Shadow's Stand

by Sarah McCarty

“What the hell do you mean?”

  “Your colonel found me.”

  “Daniels? Son of a bitch!”

  “Yes. Son of a bitch. He made me come here. He wanted the gold.”

  “Why didn’t you just give it to him?”

  “It is my fresh start, not his.”

  “So you decided to blow it up?”

  “No, this I decided when he decided to kill me. I’m glad he hasn’t succeeded.”

  I do better with bluffing than killing. He remembered when she’d told him that. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “He is still trying.”

  Shadow froze. “Does he have a gun on you?”

  “I think he is dead.”

  That explained the tightness in her voice. “Don’t think about it.”

  “I cannot help it. I am sitting on him.”

  Sitting on him? “How big is that ledge, Fei?”

  “Not big. And getting smaller with every tremble.”

  “Can you shove his body off the ledge?”

  “No.”

  “Can you…”

  “Shadow, I can do nothing but sit here and lose my mind.”

  “You’re too stubborn to lose your mind.”

  “It is all I have left to lose.”

  The hole was big enough to get his arm through. There was only a slight bit of level ground until he reached air. She was right—the path was gone. From what he could see, where the path should have curved around had collapsed, resulting in a straight drop-off. Twisting about, he reached down. “Can you reach my hand?”

  Her fingers brushed his. He lunged forward and grabbed, holding on tightly when she almost slipped away. He closed his eyes; relief flowing through him with debilitating force at the contact. “Goddamn, Fei!”

  Then her fingers slipped away. He yanked his arm clear and shouted through the hole, “Fei!”

  “I am sorry. It is hard to balance on…him.”

  Jesus Christ. She was trying to balance on a body on a ledge just to touch his hand? “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t think. It’s not the time for hand-holding anyway.”

  “No, that time has passed.”

  “Fei…”

  “You broke my heart, Shadow Ochoa.”

  The catch in her voice devastated him and cracked the wall he’d erected around his emotions to protect her. The sob that followed spread that crack into a crevice. Pain seeped into his concentration, disrupting it.

  “Don’t cry, honey.”

  “You had no right.”

  It was like a puzzle, trying to figure out what part of the slide he could move without disturbing another.

  “Now is not the time.”

  “There is no better time. I am very good at what I do. I blew this cave, so it would be no more. Whatever hasn’t caved in yet will shortly.”

  He’d rather talk about how he’d hurt her. “I just wanted you safe.”

  “That was not your choice.”

  “The hell it wasn’t.”

  Something poked him in the hip.

  “What the hell?”

  “She’s got a point.”

  “Sam?”

  “We thought you might need something to support that mess. Found this stuff outside.”

  Shadow reached back and felt a plank poking his hip. It was about the length of his arm. “I’m going to need about two feet to get her out.”

  “Got it.” There was a pause and then, “Good thing she’s a small woman, otherwise I don’t think we’d have a prayer.”

  Shadow put his hand on the rock pile, imagining he could feel Fei’s hand on the other side. “We’ll have you out of there in just a minute, Fei.”

  “No, you won’t, but it is all right. I have had more than I expected in my life.”

  “I don’t want to hear this.”

  “I didn’t want to hear you tell me goodbye. We do not always get what we want.”

  Sam came back. “If it were me, I’d humor her.”

  Shadow swore and took the post Sam slid up along his side. “What did you have that exceeded your expectations?” She didn’t answer. “Fei?”

  “I’ve known great passion. I have loved. I made my fortune and I had a fresh start.”

  Her passion had only been for three days. Her love had sent her away, her fortune would never be spent and her fresh start had gotten her kidnapped. He only addressed the latter.

  “Some fresh start. It only lasted five days.”

  “It didn’t have to last, it just had to be. And it was more than I would have had, had I stayed where I didn’t belong. Where you tried to send me back to.”

  Shadow wedged the post against one side of the hole. Even to his untrained eye, it looked shaky. He went to work on the other side. “We’ve already been over that.”

  “No.” A rock came hurtling through the hole and bounced off his shoulder. “You went over it. You decided. You made it happen so it was good for you. You did not care that it broke my heart. You did not care that you could have been hanged and I would not have known. You didn’t care.”

  Son of a bitch. She was crying. “I cared,” he said.

  “If you cared, you would not have sent me away.”

  “What could you have done?”

  “Many things. Some foolish, some smart, but I would have had the choice to do something.”

  “You would have tried to break me out.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Honey, the dynamite would have been flying for sure.”

  She continued as if he hadn’t interrupted. “Or maybe I would have sat with you and held your hand while you waited for the trial. And maybe I would have sent a message to your family. And maybe if they hadn’t come, and nothing I tried worked, maybe I would have stood in the front of the crowd, holding your soul with my heart until the last, not letting you go alone to meet your ancestors.”

  “Goddamn, Fei. I wanted to spare you that.”

  “And maybe,” she continued, beating him up with the force of her truth. “Maybe, if you had allowed me my right, I would not hate you so much now.”

  “Fei.”

  “Do not talk to me anymore, Shadow. I do not want my last emotions to be ones of anger and regret. I want to remember what was, before you decided I did not matter.”

  “Nothing but you does matter.”

  “Pfft!”

  Sam slid another plank forward. “That woman has a brutal way with words.”

  Shadow took it. “She’s upset.”

  “She’s also right.”

  “I have a right to protect the people I love.”

  “But not to the point where it’s all about you.”

  He wedged the first plank in to the opening of the cavern and hammered it in with his fist. “It’s never about me.”

  “You’d better work on your listening skills, because when we get that woman out of there, you’re going to have a long haul to get back in her good graces.”

  Shadow forced the second plank into place. The opening was less than two feet. It would be tight. “I don’t want her hurt because of me.”

  “Yet she was, despite all your sacrifice, and now she’s sitting on a ledge on the dead body of the man who tried to kill her, breathing foul air, listening to you tell her you’re right and she’s wrong.”

  “Sam.”

  “Bella taught me that you can’t claim to love if you don’t know how to accept it.” Sam patted his leg. “I’d rather face twenty Apaches on the warpath than go through that ‘accepting’ thing again.”

  “Bella loves you.”

  “Maybe Fei loves you.”

  Shadow flinched away from the knowledge. “She thinks I’m a hero.”

  “I do not. I think you are a jerk,” Fei interjected.

  Sam laughed. “There you go.”

  “Shut up, Sam.” Shadow pushed the top brace in. The side threatened to fall.

  “Watch it!” Sam stretched, but couldn’t reach the post to help.

  “Christ,
it’s tight in here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Turn on your side and let me see if I can get in there to steady this one.”

  “Shit.” Shadow waited until Sam seemed to have a grip before letting go. “Got it?”

  “Sort of.”

  Another avalanche of rock tumbled down, but the makeshift bracing around the hole held.

  “It held,” he called to Fei. “I’ll have you out in a bit.”

  “Shadow,” she called back. “It is time for you to leave.”

  I hate you.

  He wasn’t leaving with those words between them.

  “I’m taking that holding as a good sign,” Sam grunted. “You clear out as much of that rock as you can, and I’ll go get the rope.”

  “Done.” Sam left. In his wake there was only silence.

  “Fei? Talk to me, honey.”

  “Why?”

  “So I know you’re alive.”

  “I am alive.”

  “Good.”

  Moving the debris wasn’t as easy as he’d hoped. Because of the tight confines of the tunnel, the debris had to be distributed down its length in such a way that it wouldn’t block progress. And every time Shadow crept back and forth, more of the tunnel wall seemed to disintegrate.

  Sam came back. “Caine says to get a move on. You can see up top where the ground is sinking.”

  “Shit.” Knotting a loop in the rope, he fed it into the hole and over the drop-off.

  “Fei. I’m lowering the rope.”

  “All right.”

  From deep in the cave, there came a rumble. Fei screamed. Shadow could hear the rock falling down. “Grab the rope.”

  The order was for Sam and for Fei.

  From above, Tracker called, “Move!”

  “What’s happening?” he shouted.

  “It’s collapsing from the other end!” Caine shouted back.

  “Fei, get that rope around you.”

  She didn’t answer immediately. “Fei?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Pull!” Shadow shouted up the hill.

  “Slow and steady,” Sam corrected, backing up, giving them room.

  Shadow stretched into the hole, fighting back the horror as the wooden braces cut into his side. As long as he was in this hole, Fei had a way out. And Fei was getting out. He felt the touch of her fingers. The brush of her hand. Locking his fingers around her wrist, he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I’ve got you.”

  Her fingers locked around his. “And I’ve got you.”

  For a second they hung like that, him holding her, her holding him. Shadow couldn’t see Fei’s face, but he could feel her pulse beneath his thumb. It was racing.

  “I won’t let you go.”

  “You have before.”

  “Never again.”

  She shoved something at him over the lip of the ledge. “What’s that?”

  “A book Daniels kept, documenting all his schemes. He was a very vain man. He saw himself as a hero. It will free you.”

  “Stop pushing that thing at me.”

  “It will free you.”

  “What I want free is you.”

  “Shadow—”

  “Give me the damn thing.”

  “Do not lose it—”

  Stuffing the book in his shirt, he cut her off, “Brace your feet against the wall and try to keep straight until you can see the hole, then lie down and we’ll drag you through.”

  “I want to tell you.”

  “Tell me when we’re clear.”

  “But I wish you to know—”

  “You hate me. I heard you.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Pull,” he hollered before Fei could say more.

  He inched backward along with the rope, staying in the hole as long as he could, unwilling to leave her exposed any longer than possible. The scariest moment he ever lived was the one when he had to let go of her hand.

  “Don’t let go of that rope, Fei. No matter what.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Back on out now, Shadow,” Caine called.

  “Pull,” Shadow called, pressing back against the wall, holding the lantern above his head. It was a tight fit, but she’d make it.

  “Goddammit, Shadow, get out first!”

  Not without Fei. “Get her out of here.”

  The rope pulled taut. Inch by inch, Fei came over the ledge. Above them, the cave groaned loud and long. A death cry. There was no more time.

  “Haul her out now!”

  They did. Fei went, speeding by him like a stick riding a hard current.

  For a brief moment he saw her eyes and the accusation there, before her shoulder hit a rock and she turned the other way.

  He told himself it didn’t matter how she felt. She was safe. She’d get over it. He’d done the right thing. It didn’t help.

  “We’ve got her,” Sam hollered. “Now haul your ass out of there.”

  He started working backward. Rock sprayed down, first small and then bigger. A sprinkle to a torrent, pounding him with the force of fists. Dirt and debris slammed his skull into the ground and began filling in the holes around him, beginning to entomb him in a slow steady trickle. He couldn’t move.

  “Shadow!”

  Fei. His Fei.

  “Someone grab her! Don’t let her back in there,” he heard someone shout.

  “Goddamn! She’s quick.”

  Something touched his leg. Grabbed his ankle.

  “Shadow, move!”

  Fei? She wasn’t supposed to be there. “Get out.”

  A rope slipped around his ankles.

  “Pull!” she screamed.

  “You first,” he whispered, pushing back with his hands. “Get safe.”

  Fei didn’t answer. He didn’t know where she was. Was she out?

  Get out.

  The tugging at his feet increased and he slid along. He tried to twist around. He caught a glimpse of her at his feet, guiding the rope. He saw the crack start to break across the ceiling. Saw the end coming.

  Pushing up on his hands, he lunged for her, kicking as hard as he could, knocking her through the opening and into the light.

  Live.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THAT NIGHT, SHADOW STOOD at the window of one of the hotel rooms they’d rented. Pulling back the curtain with two fingers, he watched the street below. There was nothing untoward. No men lurked in strategic locations. No women hung in windows. All there was were the normal comings and goings of a sleepy town on Sunday evening. Which was good. From the looks of things he’d have time to rest and heal up.

  A twinge in his shoulder had him rubbing it and rotating it in a small circle. There wasn’t a muscle in his body that didn’t ache. He was bruised from head to toe, and would likely be stiff for several days, but as it was a miracle he wasn’t dead, he wasn’t complaining. The memory of being in that cave would be with him a long time. The moment when the cave collapsed and Fei had been in the path of all that falling rock would haunt him to the grave.

  There were moments in a man’s life that defined the right and wrong of his grasp on the world. That moment had been one for him. He’d always thought himself a cold-blooded killer. A man in whom the softer emotions had long since been beaten out, but in that moment when he’d watched the ceiling crack and known Fei would die if he didn’t get her out, he’d seen with crystal clarity his one thing. He loved Fei. For a man who’d thought he was empty inside, it was quite a revelation. It also scared the shit out of him.

  He wasn’t sure what Fei saw in that moment, but in the aftermath, she’d been madder than a hornet. As soon they’d pulled him out and she’d been certain he was alive, she’d spun on her heel and demanded to be taken home. When she’d learned they couldn’t take her home until they knew what mischief the colonel had left in his wake, she’d huffed and demanded to be taken to a hotel. Away from him.