“Sethi,” I said, my jaw rigid. “Can we talk for a minute?”
Sethi nodded.
Taking Evie’s hand, I crossed the room with him, keeping out of the glaring lights of the cenote. We stopped near the three-screen display.
“Sethi, I want to try to figure out a way off here. You’ve got grenades and guns. We’ve got to try.”
“Please,” said Evie. “Gray and I have children. If we try to fight them, neither of us are going home to them.”
Sethi expelled a stream of air. “I’m afraid to say Kara’s right. Planning an escape is a fool’s mission.” He bent his head. “Even if it were possible, I couldn’t leave Jenny and Constance here. The best I can offer you is that I’ll create a diversion—and let you and Evie run as far as you can get.”
Evie shook her head, her eyes huge.
Heart beats pounded in my chest. “No.”
“There isn’t anything else. There’s too many of them.” The shadows and ripples of the cenote set ghostly lights in Sethi’s eyes.
With anxious steps, Kara made her way over to us. “They’ll be coming to get the prisoners soon. The six for the cenote. You’d better make a decision on what you want to do, or the Saviours will make that decision for you. I’m going to head there now and slip in while I can. My mother won’t see me, and she won’t feel anything when I fire my gun. I’ll make sure of that. She’ll die instantly.”
Evie shivered. “They’ll hurt you, Kara.”
“If they catch me, they’ll be brutal,” she admitted. “Sage won’t protect me now. But if I’m quick enough, I’ll have killed myself before they can reach me.”
The young guy named Cormack was suddenly behind her. He encased her in his arms, his eyes wild. “I’ll not let you do that, Kara,” he said in a Scottish accent.
Near the half wall, the others had gathered in a tight bunch, making their own plans.
I glanced at Sethi. He was staring fixedly at the left-hand screen, a frown making a deep V shadow between his eyes.
He turned sharply to Kara. “What is that object on the floor of the cenote?”
I peered at the screen. All I caught were some old skeletons and the glimpse of a metallic curve before the view swept away to another section of the cenote floor.
Kara dropped her head to the side, her brow furrowing. “I don’t know. Probably the remains of a broken cage. They don’t last forever.”
“No,” insisted Sethi. “I could only see a small piece of it, but it looked to me like the shape of a mine. Maybe a World War Two issue.”
Kara grasped Cormack’s arm as though to push him away, but then she didn’t. “Mines? Yeah, there are three. No one knows they’re there except for my stepfather and the last leader of the Saviours, Brother Angelo. I used to listen in on my stepfather and Brother Angelo talking all the time when I was very young. Not hard when there are holes in the walls. They said the bombs had been down there too long to be any good. Since the nineteen eighties. The mines had already been lying around in a factory since the war. They were talking about buying new explosives.”
“What are the explosives for?” Sethi asked urgently.
“An insurance policy,” Kara answered. “In case the Saviours were ever exposed—so they could destroy everything. All the evidence of what they’ve done here.” She looked nervously at the middle screen, her attention captured by the sight of her mother and Jennifer surrounded by the Saviours. “I have to go.”
“Wait,” said Sethi. “Please. Where are the new explosives?”
“Locked up tighter than Fort Knox,” said Kara. “You can’t get near them. Only the mentors have clearance.”
Sethi threw back his head, exhaling hard. “How did they plan on detonating the mines?”
“There’s detonators in the cenote,” Kara replied. “You’d need full diving gear to even get to them. Once switched on, they’re wired to count down for twelve minutes and then emit a sound like a submarine.”
Sethi’s dark eyes widened in frustration. “They’re down there? Why in the name of—？”
“So that no one could get to them,” she said quickly. “The monastery is full of mass murderers, after all. Some of them like explosions. No explosives or guns are even allowed in the remembrance hall. Apart from the mentors—they are the only ones allowed to be armed in there.”