“Jasper! Stop!” The woman rushed over to Jasper, ignoring the gunfire. She blocked Callie’s shot.
Then Seth emerged from the tunnel entrance, running to the side, away from Callie. She took one second to enjoy him coming to save her. Their eyes met through leaping flames. He nodded, smiled, then took aim at Jasper. Callie leveled her gun.
A crack of shattering stone echoed through the cave. Jasper dropped with a sharp scream. The rumble of stones made Callie look overhead for a cave-in, but the roof held. She rose to her knees and saw that Jasper had broken through the floor up to his hips.
His eyes went wide. “Bea! Help me!”
She was on the same side of the flames as Jasper and she reached for him. “Grab my hand!”
Their eyes met. More passed between them in an instant than seemed possible to Callie. Love. Heartbreak. Regret. Maybe the knowledge that even now it wasn’t too late to decide where Jasper would spend eternity.
He reached for Bea, and the floor collapsed and he vanished. The little cylinder plunged into the pit after him. His scream went on and on until it faded away. They didn’t hear him hit bottom.
The woman, Bea, collapsed with a cry of terror. Callie leaped from her hiding place and rushed toward her.
“Callie, no!” Seth shouted. The burning kerosene was an arch that curved around Bea, and left Callie on one side of it and Seth on the other.
Callie looked across the flames to see Bea hanging from her stomach on the edge of the hole. Her arms clung to the broken floor.
“Stay back, Callie! The whole floor can cave in any second.”
“I have to help her.” Callie whipped her coat off and dropped it on the fire, then started moving toward Bea.
“No!” Seth jumped the flames and threw himself at Callie, tackling her. As they landed, only feet from Bea, the floor broke again. Bea screamed and fell. Only her fingers still clung to the lip of the hole.
She screamed and cried out, “Help me! Please, God . . .”
“We have to help her, Seth. She took care of me. She kept him from hurting me.”
Seth met her eyes. She saw sanity. Clear, bright sanity shining in his wild blue eyes. Callie’s heart almost broke with love for him.
With a jerk of his chin he turned and, lying flat on his stomach, grabbed Bea’s hands. “Get behind me, Callie. Hang on to my feet. We don’t know how much more of this floor will break off. I need you to anchor me.”
Quickly she wrapped her arms around his legs and held on tight.
“Climb up!” Seth shouted. “Here, grab my hand!”
“I can’t . . .” Bea cried.
The floor cracked and Seth fell forward to his waist.
Bea’s scream told Callie the woman was still hanging on.
“Don’t let go, Callie!” Seth’s shout gave Callie strength. Her desperate prayers helped even more.
Then an arm reached past her and grabbed the waistband of Seth’s pants. “I’m here, Seth.”
Callie recognized Ethan’s voice.
“Hang on, Bea. We’ve got help.” Callie knew the woman’s weight added to Seth’s was too much. How much more of this floor might break off?
“It’s still thin under my legs, Ethan. We’ve got to get off it.”
The fire crackled within inches of where Ethan stood. He ignored it and pulled until inch by inch Seth started emerging from the hole.
“Heath, get the rope around Seth!” Rafe was there, giving orders.
A rope thrown with sharp precision settled over Seth. Yet one more break in this floor and Seth would be gone forever. If Seth hadn’t been busy fighting for his life, he’d’ve smiled to hear his big brothers’ voices.
“Get your arm through the rope.” And Heath’s, too.
Seth looked into Bea’s terrified eyes. “Can you let go of my hand and grab the rope?”
The woman’s eyes were wild with fear. She had her hand sunk into his sleeves. She couldn’t let go to climb up his body or take the rope. Seth ripped one hand loose from her clawing grip. She screamed as he shot his left arm under the rope and quickly caught her again. As he was about to pry her other hand loose to get the rope around himself more securely, the floor snapped again. He plunged forward and jerked to a stop, dangling from one arm and his neck. Holding on to Bea’s hand with the other arm.
The rope ripped at the skin on the right side of his throat. Bea’s hand slipped.
“Hold on, Heath!” Rafe yelled. “Callie, get back.”
“How far back is it thin, Seth?”
Seth glanced over his shoulder, and his stomach twisted as he looked along the bottom of the stone just above his head. “It’ll break all the way to the tunnel you came down.”
Seth gritted his teeth as the rope cut into his arm. He lifted his and Bea’s weight enough so he could slide the rope to support them at his shoulder socket instead of just his arm.
The way he dangled now, he could get a better grip on Bea. If the rope would just hold their weight and the stupid floor would stop collapsing, they’d be fine.
“Get back into the tunnel, Callie. Help Heath hang on to the lasso. Eth, you next, get back. You got a firm hold now, Seth?”
Not really. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Seth’s eyes shifted downward, thinking of the man who’d started all this. He couldn’t see the bottom, even with the lights from the dancing flames overhead. Whatever this pit was, it was deep. To fall here meant certain death.
Bea looked half mad with fear, but she reached up with the hand he wasn’t holding and caught hold. If Seth let her go, he’d be pulled up easily, and with far less risk to his brothers and Callie. Instead, he tightened his grip on her hand, this woman who was part of a scheme that almost cost Seth his wife and now risked his brothers.
The rope pulled him up an inch, then another. “Can you grab my belt, Bea?”
Much as he hated risking so many people he loved, he wouldn’t have dropped her, even if he could’ve gotten her fingernails pried loose.
Another inch and the floor crumbled again. Seth dropped two feet with a jarring thud. Bea let loose one of her ear-piercing screams. Seth looked up and saw the rope sliding back and forth against the sharp edge of the rocks. But now, finally, it was against solid rock.
“I think it’s done breaking, Rafe! I’m against a wall now.”
“How many times have I told you all not to come down here?” Rafe said, now that the rope was being drawn up steadily.
With four hands lending strength, Seth popped up to the surface in seconds. Then Ethan’s hands slid under Seth’s arms, and he was dragged up onto the hard, blessed rock.
While Seth was being helped by Ethan, Rafe reached down and grabbed the back of the woman’s dress. Yet even after Bea was pulled to safety, she still didn’t let go of Seth.
Finally she was peeled off of him. Seth thought she took chunks of his skin with her, but then the woman was wise to hang on tight, so he didn’t complain.
Seth scrambled well away from the ledge until his back was up against a thick wall. He’d taken one deep breath when Callie launched herself into his arms.
“Callie!” He wrapped his arms around her. “My beautiful wife.” He held her almost as tight as Bea had held him. But without the fingernails.
“The first time I laid eyes on you, you were wearing a pink blouse scattered with white flowers and a black skirt.”
She kissed the side of his neck and he almost forgot what he’d been talking about.
“You were a mess, your hair mostly out of its braid.” He sank his fingers into her hair. “Just like it is now. And your sleeves were rolled up. You were soaking wet with sweat in that overheated hospital. I’d never dreamed there could be a woman so beautiful. And you were crying for me, trying to wake me up from a nightmare. The first thing I said when you woke me up was, ‘You’re not Rafe or Ethan.’ ”
Callie gasped and pulled back. “That is what you said. Seth, you remember!”
Happiness soake
d all the way into his soul—his soul that wasn’t left behind in some dank old cavern. It was firmly seated right in his own body and given over to the keeping of the Lord. “I surely do remember everything that passed between us. Every word.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Every kiss.”
“Well, let’s get going.” A hard slap on his back stopped him from adding another kiss to his memories.
Rafe, always organized, said, “Julia’s crazy with worry.”
Seth turned and saw Bea, crying, staring at the hole.
“We have to try and save him . . .” Bea said, taking a step toward the hole.
Ethan moved forward and blocked her from getting any closer to the edge.
“It’s too deep,” Seth said gently. “I couldn’t see the bottom. He didn’t survive the fall.”
“But we can’t just leave him down there. It’s like being buried in . . .”
Seth didn’t say it, but he knew what Bea was thinking. Her man had made his choices, and he’d been swallowed into the belly of the earth. To help the poor woman accept the truth, he picked up a small stone.
“Listen,” he said, his voice cutting through her crying. Seth then tossed the stone into the hole. Seconds passed. Two. Ten. Thirty. They never heard it hit bottom.
“Oh, Jasper . . .” Bea whispered. Tears began streaking down her cheeks.
Callie shook her head. “And all for diamonds.”
“What about diamonds? Is that what this is about?” Rafe asked. “That was the Jasper who Wendell Gilliland stole the diamonds from?”
Seth suspected none of them knew the whole of what had happened. But the mention of diamonds lifted his eyes to the ledge above the fish on the wall. The fish was still frozen in stone, but the diamonds were gone—down in the bottomless pit with Jasper.
He finally had his diamonds back.
“Let’s get out of here.” Seth slid his arm around Callie’s waist and turned her toward daylight and family and home.
As they walked out, Seth realized that the next time he came down here, he’d come for a better reason than to search for a part of himself. And he’d never be reckless in this place again. “You know, Rafe, you were right.”
“About what?”
“This place is dangerous.”
Rafe growled. Seth shifted Callie around in his arms to use her as a shield. Rafe’s eyes narrowed, Ethan grinned, and Seth laughed as they all began making their way out of the cavern.
Chapter
31
When they reached the place in the cavern where Rafe would split off, not far from the hole that had been the source of so much pain, instead of keeping up his usual forward march, Rafe stopped and turned to his brothers.
“Let’s go look at that hole. Together.” He looked at Seth and Callie, then at Heath. “All of us.”
A few moments later, the Kincaids stood beside that awful hole. Bea was there too, though she’d withdrawn into herself now, silent and grief-stricken.
Rafe raised his lantern and stared at the dark place.
“What are you thinking, big brother?” Seth asked.
“I’m going down there.”
Seth gasped. Not real loud but they all heard it. His eyes went to Rafe’s lantern. “I’ve never done that.”
Rafe spun around from the hole to look at Seth. “In all these years, with all the exploring you’ve done, you’ve never climbed down there?”
“Nope, not since the accident.”
Ethan pointed to a black corner of the hole. “Looks like it goes on forever there. No bottom to it.”
“Like the hole that man Jasper fell into,” Heath added.
Bea made a soft sound of pain, but silenced it almost immediately.
“Do you know how deep it goes?” Rafe asked Seth. “You’re the one who knows this place better than anyone else.”
“I told you—I’ve always avoided it.” That suddenly struck Seth as very strange. “Let’s go.”
He stepped forward and started climbing down. “This is where I climbed up that day, when Ethan goaded me into it.”
“I was cruel to you, Seth. I don’t know where I found it in myself to be so heartless.”
Seth glanced up at his brother. “It’s all right, Eth. I understand now.”
It wasn’t an easy climb. Twenty feet or so, with slim handholds and toeholds—far enough apart that Seth was surprised he’d been able to reach them when he was only nine.
Below him there was no level spot. The hole, about twelve feet across, exposed a floor of broken stone that had shattered and fallen. The floor itself was jagged, sloping toward that black corner.
Seth dropped the last few feet and moved to make room for his brothers. His throat thickened as he thought of being down here before. He’d been so badly hurt. Trapped. Burning . . .
Clearing his throat, he looked up at Callie and waved. She’d stayed up top—along with Bea—but was watching, ready to help if called on.
Seth backed up farther until he passed the rusted-out lantern. It had been lying down here all these years. Then it all came back to him in a rush. But not in a nightmare, not through the tormented eyes of a badly injured little boy.
He watched calmly with a man’s clear thinking as Rafe and Ethan helped Heath reach the bottom. The three of them turned to Seth.
“You fell down here?” Heath looked around, wide-eyed. A little boy.
Picking up a stone, Rafe went to the hole in the corner and tossed it in. It hit bottom almost instantly. “It’s not even deep.” Rafe had brought his lantern down and he extended it over the hole. “Look. It’s nothing—just a drop of about four or five feet. Doesn’t go anywhere.”
“I always figured it went all the way to hell.” Ethan came up beside Rafe and looked down.
“You’re right,” Seth said. “It’s nothing . . . I’m going down there.”
Rafe caught Seth’s arm. “No, that’s reckless. We don’t know if the floor’s solid or not.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.” Seth looked at Rafe, then at Ethan. It was a painful moment. A clear moment. Rafe being in control, Ethan feeling everything too deeply, Seth being reckless.
But they were doing it as men. Strong men with common sense. Seth laughed.
Before long, his brothers joined in.
Well, two of them anyway.
“Nothing funny about this,” Heath said. The pint-sized kid was the only one of them with any real sense—at least when it came to this pit. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t obsessed with this hole in the ground. He was curious, though, like any young boy his age.
Seth’s laughter died when he noticed Heath picking up the rusted-out lantern. “You know, I always figured that lantern shouldn’t be moved.”
Heath frowned. “Why would you leave it here?”
“I guess I always thought of it as a kind of tombstone. In a lot of ways we all died that day. And came back different. I wasn’t innocent anymore. I knew the cost of my recklessness.”
“My childhood died,” Rafe said.
Ethan crossed his arms. “Our whole family died.”
Heath shrugged. “No one died. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like you found yourselves in a tight spot and you were tough enough to get yourselves out. Seth’s got some ugly scars, but he still managed to marry about the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen. She’s way too good for him.”
“I have to admit, that’s the truth,” Seth said.
“It is for a fact,” Callie called out from the rim above.
“The nightmares are annoying, though. Can you stop that?” Heath asked.
“I’ll try.” Seth thought he really might be able to after today.
“And Julia and Audra are way nicer’n either of you deserve.” Heath looked from Rafe to Ethan.
“No denying that,” Ethan said.
Rafe shrugged. “I married well.”
“And it sounds like your ma was on the crazy side.”
Heath sounded real chipper about that. Seth
suspected it was because the boy’s own ma had been a real fine woman.
“And heaven knows our pa was worthless,” Heath went on. “He didn’t take care of us worth a lick. It’s a wonder any of us grew up to amount to much with him as an example.”
Funny but Seth had never really thought of his pa as worthless. Well, maybe he’d thought it a few times since he found out about Heath. But now he was thinking about it and the boy had a point.
“I think you got through that day in good shape,” Heath said. “I mean, if Ethan hadn’t dropped the lantern that burnt you, and if Rafe hadn’t pulled so hard that he and Ethan both cracked their heads till they were both stupid, and if you’d have jumped into that black hole to hide from the fire . . . well, you’d’ve all been fine. But that would’ve been a loco thing to do without knowing how deep it was. Things like that happen when you’re in a tight spot. Yep, I think you handled it pretty well.”
Ethan rubbed the back of his head, while Rafe touched the scar on his temple. Seth didn’t bother touching his scars. It was too hard to pick just one.
“You know what, Heath?” Seth said.
“What?” That sullen expression was back. Heath wasn’t about to admit he wanted his brothers to like him.
Seth smiled at him. “I think having a little brother is going to be fun.”
“Yeah, finally someone you’re tough enough to beat up.” Ethan added his charming grin.
“I can take you any day. I’d prove it too, if you were worth the bother.” Seth slapped Ethan on the back just a little too hard.
Even bossy Rafe found a chuckle. “We’ll whip ’em both into shape when we’ve got a few spare seconds, Heath.”
Heath gave in to temptation and let the corners of his mouth turn up.
The Kincaid men stood there, in that pit that was the heart of all their worst fears, and laughed.
“Let’s go home.” Seth turned and scaled the pit like it was a stairway. Why hadn’t he ever climbed down here in all these years? “I want to spend the rest of this day with my wife.”
When they reached the top, Rafe said, “Heath, we’re going that way.” He pointed to the other side of the pit.
Mary Connealy - [Kincaid Brides 03] Page 24
