“What do you propose to do now?” he asked.
She choked on a mouthful of water and glared at him through the lacy curtain of serrated leaves. “Don’t concern yourself… O’Shea. I’ve got everything under control. If you’ll just return my flashlight now…”
“Under control,” indeed. “Nothing’s changed, Mac. You’re not going off alone—”
“I’m not going off anywhere. I just need to take care of something in the tunnel.” She clenched her fists. “Please.”
It would be simple enough to keep track of her from the tunnel entrance. She couldn’t go far. Something had upset her, and he was determined to learn exactly what it was.
He extended the lantern and she snatched it from his hand. Without another word she squared her shoulders and marched straight into the tunnel as if she were about to confront a man-eating dragon.
For all he knew that was exactly what she anticipated. Better a dragon than him—if even a part of his suspicions proved true.
Liam set down his haversack and pitched the brim of his hat low over his eyes. He made himself comfortable under the shade of the temple wall, checked his pistol and let it rest in his lap. He’d give her a half hour, no more. There was little time to waste indulging her freakish starts or devious games—if that was what they were.
He’d left the sack in the tunnel when he and Perry had first arrived, never suspecting the need for emergency supplies would come from such an unpredictable quarter. Along with the additional food Perry had left him, there might be enough to tide two people over for a week, no more.
Two men. A woman was another matter entirely. If she were truly alone here…
He jerked awake, shoved back his hat and sat up. The long shadows and dim light told him that over an hour had passed. Damn it, he’d slept—an amateur’s mistake.
There was still a faint throbbing in his knee where something had struck it. Mac couldn’t have come out of the tunnel without tripping over his legs; Liam stood and looked from the tunnel entrance to the faint clearing beside the temple.
She was sitting on a fallen stele, staring into the jungle. Her pack lay at her feet. There was something strange in her bearing, in the way she didn’t move as the seconds passed, the way she held her hands out in front of her with a peculiar stiffness.
She turned her head as he came near. Her gaze held his with a vulnerability that stopped his questions before he could voice them.
“Something is… very weird here,” she said. “I found the wall, but… it just ends. There’s no way through. It’s the same and not the same. I know it’s the right wall, but the bones…” She shuddered. “They aren’t there anymore.”
He knew the wall she meant; it was the place he and Perry had found the carved plaque of stone from which they’d made their matching pendants. Symbols of a brotherhood that no longer existed.
He shook off his lapse and crouched before Mac. “The wall with the hieroglyphs?” he asked. “It ends the tunnel. There is no way through. What bones are you talking about?”
“I thought they were—” She lifted her hands. For the first time he saw that her palms were raw with bleeding scratches, as if made by ragged stone. “This isn’t possible, you know. There isn’t any real proof. I—”
Liam caught her hands and held them still. “What in hell did you do to yourself?”
She laughed raggedly. “I was sure there must be something, but—”
Her coherence hadn’t improved since she’d gone into the tunnel again, and neither had her rationality. “Be quiet,” he commanded. “Just stay there and be quiet.” He went back for his sack and dropped it beside the stele, pulling out his own canteen. She remained unnaturally still, watching him as he poured water over her palms and washed away the blood.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said, smiling with the distracted air of a good-natured lunatic. “I’m okay. Everything will be fine.”
He caught her chin in his hand. Her cheek was clammy, and the pulse that beat under the skin at the base of her neck was faint and rapid. She was in a state of shock; he’d seen such conditions before. “I told you to be quiet,” he said gruffly. “Sit still and do as you’re told.”