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“Of course I know how to use it!” Dawson exclaimed a bit wildly.

He shifted his sweaty-handed grip on the weapon as he set the stock to his shoulder.

The professor’s grip was terrible, but he did have his finger on the trigger, and Adam knew that the safety was already off.

Adam had accidentally discharged one round inside the temple. Did Dawson know enough to have chambered another?

If he hadn’t, then Adam could probably jump him before he had a chance to shoot.

If he had, then jumping him would probably earn Adam a bullet in the chest… and there was no way that he could tell the difference just by looking.

Time ticked past as the stalemate froze him. Jacobs had to be on his way, and he’d undoubtedly be bringing more guns and more bullets. As soon as he arrived, Adam would be toast. And if Adam was toast, then there was no way Ellie was getting out of here alive, no matter how brave and resourceful she was.

In the end, that left him with only one option… spinning the wheel of fortune and hoping it didn’t kill him.

Another wave of uneasy vertigo crawled up the back of his brain. Adam fought it as he faced Dawson across the windy gloom… and readied himself to leap.

A familiar voice blazed across the silence.

“Remove your finger from that trigger, Professor Dawson, or I shall drive this excessively large knife through your throat,” it called out boldly.

A figure stepped from the archway at Dawson’s back—holding a beautifully familiar blade to the professor’s neck.

“Ellie?” Adam blurted in surprise.

?

Thirty-Five

There was a newscrape on Ellie’s cheek. Her hair was tumbling from the perpetually messy bun in which she kept it. The knife in her hand—Adam’s knife, he realized with a bolt of joy—was steady as a rock.

She looked gloriously furious.

Dawson removed his finger from the trigger of the rifle, making a clear and obvious show of it. He couldn’t see the blade that Ellie held to his throat, but he must have been able to feel it well enough to take it very,veryseriously.

“Now place the weapon on the ground, please,” she ordered.

Dawson slowly moved to obey—with his eyes locked on Adam’s—and then tossed the gun over the side of the pyramid.

Adam instinctively dropped. The rifle hit the next tier of stones, and another shot cracked through the night, pinging off one of the carved archways.

Chips of debris peppered Adam’s arm.

He heard a distinct clatter as the rifle continued to tumble down the side of the pyramid before coming to rest somewhere in the shadows below.

“Of all the lunatic,irresponsiblethings to do…” Ellie raged.

“I couldn’t let him take it!” Dawson stammered wildly. “He would have killed me with it!”

“The hell I would have,” Adam shot back, still lying on the flat, safe-feeling stones. “There were four rounds in there, tops. I’ve got much better things to do with four rounds than waste one of them on you.”

The machete flashed as Ellie pulled it away from Dawson’s throat, and then set her boot to his rear end. She kicked, sending the professor sprawling down the top steps of the pyramid.

“Come on,” she urged as she grabbed Adam’s arm and hauled him up off the floor.

She tugged him toward the temple. Adam resisted, waving toward the place where the rifle had fallen.

“Four rounds!” he said urgently.