“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Sana said. “So far, this ranks up there as one of my least favorite experiences. Get in there and get that damn ossuary!”

The last thing Shawn wanted was to be bossed around by Sana after he’d had to hold her hand, at least figuratively, through the entire ordeal. Dealing with her fears had been worse than the fear of discovery.

“I’m going to get the ossuary because I want to get it,” Shawn retorted, “not because you’re ordering me to do so.” He grabbed the chisel and the bucket, and crawled back into the tunnel.

Sana could hear him scraping the dirt from around the ossuary, but unfortunately she had nothing to do and her mind reverted back to obsessing about the situation. Now that the glass access panel had been lowered in the deck, she was completely at Shawn’s mercy by being truly imprisoned. As a consequence, her panic and anxiety threatened to return.

“Shawn!” Sana called out over the scraping and grunting noises he was making in the tunnel. “I need us to go back and raise the glass panel.”

“Go do it yourself,” Shawn yelled back, along with something Sana couldn’t hear but could guess.

Knowing she couldn’t handle the glass panel herself, and knowing that Shawn knew it too, made her furious, but there was a good side.

She quickly realized that anger mollified her claustrophobia. The more angry she was at Shawn, the less anxious she was about being in a confined space. Recalling that closing her eyes had worked so well in the tunnel to lessen her panic, she did it again.

“Voilà!” Shawn shouted from inside the tunnel. “It’s free! It’s coming out!”

As if waking from a hypnotic state, Sana’s eyes popped open. As far as she was concerned, Shawn could have been talking about her. The ossuary’s freedom was her freedom as it meant they would soon be leaving. Completely forgetting her phobia, she crawled forward to the mouth of the tunnel and watched Shawn slide out the stone ossuary from the niche in the wall.

“Is it heavy?”

“Heavy enough,” Shawn said with a grunt, settling the limestone box onto the tunnel’s floor. Repositioning himself, he pushed it out of the tunnel and emerged himself.

Squatting on their knees and gawking at the ossuary between them, the couple instantly forgot their irritation. Shawn reached out reverently with his gloved hand and gently brushed off the residual dirt from its top. He was momentarily overwhelmed by the possibility it could contain the relics of one of the most revered people in history. The surface was covered with what appeared to be indecipherable scratches. Once he was able to make sense of them, it all clicked into place.

“I was hoping to see a name,” Sana said, disappointed.