Page 96 of Boxed In

Chapter 14

In the darkness, Luke struggled to control a spurt of fear. If Olivia couldn’t get into the temple, then she would be outside—alone and unprotected.

Damn, he should have made her stay with Dr. Sanchez. But he’d wanted to keep her with him as long as possible, and he had to protect her.

“You couldn’t see the building?” he asked. “Between numbers 57 and 59,” he repeated, in case she was looking in the wrong place. “The house with the blue woodwork. And the one with the yellow door.”

She answered in a small voice, her one word tearing at him like the claws of a bird of prey.

“No.”

Fighting to keep his wildly swinging emotions under control, he scrambled around for a way to help her bring the temple into her vision. It was so natural to him, now that he’d absorbed the warrior’s essence. And he’d assumed it would be the same for her.

Finally, he came up with an analogy. “Have you ever looked at any of those Magic Eye books and seen a flat picture change to three dimensional?”

“Yes. But what does that have to do with it?”

“So you know you have to change the way you look at the page. It’s kind of like crossing your eyes.”

“Yes.”

“It’s the same for the Moon Temple. If you stare at the line between those two houses and change your vision, you’ll see the doorway of the temple. And the rest of the building is in back of it.”

“What if I can’t see it?”

He tried to sound confident. “If you can’t see it, just run with me to the doorway, and the priests will let you in.”

Together, Luke and Zabastian prayed that it was true. Prayed with every fiber of belief that they’d ever possessed. Because if it wasn’t, they were both in big trouble.

But Olivia must have caught the hesitation in his voice. She put her hands on his shoulders, gripping him through the suit jacket.

He heard her swallow hard. “You mean, you might get inside, and I can’t?”

He felt a kind of desperation rising inside him. “That might be true. I don’t know. We just have to have faith.”

“Faith in the moon priests?”

“Yes.”

“A cult that died out a thousand years ago?”

Frustration made his words choppy. “I told you, they didn’t die out. They just went into hiding.”

“Okay.”

He changed the subject abruptly. “We can’t stay in this shed.”

“Who do you think was out there?”

“The police. The Poisoned Ones,” he answered, hoping the reality would jolt her into action.

She sighed. “Yeah.”

“We have to make a run for the temple and hope we can get inside before anybody grabs us. If you can’t see the door, follow me,” he repeated his earlier advice.

She dragged in a breath and let it out. “Okay.”

He reached inside the briefcase and pulled out the shoulder strap, which he attached in the dark. When he was sure it was secure, he slung it over his head and across his chest so that the bag hung against his back, leaving his hands free.

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