Hidden Motive (13 page)

Sable returned her examination to the bottom of the cavern, where a set of matching indentations a few feet from the stream drew her attention. She aimed her beam directly on them, and frowned.

“Footprints,” she said.

Murph peered over her shoulder. “Someone's been down here since it dried up.”

“But Craig said he hadn't come this far.”

“Can you trust his word?”

She frowned at the doubt in Murph's voice. “Of course.”

“What about your brothers?”

“Peter and Randy both told me they'd been too busy to explore lately. Maybe Grandpa—”

“Look, someone's been digging down there, too.” The ray of Murph's light showed freshly disturbed earth and rocks.

“Do you think—”

The sound of scattering pebbles echoed from the darkness behind them.

Murph swung around. “What was that?”

There was scuffling, and a movement of shadow from the natural bridge above and behind them. Rocks clattered down. Murph lunged forward to protect Sable from the rockslide, and something—someone—shoved them from behind.

Sable shifted to retain her balance, and the ledge beneath her right foot crumbled. Her arms flew out automatically, and she lost her grip on her flashlight. It bounced with a clatter against rock and earth and landed in the pit below.

“Murph!” She fell hard on the edge of the pit and clawed at the limestone floor, feeling herself slide.

Murph grabbed her shirt. “Sable!”

She reached up and grasped his arm, arresting her slide. Then the ledge crumbled completely, and she cried out as wet earth and loose rocks fell beneath her. She scrambled to get back onto solid ground, but the earth continued to fall away beneath her feet. Sharp rocks dug into her legs.

She felt something tug at her shirt in the darkness.

“Reach for me!” Murph said. “I've got—”

The ledge gave way, and her shirt ripped. Sable flung her free arm up to catch at Murph, but her blouse tore loose from his grip. She plunged down into the darkness, fighting the mud, until she landed, with a cry of pain, at the bottom.

M
urph lay panting at the edge of the pit, his eyes straining against the impenetrable darkness. The distant echo of footsteps reached him; whoever had pushed them was running away, stumbling over rocks in flight.

“Sable, are you okay?” he shouted. “Sable, say something! Answer me!” Frantically, he felt around for his flashlight. “Sable!”

He heard a rustle of movement several yards below him, and a soft groan.

“Sable? Wake up!”

No answer.

He dug through the damp earth until he felt the end of his flashlight, and discovered that it hadn't gone out, it had only been caked with clay. When he wiped it off, the glow lit the cave once again, and he pointed it at Sable. Her pale, still face frightened him.

“Sable!” he shouted. “You've got to wake up, sweetheart! You've got to hear me!”

He searched for a rope, for handholds or footholds on the face of the cliff that had just collapsed with her. Nothing. He studied the length of the ledge and beyond, to the bare rock face of the wall that circled the cavernous pit and rose above the ledge on which he stood. He saw nothing but slick limestone and scattered fragments of galena.

The pit was at least fifteen feet deep; he couldn't climb into it and back out without a rope, and he couldn't risk both himself and Sable getting stuck down there. No doubt, someone would eventually come to find them, but what if Sable was badly injured? Murph might be forced to go for help. If only he could take her in his arms, hold her, make sure she was still breathing…

Craig and Bryce might not even come this way if they found the other passage more interesting. He couldn't just sit and wait. But he couldn't leave Sable.

“Sable? Please, can you hear me?”

He waited endless seconds as his flashlight illuminated her deathly still features, her hair slithering like a living thing in the tiny stream of milky water beside her head. “Lord, please!” He couldn't tear his fearful gaze from her face.

She moved.

“Sable, wake up!”

Her dark lashes fluttered, and she winced.

“Thank you, God!” he shouted. “Sable, look up at me!”

 

Sable's mind, foggy with pain, steadied at the sound of Murph's voice, concentrating hard on it, struggling against dizziness.

“Murph,” she croaked, her head throbbing with the effort to form her words. “You okay?”

“Forget about me. Lie still until you've done an assessment. Did you hit your head on something?”

Sable squinted up toward the sound of his voice, and her blurred sight caught the ghostly shape of his head above the beam of his flashlight. “Murph?” Her voice sounded louder to her as the pounding in her head receded. “You sure you're okay? Did you see who hit us?”

“
See
him? I
felt
him.”

“Was it a him?” Her voice drifted…

“We'll deal with that later. I heard someone run away. It's you I'm worried about. Where are you hurt? Can you move your hands and feet? Come on, Sable, stay with me. You need to assess your injuries.”

Sable became aware of the scratches on her arms, of the pain at the back of her head, of the water swirling close to her ears. Tentatively, she moved her legs and hips, then sighed with relief. “I don't think anything's broken, except maybe my skull.” Her head throbbed. She wiped something sticky from her face. “That's…that's not blood, is it?”

“Can you move without pain?”

She noticed he didn't reply directly to her question. “Blood, Murph. Is it blood?”

“I can't tell for sure, but from here it looks like mud.
Can you move without pain?
”

Sable groaned. “Have a heart. I can't even see with you shining that stupid light in my eyes.” The brightness eased. “Thanks.” She struggled to sit upright. A piercing stab of pain shot through her head when she moved. She slumped sideways into the sticky clay, momentarily comforted by the coolness against the side of her face.

“Where are you hurt?” Murph demanded.

“My head. I must've hit it on a rock in the water.”

“Are you dizzy?”

Darkness converged on her again. The cave whirled around her, scattering the beams of Murph's flashlight.

“Sable, talk to me! Now!”

“Murph, I just can't seem to—”

“You've got to try to stay conscious. Concentrate. Are you dizzy?”

She lay still. “I think I'll be okay in a little while. I don't know where my flashlight fell. Can you shine yours around and find it?”

She closed her eyes as he swept his beam around. Pain washed over her.

“I'm sorry, sweetheart, but I can't find it.”

“Go get Craig and Bryce.”

“And leave you here alone? What if the attacker returns?”

“We need help now.”

“I could come down and boost you out.”

“I…uh…I don't think I can make it out. Please, Murph, get help.” Sable felt around her and at last her fingers came into contact with a hard, oblong object in the water. “I've found the flashlight. Now will you please go?”

“Does it work?” Murph asked.

She grasped it more firmly and tried to pull it out of the water. It wouldn't budge. She moved her fingers farther down and jiggled, dug around the end of the object. How could it have become so imbedded? It finally loosened in her fingers, and she pulled it out. From the reflected glow of Murph's light against the crystals in the cave wall, she saw more than she wanted to see.

“It isn't…it's not the flashlight after all,” she said. Tingles of shock fled through her, renewing the pounding pain in her head. Now she knew what the white protrusion was in the water, what had dented her head. A human long bone.

“Sable, you need to remain still until I get back with help. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” she said, clamping down hard on her panic.

“That means you'll have to sit here in the dark until I come back.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Go now. Quickly. I learned a long time ago not to be afraid…afraid of the dark.” But what was in the dark right now? Was the stalker still up there somewhere, waiting? Would Murph be in more danger on his own?

He stood. “I'll be back as soon as I can. Just stay calm.”

“Do you remember how to get back?”

“I remember,” he said softly. “You're a wonderful guide. You showed me every marker.”

Sable heard him moving off, as if a great distance already separated them. Blackness covered her. She might die here. Or Murph might, if he wasn't careful. She couldn't stand the thought of that.

“Murph?”

He stopped. “Yes?” Gentle, so tender.

“Please be careful. Don't let anyone get you.”

“Nobody's going to get me.” She heard him turn to walk on.

“Murph?”

He stopped again.

“I mean it. I…couldn't handle it if something happened.”

“I'll be careful. Stay awake, Sable. You can do it.” He raced away, the echo of his footsteps fading as she lay with her eyes closed in the darkness.

The pain in her head slowly receded to a dull throb, but her head still whirled, and nausea clenched her stomach.

She had been in complete darkness like this lots of times. The good thing was if she couldn't see anyone, no one could see her, either. Murph had said he'd heard their attacker running away. It meant whoever it was feared being seen and maybe would not be coming back this way.

 

Shadows loomed huge as Murph raced from a narrow passageway into another shadowed cavern. He scrambled over a slippery rock, then frowned at the forked section of passages.

He rushed headlong down the right fork, and immediately encountered a filmy, white mist. It didn't thicken as he made his way. Had Craig and Bryce found a viable passage, or would he have to follow them through this labyrinth to the end to get help?

This cave was filled with tunnels, probably false passages. No wonder Sable's brother had gotten lost down here.

He ducked his head to go beneath a low rock and heard another sound over the splashing water—metal hitting rock.

He swung around, aiming his light back the way he had come. “Who's there?”

No answer.

“Craig? Bryce? Where are you?”

Still no answer. No sound of retreating footsteps. He backtracked, listening hard, but hearing no more.

 

Slowly, with great care, Sable splashed her face with water from the small stream that trickled past her. She could only pray that their attacker hadn't followed Murph.

Carefully, she shifted positions. Her head throbbed. But she could tell, even through the pain and nausea, that it was getting better. She'd taken falls before, although maybe not quite as painful as this one.

She splashed more water in her face, wondering about the human bone.

No one in the family had ever taken seriously the story about the previous owners finding silver here, because silver didn't occur naturally in this part of Missouri. If it was found at all, it was only as a by-product of another mineral—a valuable by-product.

But the two earlier owners who had disappeared—they might well have believed in the myth of hidden silver, and they might have prospected for it down here. Had she just landed on the remains of one of those partners? The men could have drowned in the flood that had swept through here at the time of their disappearance.

A new line of thought occurred to her: The ceiling collapse in the nearby cavern had happened within the past century—a rarity. Could there have been a small earthquake around the fault line? And if so, was it possible that the owners were in it at the time? This leg bone could have washed to this pit later, during another flood.

A distant sound reached her, a rattle of rocks. She caught her breath and struggled to sit up. Her eyes opened wide, peering into the darkness. Did she detect a shade of light? A movement of shadow? It could be Murph, returning with Bryce and Craig. Or it could be the attacker. Wouldn't Murph have called out to her by now?

Sable scrambled away from the streambed. She was about halfway between the ledge from which she'd fallen and the wall on the other side of the cave. Her right hand touched some pebbles, scattering them, sending them splashing into the water.

She heard a footfall, then another, but she saw no flash of light. None. How could someone be walking in the darkness?

The footsteps neared, softly. She stared into the blackness. Had she suffered some kind of blindness from her head injury?

Another footstep, directly above her. She stared hard into the darkness. Was that a very faint green glow? Like the eyes of an animal reflected in headlights, only not as bright.

Ghost eyes.

She blinked, rubbed her eyes and looked back up at the ledge. The glow dipped and disappeared.

She heard the clink of metal, and another scuffle of footsteps.

She scrambled backward in the mud, feeling for the bone she had thrust aside. If only she could keep her mind clear, maintain her bearings. She found the bone.

She crept backward, feeling for the limestone wall. There was a tiny crawl space about five feet to her right. She had explored it once, barely fitting through.

She heard a rustle of fabric and turned back toward the ledge, saw the ghost eyes bobbing in the darkness once again. She couldn't be hallucinating…could she? She skittered backward and struck her tailbone on a rock. With a muffled groan, she rolled onto her side and reached back for a rock. Still clutching the bone in her left hand, she drew herself onto her knees and flung the rock toward the ledge. It hit with a clatter and bounced back into the cavern.

The glow disappeared and she heard more sounds of scuffling, the scattering of tiny rocks and dirt. For the first time, she heard heavy breathing.

She bent down and felt for another rock, found one and threw it as hard as she could toward the last place she'd seen the glow.

The glow reappeared for a few seconds, as if the ghost had turned to get its bearings again before continuing down.

She scrambled toward the tiny passage.

 

Murph scuttled beneath the rocky ledge, picking his way with speedy care along the dry streambed. He recognized where he was now, at the passage that Craig and Bryce had taken.

“Craig?” he called. “Bryce!”

He had to drop to his hands and knees and crawl over a scattering of rocks for about twenty feet, and then suddenly the ceiling lifted and the passage broadened. Here he encountered more fog, thicker this time, so thick it reflected the beam of his flashlight back at him.