Page 130 of Kingmakers, Year Four

The waterways are complicated and labyrinthine. They’d be impossible to navigate in the dark, with only one tank of air. Except that we have a map. As long as we don’t take any wrong turns, and as long as none of the tubes are too narrow for a body to pass through, we should be able to swim all the way up to the heart of the mine.

This is the most secretive way inside.

Those going in through the tunnels will take a more direct route, one we know for certain can be traversed. But they’ll be vulnerable to attack by Marko’s men.

“I want you to swim in,” my mother says to Freya and me. “Take your friends. Adrik, too. I’ll go in through the tunnels with the others.”

“What about Nix?” Sabrina asks.

“She’s going with you,” my mother says.

“You plan to drag me along underwater?” Nix says, holding up her handcuffed wrists.

“You’ll swim, or you’ll run out of air in that underwater maze and drown in the dark,” my mother says, calmly. “And if you don’t cooperate, I need you to remember that your father has kept my husband prisoner for three and a half years. You’re only breathing right now because I think you might be of use to me. The moment you become a hindrance instead of a help, I’ll snap my fingers like this,” she gives one crisp click of her finger and thumb, “and that will be the sound of a bullet entering the back of your skull. Do we understand each other?”

“I understand,” Nix says.

My stomach is one solid knot.

I know better than anyone that my mother means exactly what she says.

But if she tries to hurt Nix . . . I can’t let her do it.

I’m almost relieved we’re splitting up, even though I know Adrik and Freya are just as loyal to my mother—and just as dangerous to Nix—as any of my father’s soldiers.

“Perhaps you should swim as well,” Timo says to my mother, quietly.

He’s worried she might be injured or killed in a direct assault. We’d better not rescue my father at all, if the first piece of news we give him is that his wife is dead.

My mom isn’t having it.

“I’m the best shot of any of you,” she says, sternly. “I’m going in through the tunnels. Now remember—watch out for Kuzmo. We need him alive. Or we need his eyes.”

One of the pieces of information my father passed to us was that the locks are operated by retinal scan. And as far as he knows, only Kuzmo and Marko himself can open his door.

Miles lured Marko away. Kuzmo is still inside that compound.

We need to find him and shove his face up against that door.

“Alright,” my mother says. “We’ll take this Jeep and you?—”

She’s interrupted by my phone buzzing loudly in my pocket. I pull it out, seeing the last name I want to see on the screen: Miles Griffin.

I answer the call.

“What is it?”

“He left,” Miles says.

“What do you mean he left?”

“I mean, he was walking up to the hotel, we were ten feet away from each other, and he turned around and left. Didn’t say a word to me.”

“Where the fuck is he going?” I cry.

“I have no idea.”

Predators have a sense for traps.

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