by Alice Sharpe
“Go inside and arm yourself,” Sierra replied. “Keep the doors locked. And you might call Kinsey and tell her the same thing,” she added, shoving the gun in her waistband.
She took off into the night, fingers figuratively crossed, heart racing. Grace had turned on the floodlights and that helped her find the gateway to the creek. And sure enough, the horse began the winding climb on sure feet. The trees overhead slowed down the snowfall and Sierra held on for dear life as the path became steeper. Her mind kept racing to the mine she had to find, and what had become of Tess, who had not recorded the time on her note. Who knew how long she’d been gone, but if she’d left right after the Hastingses had gone looking for the crew, it had to be hours now, more than enough time for her to have reached this mine and for Raoul to have done heaven knows what to her.
It seemed to take forever and then some to reach level land, and she looked through the falling snow in an effort to find some sign of life. Disappointed beyond words—she really had hoped she’d run in to Pike out here, or if not him, then one of his brothers or their father—she kept riding, trusting the horse to know the lay of the land and find footing. Common sense suggested the ground was uneven under the snow, but the horse kept moving and her gait was such that Sierra was relatively comfortable in the saddle. She didn’t dare kick the horse into a run because she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to stop it. Better to get there in one piece sometime tonight than risk a broken neck and never arrive at all.
For a girl used to crowded sidewalks and subways, this lonely night with only one big heavy-breathing horse and a sky full of snow for company seemed to stretch into eternity. Using the flashlight, she checked the compass heading and saw that she was as close to right on as she could get without micromanaging every step. The horse actually seemed to know the way, and Sierra formed a growing admiration for the way the big red beast kept her head down and one foot in front of the other.
Robbed of any landmarks, she had no reference points. They could be walking in giant circles and, if not for the compass, she wouldn’t know. Eventually, so cold her teeth had stopped chattering, she felt rather than saw a change and shined the flashlight to the right. A large dark building was discernable through the snow. Eureka! She’d found the ghost town, or at least she assumed she had. The light played over additional shapes and she felt more confident. Soon, spectral buildings appeared on either side of her and she guessed she was riding down Main Street. The road took a curve and then the buildings petered out, and after a while longer, a hillside appeared at the edge of a large clearing that was scattered with hulking pieces of what must be old mining equipment.
In the face of what appeared to be a rocky outcropping, she saw a darker area shaped like an arc. This must be the entrance. Grace had said that it was covered with a locked door, but Sierra saw no evidence of one. Tracks in the snow suggested activity within the last few hours.
“We found it,” she whispered through blue lips to the horse. Her numb legs almost collapsed as her feet hit the ground. A sound from close by sent her heart into her throat and she twirled around, flashlight illuminating nothing but snow at first, until a large shape materialized and hastened toward her like a banshee out of a horror film.
She reached for the Glock but paused at the sound of a throaty snort. The apparition turned into a horse, and it came to within a few feet of her then stopped. Its breath shot out in a cloud as it stamped a foot on the snowy ground and whinnied.
Sierra grabbed the reins of the horse’s bridle. The animal was still saddled. It seemed likely that this was the horse Tess had ridden to come here, so that must mean she was still in the mine.
She had to wonder: How did a person unfamiliar with this land find his way to the mine? She thought back to the map. She hadn’t noticed other roads, but there must have been at least one. Was it reasonable to expect Raoul Ruiz to be able to navigate out here on a night like this? On the other hand, she recalled the tracks in the snow when they got to Hastings land. Who had driven through that gate when everyone on the ranch was either inside a house or out rescuing the film crew on horses?
She led both animals to the opening of the mine because she wasn’t sure what else to do with them. What if they were needed for a quick getaway? What if they wandered off to find someplace more hospitable? How would she and Tess get back to the ranch? The flashlight revealed a few boards jutting up through the snow. Presumably, they were all that was left of the door. The light also revealed an iron rod embedded in the rock right outside the entrance. Maybe it had supported the door. She looped the reins around the iron. The horses could stand inside if they wanted or stay outside—their choice. Satisfied with her solution, Sierra shined the light into the mine and took a deep breath.
There weren’t too many things that seriously rattled her, but underground cavities were one of them. And somehow, this ancient, abandoned, man-made mine was twice as terrifying as a cave Mother Nature created. She flashed the light around once, trying to orientate herself, knowing she would have to be careful with both noise and light as she got deeper and hopefully closer to Tess.
The mine tunnel was heavily shored with lumber. Were there bats in here? Probably not, since it had been closed until just recently. No wonder it smelled like a grave. On the other hand there might be fissures leading to the surface through which bats could enter. She could almost feel them in her hair—obviously she’d seen too many Scooby-Doo cartoons as a kid.
Sags and even areas where the lumber had failed altogether made piles of dirt and rock. The tunnel itself appeared pretty straight as far as the light penetrated. A railroad-like track ran along the ground.
Sierra took off her hat, shook off the snow, took the Glock from her waistband and turned off the light. Moving as quickly and silently as she could, she kept her gloved hand touching the wall as she progressed. In all the years she’d been an investigator, she’d actually only pulled out her gun once, maybe twice. Guns tended to escalate a problem and were a tool of last resort for her.
But this felt different. This felt like the Old West and it was hard not to juxtapose her present situation with all the old Westerns she’d watched with her father. For a second she thought of those long-ago bank robbers thundering out of town with their loot, a posse not far behind. For the first time it seemed real.
The air quality abruptly changed and the wall disappeared. She chanced the light again. The tunnel had turned and within fifteen feet, the track on the ground split into two and veered off at right angles to each other.
Again she walked in darkness until she felt air all around her. On came the light. She’d been worrying about which track to take, but now she saw that the spur was actually blocked by a cave-in. While that made the choice easier, it also reminded her how fragile this world was.
The clear tunnel began a rapid decline deeper into the earth. She moved slowly, worried that her feet in the thin-soled boots might slip on the pebbles that littered the ground. She kept listening for voices—Tess’s or anyone else’s for that matter—but the place was eerily silent, the air cold and dank.
The tunnel wall disappeared and she once again used the light. A deep crevice on her right side looked like nature’s handiwork and stretched on along the side of the tunnel. The tracks hugged the opposite wall and continued until they disappeared around another turn. She set off once more, this time walking on top of the track to stay far away from the crevice. She strained to hear any sound that signaled a living human being, refusing to even consider the possibility that Tess lay dead up ahead.
At the place where the tunnel turned sharply to the right, she paused. There wasn’t a noise to be heard. She had to have light before chancing a change of direction. The tunnel evolved here into a wider cavern. The crevice she’d noticed earlier was still here. There were a couple of empty mining carts and old metal tubs scattered about, as well as additional tunnels branchi
ng off what seemed to be this central area. Near the edge of the rift, she spied a pile of rubble consisting of dirt and rotting timbers. Was it the result of another cave-in?
The light illuminated a splotch of red beneath the rubble. Closer examination revealed a red knit hat. If it wasn’t the one she’d seen hanging in the ranch mudroom, then it was its twin. Next to it, she found a pink loafer, and her heart sank as she fell to her hands and knees and shone the light into the seemingly bottomless gash in the earth.
She played the light against the opposing wall, which appeared relatively smooth. Then she aimed the light straight down on her side of the chasm. There was a narrow ledge down there, two or three feet wide. Another pink shoe lay amid additional rubble. There was no sign of Tess.
Had she been knocked into the bowels of the earth or had she been taken away from this mine? If the sole purpose was to silence her forever, then her body probably lay down at the bottom of the rift.
As Sierra stared at the pink shoe she heard a sound from behind and turned her head.
* * *
“SHE DID WHAT?” Pike said when he and Chance got back to the house. They’d found Grace asleep while sitting at the kitchen counter, a rifle on one side of her and an empty pot of coffee on the other. Hollow-eyed, she’d roused herself as they entered from the mudroom, obviously embarrassed to have been caught napping on guard duty. Chance mumbled that he’d be right back and left the kitchen, headed for the second floor to check on Lily and Charlie.
“Tess left a note,” Grace repeated, her eyes moist and her voice gravelly. “She said Danny texted a message asking her and Sierra to meet him. She didn’t want to wait for Sierra. She remembered the old mine you’d shown her, so she suggested that to this supposed Danny. In her defense, it was dark and cold out, but the storm hadn’t fully hit yet. Anyway, Sierra read the note Tess left and decided to go after her.”
“How is Sierra going to get there in this weather and at night?” he asked. “She’s never even been there before. And can she actually ride a horse?”
“I think she can do almost anything she puts her mind to,” Grace responded and he had to agree. “And as for getting there, she had a map of this ranch on her phone. I gave her compass headings. Frankly, I was hoping she’d meet up with you along the way.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“About two hours.”
“She must have ridden past the tree while we were still out there. In this weather she could have been thirty feet away.”
“This is all my fault,” Grace said with tears in her eyes. “I was responsible for watching Tess and I failed.”
He patted her shoulder. “You know people can be sneaky when they want to be. It’s just as much our fault for not telling Tess the truth about Danny so she wouldn’t fall for some con. None of that matters right now. I have to go after them.”
“Wait for Chance to go with you,” Grace said.
“No time. Tell him to stay here until the others arrive and then come. I’ll text when I have an idea where they are.”
He rushed into the mudroom, where he reclaimed the shotgun he’d laid aside and grabbed a flashlight from a basket. Out in the barn, he saddled a fresh horse and snagged a coiled rope that hung on a post. Within minutes, he rode back up the creek, following what had turned into a muddy trail.
The trip was a grueling issue of mind over matter. It was three or four in the morning by now and he was exhausted and yet panicked at the same time. The wind had picked up enough to cause the snow to blow almost parallel to the ground. The ghostly moans as it snaked through the old town made the hairs stand up on his neck.
At the mine entrance, he found two saddled horses dragging reins in the snow. At the sight of him and another horse, they made low grunting sounds in their throats. The wild look in their eyes reflected tension and they skittered away from him as the sound of an accelerating engine reached Pike’s ears. It had to be a snowmobile leaving via the old road that ran parallel to the town and eventually looped around to the main ranch access road.
He should have waited for Chance. Cursing the fact that he was alone, he rounded up the horses and looped the reins around a piece of equipment. He knew the snowmobile tracks would linger for a while even in this snowfall. He’d have to hope he could find them after making sure Tess and Sierra weren’t in need of help.
He looped the coil of rope over one shoulder and his saddlebag over the other, as it contained some emergency supplies, including a flask of water. Wielding the flashlight in one hand and the shotgun in the other, he entered the mine.
It had been absolutely forbidden to enter this place when he was a kid. That hadn’t stopped him and his brothers from doing just that, however, and they’d spent many a secret afternoons investigating its tunnels, shafts and the natural underground chambers. He flashed the light and then from memory made his way to the central area, moving swiftly but with caution, unsure what he’d find.
He knew there were natural-occurring fissures and he also knew that deep shafts had been dug decades before to access veins of gold. He remembered where the tunnel branched and discovered a cave-in had more or less sealed the way.
Once again he fought the craziness of the possibility that someone like Raoul Ruiz would orchestrate the chain of events that had occurred this night. True, he didn’t know the man, but he knew about him and it seemed implausible. Wasn’t he more the walk-up-to-you-and-shoot-you-in-the-face kind of guy? Other explanations evaded him, however. He wasn’t satisfied with any answer he could come up with or even the questions. So what? Time to hunker back into rescue mode and stop trying to figure it out.
He found the main cavern empty aside from the tracks and abandoned mining equipment he and his brothers had played on as kids.
A weak light shone on the ground near the edge of a chasm. A flashlight had been dropped next to a pile of rubble. His gut twisted in a knot. People don’t abandon a light source in a place as dark and treacherous as this unless they’d been forced to. As he fumbled with the reclaimed flashlight, its weak beam caught something twinkling in the dirt. Kneeling down, he picked up a fine gold chain adorned with a single diamond pendant. He battled the creeping ache that he’d never see Sierra alive again and buttoned the necklace into his shirt pocket.
Further investigation of the rubble revealed dirt and boards and a red knit hat caught under a rafter as though it had been knocked off its wearer. There was no sign of a body under the rubble. A pink shoe lay abandoned a few feet away. He wasn’t sure about the cap, but he knew the shoe belonged to Tess.
When they’d been young boys, he and his brothers had marched fearlessly through this mine. Now he moved with caution and determination. He lay on his belly and scanned the ledge below with his flashlight. A woman lay facedown too near the fragile lip for comfort. The light glowed on her red hair, leaving little doubt as to her identity.
“Sierra!” he yelled.
For a moment he was sure she moved, but in the next instant he realized it was an illusion caused by the trembling of his own hand as he grasped the flashlight.
He closed his eyes for a second and listened to the suffocating silence.
Chapter Nine
Pike shook off momentary despair and went to work. As kids they had once rigged a harness and lowered danger-loving Frankie into this pit. He’d reported that the ledge ate its way back into the earth, creating a sort of overhang about fifteen feet down. Pike uncoiled the rope from his shoulder and looped one end around an abandoned mining cart that was wedged against an outcropping of rocks. He quickly moved to the crevice and slipped over the side. Hand over hand, one foot wrapped around the rope, he made his way down until he landed a foot or so from Sierra’s still form.
He took off his gloves and kneeled beside her, resting two fingers against her throat. The world realigned itself as h
er heartbeat leaped to his touch. He had no way of knowing if anything was broken. The inadequate light didn’t reveal any obvious issues, but he wasn’t sure.
As a precaution, he moved her a few more inches away from the edge, but he couldn’t take her far as headroom tapered off quickly. Moving her revealed she’d been resting atop Tess’s other pink shoe. Using the flashlight, he scanned for any sign of her.
Way back, deep under the overhang, a shape caught his eye. He stared at it until he was able to discern human features: dirt-matted hair, arms and legs all squeezed into a cranny. Tess had to have wiggled herself into this position, which meant she’d been alive after the fall. He got down on his stomach and dragged himself toward her. It was a tight fit and a huge relief when he was finally able to reach out and touch her arm. The light revealed cracked fingernails and rocks imbedded in her scratched hands.
“Tess,” he called softly.
Her eyes fluttered open. He could barely see her features, but he could tell her expression went from frightened to relieved and back again in a single breath. “Pike!” she spluttered.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
“Are they gone?”
“Who?”
“Two guys. They...they threw me down here. They must have thought I went all the way to the bottom but my foot hit this ledge and I grabbed on. I don’t know how I managed to climb up here. I just kept picturing that black hole...”
“They’re gone,” he assured her, though he had no way of knowing if they would come back or even if both of them had left. “Can you shift yourself so I can help get you out of there?”
“I’ll try,” she said.
A moment later, he was able to grasp her shoulders and pull her farther toward the edge. Her coat was torn, her hair knotted. Her runny nose had smeared dirt across her cheeks. He handed her his bandanna. “Did all this happen when you fell?” he asked.
