Ashes, Ashes, They All Fall Dead (31 page)

He pulled one of the small rocks out of his pocket that he’d been gathering when Hargrove used the Taser on him. He scored the sharp edge of the rock across the wall, christening it tunnel one, before hurrying down it. The light gave way to darkness again as he ran his hand along the wall to guide him.

When he came to an opening on his right, he did his best to mark a two on the wall, but he couldn’t see to tell if it was legible. He paused, listening for any sounds, but nothing broke the silence. Since tunnel one was sloping down deeper into the mine, he decided to try tunnel two. He imagined if Tessa had passed this way she would have probably chosen the tunnel that sloped up, hoping it would lead to an exit.

T
ESSA CROUCHED BEHIND
the little railway bucket car she’d found by literally running into it a few moments earlier. She imagined her entire body would be full of bruises soon from all the walls and rocks she’d either slammed into or tripped over.

She hadn’t seen the bouncing light since turning down that first side tunnel. Since then she’d made so many different turns she was hopelessly disoriented. But at least she wasn’t on the other end of a gun right now.

The railcar was small and wooden, with a band of metal along the rim. She carefully felt along it in the dark and dipped her hands inside, hoping for something to use as a weapon. There were rocks inside, or perhaps coal, but nothing else. She hadn’t really expected to find anything. It wouldn’t have made sense for the company who owned the mine to have left valuable tools behind. But it sure would have been nice if just one lazy worker had left his hammer or pick.

Light shone down the tunnel toward the car. Not the weaker light from Matt’s computer this time, a bright light, from a flashlight. As it passed down the tunnel it illuminated another side tunnel close by. She debated ducking down that tunnel, not sure if help was here: maybe Casey and some rescuers who would help her find Matt. But what if Hargrove was tricking her and had a flashlight instead of Matt’s computer light this time?

She hesitated, not sure what to do. Could she even make it to that side tunnel before whoever was behind that light saw her?

She ducked down behind the railcar until she could be sure who was behind the light. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

Footsteps sounded sure and steady as they came closer, closer. Hargrove wouldn’t walk so loudly, not if he was trying to sneak up on her? And he wouldn’t use a light that bright, would he? Hope blossomed in her chest.

She risked a quick peek around the corner, hoping to see a miner or a fireman. Her hopes plummeted. Hargrove was standing there, his flashlight pointing at the ground now, his rifle aimed directly at her.

She gasped and dove to the side just as the rifle boomed through the tunnel. The wooden side of the car closest to her exploded, raining rotten kindling down onto the ground and on her.

He swung the rifle in her direction.

She screamed and ducked down the side tunnel she’d seen earlier, just as the rifle boomed again.

M
ATT FROZE AT
the sound of gunfire. He listened intently, trying to figure out which direction it had come from. A scream erupted from somewhere up ahead and to his left. He started running as fast as he could in the dark, trailing his hands along the tunnel walls to guide him.

T
ESSA SLAMMED INTO
another wall and slid to the ground. She clapped her hand over her mouth against the urge to cry out and rocked back and forth, holding the throbbing foot she’d hit against the unforgiving rock.

Footsteps sounded down the tunnel she’d just left.

Light bounced against the walls.

No, no, no! She wasn’t ready.

But she couldn’t sit here and wait for Hargrove to shoot her. She had to get moving again.

She gritted her teeth and pushed herself to her feet. She felt along the wall with her hands like a blind person, desperately trying to find another exit. Her hands met empty air and she crashed down onto the ground again.

A rifle cracked. The nearest wall exploded, sending hundreds of pieces of rock flying at her, pricking her skin like tiny knives.

A scream echoed through the tunnels, but Tessa wasn’t the one who’d screamed.

She looked behind her, but the light from the gunman’s flashlight blinded her. She didn’t wait to see what he’d do. She lunged forward, away from him, and away from the scream.

T
HE SECOND SCREAM
sounded much closer than the first. It was off to Matt’s right somewhere. He felt along the wall until he reached another opening. When he turned, he saw light up ahead from another ventilation shaft. He quickened his pace, no longer having to feel along the walls to keep from running into them.

When he reached the shaft, he stopped and listened. There, up ahead, he heard . . . crying? Horrible images of what might have happened to Tessa—and what Hargrove might be doing to her right now—spurred him forward in a full-out sprint.

There was more light up ahead, coming from just around the next curve in the tunnel. He forced himself to slow down and then stopped, even though the crying was tugging him forward. He wouldn’t do Tessa any good if he barreled in and got shot. He waited, listening for other sounds, but all he heard were the sniffles and sobs. He leaned around the edge of the wall and froze in shock.

The first thing he saw was a key hanging from a peg in the wall. Past the key, in the last ten feet of the tunnel, was a room: a prison with a wall of bars built into the sides of the rock. A ventilation shaft was positioned overhead a few feet outside the cell, shedding just enough light so he could see the woman inside, huddled on a cot, her eyes wide with terror.

Tonya Garrett.

T
ESSA LIMPED DOWN
the tunnel. Her side burned. Her foot was throbbing. She suspected she’d broken something, but she couldn’t stop and risk Hargrove finding her again. She’d had too many close calls already. If he shot at her again, she doubted she’d be as lucky as she’d already been. He’d missed her, what, three, four times now? What were the odds of that in such a confined space?

The odds were probably just about . . . zero.

She stopped and leaned back against the nearest wall. Was Hargrove purposely missing her? Why would he do that? There were several possible answers to that question—all of them bad.

He’d been a miner in this region, possibly in this very mine. Had he planned this all along, to get her and Matt in the tunnels? If so, he probably knew the tunnels well. He had that advantage, and a flashlight, so it should have been much easier for him to follow her, find her, and kill her.

So why hadn’t he?

Was he herding her like cattle? Was he driving her to a specific place in the mine so he could then take his time doing . . . whatever it was he did to his victims before killing them?

She shivered and swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. How could this man possibly be her biological father? How could she have lived with him, have grown up for seven years around him, and not remembered him? What kind of life had she lived? She shivered again, afraid the answer to that was probably why she’d blocked so many memories. Her past was far too frightening to face, and she certainly didn’t want to resurrect any memories right then.

If he wanted to kill her with fire, as he’d done so many victims, what better place than an old, abandoned coal mine? Detective Stephens had warned her and Matt of the dangers—among them natural gas pockets that could explode into a fiery ball around them. Hargrove must know where the dangers were. Was he moving her toward one of those pockets? What about Matt? Had Hargrove left him somewhere dangerous, hoping to come back and burn him alive once he took care of her?

She cursed her own cowardice. All this time she’d been running away when she should have been doubling back to find Matt. She had to find him, help him, and get him out of here. She wasn’t going to even consider the possibility that he
wasn’t
alive; that would destroy her.

A noise sounded from up ahead. She jerked her head up. No light bouncing around the curve in the tunnel this time. Was Hargrove sneaking up on her in the dark? She froze in indecision. The tunnel she’d just come down was long and she hadn’t noticed any side tunnels. If she ran and he came around the curve up ahead, he’d see her with his flashlight. She’d have nowhere to hide, nowhere to go this time.

She took a gamble that she’d reach a side tunnel before he reached her and started forward—toward the noise instead of away from it.

Please let there be another tunnel opening off this one. Please let me find it in time.

She inched forward, trying not to make any noise as she felt along the walls to her left and right, searching for an opening.

A sob up ahead had Tessa stopping to listen again. That wasn’t Hargrove. And it certainly wasn’t Matt. That was a woman crying. She must be the woman Tessa had heard scream earlier. Was this Hargrove’s game? Trapping women in the mine and leaving them to starve or die of thirst? Or to go out of their minds in the vast, dark emptiness?

Another sound carried to her, a deep whisper, a whisper of reassurance.

Matt! That was Matt’s voice.

“Matt,” Tessa whispered. “Matt?”

“Tessa?” His voice broke as he said her name. The shuffling noise came closer. “Where are you?” He was much closer now.

“Here, right here.” She held her hands out in front of her in the dark.

His searching fingers touched her arms, then wrapped around her and pulled her close. He cradled her against him, hugging her so hard she could barely breathe. This time she didn’t complain. He could squash her, for all she cared. She was just grateful he was alive.

He kissed the top of her head and hauled her against his side. “Did he hurt you?” he asked, his voice tight.

“I’m bruised and banged up, but that’s mostly from running into walls. What about you? What happened?”

He let out a shaky breath, as if relieved by her answer.

“He must have come in through another entrance into the mine. He shot me with a Taser and grabbed my computer.”

A sniffle sounded off to his left.

“Tessa, Tonya Garrett is here with us. She was locked up in what amounted to a jail cell back at the end of the tunnel. Tonya, this is my very special friend, FBI Special Agent Tessa James. She and I are going to get you out of here.”

“I want to go home.” The young girl’s voice was so full of fear and grief that it nearly broke Tessa’s heart.

Tessa reached out, touching Matt’s hard chest, then feathered her hands to the right toward the sound of the girl’s cries. She was clinging to Matt’s other hand with a death grip that was probably cutting off his circulation.

“Nice to meet you, Tonya. Are you hurt?”

The girl sniffed. “I don’t . . . I don’t think so. He didn’t . . . do anything to me. Not
that
, at least. He drugged me, I think. And then he left me down here in the dark. I had a tiny flashlight he gave me when he brought me here, but the batteries burned out.” She shuddered, as if being alone in the dark was the worst thing that could happen to her.

Tessa could think of far worse things.

“Matt, Hargrove shot at me, more than once. I think he missed on purpose. I think he was driving me through the mine. Now that I know about the cell where he was holding Tonya, I’m thinking maybe he wanted to drive all of us here, to lock us up.”

“Which means he’s probably close by.”

“Exactly,” she whispered.

Tonya let out a little whimper.

“It’s okay,” Tessa reassured her. “We’ll get out of this.”
Somehow.

The poor girl still wouldn’t let go of her two-handed hold on Matt, so Tessa moved to Tonya’s far side and held on to her forearm. That way, Matt could run one hand along one side of the tunnel to guide them, while Tessa ran her hand on the other side of the tunnel.

“Let’s go.” Matt started forward, and the three of them headed back down the same tunnel Tessa had come up just moments earlier.

“W
E’RE GOING IN
circles.” Tessa dropped Tonya’s hand and slid to the floor to rest.

“All right. Maybe we are. We need a better system than what we’ve been doing. Here, Tonya, sit down. Let’s rest for a minute.”

Tonya whimpered, which was all she seemed to be able to do.

Tessa heard the whisper of fabric against skin as Matt and the young girl sat down.

“We haven’t heard or seen Hargrove anywhere in quite a while,” Tessa whispered. “Maybe he’s gone. Maybe he left through the same tunnel he came down.”

“Maybe.” Matt’s voice lacked conviction.

Tonya whimpered again.

“It’s okay,” Matt reassured her. “We’ll find a way out of here.”

Tessa didn’t have the confidence she heard in his voice. And she wasn’t sure he did either, though he was putting on a good face for the nearly hysterical teenager clinging to him. Tessa should have felt sympathy for the girl—and she did, of course—but after spending the past hour or so wandering through the dark tunnels with Tonya clinging to Matt, her sympathy was turning into irritation.

As soon as that thought went through Tessa’s mind she cringed with guilt. Tonya was seventeen. She’d been abducted from her home hundreds of miles away and suffered who knows what in the past couple of days. If holding Matt’s hand helped her make it through this harrowing experience, Tessa shouldn’t begrudge her that small comfort.

She sighed. “Okay, counting tunnels and ventilation shafts isn’t helping us find our way out. But I don’t know a better idea.”

“We know there’s another exit tunnel or Hargrove wouldn’t have gotten inside. Since we haven’t spotted him, he must have gone back out,” Matt said.

“Or he’s in another section of tunnels we haven’t explored.”

“The only tunnel we haven’t gone all the way down is the first one, the one that slopes deeper into the mine. We’re going to have to explore that tunnel. That has to be the way out.”

Tessa shook her head even though he couldn’t see her. “Down is not good. Down means deeper into the mine. There could be pockets of dangerous gas down there. And who knows if the support beams are still reliable? I think it’s too dangerous.”