If our motivations differ, isn’t that a debate that can be postponed to another day?”
Drake glanced at Jada and then took a sideways shuffling step so that he was beside her. From the outset they had been convinced that Tyr Henriksen was their enemy, and even now they couldn’t be sure he was not. When Luka Hzujak had discovered Henriksen’s plans for the fourth labyrinth, he had quit working with Phoenix Innovations and tried to beat Henriksen to the punch. Henriksen wanted the treasure of the labyrinth for his purposes, and to make sure he could claim it, he intended to keep secret the historical revelations involved in his discovery. Jada would never let that happen, and Henriksen had to know that.
But the selfish, entitled bastard was right. It was an argument that could wait. The only thing that really mattered at the moment was finding Sully.
Drake lowered his gun. After a moment, he slipped it back into his waistband and nodded toward Henriksen.
“We’ll settle our differences later.”
Henriksen smiled. “I look forward to it. But for now—” He turned toward Jada’s stepmother. “Olivia, what can you tell us?”
Olivia paused in her photography. “Not a lot yet. The writing is ancient Chinese, but we’ll need to transmit these pictures to Yablonski for translation. No idea what the flower motif is meant to represent, but it’s all through here, an addition to the same repetitive imagery we’ve seen in the other chambers.”
Drake frowned and glanced at Jada. If she seemed surprised that her stepmother was the expert on Henriksen’s team, she didn’t show it.
“Any idea what god this chamber is dedicated to?” Drake asked. “The paintings over by the door look like something out of Dante’s Inferno.”
Olivia stared at him. Drake thought about the way she had come into the restaurant in Egypt the other night, pretending to be the damsel in distress from some film noir. Olivia might not be as evil as Jada had made her out to be—she hadn’t murdered her own husband, at least—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a manipulative bitch and a hell of an actress.
Now though, Olivia seemed to deflate a little, and most of the remaining tension in the chamber dissipated. They were all there together, hundreds