Slowed by the loud revelry of nearby late-night Roman parties and the rumble of vehicles, both of which kept King on edge for intruders, they spent an hour searching every nook and cranny of the site.

And found nothing.

Sweating from the humid Roman heat and discouraged by the apparent dead end, King sat on a stone and looked up at the cloudy sky. Silhouetting the temple’s three columns, the moon’s glow had just begun to pierce the thinning cloud cover.

Pierce sat next to him. “Sorry. This was the best I could come up with.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. I asked you on a hunch to find something that might not even be here. This was my idea.”

“Your hunches typically save a lot of lives.”

“Not always the ones that matter.”

Pierce stood. “Well, we’ve looked everywhere at this site. I think we should check out the temple of Jupiter. We’ve got a few hours of darkness left.”

After walking a few steps, Pierce turned around and found King still sitting. His eyes were fixated on the three columns. “What?”

“We haven’t looked everywhere,” King said before standing and heading for the columns.

Pierce realized what King was about to do and attempted to voice a protest. “King, wait. You can’t—”

But King was already scaling one of the outside columns like a champion logger. Pierce flinched as he heard crumbs of column falling onto the marble base. If Augustina finds out about this, he thought, she might turn me in herself.

After reaching the top of the column, King inspected the exposed top and then climbed on top of the entablature, scouring it with his flashlight.

Pierce waited below like a nervous teenage vandal, bouncing his foot and scanning for onlookers. He could hear King above, moving about. The scrape of plastic on stone preceded a clunk as something fell from above. Pierce cursed in his mind as he began to wonder if bringing King here had been a mistake. His thoughts stopped when he realized that King had fallen silent. He looked up expecting to see King inspecting something with his flashlight, but saw nothing.

King’s flashlight was off.

For a moment, all he could hear was his own shaky breath, but then a loud scrape sounded from above and a rain of debris sprinkled onto his hand. As he pointed his flashlight up he saw King descend in a blur. King landed next to him, grabbed Pierce’s flashlight, and switched it off.

“What’s wrong?” Pierce asked, his heartbeat pulsating hard in his throat.

“Guards. Four of them coming this way. Two from the north. Two from the east.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Keep looking.”

Pierce looked astonished. “What?”

“I saw something.”

“Up there?”

“To the northeast. It looks like a pit beneath a modern covering, across from the Basilica Julia.”

Pierce took a sharp breath and whispered, “The Lacus Curtius.”

“You know what it is?”

“No one really knows for sure. It’s been covered over with ancient stones and it has yet to be excavated. Probably never will be.”