His search seemed to take forever, scanning the weathered cliffs, inspecting each crack and shadow, but when he finally found the first shadowy concave space in the rock, his watch showed that only six minutes had passed. Perhaps he’d be doubly lucky and his hidden enemy had given him up for dead. Without further consideration, he set to climbing.
The ancient holds were eroded in places, some of them no more than shallow pits. He moved as quickly as he could, taking more time where the holds were almost gone. He did not look down, but instead kept his eyes on the top of the cliff. What would he do if someone appeared above him? Hope it was someone on his side, he supposed.
He made steady progress until he was about halfway up when the next handhold simply wasn’t there. He paused, squinting against the sun’s intense glare, and searched for it. His hands burned from scrabbling up the rock, and his muscles were knotted from the awkward contortions the climb had forced upon him. Where was the next hold? It was not long before a memory crashed down on him. The Anasazi coded their hand-holds. If you didn’t start with the correct hand and foot, you could get just far enough along to get…stuck.
Keeping his body pressed as close to the rock as possible, he turned and looked back, seeking a way down. He could see the way he had come, but his feet and hands were all wrong and the intervening space too broad to permit him to move backward. He was in trouble. He certainly hoped Bones was faring better.
Chapter 16
Bones scanned the ruins of Sun Temple. Even now it was an amazing sight. The remains of two towers stood inside a D-shaped double wall.
“It doesn’t look like a clover to me,” Saul said, his constant scowl fully in evidence.
“No but we need to check it out anyway,” Bones said, wondering how he had gotten stuck with Saul as a partner. “The marker is supposed to be at the southwest corner.” He indicated the direction they should go and led the way.
The walls were short and thick, the craftsmanship amazing. Sun Temple had never been completed, so Bones was skeptical about what they might find, but Jade had insisted they leave no stone unturned, so to speak.
Arriving at the southwest corner, they found a heavily eroded stone with three circles carved against a blurry-edged, diamond shaped background. Bones knelt and ran his fingers across the surface of the marker up to the point where it curved into the wall. He didn’t see anything here that would indicate Fray Marcos had chosen it as one if his hiding places.
“This is it, huh?” Saul said, putting his hands on his knees and leaning forward to gaze intently at the stone. “It looks a little bit like two planets crashing into a sun.”
“It does a just a bit, doesn’t it?” Bones looked all around the stone to see if he was missing anything. He didn’t see anything that indicated a hidden compartment or Marcos’ symbol. “I don’t suppose the three circles could be the leaves of a clover?” he asked, somehow knowing it was not so.
“Doesn’t look like what we’ve found so far,” Saul replied, doubt clear in his voice.
A movement caught Bones’ eye. Someone was moving beyond the farthest tower. That in itself was not strange, but it was the way they were moving — as if they were trying not to be noticed.
“Keep looking down at the rock like you’re interested,” he whispered to Saul. “Don’t do anything else unless I tell you,”
“I hear you,” Saul said. He didn’t offer any argument or ask questions. Maybe the guy wasn’t as stupid as Bones had believed.
He kept an eye on the far tower. There were two men moving slowly around the back of the chest-high structure. They were facing the back of the tower as if admiring the architecture, but it was obvious to Bones that they were watching him just as much as he was watching them. Their appearance was wrong as well. They wore casual clothes like any tourist would wear, but they were neatly pressed and their shirts were tucked in. Their haircuts were perfect. Everything about the way they looked made it seem they had checked in at the office before dropping by the ruins. Their bearing was not that of civilians. Their backs were too straight and they moved with too much purpose to be sightseeing.
Bones turned the lay of the land over in his mind. The men stood between them and the parking lot. The surrounding area offered little cover.
“Are you packing?” he asked Saul.
“Am I what?”
“Carrying a gun.”
“Oh, no,” Saul replied. “Why?”
Just then, the two men rounded the tower and moved toward Bones and Saul in a fast walk. They separated, each drawing a weapon and ducking low as they approached.
“Because I think we’re going to need a little firepower.”
Fatigue gave way to a bout of dizziness as Dane baked in the sun on the face of the cliff above Square Tower House. Sweat ran into his eyes, but he scarcely noticed. He had considered and dismissed a dozen or more ideas, each more reckless than the next. He had just about settled on trying to slide down the cliff and hoped he survived the fall, when he began to hallucinate. At least that’s what he thought was happening when a rope suddenly appeared six inches from his nose.
He blinked twice, but could not dispel the image. He thought of thirsty men in the desert seeing mirages, their minds willing them to believe that which they most desperately sought was before their eyes. But he wasn’t that far gone. Tired, aching, and frustrated to be certain, but not on the verge of death.
“Maddock, are you going to grab on to the stupid rope or not?” Jade’s voice sounded tired and a bit hoarse, but it was her. Looking up, he could see the outline of her form against the bright, blue sky. Hoping this really wasn’t a hallucination, and that he was about to grab a handful of empty air, he reached out and grasped the rope.
“It’s the rest of what wasn’t cut,” she said. “I’ve got it secured to the base of a tree, but I think I’m strong enough to help you up. But you’ve got to hurry.”
Shaking off thoughts of ache and fatigue, Dane transferred his weight to the rope and started working his way up. Up above, Jade hauled on the rope. At first she seemed just to be dragging him across the rocky face, adding to his cuts and bruises, but then he saw a handhold. She had pulled him back over to the ancient egress. Keeping the rope twisted around his arm for safety, he scrambled up the ancient notches and quickly found himself face-to-face with Jade. What he saw made him grind his teeth in anger.
Her face was bruised, her lower lip split, and her clothing was ripped and dirty. She looked away, as if embarrassed to meet his eye.
“I don’t know who they were,” she said before he could ask. “They know we’re after an artifact, but they didn’t seem to know what it is. I didn’t tell them.” She kept her back to him, hastily gathering the rope and looping it around her hand and elbow.
“Why didn’t they come down after me? Or wait ‘til I got to the top and take it from me?” Dane asked. “If they wanted the artifact, cutting my ropes wouldn’t help them.”
“I convinced them you had just called up to me to tell me that it wasn’t there, and that you’d be coming back after you put things right. They slapped me around a bit to make sure I was telling the truth. They finally knocked me unconscious. I assume they cut your rope to slow you down and then took off for Sun Temple.”
“You sent them after Bones?” he said, unable to believe what he was hearing. “How could you…”
“No! They asked me about Sun Temple. I didn’t say anything, but they seemed to already know about it, and that Bones would be there.” She looped the last of the rope around her arm and finally turned to face him. The sight of her injured face brought a surge of guilt.