A Valley to Die For (28 page)

“If I don’t, what then? He’ll shoot either you or Susan on sight, and you’re the only one who knows how to handle that gun. I don’t think he’ll hurt me even if he sees me, and he isn’t going to see me. It sounds like he was the one up on the plateau yesterday, though, if he’s seen us together enough to call you my... boyfriend. He wouldn’t have thought that simply by getting a glimpse of you in my house. That’s why he wasn’t in his office. He was here, breaking into my house and spying on us. I’d already told him Susan and I planned to look through the caves. If he heard us talking on the creek bank yesterday, then he found out when we were coming here, and that you’d be with us.”

Evan’s voice came again. “I’ve got explosives.” He laughed. “I’ll shut you in the cave, just like Aïda and Radames. Isn’t that romantic?”

“Oh!” Carrie said. “Henry, let
go
of me. What else can we do? What if he really does have explosives? There is no other way out now. We can’t chance waiting until Roger gets home or Shirley calls for help. Susan will come back to you as soon as we find an opening I can use.”

This time Henry didn’t try to stop her. He handed her the car keys and awkwardly tightened his arm around her for a moment. After giving him what she hoped was a strong, confident smile, she got to her feet.

“God go with you,” he said in a gruff voice as she followed Susan into the tunnel. She didn’t look back. She didn’t want him to see her face.

Chapter XXII

The first two tunnels off the cave’s main room were dead ends. Carrie crawled along each of them as fast as she could, not caring that she was tearing holes in her coat and slopping muck all over herself. One of the tunnels continued beyond where she could crawl, but there was no hope—she couldn’t get through.

She was sweating from exertion when she backed out and re-joined Susan in the central room for the second time. “There’s no opening there either,” she said. “I’m going to have to try that tunnel with the water sounds coming from it. Pray it works.”

The tunnels were all above the level of the floor where they stood, and there were few toeholds, but Susan helped push and boost Carrie for a third time, and she started off toward the sound of rushing water.

“Don’t take time to come back if you find an opening where you can get out,” Susan said. “Just bang a rock against the cave wall three times. That way your voice won’t carry to the outside if you’re close to an entrance. I’ll signal back when I hear you. I’ll pull myself up and wait here in the opening so I can be ready to come if you need my help. Be careful. That water scares me.”

Everything about this scares me, Carrie thought as she crawled into the darkness, holding the flashlight in one hand and balancing awkwardly on two knees and the other hand. But there was no hope for it. She just had to find a way out, and only this way was left.

She could tell she was heading downhill, farther into the earth, which meant, she thought, that an opening to daylight would be very unlikely. Water sounds were getting louder, echoing along the passage where she was crawling. It was wet everywhere, and the rocks above her dripped constantly. She was glad her jacket was waterproof, at least where it wasn’t torn. In places the tunnel was so narrow she thought her clothing would be pulled off before she could push her way through the rough passage. She was driven forward, however, by a frantic desperation and the feeling that she was now responsible for seeing that Evan didn’t kill Henry and Susan.

Finally, the cave began to open up again and, creeping forward, she came to the edge of nothingness.

She could hear water roaring far below, and she turned her flashlight down into the abyss. The light disappeared in a misty blackness that had no bottom at all.

She didn’t feel cold, but she was shaking as she pointed the flashlight around the area, trying to see what to do next. The ledge supporting her weight was narrow, but it continued along one side of the chasm to what looked almost like steps on the other side.

There was no way she could force her body to crawl out along that ledge.

But she had to. She had to keep trying. Her own stupid determination to prove she could figure out what others (especially Henry) couldn’t had put the three of them in this terrible danger. She had to keep trying now, even if it all ended right here.

Please, God...

She swallowed her terror and got down on hands and knees again, feeling her way carefully along the stone shelf, creeping forward around the horrible void and its invisible rushing water.

A dull boom echoed through the cave, and she froze as a piece of ledge under her broke off and disappeared into the roar below.

Her right leg swung free in black air and she moaned, gasping for breath. Fast-forward prayers filled her thoughts, meeting fear so overwhelming that it pressed against her body, pushing her toward the pit.

Fighting against the downward pull, Carrie battled to get her leg up and her weight away from the break—teetering on the edge, gasping, moaning, while impossible ages passed. The heavy hiking boot she was wearing turned her foot into a deadly threat. That, plus the force exerted by the drop of her leg, was going to be too much to fight against.

NO!

She couldn’t give up.

The sound of rushing water seemed to be getting louder and louder as she prayed:

“Give angels... charge over me... help me... ”

Henry and Susan... she... had... to... make... it.

Carrie panted short bursts of air and struggled to roll on her back—away from the break—hoping the turning of her body would help lift her leg. More chips from the ledge fell away as she rocked there for an eternity, organizing strength, and willing her body to roll backward.

At last, breathless and weak, she fell against the wall on the inside edge of the shelf, not daring to wonder if it would hold her weight. Lying there, exhausted, she heard words: “I... have sent my angels... ”

In all the years to follow, she’d never know if she’d actually heard a voice or if the words were simply in her thoughts, but it didn’t matter.

The next thing she was aware of was Susan’s terrified shout, “Carrie! Carrie!”

“I’m all right,” she called back as soon as she could speak.

She began inching forward again, lying on her stomach and pulling herself along the wall toward the stone steps. Thank goodness she hadn’t dropped the flashlight.

When she reached the end of the ledge and could sit on the bottom step, she stopped, leaned against the stone wall, and waited for the pounding in her ears to quit. She tried to breath deeply and evenly as she used the flashlight to investigate what did seem to be rough steps. They looked like they had been chipped with some sort of tool, and black stains on the ceiling over her head could be, she imagined, soot from torches. Perhaps it was fantasy, but it looked like humans had worked here, chipping steps to water that must have once flowed at this level and had, eons ago, worn the ledge that was now behind her.

She had to stoop as she climbed the steps, but they went up steadily until she stood in another room, dry and almost warm. She turned her flashlight toward the walls and gasped. The charcoal drawings!

They were everywhere, graceful, curving black lines. She saw what looked like a cow... no, a buffalo or something similar, and a funny bird. That must be a drawing of a fire, probably a campfire, and those could be people. For a moment, she forgot even Henry and Susan as she took in the pictograph-covered walls.

When she finally turned her flashlight toward the floor, she saw footprints in the powdery dust. It was easy to recognize the tread print of JoAnne’s hiking boots—she knew it well. And, there was another shoe, narrow, with a smoother sole. The print was no larger than JoAnne’s.

Evan. He had small feet for a man. This could be where JoAnne was last Thursday, and she’d been here with Evan. Then JoAnne had already met him when she went to the barn on Saturday. He must have called Friday to say he’d found something more... something to do with head rights that would also help halt quarry construction.

Evan had been leading JoAnne in a deadly game. He had undoubtedly been in Walden Valley more than once last week, toying with JoAnne, perhaps even trying to find out if she knew anything about stock brokers who cheated people. But why had JoAnne listened to a stranger, and a man at that?

I know him, she reminded herself. He can be charming.

Oh, JoAnne—she almost cried it aloud—when you did choose to trust a man, why did you have to pick the wrong one! Caring so much about saving this valley meant you weren’t careful enough for yourself.

But then, Carrie realized, I trusted him too.

It was a very unsettling thought.

Shining her flashlight across the room, Carrie saw a narrow slit in the wall on the other side and went toward it, following the footprints. It looked like the slit continued for at least ten yards. Was the blackness less intense at the end of it? She shut off her flashlight. Yes, there was a slight softness in the black ahead of her.

Of course, there would have to be another entrance. JoAnne, much taller than Carrie and at least twenty pounds heavier, couldn’t have made it through those tunnels and across that awful ledge, and she doubted Evan would try it either. If they had used this opening, then she could too.

She hurried back down the steps, found a rock, and banged it against the wall of the cave. Almost as soon as the echoing sound had died, she heard three responding bangs from the passage on the other side of the abyss.

Good, now Susan would go back to Henry. The rest was in Carrie’s hands. They’d get out of this yet!

She slid into the narrow passage, following it to another fissure that turned off at an angle. The end of that was blocked by what looked like a rock slide, but light was definitely filtering through at the top. When she got close enough, she saw that weeds and clay were clinging to some of the smaller rocks on the pile. They had evidently been pushed there recently to block the entrance.

Thankful that her gloves were still mostly intact, Carrie shoved and clawed at the rocks. At first it seemed she wasn’t going to be strong enough to move them, but finally the top few began to slide away from the opening. Scrambling up, she burst out over the rocks into clean air and open sky, almost like a rabbit with a weasel behind it.

Except the weasel was in front of her.

He was sitting on a large rock by the opening. “You’re looking a bit disheveled, Carrie,” Evan Walters said.

He couldn’t have missed the sharp intake of breath or her look of horror, but she steeled herself quickly and said, “My goodness, Evan, how you startled me. Golly, yes, I must be a mess. Crawling through caves is not a tidy occupation, fun though it may be.”

She’d surprised him, taken him off guard. He cocked his head on one side and looked at her thoughtfully.

The gun he held was like Henry’s. She turned her eyes away—this was the gun that had killed JoAnne—but turning away didn’t help, because that’s when she saw the rifle and two beer cans on the rock near him.

Beer cans? Was Evan drinking?

For a moment he seemed embarrassed, as if he realized that a friendly meeting wouldn’t include two guns.

“I’m glad you’ve come back to the Ozarks, Evan, but you’re certainly the last person I expected to see today.”

She took off her gloves and hat to brush at her hair.

Keep it up, she told herself. He isn’t sure of himself now. Keep him confused, off-balance. And be nice!

“My goodness,” she said, unable to stop the quiver in her voice, “I’ve gotten rather muddy, and I’ve torn my coat, too. I’m glad the snow has quit at least. Come back to my house with me, Evan. I’d like you to see it, and I do want to change into dry clothes.”

“Are you going to leave without your boyfriend and Susan Burke-Williams?” he asked, staring at her face. “Funny, but they thought you’d been shot. I did too until I heard you say very clearly that you were all right.”

She attempted a laugh. “How ridiculous. We were exploring. I don’t know where they got to. Well, never mind, it won’t matter since you’re here. I’ll just leave the car keys and a note for them and we can go to my house in your car. And, the man with us isn’t my boyfriend. He’s Susan’s father.”

Evan spoke quickly. “You said Susan’s parents were dead.”

“Her adoptive parents. Henry is her birth father.”

Again, he cocked his head sideways and looked at her.

“Evan, can we go? I’m getting awfully cold. Where’s your car? I can hardly wait to show you my house.”

Maybe I can get him away from the valley, she thought. Then Susan and Henry will be safe.

“Were you looking at the pictographs?” Evan asked. “I found them when I was exploring here several years ago. Never told you and Amos about it, just covered the opening and walked away. They were my secret. I showed them to your friend JoAnne last week, though.”

He shrugged. “Too bad about her tragic death. I really liked her. She was impressed by the pictographs, and also by my story that the Osage people still hold mineral rights to this land. I told her that meant even limestone rock.” He laughed. “Oh, JoAnne and I were going to stop the quarry. She enjoyed talking with a representative of the Cherokee Nation from Tahlequah, Ok-la-ho-ma!” His bottom lip drooped in a momentary pout. “She appreciated me like you never have, Carrie McCrite. She was a woman to admire!”

Carrie struggled to hide the rage that was boiling through her whole body and ducked her head so he wouldn’t see her face. She pushed her lip out, not because she wanted to mimic Evan’s pout, but because using that gesture of defiance gave her a small bit of courage.

His voice droned on. “JoAnne was smart... lots of fire. She listened to me, and she was so excited about surprising all of you. I was very, very sorry she had to die. She had more fire than ten of you, Carrie. Hated most men, she said. Didn’t trust them. But she trusted me.”

He was watching her closely. “JoAnne and I would have made a good team. I saved the red cap to remember her by, then had to use it on you. Too bad you got in the way.