The giants held me between them and carried me deeper into the mine. They hoisted me up so high my feet didn’t even touch the ground. While they carried me, I rubbed my thighs together. But the slots on my garter belt were empty. They’d taken the silverstone knives that had been strapped to my thighs. The ones up my sleeves were gone too. Something bumped against my hip, and I looked down. Dawson or one of his goons had been kind enough to loop my purse around my neck. The top flapped open, and I could see the empty space where my final knife had been. The bastards had been thorough, if nothing else. Too bad for me.

Dawson led the way, carrying a flashlight. The two giants also carried one apiece in their free hand. I eyed the flashlights. Not as weighty as a baseball bat, but a crack across the throat with one of those would be a good way to start cutting my captors down to size. Assuming I had the strength or guile to wrest a flashlight away from one of the three men.

We went down, down, down into the earth. The tunnel grew narrower, tighter. The bits and pieces of equipment on the floor vanished. So did the concrete support beams. Slowly, the violent mutters of the stone gave way to older, calmer vibrations. We walked through a natural tunnel now, instead of a man-made hole in the ground.

I noticed a light up ahead. A soft, white glow, like a beam of sunshine slanting through a cloud. Some sort of industrial spotlight that had been rigged up so folks could see what they were doing in the belly of the mountain.

Tobias Dawson rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. A moment later, the giants dragged me around it as well.

And my breath caught in my throat.

Because the narrow tunnel opened up into a circular chamber that was more than two hundred feet wide. The ceiling was just as tall, with thick stalactites that hung down like elegant stone icicles. That was beautiful enough by itself.

But the diamonds made it truly breathtaking.