They had twenty hours until the bombs began bursting.

Kira was beyond thirsty. It was time to start exploring. Perhaps there was a spring or mold growing on the cavern walls.

Slime mold. Yum.

She unfurled from the ball she’d curled herself into and thought of the spider drone. How long had it been gone? Had it found an escape? Had it broken a leg or gotten stuck? Was it eaten by a bird?

She’d had a lot of time to think in the last few—hours? days?—and she was going to tell Leah if she ever got to meet her that the drone command should be changed to “E.T. Phone home.” Appropriate and fun. 

When one faced the prospect of dying in a crypt next to the corpse of a Russian spy who’d pretended to be the long-lost step-nephew to a father who wasn’t really her bio dad, fun was the missing ingredient.

Well, that and food. Food was also a missing ingredient. Unless you count slime mold.

Kira did not count slime mold as food.

She sent a thought prayer to the tiny spider that traversed the blistering hot unknown surface world so she didn’t have to. Although she would, gladly, if she could. Even in the midday Maltese sun.

She wouldn’t even complain about the heat.

She considered starting a dialogue with Cousin Andre. Pull a Hamlet and find his head and ponder life and death. But his body was too fresh for touching. She was a fan of Shakespeare, but in this instance, she needed more E.T.

Flying bicycles. Hope and resurrection. A rescue from above that would take her from this alien landscape.

She discovered she wasn’t fully dehydrated because she still had tears. Damn, she really should have told Rand she loved him when she had the chance. At least she had the memory of his touch, and he would remember hers. How she’d traced the contours of his body, worshipping it like the work of art it was. Her love had been in her touch. He had to know that.

She’d sunbathed topless for him. That was something she’d never imagined she’d ever do. He made her forget the box she held herself in. Shy. Awkward. Anxious. She was none of those things with him. Rand made her feel like a Valkyrie. Like a siren. Valkyra.

God, but she wanted to be that person. For him. With him. There was something about his presence that drowned out all the little voices in her head that told her she was less than. She saw herself through his lens and liked what she saw.

Dammit. Reuben couldn’t take this from her.

She ignored her aches and pains and crawled across the uneven floor of the impossibly dark crypt. It was time to go down the stairs and see if she could find something to drink or something she could use to pry open the locked door.

Chapter Fifty-Six

The sun was high in the sky when Rand’s phone pinged. 

Freya

We have coordinates from the spider.

Relief exploded through him. He’d been through many long nights in his career, but this had been a different kind of hell.

Her next text was the coordinates. He clicked on them to see the location on a map, but before it loaded, he sent the most important question.

Rand

What’s the time stamp?

The spider started its journey sixteen hours ago. It took two hours to go the first twenty feet or so, then it traveled two miles before it pinged a cell tower.

Sixteen hours.

Kira had released the drone at 1700. Right around the time Rand had been at the Kulik estate. Was she still there?

Was she still alive?

If she didn’t have water, sixteen hours in the Maltese heat could be deadly. But at least most of those hours had been night.

He had a Fire Team ready to go. The coordinates were in the countryside outside Mdina. They would move in quietly—Rand in civilian gear, the team as backup.

Separate cars in case he needed to talk his way through a guarded gate. But they’d move in with force if needed.

Ten minutes after Freya’s text, Rand was on the road, driving to coordinates that satellite imagery showed was nothing but a rocky slope miles from nowhere.

Not surprising given that the spider had to traverse two miles to get within cellular antenna range, but it was a reminder that the island of Malta, while only seventeen miles long and nine miles wide, still held large swaths of undeveloped land that baked in the Mediterranean sun.

The road ended far before he reached the coordinates. Rand left his car and set out on foot, imagining the spider drone traversing the same path. He’d met Leah, the drone’s inventor, a few months ago. She was married to a Raptor operative and made millions in the tech industry, but saved her most special drones for Raptor, who now shared them with FMV.

When he found Kira, Leah would have his eternal gratitude. She didn’t need money, so he’d find other ways to thank her. Every book he wrote would be dedicated to her. Her favorite charities would become his.

The sun burned bright as he walked the ground, staring at his phone like a tourist as he made his way to Kira’s last known position.

At last, he was there and found…nothing but rocks and dirt. She must be underground.

Where was the entrance?

He signaled for the SEAL Fire Team to join him, and they walked the hillside in transects like archaeologists, according to Morgan, who, along with others in the office, monitored their body cameras, providing more eyes to spot anomalies on the ground that could hint at a hidden door.

They were seeking something as simple as wooden doors covering a storm cellar like one might find the world over, or rocks stacked in a cairn to hide the entrance to the underworld.

Thankfully, they had the spider drone’s wandering route to direct their search, or they might never have found it. The color of the wood blended with the natural landscape. But it was a door set into the ground and covered with rocks to disguise it.

They cleared the rocks and pried open the door, revealing a basic aluminum ladder that was anchored to the rock wall. Rand descended first, entering a labyrinth. This must be a prehistoric site—one the Maltese government didn’t know about, or it would be protected. At some point in the recent past someone had found it and installed the ladder and—it took a bit for Rand to find it—another door with a sturdy metal lock.

His first instinct was to shoot the lock, but he suppressed the impulse. Kira could be beyond the door.

Instead, he kicked the door and shouted, “Kira! Are you here?”

There was a thump and a shout. Kira couldn’t make out if there were actual words. The sound echoed and was distorted by the labyrinth.

Was Reuben back? Looking for her?