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She burst into the room like lightning, sparking life in the darkness. “I think I know where they are.”
Declan leaned up from the table. “Where?”
“Ethan, remember when you were telling the pirate story at the fundraiser? One of our kids—Rohan—said that he’d hide the treasure in the crypt.”
Ethan nodded, frowned.
“I told you that the storage areas had been redone. But maybe that’s not what Henry van der Meer meant when he said ‘storage.’” She finger quoted the last word. “Back in medieval times, they often stored valuables—like art or church treasure or even people—in crypts. We assumed he meant the food storage areas, but...”
“Yes,” Ethan said. “Brilliant. Does the church have a crypt?”
“Rosa would know,” Doyle said, and Tia looked at him, nodded.
“C’mon.” She headed to the kitchen, but it had been cleaned and secured for the night, the lights off. “She might be sleeping.”
He ignored the word, just in case his body decided to remember that he hadn’t slept for way, way too long. Right now it simply buzzed, part fatigue, part what-if.
She headed up the stairs off the kitchen to the apartment, stood in the shadowed alcove, and knocked.
Nothing.
“Rosa? It’s Tia. I think I know where the kids?—”
The door opened. Rosa stood in the frame, her dark hair down, wearing a housecoat, a pair of worn slippers. She seemed remarkably young, or perhaps he simply spotted the youth in her expression. “You found them?”
“Does the church have a crypt?”
Rosa frowned, a beat passing, and then, “Yes, of course. It’s an ancient church, and the crypt runs all the way under the courtyard, the refectory, and even past the gardens.” She cinched her belt tighter. “But the crypt entrance was sealed years ago. It used to be under the sacristy.”
“Is there another entrance, somewhere the kids might be able to access?” Doyle asked, because suddenly, in his head, he heard Jamal’s words,“You can smell them—the dead bodies.”
What if he hadn’t been talking about the sulfur mine but... “Caves. Jamal said caves.”
Rosa frowned, shook her head. “I don’t know about any other entrance.”
“Let’s find Jamal,” said Tia.
“I saw him with Kemar and the Jamesons in the hall before I retired,” said Rosa and closed the door behind her as she followed Tia down the stairs. Doyle landed in the kitchen and headed out to the hall.
Elise and Hunter Jameson sat across from Kemar and Jamal at a table. Kemar scooped up beans and rice, shoveling them into his mouth.
They wore concern on their faces as Doyle walked up to them.
“Jamal,” Doyle said, “when you said that Gabriella and Rohan and Jaden went into the caves, did you mean the sulfur mine?”
He frowned, then shook his head. “They went into the caves by the soccer field.”
By the... soccer field?
“Doyle, Ethan found an old document with the original monastery blueprint,” Declan said. He stood with Ethan, looking over his shoulder, and Doyle headed over to them.
Ethan showed him his tablet. “I pulled this from Esperanza records during my initial search of the building.” He pointed to the church, then the sacristy. “There were stairs here, going down under the church. But in a later drawing, there is a map of the burial plots of various family members. The crypt is under the entire monastery.”
Just like Rosa said.
“Jamal mentioned caves,” said Doyle.
Ethan set the tablet down, shrank the drawing. “I don’t see?—”