Page 62 of The Lost Guardian

They sprang back into action, returning their attention to the windows.

“Let’s first talk about the construction of the room,” Ali continued in Spanish. “The rock that you see at the bottom of the structure was not placed there. It’s the original ground of the mountain that we stand on!”

If Santiago weren’t actively fearing for his life, he would have smiled. He hadn’t thought Ali was paying attention. Even when she assured him that she found it interesting, he hadn’t really believed her.

But she was listening, he thought. Maybe she really didn’t find him as boring as he often felt.

Her voice muffled as she continued to drone on about the architecture, and Santiago shifted his focus to finding the next clue.

“Come on, come on,” he said to himself, now gently poking and prodding certain pieces of stone. He sent a quick prayer to his ancestors, apologizing for his lack of respect as he rapped his knuckles against the sides of the windows.

Santiago and José both pushed and tapped through the window-like hollows in the stone. And then, suddenly, something sounded different.

Santi repeated his action on a window at the southwestern corner of the room and listened closely. Sure enough, an odd sound echoed, as if the stone was not quite as solid as its surrounding counterparts.

He drew closer and— There. Not truly hollow, but it definitely sounded different.

“Yes, yes,” he heard Ali say. “We will get closer to the room in just a moment!”

Santiago was out of time. He placed his hands flat on the ledge, dragged them up the sides, but still felt nothing. It was only when he touched the top of the trapezoidal notch that he stopped.

Was that a knob at the top of the frame?

He lifted onto his toes again, peering up at the dark space, trying not to cast shadows over the meager light.

There was a small protuberance at the center. Upon closer inspection, he noticed faint lines carved into the stone around it…creating the shape of a chakana.

The bump that made up its center point, the inner circle, was smaller than most chakanas. Just like his pendant.

“José,” Santiago hissed as he pulled the necklace over his head. The professor joined him in time to watch Santi line up the stone pendant to the etching. The second the knob slipped into the center void, there was a faint but unmistakable click.

The piece of stone that comprised the back of the window dropped, sending up a small puff of dust. Santiago, who had leaned forward at the movement, suppressed a cough, rubbing hard at his eyes. When he opened them again, he blinked several times.

There, at the back of the “window,” were two sentences in Quechua.

His chakana fell, bouncing a few times on the ledge before Santiago placed it back around his neck with shaking hands.

“Oh my—” But whatever José was going to say was interrupted by the sounds of commotion and Ali’s raised voice.

“Yes, that’s right, everyone take some money!” she was saying loudly. “The ice cream man is just outside, right out front, but he won’t be there long. Hurry!”

“What? No, children—” he heard an adult say, but Ali interrupted.

“Quickly, quickly, you don’t want to miss out on your ice cream!” she encouraged them.

There were the excited shrieks and cries of children, as well as the sound of small running feet, before Ali ducked into the Ransom Room to meet them.

“Look!” Santiago gasped, marveling at the improbably carved rock in front of him. “Can you believe it? I mean, I just can’t—”

“The implications,” José murmured, his eyes alight with wonder. “Let me just…” He began pulling out his notebook.

“Not now, nerds.” Ali grabbed his sleeve and dashed forward, herding Santiago along with them. “The kids are crowding the exit, but it won’t stop Torres’s men for long.”

She pulled them around the back side of the Ransom Room, and Santiago glimpsed the pandemonium her lottery of ice cream had created. A mass of children clustered at the entrance of the room, doing their best to be the first out the door. Leo and Mario towered over them, any movement futile against the wriggling chaos.

The children were undeterred by the older men’s scowling faces and looming forms, the promise of ice cream too sweet to be discouraged by any obstacle. Try as they might, the gunmen could not make their way past the crowd that pushed against them.

For a brief, breathless moment, Mario’s eyes caught Santiago’s, and the unadulterated rage in the young man’s gaze rooted Santi in place.