Will Adams - The Lost Labyrinth

She turned slowly onto her back, tipped her head to the side to watch him lying there, his mouth fractionally open, the golden glitter of his stubble, the swell and fall of his chest. The one person who'd known what Petitier looked like, what he'd been up to these past twenty years. A man who, beneath his self-deprecating jokes, yearned for a great discovery. As quietly as she could, she lifted his arm off her. He stirred but didn't wake. She got to her feet, tiptoed out of the room, closed the door softly behind her.

His backpack was resting against the wall by the front door. Her breath came a little faster as she put her hand on it. The fabric felt faintly charged, as though lightly dusted with electricity. It ran against her nature, looking through other people's belongings, but she couldn't stop herself. She unzipped a side-pocket, checked the contents: a lighter and a box of waterproof matches, a torch, a multipurpose penknife, tattered maps of Crete and a handheld GPS. She went through the other pockets, equally stuffed with hiking supplies. The main body of his backpack was filled with clothes. She came across his photographer's trousers, scrunched the cotton for anything in the multitude of pockets. She found his wallet, checked it briskly, put it back. She felt something else, pulled it out. An Athens metro ticket. She turned it to the light, squinted down, went a little numb. It had been validated on the same afternoon that Petitier had-

'What the hell are you doing?'

Her heart skipped a beat. She looked around to see Iain in the bedroom doorway, wearing only his boxer shorts. 'You're up,' she said, stuffing the ticket back in the pocket, the trousers back in the pack.

'Yes. I'm up. Now what the hell are you doing?'

She didn't know what to say. She just squatted there, waiting for inspiration. 'I was only…' she began.

He began walking towards her, fists down by his side. 'Yes. You were only what?'

'I was looking for your first-aid kit.'

'Oh.' He stopped short. 'What for?'

'My ankle,' she said. 'I wanted some new bandage. This one's getting dirty and stretched. You don't mind, do you?'

'Of course not,' he said, though warily, as though he didn't quite buy her story. He crouched and unzipped the lower compartment, pulled out the kit.

'I didn't want to wake you,' she said. 'You had such a brutal day yesterday. I wanted to be gone and back by the time you woke.'

'Gone and back?'

'I have to find out what's happening with Daniel and Augustin,' she nodded. 'I have to. It's driving me crazy. I thought I could climb high enough to get a signal on my mobile.'

'On your own? With your ankle still crocked? Are you mad?'

'I wouldn't take any risks.'

'What do you mean? Just climbing that path is a risk.'

'It's my choice.'

'Really? And who would have to rescue you if something went wrong?'

She hung her head. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I guess I wasn't thinking. But I just…I need to know.'

He sighed and put his hand on her shoulder. 'You shouldn't even be thinking of climbing on that ankle, not for another day at least. Tell you what, why don't I head back up myself. I'll call Knox, tell him what we've been up to, pick up his news. And we can make plans for getting you safely out of here. How does that sound?'

'Terrific,' she said, forcing a smile. 'And thank you so much.'

'My pleasure,' he told her; but there was still something in his eye. His gaze drifted to the Mauser leaning against the wall. 'And maybe I'll take that with me,' he said. 'See if I can't bag us something fresh for tonight's pot.'

All the early flights to Heraklion were full, but there was room on the first departure for Chania, a port in north-western Crete. Knox landed a few minutes before six-thirty; with no luggage to collect, he breezed through arrivals. There was only one car-hire booth open, manned by an unshaven middle-aged man in sunglasses who kept pushing the sleeves of his rumpled linen suit up past his elbows. He tried to scare Knox into taking additional insurance against the deductible. 'Nasty roads,' he told him. 'Terrible drivers.'

'Don't worry about me,' Knox assured him, as he took the keys to a Hyundai. 'I live in Egypt.'

It was still early, the roads were empty and good, gorgeous shrubs in full bloom either side, like an extended fairway at Augusta. Bugs tapped the windscreen every few minutes, leaving little smears of themselves. He made excellent time to Vrises, cut south and headed up into the White Mountains. Black nets hung from the steep hillsides like widows' veils. There was a haze in the air, as though someone had lit bonfires. He passed through Petres, then had the road entirely to himself. At first he enjoyed it, taking the hairpins a little faster than was prudent, but gradually the complete quietness began to alarm him. Even this early on a Saturday, it shouldn't be this quiet. He was nearing the top of a high pass when he saw the first sign of trouble, road so freshly laid that the glistening tarmac slurped stickily at his tyres. He'd only gone another quarter mile when he saw a pair of huge grey pipes by the side of the road ahead, supports for a tunnel being bored in the cliff. A thin slurry sprayed against his undercarriage as he drove over it, and then the surface disintegrated even further, just raw bedrock in places, scattered with weeds and grasses. He went down into first gear, crested the peak and then wound back and forth on the descent, half expecting to meet some impassable obstacle. It wasn't that great a surprise, therefore, when he saw the two red-and-white barriers across the road, and the bulldozers and earth-movers parked nose-to-tail beyond them, along with huge hummocks of hardcore and tarmac waiting to be laid.

He pulled to a stop, clenched his steering wheel. At another time, he might rather have savoured the righteousness of his indignation that no one had seen fit to put out warning signs thirty miles back, but all he felt at this moment was a dreadful foreboding, an irrational yet overpowering sense that Gaille was in terrible danger. He grabbed his car-rental map. His choices were awful: a massive detour through the mountains or returning all the way to the north coast, then east to Rethymno and south from there. Either option would cost him at least three hours. He got out of the car, slammed his door in frustration, then walked between the barriers to go study the road ahead.

Gaille let herself into Argo's pen to refill his emptied bowls. He danced in joyful circles and snuffled and put his paws up on her, smearing her shirt, his tongue like sodden sandpaper on her cheek, his rapture at seeing her extraordinary, more akin to a reprieve from bereavement than a reunion after a night apart. She couldn't help but be touched by it, by mattering so much to another creature, and she hugged him warmly, while wishing his breath wasn't quite so pungent.

Iain called out farewell as he vanished through the orange trees, the Mauser over his shoulder. She didn't buy his story about wanting to bag some game; they had plenty of food in the pantry. He'd simply wanted the rifle for himself, or to deprive her of it. The thought sobered her. She watched him until he'd vanished into the walnut grove then went back inside, uncertain what to do. A decent mobile signal was the best part of an hour's climb away, even for Iain. Add in time talking, she probably had two hours before he got back. She needed to use that time well, which meant learning more about Petitier's finds and Iain's incursions. She went back into the house, pushed aside the armchair, rolled up the rug, lifted the trap-door and limped down the steep steps into the darkness, fumbling for the lights. She started by double-checking that it had truly been Iain in the photographs, that her imagination hadn't been playing tricks.