Christopher Golden - Uncharted - The Fourth Labyrinth

“I’ve stayed in worse,” Jada said, tossing her duffel onto the bed and then flopping beside it. She seemed to have forgotten the gun she carried, but Drake thought it was a bad time to remind her.

Sully made a circuit of the room while Drake went straight to the windows. The room had a water view, and he could still see the go-fast boats out there, drifting. He opened the French doors and stepped onto the small balcony, searching the railings and beneath the chairs and the little round table for anything Luka might have left behind.

When he reentered the room, Jada was by the door, fiddling with the knob that controlled the old ceiling fan. It began to rotate slowly, making him realize just how hot it was in the room. He went to the small air-conditioning unit in the corner and found that it was broken. More accurately, someone had taken it apart and it hadn’t been properly put back together again.

“Whoever ransacked the place, they did a job on the AC. It’s screwed. You’re going to be sweating tonight,” he told Jada.

“The fan will help,” she said. “I’ll open the windows. With a breeze off the water, it’ll be fine once the sun goes down.”

Sully stood back with his hands on his hips, staring at the bureau. He had pulled the drawers out and set them on the floor, working much more neatly than whoever had broken in and searched the room before they arrived.

“Get the bed, will you?” Sully asked.

Drake dropped to his knees, searching underneath, then stood and stripped the fresh bedclothes, checking under the mattress. They both knew there was no point to the search. If there had been anything here, whoever had ransacked the place would have found it already. But he looked just the same, checking the seams of the mattress to see that nothing had been cut and re-sewn. If they were going to look, they might as well be thorough.

While Drake went over the bed, Sully moved the bureau and then the entertainment center, then went into the bathroom. Jada watched the proceedings with fascination at first and then with growing amusement.

“I hope you’re going to remake the bed,” she said, pushing her magenta hair behind her ears.

Drake frowned at her. “We’re looking for-”

“Anything my father might have left behind,” Jada finished for him. She kneeled on the mattress, hands defiantly on her hips. “Do you think I’m stupid, Nate? If someone tossed this room, they were looking for something. Stands to reason that there’s something to look for. Whoever Henriksen has working for him, they must know a lot of things we don’t. My father came here, he figured something out.”

“We knew that part already,” Sully said.

They both looked up to see him standing in the bathroom door with his arms crossed.

“Yeah, but if they’re searching, it doesn’t just mean he was on to something,” Jada continued. “It means they knew it, and he knew-or at least suspected-that someone was going to try to take those secrets from him. They think he was worried enough to hide something.”

Drake looked around the room. “The question is, Did they find it? Whatever ‘it’ is.”

Jada threw the sheets back on the bed, not bothering to make it up, and flopped onto the mattress again, staring at the ceiling. She crossed her ankles, making herself right at home.

“My father was a pretty smart guy,” she said. “If he had something important, something he was afraid other people might try to take away, he’d find a way to get it home safely.”

Sully chuckled and rapped his knuckles on the door frame as if for luck. “You can say that again. He did it more than once. But if Henriksen, or whoever killed Luka, thinks it’s here…”

He trailed off, thinking, then nodded to himself. “Maybe they burned his apartment to destroy records or notes he made since he got home, but if they’re still looking, they must be damn sure Luka didn’t bring whatever it is home with him. So let’s assume he did leave something here. Why would he do that? And where would he hide it?”

Drake had kept walking while they spoke, feeling the door and window frames, checking the curtains, testing the floor with his shoes. Now he paused and looked at Sully.

“He made it home alive,” Drake said, trying to infuse himself with the kind of fear and paranoia they believed Luka must have been feeling. “But if he thought he might not make it home-if he thought he might not make it out of Egypt alive…”

Sully nodded, pointing at him. “Yeah. That makes sense. Okay, so let’s say he did hide something, but like Jada says, he’s smarter than they give him credit for. Would he really hide it in this room? I’m going to say no.”

“Which puts us exactly nowhere,” Drake said. He ran a hand over his stubbled chin, confused and frustrated. Luka’s killers were way ahead of them, had so many more pieces of the puzzle. He and Sully and Jada were essentially starting from scratch, and they’d already nearly been murdered once.

Jada laughed softly.

Drake frowned and stared at her.

“What’s funny?” Sully asked.

She propped herself up in the bed, staring at the ceiling. She barely seemed to notice they were still in the room.

“Jada?” Drake said.

“This place is old. Faded glory, right?” she said. “But the ceiling fan-that’s pretty new. Quiet. You can barely hear it except for the swish of the air. No rattling or anything.”

Drake shot Sully a worried glance, then turned back to her. “And?”

Jada crawled onto her knees and then rose unsteadily to her feet on top of the bed. She bounced a little, smiling at them.

“Uncle Vic, turn off the fan.”

Sully made a beeline to the knob by the door, not stopping to ask why. It was clear Jada thought she was on to something.

“I talked to my dad the night before he came home from Egypt. I heard the-the fear in his voice, I guess. But at the time I just thought he was tired, y’ know? Wiped out. He was getting too old to be running all over the world at a moment’s notice. I told him I was worried about him, and he told me I had nothing to be afraid of, that he’d be okay as long as he didn’t dry up and blow away in a sandstorm. He didn’t like the heat.”

“Do you think he was trying to tell you something?” Drake asked.

“I didn’t notice it then, but yes, I think he was. In his way, without saying it, I think he was trying to warn me that he-that he might not make it back.”

She’d stopped bouncing, lost in the memory, her sadness painful to see. Sully moved to the edge of the bed and reached out, taking her hand. Drake said nothing, not wanting to interfere with a moment so intimate. This grief was between family members.

Jada looked down at Sully. “He kept complaining about the fan, Uncle Vic. I’d forgotten all about it, but now that we’re here-I’ve been trying to imagine I’m my dad, and I’m afraid and alone and talking to my daughter on the phone. I was watching the fan and thinking how quiet it is, and then I remembered.”

Drake looked up at the fan, its rotations slowing now that Sully had shut it off. He wanted to check it out, but this was Jada’s to do.

Tears had started to slip down her cheeks. She wiped at them, smiling sheepishly.

“He said-”

“What, Jada?” Sully prodded.

“He said he hated having the AC on, but the fan rattled so much, it was like having someone in the room that wouldn’t shut up. He said, ‘This damn thing’s got a lot to say.’ ”

Jada turned to Drake, excitement building in her now. “Those weren’t the exact words, but something like that. I know it’s not much, but it’s weird, right?”

Drake nodded to her. “Go ahead. Look.”

She took a deep breath, reached up, and began to run her hands over the tops of the fan blades, one at a time. On the third one, she froze, her breath catching in her throat. Drake heard the sound as she peeled off a scrap of paper that had been taped to the top of the fan blade.