They ran to the panel and started shoving, trying to slide the carved relief back to cover the opening. The panel was almost halfway there when Paulo’s light hit Gage in the face. The beam slid past him, shined over the panel, into the half-exposed room beyond. Gold glittered in the beam of light.

“Stop right where you are!” Paulo jerked his pistol. “Move over there! Vamos! Get out of the way!”

Gage silently cursed.

He eased Abby behind him, and the three of them moved away from the treasure room. He could feel Abby trembling. Santos appeared at the top of the stairs, then Tomás. All of them had pulled their weapons.

As the men descended the stairs into the chamber, Paulo shined his light into the treasure room. Gold glinted, piles of it.

“Dios mio!” Santos exclaimed. “We are rich!”

“The gold belongs to Don Arturo,” Paulo reminded him. “It is not yours, but you will be well paid for helping him find it.”

Santos swung his assault rifle toward Paulo. “We take the gold. We are the ones who found it. We take the gold and disappear. You go with us, or we leave your body here to rot in the bowels of these ruins. You choose.”

“What about the men from the village?” Paulo said. “If we bring out the gold, they will kill us to get it.”

“Then we get rid of them first.” He panned the gun toward Gage, Abby, and Mateo. “We get rid of all of them.”

“You shoot us, and they’ll hear the shots,” Gage said. “They’ll know you found the treasure.”

Santos’s lips thinned, tugging the ugly scar at one corner. “Upstairs.” He motioned with the rifle. “And keep your mouth shut about the gold.”

They moved up the stairs ahead of the men, Gage’s hand at Abby’s waist, keeping her close, Mateo behind him. Alamán’s soldiers were on their way, but Gage had to keep them alive long enough for the soldiers to get there. Edge was out there, but interfering too soon could get them killed.

As Paulo and Santos marched them across the ground at gunpoint, the cartel men sensed the change in the atmosphere. All of them began moving forward, fanning out from under the trees, drawing their weapons and aiming them toward Velásquez’s men.

“Hey, gringos,” one of them called out. “What did you find down there?”

Gage didn’t answer. One wrong word could get them killed.

“They found nothing,” Santos said. “There was nothing to find. Paulo will give you your money, and you can go home.”

The men held their positions. The stout man with the thick arms and legs came forward, an AK-47 gripped in his blunt-fingered hands. “We do not believe you. You found the gold, and we want our share.”