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Orry Rockwell lay on his back on the wet stone floor. All he could hear was the rush of running water and his own ragged breathing. For a moment he imagined he could hear Maddock and Bones crying out on the other side of the wall, but they were sealed away forever. A shame really. He had liked them.
He rolled over onto his side and a lash of pain sliced through him. He let out a cry of anger.
“I can’t believe how much this hurts.” He tore his shirt into strips and bandaged the wound the best he could. It didn’t seem like a serious wound. What was more, he could claim he’d encountered a human trafficker and been wounded in the struggle.
The sound of running feet startled him. Flashlights bobbed in the darkness. And then Terry Gold was standing over him.
“What the hell did you just do?” Gold demanded as he snatched up Rockwell’s rifle.
“What are you talking about? I came down here looking for Maddock and Bonebrake.”
“You trapped them in there is what you did.” Steven Segar was struggling to lift the trident handle. It was the wrong handle, so his efforts, though ferocious, were in vain. “We heard you.”
Rockwell felt as if he’d suddenly been doused with cold water. How could they know?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gold shoved Segar aside and raised the trident handle on the left. Rockwell held his breath. He was ninety-nine percent sure he had opened a floodgate into the chamber. What would happen if the sealed doorway opened now?
They didn’t have to find out. Nothing happened.
“I don’t know what that does,” Rockwell said. “This is as far as I got.”
His cheek burned as Segar slapped him across the face. The indignity and positively surreal experience of being slapped by a B-List celebrity rendered him mute.
“You wouldn’t believe how well sound travels down here,” Segar said. “We could hear you all the way on the other side of that spiky tube thing.”
“I don’t know what you think you heard, but I didn’t do anything.”
“It’s not what we think we heard,” Gold said. “You see, I habla a little Espanol, and one of those dirtbags fingered you as the big boss.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I don’t think so,” Segar said. “Just as your compadre was ratting you out, we saw you sneak away. And we knew you were up to something— something that was worthy of a reality television show.”
Gold took up the narrative. “We couldn’t bring a crew down here and hope to keep pace with you, but we brought our buddy Yoshi with his handheld camera.” He pointed with his thumb to a young man standing just behind him. Yoshi, who held a camera trained on Rockwell, waved. “We fell behind at first, Segar isn’t as young as he used to be. But we kept coming. Of course, we heard you long before we caught up to you, and Yoshi started recording the moment we heard your voice. Did you catch any of what he was saying, Yoshi?”
“Let me see.” The young man made a show of playing back a portion of what they’d recorded. The screen was dark, but Rockwell’s voice came through clearly.
...if you actually think I would allow you to leave when I just confessed to human trafficking and blackmail, and after I just tried to kill you...
Yoshi turned off the recording. “Is that enough, gentlemen?”
“That’s perfect,” Gold said. “By the way, I was recording with my phone. You should see the look on your face.” He flipped the phone around and showed Rockwell a freeze frame image of himself looking poleaxed.
“That isn’t me.”
Segar punched him in the face.
When Rockwell’s eyes cleared and his ears stopped ringing, he tried to stand, but his legs were wobbly.
Segar raised a finger in warning. “The sensei will only tolerate a certain amount of prevarication.”
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Water poured from the ceiling in a primal flood. Maddock danced to the side as a hunk of stone the size of his head fell from the ceiling. The water was rising at a rate he could not believe. Already it was at his armpits.
“Get to the statue!” he shouted.
Gripping their flashlights in their teeth, he and Bones swam through a hailstorm of falling rocks, swept along in the maelstrom. Bones reached the statue first. He grabbed on to Poseidon’s right arm. A moment later, Maddock caught hold of the left.
“What’s our play?” Bones said around a mouthful of Maglite. He squinted his eyes against the downpour.
“Any ideas on where there might be a release lever?”
Bones pulled the flashlight out of his mouth so he could gape at Maddock. “Do you think I’ve been here before?”
“I asked for ideas, because I’m fresh out.”
Bones thought. “I’ve got it. Trident goes down, door goes down. Trident goes up...” He grabbed hold of the trident and pushed up. Nothing. Again. “Never mind. You got any ideas?”
“Maybe we can float to the top,” he offered. He knew it would be no good. Water was pouring in from the underground river faster than it flowed from the chamber. Unless they could somehow pull the plug, the water would back up and they would drown.
No sooner had that thought entered his mind than a massive upsurge of water lifted him high. He lost his grip on the statue, made a desperate grab for it but came away with the thunderstone.
He almost dropped it, so surprised was he to find it in his hand. It was both thrilling and unnerving, but at least it wasn’t something that killed at the first touch. He had enough to contend with at the moment.
He and Bones were rising fast.
“What happened?” Bones asked.
“I think the rubble from the falling ceiling must have clogged the outflow.”
Bones looked up. “Now I know how that kid from Willie Wonka felt.”
Maddock had an idea. He reached into his pocket, not an easy task while treading water and holding the thunderstone in the other hand.
“Just so you know,” Bones shouted over the pouring water, “I do care about other stuff, not just the hunt. And other people.”
Maddock’s hand closed on the sapphire. He pulled it out and held it against the thunderstone. “Shut up and shine your light on the sapphire!”
“Think you can use that thing?”
“We’ll find out.”