Peyton activated the phone. “Thirty yards. Dead ahead.”

Desmond crept forward, the gun held out now.

Peyton held her breath as they walked the last ten yards. The fog seemed to close in on all sides.

The phone beeped. A message popped up:

Labyrinth Entrance Reached

Desmond took the flashlight from her hand, turned it on, and panned around the area, cutting through the fog. Suddenly he stopped.

Peyton saw it too. Her first thought was: it’s going to explode.

Chapter 76

Chapter 76

Desmond crept toward the small metal box that lay on the ground. “Stay back,” he whispered. “Could be booby trapped.”

She retreated behind a tree ten yards away and watched him draw his fixed-blade combat knife. With the serrated edge, he sawed a limb off a nearby tree, cut the branches off, and used it to flip the box open.

To Peyton’s relief, nothing happened.

Still cautious, Desmond stepped forward. He bent down, drew a small scrap of paper from the box, and exhaled.

“It’s a new set of GPS coordinates,” he said.

“Where?” Peyton asked.

He took the phone out and typed on it. “Still in Shetland. Maybe twenty or thirty miles from here, I think. We can drive.”

An alert popped up on the phone’s screen. It was a message from the Labyrinth Reality app:

1 Entrance Located.

She showed the message to Desmond.

He paused. “It’s the same message as before, when I opened the app in Dadaab.”

He took the phone and clicked the message. A map appeared. The location was in Australia, in the southern half, near the coast. It was rural, and as Desmond zoomed in, Peyton saw a dark spot in a green and brown landscape. He zoomed to the maximum, and Peyton’s mouth went dry. Desmond was silent. They had gone there together, fifteen years ago—to Desmond’s childhood home. The burned remains were more overgrown now, but the charred foundation of the old ranch house still rose above the weeds. There was no indication anything had changed, but Peyton didn’t know how old the satellite images were. Someone or something could be there now. Or could have been hidden there, just like at this location.

“What do you think?” she asked.

He glanced at the phone, then at the scrap of paper with the nearby GPS coordinates. “I say we check out the coordinates here, then we can decide on going to Australia.”

“Should we call Avery?” Peyton asked.

“No. Not until we know what’s going on.”

A tree-mounted, motion-activated wireless camera came to life when Desmond entered the scene. The individual who had been monitoring the feed woke and watched anxiously. It wouldn’t be long now.