Masked

XI.

Lara awoke to the sound of a turned-on shower. Groggily she looked over her shoulder to see Jonah's bed empty. Sighing, she rubbed her eyes and was about to doze off again, when she heard her phone buzzing. Luckily, the hotel had Wi-Fi, so she didn't have to use the way too expensive roaming in order to receive her messages. She reached out to the night stand and grabbed her phone to see who had just texted her. Of course, she would've known, but the jet-lag was getting the best of her.

'Rise and shine sleepyhead! Took me long enough to figure out when's the best time to text you, but I did it! Anyway, thanks to my father I got new information, would ya like to hear it?'

Lara yawned while checking the time. It was almost eight o'clock in the morning and already afternoon back home. Still a bit sleepy, she typed an answer.

'Right on time, I just woke up. Sure, let's hear it.'

'Can I call you? I'm honestly a bit too lazy to type it out.'

'Go ahead. But don't get frightened by my morning-voice.'

'Pff, can't be that bad.'

Just a second later Lara got an incoming call from her friend.

"Gooood morning!", she could hear Isabelle's cheery voice.

"I thought you hated your life because you most likely got too little sleep?", Lara answered while sitting up in her bed, trying to stretch.

"That is correct, but I can cope with loss of sleep better than I first thought. Besides, the news I'm about to tell you are way too interesting not to be a pain in the ass to everybody that crosses my path today."

Lara chuckled, which still sounded a bit hoarse.

"By the way, your morning voice is not half as bad as you said it'd be."

The brunette couldn't help but to smile. She didn't know why, but she missed the sound of Isabelle's voice, even though they were apart for roughly twenty-four hours.

"Thank you for that compliment. So...", Lara had to pause because another yawn interrupted her, "What did your father find out?"

"Right. He remembered another cave, so there are two, but they are different. The one has to do something with that constellation, at least my father said that your dad had found it before Dominguez did. And supposedly, there is another riddle which will lead you to the lost city Paititi."

"And my dad found that out years ago?" Lara was a bit puzzled.

"Yeah, it's one of the few advantages they had over Dominguez and his team. I thought you found out about that, too?"

"Dad only wrote about a clue and constellations. ... So, I guess he kind of did, yeah. But I didn't know that we're talking about two different places. I always thought the hints regarding both – Paititi and the whereabouts of the dagger - were located in the same hidden cave."

"I thought so too, but father proved me wrong. The cave with that constellation thing is located under a hill or mountain, just nearby the town you're staying in. I don't know if Trinity has found it yet, I mean it has been over fifteen years but... It's worth the shot."

The archaeologist hummed.

"I'll see what I can find out. And the other cave?"

"Neither, my father nor your dad have found out about that one, I'm sorry. But if I had to guess, then the most logic reason I could come up with is, that the dagger is there. Maybe that excavation site of Trinity has something to do with it. But that's just a wild guess."