Page 172 of New Storm Rising
Bam! Bam!
“Five,” I answered with my most innocent smile.
“How splendid,” he squeezed out between clenched teeth. “Now that you have demonstrated your maturity, do you have any more brilliant ideas that might help us to get out of here? After all, as effective as this delaying tactic is for the others to get away, it has one big drawback:the two of us are still stuck here!”
I put on a sombre, stony expression. “Indeed.”
“You…! This is no time for jokes! What are we supposed to do?”
“Well…” Grinning like a Cheshire Cat, I reached into my pocket. “I borrowed a little something from my darling husband.”
I pulled out something long and tube-shaped. A little hint: it had a fuse at one end.
“No. No, don’t you dare to—”
My grin widened. “Yes. Oh yes.”
And, before he could stop me, I lit the fuse and hurled the dynamite down into the canyon.
KA-BOOM!
The entire gorge was rocked by the explosion. Dozens of boulders came sailing down, followed by hundreds of smaller stone splinters, all piling up in a massive barricade at the bottom of the ravine.
Karim turned to glare at me, his beard bristling. I noticed that by now it was algae-free. “If you had that all along, why didn’t you do that in the first place?”
I stared at him oddly for asking such an obvious question. Patting his shoulder, I gave him the look of a connoisseur trying to explain art to a philistine. “Because then I’d never have gotten to shoot at them, of course!”
Then I grabbed the rope tied to a nearby rock and slid down from the ledge towards my waiting camel.
It took quite a bit of time to catch up with the rest. Apparently, our little distraction had been quite successful at putting distance between my fellow camel riders and our pursuers. If I could have done so without twisting myself into a pretzel, I would have patted myself on the back. After all, who wouldn’t congratulate me for such a job well done?
“Welcome back, Mrs Ambrose,” a smooth, spine-chillingly familiar voice entered my ears. The very same voice that commanded my body and soul in the bridal chamber. “Would you mind explaining to me where you and my dynamite disappeared to?”
Oh crap.
Mr Ambrose Gets Serious
Oh crap.
“Well?” the icy voice at my ear demanded, his breath tickling my neck. “Would you mind telling me what you were up to?”
“Um…yes?”
“What?”
“Yes, I would mind.” I explained helpfully. “By the way, nice weather we’re having today, isn’t it?”
“Mrs Ambrose…”
“I don’t think it’s going to rain anytime soon. Isn’t sunshine a wonderful thing?”
“Mrs. Lillian. Ambrose.”
“And not a hint of clouds in the sky. How splendid!”
“Mrs! Ambrose!”
I tried to resist mightily. But in the end, I succumbed to Mr Ambrose’s mesmerizing eyes and spine-chilling voice of doom. I spilled everything about my plans, the details of which I might have previously hidden from him.
