The Lost Ark (The Rain Collective Book 9) by J.R. Rain

Author:J.R. Rain [Rain, J.R.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Rain Press
Published: 2013-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-five

I awoke slowly from the land of the dead, head pounding. Professor Caesar Roberts was holding a wet rag to my head, a bemused grin on his face. I was beginning to think he always had a bemused grin on his face.

“How long,” I said, struggling to regain use of my tongue. “How long have I been out?”

“Two or three hours,” said Caesar, a sparkle in his eyes. “At least since they dragged you in here and deposited you like a sack of potatoes.”

When I finally stood, a wave of nausea swept over me, and I almost disgorged what little food I had eaten during the past few days. Wally sat cross-legged next to the fire, rocking gently, staring down into the lapping flames as if they held the secret to his escape. He didn’t look at me, and seemed lost in his own fear. I could see that his Mickey Mantle baseball card, once sheathed in plastic, was now melted and blackened in the fire pit. I pointed to the remains of the card and asked Caesar what had happened.

“A soldier threw it in the fire,” said the professor. “He said it was punishment for the beating you gave him in the tunnel.”

“Dammit.”

A cold draft worked its way over my skin. Faint morning light issued from the tunnel behind, pushing my shadow before me. In the muted half-light, Caesar and Wally looked ghoulish and pale, like two creatures from a Jules Verne novel. I wondered how long it had been since they had seen the light of the sun.

“Pardon me if I seem insensitive to your pain,” said Caesar, the smile on his face wavering, “but where the hell is my daughter?”

My head pounded from the inside out. There seemed to be a faint ringing in my skull. It had been a hell of a punch by Farid. “She’s with Omar.” I thought of Liz Cayman, inadvertently dead at the hands of Omar. I did not blame Farid. But I would hold the emir responsible. He would pay for stealing my fiancé’s life. My life. Our life together.

Caesar said, “You okay, Sam?”

“No.”

The professor exhaled, looking miserable. “Join the club. I should have known she would try something like this. With her, nothing surprises me. She’s quite capable of anything. So what do we do now?”

“I’m still working on that one, professor. First, I need to stop the ringing in my head. Either that, or someone get the damn phone.”

While I sat there with my head in my hands, Caesar caught me up to date. “We used a map I had created from the journal of Jans Struys. By coming up from the north, we had inadvertently skirted Omar’s camp.” The map had indicated that this was the legendary cave, but there was no marker, as proclaimed by Struys in his memoir. Frustrated but undaunted, Caesar began hacking away at the ice until he’d uncovered the fabled finger of rock. The marker. Elated, they had found their cave, only to discover that a massive cave-in had blocked further access into the tunnel.

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