Page 162 of Blood Game

Was the tapestry there?

Fear knotted her stomach. Once Marcus had what he wanted, they would be killed. She was certain of it.

What was it like to die? She had thought of that so many times after Mark was killed. Did he know before it happened? What were his last thoughts? Was he scared?

She had thought about that so many times, her strong brother with that quirky sense of humor. Would he have been angry? Or some other emotion? Fear?

Not that, she thought. He had never been afraid of anything, and he had believed that death wasn't an end. He even told her that once, strong in the faith they had been raised on.

“I've seen too many things that had no other explanation,” he once said. “Friends...”

Brad Morris, she thought at the time. He had been killed in a car accident their first year of college. He had known Brad since kindergarten. They had shared everything, and went off to college together. Brad didn't agree with her brother's decision to go into the military, but he supported his right to make that decision because that's what real friends did. Then the accident.

“There are times,” Mark said afterward, when he was home on leave from one of those first missions he'd been sent out on.

“I know he's there, right beside me, just like when we were in high school. We don't lose them, kiddo. Their spirit is always with us.”

The information that came back after Mark was killed, the official version and the other versions from men he served with,never said anything about that last time, what his thoughts might have been. There was just the formal letter...

“We regret to inform you...”

But knowing her brother, she was certain about one thing. He would have tried to fight his way out; he wouldn't have given up. He didn't quit...

Which way had they gone?

James asked himself again. And again there was no answer in the shadows of the passage or the stagnate cold air. Nothing, then a sound.

Was it his imagination? The way the simplest sound—the drip of water or the movement of bats seemed to come from one direction, then another, the way it echoed off stones and rock walls.

Not bats, the sound of water, or the wind through the broken roof of the mine?

Voices!

He heard it again, and moved quickly. He followed the passage until it opened into that large cavernous room. Another passage with rooms along both sides, then the passage ended, splitting off in two directions. But which one?

It was crude, but he recognized the image Albert had mentioned, the figure of a woman with a scarf and apron, the same as one drawn on the edge of the letter Micheleine had left behind.

It came again, another sound, and he was already heading down the passage. The sound faded, slipped away. He searched the walls of the passage. The military insignia carved in stone almost leapt off the wall at him. He followed the passage, stopped, listened, then kept going.

The drawings in the margin of that letter were directions in the mine. He heard another sound, almost turned back uncertain the direction it had come from, then saw the year, 1918, etched in stone. He turned, moved down the passage, then saw them—rows of crosses, someone had carved into the limestone wall.

A lion and dragon was the last drawing Micheleine had made. He heard it again. He was close and cut the beam of the flashlight. He ran and followed that sound, someone shouting.

Please, God. Let them both still be alive...

CHAPTER

FORTY-EIGHT

The room was filled with shovels, picks, lanterns, and other mining equipment from a century earlier—benches that had rotted and collapsed, helmets on a shelf that had partially collapsed.

They were inside the part of the mine that had been abandoned when it was closed down, before World War I when the English and French had brought their wounded and dying to the mine from nearby trenches and battlefields.

Marcus swept the beam of the flashlight across the walls, then over again, running back and forth in the room like a madman, kicking aside a shovel, then back again.

“Where is it?” he demanded, turning on her. “There is more. There has to be more! You will tell me!” he demanded.

“That was all that was in the letter,” Kris told him. “Just those drawings.”