by B. J Daniels
Austin reached across to take her hand. “Ah, childhood memories. I can’t even begin to tell you about all the terrible things my brothers and I did to each other. It’s just what siblings do.”
She shook her head. “I hate that I did that to her.”
“And yet, when the chips were down, she went back into those caves with you.”
She smiled. “If I’m right.”
His voice softened. “You’ve been right so far about everything.”
* * *
GILLIAN FELT A lump form in her throat. Her pulse buzzed at the look in his eyes. If he kissed her again... “I should—”
“Yes,” he said, letting go of her. “We should get some sleep. Sounds like we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow.” He rose and stepped back, looking uncertain as if he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.
She thought of being in his arms and how easy it would be to find herself in his bed. She told herself she was feeling like this about him because he’d saved her life, but a part of her knew it was more than that. It was...chemistry? She almost laughed at the thought. It sounded so...high school.
But she couldn’t deny how powerful it had felt when he’d kissed her. Or now, the way he’d looked at her with those dark eyes. She marveled at the feeling since it was something she hadn’t felt in a long time. Nor had she ever experienced anything this intense. The air around them seemed to buzz with it.
He’d felt it, too. She’d seen it in his expression. What made her laugh was that she could tell he was even more afraid of whatever was happening between them than she was.
“Something funny?” he asked.
Gillian shook her head and took a step back in the direction of her room. She realized she loved feeling like this. It didn’t matter that it couldn’t last. “Thank you again for everything.”
He smiled at that and almost looked bashful.
“Everything,” she repeated and stepped through the doorway, closing the adjoining door to lean against it. Her heart was pounding, her skin tingling and there was an ache inside her that made her feel silly and happy at the unexpected longing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Marc spent the night in a crummy old motel. He couldn’t go home. Not only were the cops looking for him but also he had Victor’s enforcers on his tail. Victor had failed yesterday at the hospital. That meant he’d be in an even fouler mood. Marc hoped he wouldn’t have to see him for a while. Never would be even better.
He’d fallen asleep after staring at the map for hours. His face hurt like hell, not to mention his shoulder. He’d drunk a pint of whiskey he’d picked up at the bar. It hadn’t helped. He thought about changing the bandage, but wasn’t up to looking at the damage this morning in the mirror.
Picking up the map, he stared again at the circle he’d drawn around Helena. Maybe he should expand it. That one day, she’d driven a hundred miles. He made another circle, this one fifty miles out around the city.
Where the hell did she go? He had no idea since he couldn’t conceive of a place she might think to hide the ledger. She knew him and he’d thought he’d known her. She would have had to up her game to beat him, and she would have known that.
He thought back to the days before he’d awakened still half drugged and found her note telling him how things were going to be now.
Marc started to shake his head in frustration when he recalled coming home early one day to find Andy crying and Rebecca looking...looking guilty, he thought now. She’d been standing in the kitchen.
He’d told her to shut the kid up, which she had. Then she’d disappeared into the bedroom to change her clothes. He frowned now. Why had she needed to change her clothes? At the time, he couldn’t have cared less. They hardly ever had sex except when he forced the issue. He hadn’t been in the mood that day or he might have followed her into the bedroom and taken advantage of the situation.
What had she been wearing that she’d had to change? His pulse jumped and he sat up straighter as he imagined her standing before him—before she’d changed her clothing. She was wearing the pair of canvas pants he’d bought her for hunting. She’d only worn them once when she’d tagged along. It had been early in their marriage. He’d made the trip as miserable as he could since he had been hoping she wouldn’t ask to come along again.
Why would she have been wearing such heavy-duty pants? He recalled that their knees had been soiled. And Rebecca’s hair had been a mess. She’d looked as if she’d been working out in the yard. But there’d been snow on the ground. Where had she been that she’d gotten what had looked like mud on the pant knees?
He realized with a start that it must have been the same day she’d put so many miles on her car.
He looked at the map again.
* * *
THE NO TRESPASSING sign was large, the letters crude, but the meaning clear enough. Austin looked from it to Gillian.
The climb up the steep mountain reminded him of the difference in altitude between Montana and Texas. Add to that a sleepless night in the motel knowing Gillian was just yards away and he found himself out of breath from the climb.
They’d wound up a trail of sorts from the creek bottom through boulders and brush to reach this dark hole in the cliff. It looked like rattlesnake country to him. He was glad it was winter and cold even though there were only patches of snow in the shade—just as there had been near her family’s cabin.
It amazed him how different the weather could be within the state. “It’s the mountains,” Gillian had said when he’d mentioned it. “Always more snow near the higher mountains.”
“This isn’t a mountain?” he’d asked with a laugh as he looked out into the distance. He could see the lake, the frozen surface glinting in the winter sunlight.
“Have these caves always been posted like this?” he asked as he looked again at the sign.
“It’s always been closed to the public,” she said with a shrug.
Great, he thought. They would probably end up in jail. But if they found the ledger, they would at least have a bargaining chip to get out.
“Would your sister really come up here alone?” he asked. He couldn’t help being skeptical. Rebecca was desperate, and desperate people often did extraordinary things. Still... “What about her son? She couldn’t have brought him.”
“It definitely isn’t like Becky, I’ll admit. She must have trusted someone with Andy, someone none of us knew about. The more I’m learning about my sister, the more secrets I realize she kept from me.”
They were wasting time, but he wasn’t that anxious about going into the caves. He didn’t think Gillian was either, now that they were here. The adorable young Luke Snider wasn’t in there with his friends to entice her.
They’d stopped at an outdoor shop on the way and bought rope and headlamps, along with a first aid kit, hiking boots and a backpack. He’d brought water and a few energy bars. He hoped they wouldn’t need anything else.
“I’m assuming you remember the way?” he asked.
Gillian nodded but not with as much enthusiasm as he would have liked. “It’s been a while.”
“Your sister remembered,” he reminded her.
“Yes, that’s assuming I’m right about her message. Also, this was probably the most traumatic thing that happened to my sister until she married Marc Stewart.”
“You’re not reassuring me,” Austin said as he stepped into the cool shade of the overhanging rock. The cave opening was large. They climbed over several large boulders at the entrance before the cave narrowed and grew dark. They turned on their lamps. A few candy wrappers, water bottles and soda cans were littered on the path back into the cave. Apparently he and Gillian weren’t the only ones who’d ignored the no trespassing sign.
They hadn’t gone far before the cave nar
rowed even more. Gillian sat down on a rock that had been worn smooth and slithered through the hole feetfirst. He followed to find the cave opened up a little more once they were inside.
Austin could feel them going deeper into the mountain. They hadn’t gone far when they came to a room of sorts. Water dripped from the rocks over their heads. The air suddenly felt much colder.
“You doing all right?” he asked, his voice echoing a little.
“It was easier when I was sixteen,” she said, but gave him a smile.
“That was because you were in love and chasing some cute boy.”
Their gazes met for a moment and he felt as he had last night after he’d kissed her. He tamped down the feeling, not about to explore it right now. Probably never. “We should keep moving.”
She nodded and led the way through a slit in the rocks that curved back into a tunnel of sorts. They climbed deeper and deeper into the mountain.
* * *
MARC STEWART HAD shared one shameful secret with his wife. He was claustrophobic. He hated being in tight spaces. When he was a kid, a neighbor boy had locked him in a large trunk. He’d thought his heart was going to beat its way out of his chest before the idiot kid let him out.
As he parked next to the white SUV below the mountain, he’d told himself if he hadn’t already been in a foul mood, this would have definitely put him in one. Even when he’d seen the gulch on the map, he hadn’t wanted to believe it.
But at the back of his mind, he remembered bits and pieces of stories he’d overheard between his wife and her sister. Being trapped in some cave had been one of the worst experiences of Rebecca’s life. Somehow her sister Gillian was to blame.
That he knew about the caves was no mystery. He’d grown up in Helena. Every kid knew about them. Most kids had explored them. Marc Stewart was the exception.
The last thing he didn’t want to believe was that his wife had gone back into the cave where she’d experienced the “then” worst thing in her life. He could imagine she’d experienced worse things since then, him being one of them.
The moment he’d seen the rig the deputy had been driving parked next to the creek below the caves, he’d sworn, hating that his hunch had been right. As he cut the engine on the old pickup, he told himself that he didn’t have to go in the caves. He could just sit right here and wait for them to come out with the ledger.
That made him feel a little better before he realized that once they saw another vehicle, even a strange one, parked down here, they might hide the ledger. Add to that, the cowboy was a sheriff’s deputy. He would probably be armed.
No, Marc realized he was going to have to go up there. He wouldn’t have to go inside, though. He could wait and ambush them when they came out.
Getting out, he locked the pickup and looked around. He didn’t think he’d been followed, but he couldn’t be sure. Not that it mattered. He should have the ledger in his possession within the hour.
Then what?
Turn it over to Victor? Make a deal with the feds? Or make a run with it?
He didn’t kid himself. He would be damned lucky to get out of this alive.
He thought of Rebecca and felt his stomach churn as he climbed the mountain. The steepness of the slope forced him to stop a half dozen times on the way up. He was trying to hurry, but he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. If he didn’t get to the top before they came out...
What difference would it make if some Texas deputy shot him? Really, in the grand scheme of things, wouldn’t that be better than what Victor probably had planned for him? he thought as he stopped to rest a dozen yards from the cave opening. Maybe that would be the kindest ending to all of this.
The thought spurred him on. He reached the opening and slipped behind a rock to wait. The winter sun was bright but not warm. He’d never been good at waiting. His mind mulled over his predicament until his head ached.
He glanced toward the opening. Still no sound. He couldn’t wait any longer. He was going to have to go in. Why hadn’t he realized the cave was the perfect place to dispose of the bodies? The last thing he wanted to do was kill them outside the cave where the deed would be discovered much quicker. But if he killed them in the cave, hell, maybe he could make it look like an accident. Drop some rocks on them or something.
Warmed by that idea, he pulled his gun and headed into the cave.
* * *
DEEP IN THE CAVE, Gillian stopped to get her bearings. Her headlamp flashed across the cold, dark rock. “It’s just a little farther,” she said. “I remember it being...easier, though, at sixteen.”
“Everything is easier when you’re sixteen and think you’re in love.”
She smiled at that. “Was there a girl when you were sixteen?”
“Nope. I was still into snakes, frogs and fishin’. It took me another year or two before I would give up a day fishing to chase a girl.”
Gillian chuckled as they moved on, climbing and slipping over rocks, as they went deeper and deeper into the mountain. She thought of Becky and how she’d forced her to come along that day—on her birthday. A wave of guilt nearly swamped her when she thought of how scared Becky had been.
Then she was reminded that if she was right, Becky had come in here alone. Gillian smiled to herself, proud of her sister. She’d always felt that she needed to protect her. She realized that she’d never thought of Becky as being strong. As it turned out, Becky was a lot tougher than any of them had thought.
She saw the opening around the next bend. Rebecca hadn’t been stuck exactly at this point in the cave. The opening was plenty wide. It was just that the trail dropped a good four feet as you slipped through the hole. Unable to see where she was going to land, Rebecca had frozen.
Gillian remembered a high shelf in the rocks. She scrambled up the side of the cave wall to run her hand over it, positive that would be where her sister had hidden the ledger. Nothing.
No, don’t tell me all of this has been for nothing.
As she started to climb down, she saw it. A worn, thick notebook with a faded leather cover, the edges of the pages as discolored and weathered as the jacket. She grabbed it and almost lost her balance.
As usual, Austin was there to keep her from falling. He caught her, lifting her down. She clutched the ledger to her chest, tears of relief brimming in her eyes. Finally, they could stop Marc.
“Are you sure that’s it?” he asked.
She held it out to him. He glanced at the contents for a moment from the light of his headlamp before handing it back.
“No, you hang on to it,” she said.
He smiled and stuck it inside his jacket.
She started to move past him on the trail they’d just come down when he grabbed her arm. “Shh,” he whispered next to her ear.
Gillian froze as she heard someone coming.
* * *
AUSTIN HEARD WHAT sounded like a boot sole scrapping across a rock as the person stumbled. He motioned for her to turn off her headlamp as he did the same.
It pitched them both into total darkness. “You don’t think...?” Gillian whispered.
That Marc had followed them? He wasn’t about to underestimate the man. A whole lot was riding on this ledger. Marc had already proven how far he would go to get his hands on it. Austin hoped it was only kids coming into the cave, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
He touched Gillian’s hand. She flinched in surprise before he took her hand and led her back a few yards in the cave. He remembered a recessed area they’d passed. If they could wedge themselves into it... Otherwise, if they stayed where they were, they would be sitting ducks.
He found the opening by brushing his free hand along the rocks. Stopping, he drew her closer and whispered, “There’s a gap in the rocks where we can hide. Can you slip in there?” He led her
to it, still holding her hand. As she slipped in, he moved back into the crevice with her, trying to make as little noise as possible. From there, with luck, they would be able to see who passed without being noticed—if they stayed quiet. If it was Marc, then he would have recognized Austin’s rental SUV. If it was kids...or cops...
The footfalls on the rocks grew louder. Austin pulled his weapon, but kept it at his side, hidden, in case it was the authorities or kids.
It didn’t sound like kids, though. It sounded like a single individual moving stealthily toward them.
A beam of light flickered off the walls of the cave. Austin pressed himself against Gillian as the light splashed over the rock next to him.
* * *
MARC FELT THE cave walls closing in on him. He swung his flashlight, the beam flickering off the close confines of the walls as he moved deeper into the cavern. He was having trouble breathing.
His chest hurt, his breathing a wheeze. He stumbled again and almost fell. When he caught himself on the rock wall, he lost his grip on the flashlight. It hit, rolled, smacked a rock and went out. For a few terrifying moments, he was plunged into blackness before it flickered back on.
He lurched to the flashlight, the beam dimmer than before. Picking it up, he stood, listening. Earlier when he’d entered the cave, he’d thought he heard noises. Now he heard nothing. Was it possible he’d taken the wrong turn? The thought made his heart pound so hard it hurt. He tried to settle down. There hadn’t been a fork or even a tunnel through the rocks other than the one he was on large enough to move through. He couldn’t have taken a wrong turn.
More to the point, Gillian and the cowboy were in here. He’d recognized the SUV. If only he could be patient enough to find them. What if they had heard him coming? What if it was a trap and the cowboy was waiting for him around the next corner of the cave?
He shone the light into the dark hole ahead of him. His breath came out in rasps. Suddenly, there didn’t seem to be enough air. If he didn’t get out of here now...
