Barely Breathing (Colorado High Country #1)

by Pamela Clare

  “He’s around back.” Hawke stopped him with a palm in the center of his chest. “Man, you’ve got to pull yourself together. Get that look out of your eyes.”

  “What look?”

  “The one that says your entire world is on the line here. The one that tells me you want to find Ready and rip him to pieces.”

  That’s exactly what Austin wanted to do. “He’s going to pay for this.”

  “Damn straight. But first, we focus on finding Lexi.”

  Austin took a deep breath, nodded. “If anything happens to her…”

  “Lexi is tougher than she looks. She’ll be okay.”

  “Yeah.” Austin couldn’t let himself imagine any other outcome, not if he wanted to help her. “Want to ride along?”

  “You think they’ll let you in?”

  “I’m not giving them a choice.”

  “I’m coming, too.” Belcourt walked up to the tape barricade, his brown eyes blazing. “That bastard almost killed my sister.”

  The two men walked with him to the rear entrance of the building, Hawke catching him up on other things along the way. “They’ve closed Knockers. Rain went to the hospital with Bear, said he ought to have someone be family for him. Megs has the Team on standby in case they’re needed. Kenzie and Gizmo are also on standby. Everyone is doing all they can.”

  Until Lexi was safe, no one was doing enough.

  They found McBride on the phone, a couple of FBI agents standing nearby, the sheriff’s CSI unit still processing the crime scene.

  McBride saw him, ended the call. “Taylor, I’m glad you’re here. I just got confirmation that a state trooper found the stolen vehicle about ten miles west of here.”

  Thank God!

  Do not lose your shit.

  “That’s good news.”

  McBride showed him the exact location on an electronic pad. “It’s parked here on a forest access road that runs through county land. Are you familiar with the area?”

  McBride didn’t seem to know that Austin and Lexi were connected.

  Austin nodded. “Yes. There’s not much up there—just open space.”

  “I could use your help. You can follow us up.”

  Austin was on his way back to his service vehicle, Hawke beside him, when he heard Rose calling for him.

  Shit.

  The last thing he wanted was the latest gossip or a psychic prediction—unless, of course, she could tell him where to find Lexi.

  She waited for him at the tape barricade, then shoved something in his hands—a piece of paper. “Lexi spent the afternoon at my place. She was pretty torn up about what happened with her dad. I tried to cheer her up. We talked for a few hours. I thought you should have this.”

  Austin looked at it—a list of pros and cons. It took him a moment to realize what they represented. Lexi was thinking about staying in Scarlet?

  Rose patted his arm. “Whatever happens, you should know that Lexi loves you.”

  Cold to the bone, Lexi crouched down in the pitch black, the air heavy with an unfamiliar stench, unseen somethings brushing against her damp skin and hair.

  Cobwebs? Spiderwebs?

  Something rustled overhead, a chorus of tiny squeaks coming from above them.

  Bats.

  Oh, God.

  She tried not to think about that. The real problem wasn’t the creatures that might be living here—which, by the way, probably included snakes. Ew. The problem was the monster behind her and the very real risk of having the ground vanish from beneath her feet. Some of these old mines went hundreds of feet down. Without light, she wouldn’t be able to tell whether her next step would land her on terra firma or tumble her into a deep ventilation shaft.

  “Don’t you at least have a flashlight or a lighter or something?” Her voice echoed—proof that this mine went deep.

  Icy fingers dug into her arm. “It’s in my bag. Hang on. And don’t you even think about trying to get away from me.”

  She could hear him digging through his junk, bats that had been disturbed in their sleep stirring above them.

  Click.

  Light flooded the space.

  Lexi bit back a gasp, her pulse rocketing.

  The passage they stood in was narrower than she’d imagined, a bat colony numbering in the thousands no more than a foot above their heads. Guano covered the rocky floor—that explained the stench—while slender roots tangled with spider webs all around her. Bending lower, Lexi moved forward.

  She’d gone maybe twenty feet, when the ground ahead of her dropped away, a ventilation shaft shored up with rotting timbers opening at her feet.

  Instinctively, she stepped backward. “That’s as far as we go.”

  Ready sat on a stone not far from the shaft’s edge and pointed to the place beside him. “Sit.”

  “I’m not sitting there.”

  He grinned. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights.”

  “No, of course not. You have BO.”

  He gave a snort but said nothing.

  She sat back against the rock wall on what looked like the remains of a railway tie, just beyond his reach and out of sight of the edge.

  He didn’t object. “Not a sound.”

  He turned off the flashlight, plunging them once again into darkness, the only light coming from the mine’s small opening ten yards away.

  From outside, Lexi could hear the drone of the helicopter’s rotors. Had the pilot spotted Winona’s car? Did she even want police to find it, given what might happen? She had no doubt this bastard would open fire on anyone who entered the mine after them. She didn’t want innocent people to die trying to rescue her.

  If she’d been brave, she would have picked up a rock and hurled it at Ready’s head—or kicked him backward into the shaft. Now it was too dark to see him anyway.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, still shivering.

  The sound of the helicopter’s rotors got fainter, then disappeared.

  It was gone.

  She didn’t know whether to feel relief or despair.

  Time passed, minutes creeping by like hours. She wanted to ask him what he’d done to Bear and Winona and why he’d shot at Austin, but he didn’t seem like the kind of bad guy you saw in the movies who filled up gaps in the conversation by telling you why he’d done all the evil things he’d done in his life.

  It was then she noticed that her left foot—the foot nearer to Ready—was sinking as if the earth had turned into quicksand or…

  There came a knocking sound.

  Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

  No!

  She leaped up and ran toward the mine’s entrance, but it was too late. There was nothing beneath her feet, nothing to grab onto, no way to pull herself to safety. She heard herself scream. Ready screamed, too, rock and rotted timbers groaning.

  Darkness swirled around her as she fell.

  Chapter 22

  Austin reached the abandoned vehicle ahead of the feds and parked right behind it, the state trooper who’d called it in waving as he drove up.

  “That’s my sister’s car for sure,” Belcourt said.

  Hawke, who had crammed himself into the vehicle’s narrow backseat, followed Austin out of the driver’s side door, while Belcourt hopped out on the passenger side. The three of them hurried over to the car.

  Austin introduced himself to the trooper who said his name was Stewart, then looked in through the open driver’s side window.

  “No blood.” Hawke said what he was thinking. “No sign of violence.”

  “Yeah.” Austin wanted this bastard.

  “I was catching speeders down on the highway and using this road to loop back around after each stop when this car just showed up,” said Stewart. “One minute it wasn’t there. Twenty minutes later it was. I’d just heard the BOLO and realized it was the car everyone was looking for, so I called it in.”

  “Did you see where the occupants went?” Austin asked.

  Stewart shook his head.
“The car was empty when I found it.”

  Damn it.

  McBride came up behind them. “Good work, trooper.”

  Stewart shook his hand. “I think you all should know, I heard a gunshot and a scream about ten minutes ago. The search chopper—”

  Austin’s heart hit his breastbone. “Gunshot?”

  Son of a bitch. Lexi.

  “Yeah.” Stewart pointed up the mountainside. “Sounded like a handgun to me. I’d have gone to check it out, but I figured I’d better wait for backup.”

  Fuck.

  “You did the right thing.” McBride looked over at Austin. “Taylor, you and I need to talk.”

  Austin exchanged a glance with Hawke and Belcourt, then followed McBride to the other side of the road.

  “Your boss tells me you and Ms. Jewell are involved.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Don’t you think that’s something you ought to have disclosed at the outset? I can’t have you up here if there’s any chance that your emotions are going to impede your judgment. You know that.”

  “Have you seen any sign that my judgment is impaired?”

  “Other than your passing my vehicle going eighty miles an hour?”

  Okay, McBride had him there.

  “Sorry about that.” He laid his cards on the table. “I love her. I can’t let this bastard hurt her. Every second he’s alone with her, there’s a chance…”

  He couldn’t even say it.

  McBride studied him for a moment, mirrored sunglasses concealing his eyes. “I know what it means to love a woman and to want to protect her. I’ll let you be a part of this only so long as you hold it together. Pull another stupid stunt like that or put yourself or someone else at risk, and I’ll have you forcibly removed. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Forest County SWAT arrived, followed by Kenzie and Gizmo, the minutes seeming to drag on while McBride and the cops discussed options and made plans. Lexi was out there somewhere, perhaps shot, maybe even dying. A fucking eternity had gone by before everyone had geared up and was ready to move out.

  Kenzie was carrying something in an evidence bag—Lexi’s yellow Team T-shirt. She took it out, let Gizmo sniff it, then led the dog over to the car. He jumped inside, sniffed around, then hopped out and set off down the road, following the little gully, his paws splashing in the storm runoff.

  They’d gone perhaps a quarter of a mile, when Kenzie stopped the dog. She looked back at them. “It’s the rain.”

  “The rain?” McBride asked.

  “Water holds scent well, but in this terrain the trail Gizmo is picking up might easily have come from somewhere else. We should make certain they didn’t go off the road somewhere uphill from this drainage. Otherwise, we’ll just be following the scent caught in the runoff and not our quarry.”

  Damn it.

  Belcourt’s shout came from behind them. “They went this way!”

  Austin turned to find him standing on the mountainside above the vehicle.

  “Who is he?” McBride asked.

  “He tracks for the Rocky Mountain SAR,” Austin lied.

  Hawke shot him a sidelong glance, spoke in a whisper. “You do remember that he’s a federal agent, right?”

  Austin shrugged. “What the hell else was I supposed to say? ‘He’s an engineering geek who climbs rocks and volunteers for the Team, and, by the way, he says he cuts sign and Ready assaulted his sister’? That would get him a one-way ticket out of here. He deserves to be in on this as much as anyone.”

  “No argument there.”

  Austin followed Kenzie as she led Gizmo back up the road, climbing the embankment toward Belcourt, where two sets of footprints were visible in the mud.

  And immediately Gizmo was off, Kenzie behind him. “Let’s find her, boy.”

  Lexi held onto a twisted bit of rail with all her strength, two thoughts breaking through her pain and panic. She was still alive, and she was no longer falling.

  Okay. That’s good.

  She had landed … on something hard and wooden. It was so dark that she couldn’t see her own hands, much less what was around or beneath her. Afraid to move, she let go with her left hand and reached slowly out to feel around her.

  To her right, there was rock. To her left and in front of her, nothing as far as she could reach. Below her, there were wooden support beams and then… nothing.

  Oh, God.

  Reflexively, she grabbed onto the iron rail again, her heart slamming so hard that it hurt, terror making her mind go blank. Her jerky motions made whatever was beneath her move, too, made it bob and bounce. And for a time, she sat there, pressed up against the rock, afraid to breathe, her hands clutching at cold iron.

  Apart from whatever she’d landed on, she seemed to be sitting in midair.

  Slowly, her terror began to recede, chased away in part by pain. Her right leg hurt horribly. She reached down with her left hand and felt a painful bulge in the middle of her shin. It really was broken.

  And, no, she couldn’t get dizzy and pass out thinking about that because she had no idea where she would end up if she fell off this little platform. Solid ground might be a few feet below her—or it might be hundreds of feet down.

  Then it hit her: Where was Ready?

  “Hey, jerk, are you there?” Her voice echoed through the pitch black.

  Silence. Not even the squeaking of bats.

  She was alone.

  A surge of panic overtook her again, left her feeling sick.

  No, she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t fall apart.

  They would find her. They would find Winona’s car, and that would lead them to search the area. They would see the tracks she and Ready had made. Or maybe they’d bring in search dogs. The dogs would follow their trail here. Even if they didn’t know she’d been the one who’d called 911 or that Ready had abducted her, they’d come this way because the dogs would catch his scent.

  All she had to do was stay alive until they got to her.

  She could do that—if she didn’t fall asleep and if whatever she had landed on didn’t break free and if there wasn’t another cave-in that buried her or sent her plummeting into the darkness below.

  Don’t think about it.

  Right. Because there were so many other things to think about sitting here in total darkness over a chasm with a broken leg and bat poop in her hair and probably splinters in her butt.

  Oh, Austin.

  An image of his face filled her mind, put an ache in her chest, tears stinging her eyes. He’d bared his heart to her last night, and she hadn’t said a thing. She’d been so freaked out that she hadn’t told him how she felt about him. Now, she might never get that chance.

  Did he know she was missing? He was probably in his parents’ backyard now grilling steaks and enjoying Father’s Day with his dad. But he would figure out something was wrong. When she didn’t return his calls and didn’t show up at his place, he would come looking for her.

  Her father probably had no idea. He probably didn’t…

  Lexi felt herself start to slide. Her head jerked up. She reached up, her hands closing tightly around the iron rail.

  When had she started to drift off?

  She must be in shock or hypothermic or something, because she was shaking.

  Stay awake. Stay awake. Stay awake.

  She tried talking to herself, but she’d started to drift off again, the motion of the beams she was sitting on rousing her once more, cold sweat dripping down her forehead. Or was that water? Was it still raining? She was thirsty.

  Snap out of it!

  If she couldn’t stay awake, she was dead.

  She’d started to drift off again, when she noticed a glow. And there beside her was a small man. Dressed like a miner from the old days, he knelt there in the darkness, worry on his sweat-stained face, a candle stuck to his helmet.

  She gaped at him, astonished. “Who…”

  He grinned
. “’allo, me purty. Ye don’ ’aff to be afeard. This ’ere be Cousin Jack.”

  Austin kept close to Belcourt, who truly knew how to track.

  “She was moving faster than he was.” Belcourt pointed to faint footprints. “She stopped here, turned back to look at him. Then they headed off that way at a run.”

  Gizmo sniffed at a particularly deep footprint.

  “The water pooled up here,” Kenzie explained.

  Then Gizmo, too, veered off in the direction Belcourt had pointed, moving faster up the muddy mountainside on his four legs than most of the men, who were weighted down with Kevlar and assault weapons, were able to do.

  And then they saw it—the entrance to a mine shaft.

  Kenzie held Gizmo back, while Belcourt moved silently forward, crouching near the forest floor. He nodded, made his way back to them.

  “They’re in there.”

  Word passed quickly through the LEOs on the mountainside, somehow reaching the throng of townspeople who had gathered below, the buzz of whispers like a breeze.

  Quickly and silently, McBride’s men and SWAT moved into position surrounding the mine shaft’s entrance, careful to stay clear of it.

  McBride stood off to the side, out of the line of fire, a bullhorn in hand. “John Charles Ready, this is Chief Deputy US Marshal Zach McBride. I know you’re in there, and I know you have Lexi Jewell.”

  Nothing.

  McBride shouted again.

  This time, Austin heard it—Lexi’s voice. It was faint and sounded far away. She was … singing.

  It took Hawke stepping into Austin’s path to hold him back. “We’re here. We’ll help her. Just wait.”

  Wait? Fuck that!

  McBride knelt down, used the bullhorn again. “Ms. Jewell, is Ready with you?”

  The singing stopped. Lexi called back, Austin catching only one word: dead.

  Ready was dead?

  McBride shouted back. “Did you say he’s dead? Are you able to walk out to us?”

  She was singing again.

  Austin didn’t like that at all. He’d seen people act this way when they were badly wounded and deeply in shock, their minds taking them to a different place to help them cope with pain and fear.