Chapter 59

The astonished looks on the faces of Javier and his men were priceless. Dave’s head went back and forth; he was not sure if he was hallucinating. "Bloody hell! I'm so glad to see you guys. What took you so long? Did you see the trail I left?" he sneered.

"It’s good to see you too, Javier," Tyler replied. Yes, they did see his trail. After they hid in that little place somewhere in Scotland, they called Chase, his cousin, and asked him to trace Dave’s phone. They found out that Javier was holding him captive, and they followed them here in Thailand.

Mary echoed the sentiment. "We weren’t sure if we were going to see you again, Dave. I'm so worried."

"Likewise, sis," Dave replied, reflecting on the past few weeks and winking at Mary.

Javier and his companion stood frozen, like a deer-in-the-headlights look on each of their faces.

Tyler cautiously stepped towards the group. "It wasn’t that difficult to find you, actually."

He glared at Javier. "Sending dozens of men for me and Mary here is by far an exaggeration. But it was a mistake on your part. You train my wife here to fight them." Tyler smiled and winked at her wife. "I have to say, though, that the last goons you sent were harder to kill, and it was too easy to convince the local authorities that my historian needed to look at this ring and give them a lot of donations. Grandfather was certainly clever; he gave this ring to me a long time ago.”

Dave stepped away from his kidnappers. "Thanks, gentlemen. It’s been fun, but you guys are not welcome anywhere near my next exhibit." He smiled. "So, Tyler, Mary? How did you know that the ring was the key, the one Elizabeth took from your men, Eddie?"

“It was bait. I told Eddie to lure Elizabeth. And really, Javier? Elizabeth didn't tell you about the key. I thought you guys were partners. ” Tyler winked. “Now take this.” Johnson handed the ring to his brother-in-law. “The real key.”

“Wow! This is the real key. ”

“Yes.” Tyler smiled and winked at Mary. "Yap from the old man. He gave that to me on my 25th birthday."

"It was with you all along."

"Oh, yes," Tyler smirked. Dave raised the ring to examine it more closely, admiring the precise detail. Every edge of it appeared as though it had been shaped by expert hands. The bright diamond was massive and shiny, yet elegant. "It must go into the mouth of the lion; the diamond shall be in the small circle on its tongue."

Dave walked back to the pole while his captors eyed him warily.

Then he motioned towards Mary. "Sister, you look like shit. Are you OK? Or shall I kick Tyler for giving you a hard time?"

Mary rolled her eyes and smiled at her brother. "You bloody owe me, Dave. You have me worried for days," she answered.

"Yes, she is worried, but don't worry, Dave; you'll be our best man again," Tyler added. Mary just smiled back, obviously not interested in giving away any more details.

"Again?"

"Oh yeah, this time it's for bloody real. I intend to marry her in Chicago."

"Good. Did you tell her you love her?" Dave teased.

"I did."

"About time," he smirked.

Tyler turned his attention to Javier and the bewildered men. "Now if you three boys don’t mind, please move out of the way." He waved his gun in a motion indicating they should step to the left. "Fuck you, Tyler," Javier said with visible anger; his fury nearly consumed him. "And you, Mary, wait until I make you scream. I will."

"Shut up, Javier!" Tyler grumbled as raw anger shot through him. "I will kill you if you ever lay your dirty hands on my wife. But first, though, you are going to need to go ahead and drop those weapons that you’re carrying in your suits. And do it real slow. I have more than enough excuses to kill you three right now."

They complied, carefully reaching into their suits and then dropping the guns to the ground.

"Good. Now step away.”

The three shuffled sideways, moving away from the pistols. Javier never took his cold grey eyes off of Johnson. Even unarmed, the man’s gaze was menacing, like he was willing to kill him.

With his free hand, Tyler reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. Keeping the gun levelled at the three men, he held the device up to his face.

"Detective, we got them."

"What do you mean you got them?" The man on the phone replied.

"We got Dave and the goons that kidnapped him. Well, it was my cousin, obviously. We are holding them at gunpoint as we speak. Here in Thailand.”

“Thailand? What the—” The man’s voice sounded urgent. “Address? I’ll send my contact—”

"At Wat Phra Kaew, in the basement."

"Okay, I’ll get the local authorities over there as quickly as I can. I'll call my men. They’ll be on their way, maybe ten minutes at the utmost."

"You have men here in Bangkok?" Tyler was a little surprised at the cop’s persistence.

"Yes, and like I said, I have a lot of questions for you. You won’t be able to answer them if you’re dead. And I thought you could use some backup."

"Don’t worry about us, detective. The situation is under control."

Dave had been busy taking a closer examination of the ring and the mouth of the lion’s statue. "I hope we don’t need that time to get it back out."

With that, Dave cautiously slipped the ring carefully into the mouth of the lion, slowly arranging it so that the massive diamond would be perfectly settled in its exact place. "Hell," he muttered. It was a perfect fit. With his index finger, Dave pushed the ring into the open hole. As the projectile went deeper, there was a click, then a few more, until it was completely inside.

The enormous totem pole and the dirt beneath their feet began to tremble. Tyler shifted his gaze away from the three men for a split second, bracing himself by bending his knees slightly. His gun, though, remained pointing at them. The three took a few steps back, unsure of what was going on.

"Tyler, be careful!" Mary yelled.

“Don't worry, wife, I’m OK!” He shouted back.

Slowly, the small rod in the dirt began to move. All of the rods on the left were sinking into the ground. They were rising on the right, but the pillar in the centre remained stationary. The strange incident lasted about a minute, but after the pillars stopped moving, their heights changed to a more staggered appearance, similar to a staircase.

For a minute, all witnesses remained motionless, staring at the peculiarity.

"So, Dave, what now?" Tyler finally broke the silence. Dave looked perplexed. "That should have been it. “Something‘s wrong."

"Maybe you didn’t do it right?" Mary chimed in. "You are an artist, not a freaking treasure hunter, Dave."

“Jesus, sis, you know me well enough to even just think about that.”

True, Mary thought. He was her very own ‘jack of all trade, master of none.’

"No, Mary, I'm pretty sure that was it, and that had to be the key." Tyler looked around as if expecting some kind of sign from heaven to point the way to their goal. None came. "I don’t understand."

The three prisoners stood still while the others tried to figure out what to do. Javier's eyes were fixed on Mary like a rattlesnake on its prey.

Tyler looked curiously at the scene. "Wife, keep an eye on those three. Kill whoever moves."

“Okay.”

a few seconds later.

"What is it?" Dave asked.

Tossing the gun to Dave, Tyler ignored his question for a moment and walked over to the totem that had been lowered to the point where the top was only about four feet high. "They’re steps," he finally answered. "The ancient keeper had a ritual for the new keeper. It was the final test they had to pass. They had to stand on top of a pole like one of these for the entire night. If they could accomplish this without falling off, they would be initiated."

"How on earth did you know this?"

"From my grandfather's bedtime story."

The realisation came to Dave. "Of course. How did I forget that? I had guessed that from the dots earlier, it was an instruction. Not just some boring sayings."

"Beats me," Tyler said, hopping up onto the short log. He grinned cynically at his brother-in-law.

"I hope you know what you’re doing, Tyler," Mary shouted. "Be careful."

"I will, dear," Tyler shouted back. "It’s only about five or six feet in between them. The problem isn’t the jumping, though. It’s the landing. The gradual escalation will not help either."

Tyler balanced himself on the two-foot-wide platform and jumped to the next one, making it appear simple enough. Dave returned to Mary and their new prisoner below, still watching Tyler jump to the third pole.

He got to the centre pole very easily. He repeated the manoeuvre up to the fifth time. The platform was roughly ten feet up at this point, and each jump became riskier. Thinking ahead, the final leap would be to a height of about twenty feet, where the hazard would be broken bones or worse. He attempted to remove the terror from his head, but it remained as he made the next two leaps. On the sixth, his lack of focus nearly cost him as he cut the distance by roughly a foot. His fingers gripped the stone's front lip tightly, and his feet hung below. In case he fell, Dave moved quickly to get below him. “Fuck it. Be careful, Tyler!”

Tyler hung above the dirt, kicking his legs in an attempt to wriggle his way up, struggling to keep his grasp on the top. He located the nose of a wolf's face protruding out of the front of the tall exterior with his right foot and used it to hold himself as he made his way onto the deck.

As Tyler lifted himself and prepared for the final jump, his teammates breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm fine," he said confidently. "I just lost my focus for a second there."

For a moment, he let his eyes scan the surroundings, expecting that the location would be disclosed from his current vantage point. It wasn't the case. So, with anxiety, he approached the pole's extreme edge. He was astonished by how hot his legs were at this time. Tyler was proud of the fact that he trained regularly and had a high level of endurance for physical activities. This routine has to have involved him working out body areas he wasn't used to using.

Tyler launched himself across the abyss with every ounce of leg power he could summon. Adrenaline must have taken control this time because he nearly overshot the thing, landing on the very rear edge and swinging his arms like a gymnast on a balance beam to keep from falling over. "Tyler, be careful! I'm going to kill you if you die there!" Mary's yells rang out in the dimly lit cavern.

“I love you, wife!” He winked and returned his weight to the centre of the beam and glanced out across the landscape. He could see rolling forests in front of him. He couldn't help but be impressed at how such a modest height could improve one's perspective.

Tyler whirled around, his gaze travelling across the horizon.

"Did you notice anything?" Dave yelled from below.

"The road is just a collection of forests. Nothing here!" Then his gaze was drawn to something. "Wait a second. There must be something." He pointed over to what appeared to the group at the bottom to be nothing more than a dense clump of trees.

"What is it?"

"I don’t think you can see it from down there. But I see another statue sticking up from the trees on that small hill, over in that direction."

Tyler had found it. Dave stood on his tiptoes in an attempt to locate it.

Mary, too, moved a few steps closer to the column of limestone faces to see what Tyler was pointing to.

She pulled her gaze away from Javier and the flat top for a split second to look towards the forest. Javier only needed a split second to take the hidden rifle from his back and fire three fast shots.

Mary faltered and lost her gun when one of the bullets struck her shoulder, sending her tumbling backward and collapsing to the ground in horror. "Mary!" exclaimed Dave.

Javier had swung forward and caught Mary around the neck, simply putting the weapon to her head as blood gushed from her shoulder wound.

Dave stood there, powerless. He stood still, thoroughly taken aback by what had just happened.

"Put down the weapon, boy. Don't do anything stupid because I might still need you."

Tyler was hunched down in his position now, watching the action below. Mary was still down, her clothing soaked in dripping blood. "Mary!" Tyler yelled.

"If you'd be so kind as to join us now, cousin," Javier gestured for him to walk back the way he'd come.

Going down was considerably easier than jumping up, and Tyler was back on the ground in less than a minute. One of Javier's men had grabbed his gun and was now aiming it at him. To say Tyler was frustrated was an understatement. He'd forgotten the most important guidelines of his training. Always search a detainee for more weapons. They were all back to square one now. Worse, Mary was now in jeopardy. "Javier, leave her alone. Get her out of here," he demanded. “She needs help.”

Mary squirmed against Javier's hands, her eyes filled with horror.

"Now, now," Javier said quietly. "Don't fight, dear. I'd rather not have to harm you, because I have to enjoy you first. You owe me that much, little one."

Tyler's request went unanswered.

Mary was unable to form the sharp words she desired to utter. Javier’s vice-like grasp around her throat pretty much allowed her to breathe as her mind began to haze.

"Let her go! She is losing too much blood!" Dave shouted this time. "She has nothing to do with this! The cops are on their way. What are you going to do? It’s over!"

Javier replied with a wicked grin. "I believe we had better hurry then." He pointed his revolver at the location Tyler had indicated a few minutes ago. "Now! Or I kill her right now! You will obey me or she will die!"

Dave and Tyler had no other option. For a split second, their eyes were locked, frantic, and befuddled. Then they began trekking into the woodland, with Tyler leading the way. Javier had withdrawn his arm from around Mary's neck and pushed her to move in front of him, holding the gun at the small of her back.

"How are we going to proceed, Tyler?" Dave inquired. His voice sounded childish and scared for Mary’s life. “She is bleeding."

"I'm not sure; we just need some extra time to lure Javier," Tyler whispered as they waded into the dense grass. He looked around, thinking the cops were on their way. "However, we're not running out of time. Mary is at risk of haemorrhaging."