by Lexi Post
She had a point there. Though rail ties and rock would make for a difficult night’s sleep.
As if she’d read his thoughts, she spoke. “I just need a few minutes rest, then we should make our beds.”
“Make our beds? I noticed a number of items in that transfer spot down there, but a mattress was not one of them.”
“No, but we have—ack! Copper, stop. Who woke you up? I’m going to change your name to Slobber if you don’t stop licking me.”
He grinned then reached over and pulled the dog off her. “Come on, boy. Settle down. You’ll need to rest so you can help us again tomorrow.”
A snort sounded in the darkness. “The biggest hole he dug was the one he took a nap in.”
That was true. At first, Copper had positioned himself between them and started digging with his paws, but it wasn’t long before he’d left them to dig somewhere else. When they’d paused long enough to recognize it was silent, he’d turned his phone light on briefly to find the dog laying in a hole he dug far away from them. Copper looked at them very proud of his accomplishment. He felt he should come to dog’s defense. “Well, he is a small dog. And you can’t really blame him for giving you kisses. You did save him as far as he’s concerned.” Heck, he would enjoy kissing her, too. Now where did that come from? That was a path he needed to avoid at all costs.
“I have a feeling he gives anyone he sees kisses.”
She sounded disgruntled. One minute she didn’t want to name the dog because he wasn’t hers and the next, she sounded put out that he might like everyone equally. “No, it’s just you. I’m holding him right now, and he hasn’t tried to lick me.”
“Humph.”
Though it was said in disbelief, he could tell that she was pleased. Wow, sitting in the dark certainly enhanced other senses. He’d always known that in smoky areas, but even then, there was some visual context. “You were saying we have beds?”
“Right. Not beds exactly, but good material for them. In Afghanistan, we would swear at the sand, especially the sandstorms, but there were a couple occasions when I was glad for it. It acts like those mattresses that are touted on commercials. It conforms to your body.
He’d never thought of sand like that, but it made sense. That was the theory behind the old seventy’s beanbag chairs that his great uncle used to have. “We don’t have sand.”
“No, but the gravel from the blocked tunnel is a hell of a lot softer than this rock. I’m going to bring some of it over here and build it up between the rail and the side wall. You may want to do the same on the other side. Then I’ll use my bandana to cover my ‘pillow’.”
She was right. There was bound to be stones in it, but it would be better than sleeping on the rail ties. “That could work.”
“I know it can. I just need a mint first. Are you ready for one?”
His mouth felt dry just at the idea of it. “Yes.” While she dug into her back pocket, he contemplated his bed. Though she had a good idea of filling in between the rail and the wall, he needed a bit more room than that. He’d fill in between the two rails. It would also put him in close proximity if she slipped into the past again.
“Here. Drop one in your mouth from the roll.”
He reached out to find her hand holding the mints. Doing as instructed, he managed to get one in his mouth without touching it with his filthy hands. What he wouldn’t give for a dip in Lake Pleasant right now. He handed back the mints, and they slipped into a companionable silence.
It was odd to think that if he didn’t return home tonight, no one would know. His family lived farther north and his former co-workers and friends were up there, too. The only people he knew in the area were his realtor, Cole, and some of Cole’s station men from long ago when he’d worked there. The only reason anyone would look for him was because his truck and the Last Chance trailer were parked at the ranch house.
It was an odd realization that emphasized how disconnected he was at this moment in his life. Definitely not a feeling he liked nor wanted to continue too long. “Will anyone else be missing you tonight, besides Last Chance people. I mean do you call your mom every Friday or anything?” It was a long shot, but it would be good to know that Riley might be missed.
“Not likely since she’s dead.”
Shit, he stepped in it this time. “I’m sorry. You mentioned your father had passed. I didn’t realize your mom had as well.”
“It’s not a big deal.” He could picture her waving her hand in dismissal. “They’re all dead. Dad was killed in Iraq, so mom drank herself to death and my sister overdosed. Hard to believe I’m the sole survivor isn’t it?”
Shit, she was far worse off than he was. “That had to be tough.”
“Not really. I was a daddy’s girl. Mom and my sister were always weak and emotional. I tried to hold them together, but duty called. Mom died while I was overseas the first time. My sister died shortly after I returned the second time. They said it was accidental, but I have my doubts.” She gave her strange laugh that he was beginning to understand was more of a self-deprecation. “Ironic when you think about it. I’m the one in a war zone and they’re the ones who die. What about you? Do you call home every Friday night like a dutiful son?”
Her tone made it clear she thought the idea pathetic, which irritated him. “No, though I know my parents would love that. We touch base whenever we feel like it. I haven’t talked to them in weeks.” Something he planned to fix.
“I think once we’re out of here, you should call them.”
Her voice had softened, and he suddenly understood exactly how alone in the world she was. “Do you ever see your Army—”
“I’m ready to make up my bed and get some sleep. Tomorrow we might break through if we have enough rest.” Cooper jumped from his arms even as Riley’s boots scraped against the ground. A clear indication she’d stood.
He rose as well, but didn’t turn on his phone. It was very low on battery and knowing he probably only had one more time to use his light, he kept it in his pocket. “My phone is about dead.”
Without replying, she turned her phone light on and set it on the ground facing up, giving them enough diffused light to see the piles of loose dirt they’d pulled in and the space they had made their home base. She strode to the piles and picking up the gold pan started moving dirt.
He followed suit with the shovel head. It took a while but it wasn’t hard work, not like pulling it from the cave-in. After piling more where his head would go, he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket. It was stuck together with Riley’s blood. As she knelt by her pile to add her bandana, a shiver raced up his spine. Her bed looked like a newly filled-in grave.
Stuffing his useless handkerchief into his pocket, he caught site of what was left of the towel, Riley had ripped up earlier hanging on the rock. Dog saliva wasn’t his pillowcase of choice, but it was better than dirt. He quickly pulled it off and laid it over his constructed pillow.
“I hope you don’t snore.” Riley pointedly stared at his pillow which was next to her own, though the rail lay between them.
“I don’t. Believe it, I’d know. In a firehouse, everyone knows who snores and who doesn’t.”
She nodded, taking his word for it, as she placed her hat on the ground above where her head would rest.
“Do you?”
Her startled gaze whipped to his. “No, I don’t snore, but…”
He cocked his head, waiting.
She shrugged. “I used to talk in my sleep, but not anymore. I’m going to turn the light off as soon as we bed down. You might want to see if you have any rocks to remove.” She followed that advice by lying down and settling in. “Not bad.”
“No rocks?” He set his hat on a rusted nail in a beam of the old bracing near where they’d worked then returned and lay down.
“Nope. No rocks. You?”
He moved his right leg and pulled out a rock, throwing it toward the pile. Copper ran after it. He laughed. “At least som
eone likes the rocks.”
Riley rolled her eyes, obviously not impressed with Copper’s intelligence. “Ready?”
“Ready.” The light disappeared and the absolute blackness was back. How long would they sleep? Would their bodies know when it was morning? “Did you happen to see what time it was when you had the light on?”
“It was twenty-one twenty-three.”
Nine twenty-three. A good time to sleep after a hard day’s work, so why was he wide awake, trying to see in the dark. “You said you’ve been trapped before. How did you know when to wake up?”
“I set an alarm the first night, but by the next morning I realized what a waste of battery that was. After that I just woke when I woke. I discovered my body was used to sleeping a certain number of hours.”
“How many days were you trapped?”
“Eleven.”
“Shit. By yourself or were you with others?” She’d avoided the subject while they dug, so he felt no compunction about asking now.
“I thought we were going to sleep?”
“And I thought you were going to tell me about your last experience while we were digging, but you didn’t.” He’d been well aware that she’d avoided it, but since she’d continued to talk and stay in the present, he’d let it go. But now that she told him she’d been buried alive for eleven days, he had to know more.
Her voice, when it came, was soft. “I was alone. The rest of my comrades had been gunned down before they could escape.”
He’d seen people die in fires. Pulled out more bodies than he’d ever wanted to. But he’d never seen someone shot, and certainly never seen someone he knew be killed by bullet or by flame. “That had to be hard to witness.”
“I was too busy running for my life to mull it over.” There was a tinge of anger in her voice.
“But you must have had too long to think about it later.”
At first, she didn’t answer, but then a small sigh escaped her, the type he’d seen his sister use when she gave into his niece. “Yeah. The shrink said I had survivor’s guilt.”
Now that he knew about. They had been fighting the Mongollon Rim fire when one of the teams lost a man. The whole crew were worthless for months. “How did you get away?”
“You’re not going to tell me not to feel guilty?”
Her question caught him off guard. “Hell no. I’d feel damn guilty, too.”
She must have liked his answer because she continued. “Like I said. I ran. All I had on me was my M9 pistol and M4 carbine. I ran in the only direction that offered any cover. Unfortunately, that meant going up, but the first large boulder I found, I ducked behind and let off a few rounds before continuing to run.”
While he didn’t know anything about Afghanistan’s terrain, he could imagine the scene in the Sonoran Desert. “Did they all follow you or just one?”
She snorted. “Two followed me. The others were busy confiscating our Humvee. That’s how they ambushed us. They’d stolen another US Humvee that made us think they were Afghan soldiers, but as soon as I saw them, I yelled. My driver was shot immediately. They grabbed Shaw but Thammishetti and I split up, literally heading for the hills.”
She paused, but he hoped she’d continue. She did.
“Tham was shot by the time I made my second cover. I tried to pick off his pursuers while holding mine at bay, but one of them must have snuck around when my attention was diverted. I heard him yell before it turned into a gurgle. I knew I was on my own then.”
“What about Shaw?”
“They tried to use him to flush me out when they lost me. In broken English they yelled that if I gave up, they wouldn’t kill him. Before I could make a decision, he told me not to say anything and must have attacked the one holding him because a barrage of bullets went off. I didn’t look. That would make his sacrifice worthless.”
That he’d understood. “How did you get away.” He fervently hoped she escaped capture.
“I found a cave near the top of the mountain and ran inside. It was huge with three tunnels going back into the mountain. I discovered a small hole in one of the walls and once taking off my belt, I was able to squeeze through. It was a small room about the size of the one we found with the old ore car. It was the best I could do with so little time. No sooner had I hunkered down then I heard them in the cave.”
He forced himself to uncurl his fingers from the fists he’d instinctually made, but it wasn’t easy. Just thinking about her alone, scared, and in danger had his protective instincts spiking. He had to remind himself she was a soldier and trained to survive. She did survive, which was proof of her strength. Still, he itched to protect her even though the story was years ago and far away. “I’m guessing they didn’t find you?”
“They came very close, but the man just outside my hole was called back.”
He felt the tension leave his body as relief swept through him.
“I listened as they argued near the mouth of the cave. I couldn’t tell what they said, but the tone was pretty clear. They were obviously arguing about what to do with me. They knew I was in there somewhere.”
His chest tightened as the decision they made jumped to mind. “They trapped you in.”
“Yes.” Her voice softened again, the smugness he’d heard earlier at her escape now gone. “They thought I was a serious threat, and they were right, though I didn’t know that at the time. Turned out they were on a quiet offensive. I think they couldn’t afford to waste time on finding me, so they left. When all was quiet, I shimmied out of my hole and listened. I never trust the enemy to do what I want, and I was right. I don’t think it was more than ten minutes before the ground shook and the cave opening, which had stood at least thirty feet high, collapsed.”
“What? How?”
“I don’t know for certain, but I think they used a grenade launcher and aimed it at the side of the mountain above the cave.”
He whistled low. “Were you hit with dirt?”
The odd laugh returned. “No, I was lucky. I was sprayed with dust, but that was it. So that’s how I was buried alive the first time. Obviously, I got out.”
“But how did you—”
“Nothing personal, Garrett, but I’m tired. Good night.”
He clamped down on the myriad questions buzzing through his brain. “Good night.” He lay in the inky darkness staring at nothingness, trying to fathom how the woman beside him had managed to get out of a cave with half a mountain between her and the outside world. She had to have been rescued. The Army probably found her dead unit members and followed her trail and blasted her out.
As much as he wanted that to be true, his gut said it wasn’t so easy. It didn’t take eleven days to find someone’s trail and remove enough dirt for a single woman to crawl out, especially with the military’s resources.
You don’t dig at the bottom. You dig at the top, as high up as you can go. Her words came back to him. Digging on the bottom will just cause the new earth to fall on top of you. How did she know that? Did that happen to her? That would take too much energy. We need to conserve that for digging. He swallowed hard, his dry mouth gone drier. She’d had to dig her way out of that cave!
He looked in the direction of where Riley lay, her breathing even, letting him know she really had been tired. He tried to go to sleep, but he kept imagining her inside a giant cave of blackness, huddled on the ground, and starving to death.
Luckily, his body finally conquered his mind and he drifted off.
Chapter Nine
Garrett woke. Opening his eyes, he couldn’t see a thing. Where were the stars? Were his eyes really open? He blinked twice. They were, but…that’s right, he was in the old mine, trapped inside with Riley.
Listening intently, it wasn’t hard to hear her breathing next to him. She sounded as if she’d run ten miles, the sounds almost gasping. What the hell? He rolled on his side to wake her when a scratching sounded on her other side.
“Copper?” There was no response but t
he scratching stopped. He raised his voice a little louder. “Copper? Come here, boy.”
Small footsteps approached from behind him. He rolled onto his back and reached out. The dog plopped down beneath his hand, nudging him in the side. “It’s okay, boy. We’re all here and accounted for.”
So, if Copper was on his left, then what was to his right on the other side of Riley? He listened, keeping his arm over the dog, who seemed happy to be with him.
The scratching sounded again then stopped. It sounded like a critter pawed at the wall of the tunnel. There’d been no evidence of any animals living in the tunnel beyond the rabbit Copper had chased in and that made Garrett cautious.
Quietly, he pulled his phone from his pocket, thankful he’d been smart enough to leave a little battery life just in case. Holding it so he hoped it would shine on the animal as soon as he turned it on, he waited for the sound to start again.
After what felt like minutes, the scratching started and he flicked on the light. “Holy shit.”
The words burst from his lips without thought. He stared in horror at Riley’s bloody fingertips as she dug at the wall in her sleep. Dropping the phone on the ground, he rolled her over to face him. “Riley, wake up.”
She moaned in her sleep, her hands reaching out to dig her fingers into his shirt. “Soldier, when I speak to you, I expect you to listen!”
Her eyelids snapped open, and she looked fearful until her gaze rested on him. “What?”
He grasped her to him, keeping her hands between them. “You were dreaming.” He held her tight as she struggled to separate, but finally she stilled.
“Dreaming? Did I say anything.”
His throat already dry from lack of water suddenly felt scratchy, and he cleared it. “No.”
The tension in her body eased. “Good. I’ve been told when I talk in my sleep, it’s not pleasant.”
He rested his cheek against her hair, his own heart still pounding as the reality of what she’d endured settled into his soul, leaving him with a strong ache in his chest. He couldn’t have let her go at that moment even if the mine was opened large enough for Cyclone to walk in. “You were breathing like you were running a race.”
