Chapter 21

 

Patricia was awake, but she was subdued and seemed far frailer than Julia had ever remembered seeing her. They snacked on packets of chocolate chip cookies and drank mugs of tea while they waited for the men to return. Patricia and Elle continued photographing the textiles and feeding the information into Elle’s laptop. Julia went over the notes she’d made on her iPad. And she didn’t like what she was seeing. Patterns were beginning to emerge. Patterns with terrible conclusions. The more she read, the more worried she became.

When the room phone rang, Julia was preoccupied when she answered, realising too soon that she should probably have let it ring.

“Hello?” she said cautiously.

“Señorita Collins?” a female whispered.

“Maria?” The hotel staff member from the chapel.

“Si. There are men here asking for you. Bad men. You must get out of your room right away. Now, señorita, hurry.” The line went dead.

Julia felt an unnatural stillness come over her and knew panic would follow later. “We need to get out of here. Now.” Julia spun on her gran. “Grab whatever is essential. Leave everything else. We need to run.”

“What is it?” Patricia said.

“Esteban’s men are downstairs looking for us.”

Elle was already stuffing her laptop into her daypack. “Passports. Cash. Phones. Everything else can be replaced.”

Patricia stood, flustered and hesitant in the middle of the room. “I can’t leave the mummy.”

“You have to.” Julia rushed over to her and grabbed her upper arms. “They will take you and kill us. Do you understand?”

The colour faded from her gran’s already pale skin, before she straightened her back. “The textiles—can I take the textiles?”

“Got her handbag.” Elle ran back down the stairs from the bedroom area. “Where are your shoes, Patricia?”

“Elle has photos of every inch of the textiles. You don’t need them,” Julia said.

“What if I missed something?”

“Then you’ll still be alive to figure it out. If they get you, they will kill Alice. She will be no use to them. And once you’ve led them to the treasure, they’ll kill you. If we don’t leave now, we lose both of you.”

“Here.” Elle thrust Patricia’s shoes at her. “Put these on.”

“Okay. You’re right. You’re right.” Patricia tugged on the tennis shoes, but kept casting longing glances at the mummy.

Julia didn’t bother checking her bag; she knew in detail what was in it. She grabbed her gran’s arm and rushed through the door.

The terracotta plaster walls, hung with old religious art, seemed to close in on them. Patricia turned towards the main exit, but Julia tugged her in the opposite direction.

“We sneak out. We don’t know who’s down there.”

They pushed through the fire exit at the end of the corridor and ran down the stairs. Behind them, they heard someone thumping a door. A voice rang out: “¿Señora Matthews, estás ahí?”

“We didn’t register under my name,” Patricia whispered.

“Through here.” Julia pushed through the door to the kitchen, just as they heard a thud and a door crash open. “They’re in our room.”

They raced through the busy kitchen and out into the alley behind the hotel.

“This way.” Julia pointed to the door leading into the chapel attached to their hotel.

“You want us to go back into the hotel? Are you nuts?” Elle almost shouted.

Julia opened the door and rushed inside. “The kitchen staff will tell them we ran out into the alley. They’ll assume we headed away from the hotel. They won’t think we came back in. Plus, I know a hiding spot in here.”

“How?” Elle demanded. “How do you know?”

“I spoke to one of the staff about the history of the place. The same one who called to warn us.”

They ran down the centre aisle of the small chapel. In the left-hand corner, halfway up the wall, was a decoratively carved dark wooden pulpit. The stairs to the pulpit were cut into the wall behind it. But what most people didn’t know was that the stairs didn’t only go up—they also went down.

Julia ran to the life-sized painting of St. John, complete with gilt frame, that took up the space next to the bottom step.

“You expect us to hide in the pulpit?” Patricia sounded hysterical.

“Quiet.” Julia ran her fingers under the edge of the frame. A button. A pop. Pulling hard, she swung the frame out. “Get in.”

A set of stairs led down to the cellars under the old building. Cellars that weren’t used for anything but wine storage and were cut off from the public.

“Sit on the steps. I’m closing the door.”

“Can we get back out if you do?” Elle asked.

“Yes.” Maybe not the way they’d come in, but they’d get out.

They sat on the cold stone steps, the pitch blackness pressing in around them.

“I can use the flashlight app on my cell,” Elle whispered.

“No—it’s best we sit quietly in the dark and wait until we know it’s safe to move,” Julia said.

“How secret is this place?” her gran whispered. It seemed to echo off the bare confines of the stairwell.

“Not very, but it’s not public knowledge either. It’s mentioned in passing in the brochure, and Maria knew about it. I doubt more than a few of the staff know about the painting. Though the cellars under the building on the other side of the courtyard are used for wine. This side isn’t used at all.”

They fell into another nervous silence, which was suddenly broken with running footsteps and shouting. Angry male voices echoed in the chapel. Someone ran up the small staircase to the pulpit, cursed, then ran back down again. They heard doors slam. More shouting. Footsteps retreating.

They were being hunted.

Julia let a few minutes pass before she broke the silence. “We wait here until we’re sure it’s safe.”

There were mumbles of agreement.

“What if I need to go to the toilet?” her gran said. “I drank a lot of tea this morning.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Right now, Julia had more important things to worry about than her gran’s weak bladder. She had to tell Joe about the patterns she’d discovered in her notes. She had to tell him what she suspected. That there was a traitor in their midst. That someone they trusted as a friend cared more about the gold than their lives. That they had been sold out to their enemy.

Julia reached into her messenger bag and pulled out her phone. But when she switched it on, she found there wasn’t any signal.

“Elle,” Julia said, “can you see if your phone has a signal?”

And her friend immediately dug out her phone.