She stepped back, lifted her head so her head lamp shone directly on the wall. She studied every inch of it, pressing inward with her fist everywhere she could reach. Mr. Weaver had told her this part of Winkel’s Cave had never been explored, much less mapped. Even though he appeared worried for her, he still had a gleam in his eye at the thought of splitting any treasure she found. It was the feel of the cave, she thought, the way the silence felt, the hollow sound of her footsteps. She was sure no one had been in this cave for a very long time, perhaps since the gold was left here. Mr. Weaver had installed an iron grate to close off the entrance—fools injuring themselves, suing him, he’d told her. He couldn’t find the key, but that hadn’t mattered. The lock had been child’s play to pick. Finally, she stepped back and hummed some more. If someone had filled in an arched opening, they did it remarkably well. She could find no seams, nothing that looked out of place or staged. She sat back against the opposite cave wall and retied one of her walking boots. She realized she was tired. She pulled out an energy bar, her favorite peanut butter, and slowly began to eat it, washing it down with water from the plastic bottle fastened to her belt. Still sitting, she raised her head to train her lamp again on the opposite wall. She was beginning to hate that frigging wall. She began at the top, and slowly scanned all the way to the bottom again.
She saw something, about two feet above the floor, where the light reflected differently. She crawled to the wall and studied the thin shadow she’d seen. There, that was it, a line of dust and dirt about a half an inch wide.
Ohmigod, it wasn’t just a line; it was shaped like an arch.
She felt her adrenaline spike. She looked more closely and saw that someone had gouged the arch deeply into the wall. She touched it with her fingertip, lightly pushed inward. Her finger sank easily through years of soft, thick dust, up to her first knuckle. She knew one thing for sure now. The accumulation of dust in that grooved arch was decades older than she was. She wondered how many more years would have to pass before the arch outline disappeared entirely. Who had cut this arch and why, for heaven’s sake? Or was it a cover of some kind?
Ruth lightly pushed against the limestone directly below the top of the arch. To her astonishment, it gave a little. She laid her palm flat against the wall and gave a sharp push. The stone fell back some more. Her heart kettledrummed in her chest. The stone was light enough that she could dig it out. She pulled the small pick from her belt and went at it; the limestone crumbled, and suddenly she was staring at a small round hole.
She leaned forward, but the hole was too small for her to see anything in the chamber beyond. And there was a chamber beyond, the chamber she was looking for. Grinning like a madwoman, Ruth continued to use the pick on the limestone below the line of the arch. The stone broke apart, collapsing inward into the next chamber. When she’d cleared it out, it was no bigger than a St. Bernard doggie door, but it was large enough to look into. Shoving dirt out of the way, she stuck her head through the opening. She saw nothing but a floor. Pulling her second flashlight out of her belt she beamed both it and her head lamp straight ahead, then slowly to the right, then back to the left. The light faded into endless black, without reflection.
She pulled back and sat on her heels. The men who’d hidden the gold had cut this slab of limestone out of another part of the cave and fitted it in this space, to better hide the low entrance to the treasure chamber. She was so excited her fingertips were dancing: She was nearly there. She stuck her arm through the opening, felt nothing but the smooth dirt floor, solid and dry, the chamber the map showed beyond the archway. Everything was as it should be. So the precious map hidden in the age-dampened cardboard box of nineteenth-century books she’d bought off that old man in Manassas wasn’t created two weeks ago in a back room in Newark and planted there. Let’s do it, Ruth. It was a tight squeeze, but once she got her shoulders through, the rest was easy.
She swung her legs in front of her, raised her flashlight, and beamed it together with her head lamp around the space. According to the map, the chamber was good-sized, some thirty feet across and forty feet wide. She didn’t see the opposite wall, she didn’t see anything. She pulled out her compass. Yes, the opposite wall had to be due east. Everything was where it should be. She realized in that moment that the air wasn’t stale or dank, which one would expect in a cave chamber sealed for 150 years. She sucked in air that was fresher than the air in the main passage. Now wasn’t that a kick—she had to be close to an unmapped exit, and wouldn’t that have been handy for the men who hid the gold? Slowly she got to her feet and looked straight ahead. It was like standing in a dark pit, but she’d done that before, and with a head lamp you’d see the boundaries, wouldn’t you? She sucked in more of the wonderful fresh air. There was an underlying scent, something rather sweet that she couldn’t quite identify. For a moment she felt disoriented. She paused, and continued to breathe slowly and deeply, waiting for her head to clear, for the world to right itself. She felt a sort of dull heaviness in her arms and legs but then it was gone and her head seemed clear again. Time to move. She took a step forward, carefully planting her foot on the solid earth. What had she expected? To step off into space?
She laughed aloud, to prove she could. Her own voice sounded fresh and alive, clear as Mrs. Monroe’s when she called to Woodrow to finish his business and come in. What a strange thought that was. She felt something familiar niggle at the back of her brain—excitement mixed with fear, she thought, and smiled. Oh boy, was she pumped, even a little dizzy with it. But not stupid. She had no intention of gaily striding forward and stepping into a pit right before the finish line. She had to be smart, like Indiana Jones. She had to feel for trip wires and booby traps. Now that was a weird thought. She felt a shot of dizziness that made her stumble. She eased down to her knees, laid her flashlight on the ground in front of her, and began to slide her palms along the floor. The floor, thank God, continued smooth and sandy, though it seemed to shimmy a bit when she got up close. There weren’t any gnarled old vines tied across the chamber to unleash poison-tipped blow darts or to fire old rifles that surely wouldn’t work anymore. She heard nothing but the sound of her own breathing. Truth was, she was so excited it was hard to keep herself crawling and not do a mad sprint to the short passageway just beyond the chamber. The gold was there, in a small alcove, waiting for her, untouched since those bone-weary soldiers had hauled it in and drawn the map so they could return for it. Only no one had.
She continued to ease forward on her hands and knees. Every little while, she moved the flashlight out ahead of her again. It seemed like she had crawled for a long time. Too long a time.
She suddenly felt disoriented, again felt that strange heaviness in her arms and legs. She stopped, brought the flashlight up, and looked at the map. She could hardly read it and wondered why. She knew it said thirty feet to the opposite wall, she knew that, but for some reason she couldn’t get her brain around the idea. Surely she’d crawled thirty feet. It seemed like she’d crawled forever. Well, all right, maybe she’d crawled for a good three minutes. She looked at her watch. Thirteen minutes past two in the afternoon. She looked at the map yet again, tangible, as real as she was, her guide to the underworld, her guide to the River Styx. She laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. Where had that come from? She tried to concentrate. She was in a cave chamber, nothing more, nothing less. She had to be near the opposite wall, had to be. Then she’d take those three long steps to the right and there would be a small passageway—it was a passageway, wasn’t it?—and it led…
She heard something.
Ruth froze. From the moment she’d finessed the pathetic lock and begun her trek into the cave, there’d been only the noise made by bats and the sound of her own voice, of her own breathing. But now she held her breath. Her mouth was suddenly as dry as the sandy floor beneath her boots. She strained to listen.
There was only silence, as absolute as the blackness.
All right, she’d take silence. Silence was good. She was alone, no monsters hanging around at the edge of her light. She was freaking herself out for no reason, she, who took pride in her control. But why couldn’t she see any cave walls?
She knew the rough distance of a foot, not much longer than her own foot, and started counting. When she reached about fourteen feet, she stopped, stretched out her hand as far as she could, and her flashlight and head lamp cut a huge swath farther ahead of her. No wall. All right, so her distances were off. No problem, no reason to panic.
But she’d heard something—for an instant. What was the noise she heard?
She kept counting and crawling forward. At least another twenty feet. Okay, this was ridiculous. Where was the opposite wall?
She rose to her feet, shone her head lamp and flashlight together in a circle around her. She pulled out her compass again and pointed it. She stared at the needle. West. No, that couldn’t be right. She wasn’t facing west, she was facing east, the direction of the opposite wall. But there was no sign of a wall in any direction. She shook the compass. It still read west. It couldn’t be functioning properly. She stuffed it back in her pocket and pulled her hefty twenty-five-foot measuring tape off her belt. She slowly fed out the metal strip in a line directly in front of her, into the blackness. Finally she reached the end of the tape. There was no wall.
She felt fear, raw and paralyzing, crawl right up her throat. Why was she feeling this way? She was a cop, for
