Page 55 of Doyle

The wind stirred the ocean breezes, lifted the heat from the morning. The trail widened, the jungle dropping away, giving over to flatter, more rocky land.

“So, this Edward,” Doyle said suddenly. “He was a childhood friend?”

“His mother was our chef. My dad took an interest in him, put him through college. He was at MIT when I was.”

“You were at MIT? Studying what?”

“Economics. I wanted to be a financial adviser and take over my father’s investments.”

“Hence the charity work.” He stopped. They’d come to a rocky hillside, the area cleaned off, the rocks whitened. She turned and spotted Hope House less than a half mile away, down the mountain.

When she turned back, he had pulled binoculars from his pack.

“What are you doing?”

He scanned the horizon, then the cliffs. “I think the opening is below us. But there’s a fire on the other side of the island.” He pointed to a tuft of white-gray smoke curling in the distance. He handed her the binoculars. “It’s near the airport, but a little farther on. Looks like they’re doing construction.”

She found the activity, made out an excavator and a truck.

“It’s not Sebold’s camp—he’s on the east side of the island.”

“I’ll ask Declan about it. Maybe some organization has come in to rebuild the village. There’s our sulfur cave, by the way.” He pointed to a yawning mouth up the hill. A dirt road, now crumbled and jutted with weeds, led to the opening of the cave.

Her gut tightened as they walked up to it.Calm down. But if this worked, she could tell Ethan that no, she wasn’t going to damage the monastery for the sake of the gold. Their conversation from last night stirred inside her. Ethan’s proposal—“I have new technology that can send a laser into the rock and crumble it. We can break through the cave-in and...”

And that’s when she’d held up her hand, suddenly seeing the destruction of their entire refuge.“You can’t be serious. You don’t know what unsettling that rock could do?—”

“Some things are more important?—”

And right then, she’d gotten up, unable to listen to more.

Seeing her own desperate actions in his words.

Now, as she came up to the cave entrance, the stench of rotten egg seeped out from the dark opening. “You want to go in there?”

Doyle pulled off his backpack and opened it. Handed her a headlamp and took one for himself. “We’ll be fine.”

She fitted on the headlamp. “I don’t love small places.” In fact, her heart had lodged in her throat. She could do this. Really.

“If my guess is correct, they’ve widened this enough for workers and even a car to pass through.”

Indeed, as she neared, the opening seemed wide enough for their Ford, and as they ventured into the mine—he might have thought to bring nose plugs—the space turned cavernous. They walked into a large area carved out, maybe for delivery purposes, and from it led five different tunnels.

“Which one, Magellan?”

He glanced at her, grinned, gave a small chuckle.

It thrummed under her skin, into her bones.Okay, calm down. She was in good hands.

“I think this one feels most logical.” He pointed to the tunnel nearest the ocean and held out his hand.

Oh. Okay then.She grabbed it and let him lead her down the tunnel, the ground uneven beneath her KEENs. Crystalline sulfur, bright yellow under her beam, covered the ground. The toxic rotten-egg smell seemed to grow thicker, and she put her hand to her nose.

“I know. Usually miners wore masks. And most of this was chipped out by hand.”

“You’re a sulfur-mine expert?”

“Did some late-night reading.” Their headlamps hit on the walls, which were wet and bleeding with amber. They passed an old, rusty metal mine cart set into an alcove.

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