Page 160 of Blood Game

If they meant to kill Kris and Valentine, they would already be dead. That meant they wanted them alive, at least a little longer, needed them alive to find what they were after.

There was only one direction they could have gone. The light was thin, then faded altogether as he returned to the tunnel passage.

“Where?” Marcus demanded as they came to the end of the passage where it opened in two directions.

“Where?” he demanded again, walking back to her, Alyia Malik with a firm hold on her arm.

“Tell me!” he demanded.

They needed time, Kris thought. James would have returned to the farm by now and Albert would have told him what happened.

Albert. Was he all right? Or had he become just another casualty in Marcus's glory game?

He jerked her head up, his fingers bruising her chin as he forced her to look at him.

“You will tell me.”

When she refused, he nodded past her, where Faridani stood with Valentine. So brave, so angry. It was there in the expression on Valentine's face. There had been no time to tell her she was sorry for dragging her and her grandfather into this.

Marcus looked back at her. Someone she thought she knew, had respected for his knowledge and his friendship with Cate.

“Your silence is wasted, my dear.” He nodded again at Faridani.

He yanked Valentine's head back, the blade of a knife gleamed in the light of the lantern they'd brought with them. He pressed the tip against her throat. Blood appeared.

“Do you know how long it takes for someone to bleed to death?” Marcus asked her.

“No!” Valentine cried out, even as blood ran down the length of that blade. “Tell them nothing!”

The Cross of Lorraine, the tattoo she had gotten in memory of Micheleine, was covered with blood.

“You don't know these people—you don't know what they do...”

James had warned her, tried to stop her. He knew, and she had seen it—Brynn Halliday, murdered in London, Brother Thomas in a pool of his own blood, James shot as they fled from the abbey. And Cate.

“There were drawings,” she told Marcus. “In a letter Micheleine left behind before she died.”

“No!” Valentine screamed, then gasped as a hand closed around her throat.

“What drawings?” Marcus demanded.

“At the hospital.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere in the mine.”

He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her forward.

“You will show me.”

“I don't know!” she insisted.

“What sort of drawings?”

“There was a figure of a woman, carved into stone.”

“Bring her,” he snapped, pulling her into the open space where those half tunnels intersected along that narrow track.