Hearing a faint sound come from the mine, Tom froze. A shout? He hardly dared breathe. After a moment he heard another sound, a faint cry, distorted by its long travel down the throat of stone. It was a man's voice.
He grasped the padlock and shook it, trying to spring it open, but it wouldn't budge. The grate was forged from heavy steel and cemented into the stone. He had no hope of breaking it.
As he was casting about, he heard another angry shout, this one much louder and clearer, in which he could just make out the word bitch.
She was in there. She was alive. And then he heard the muffled boom of a gunshot.
15
BOB BILER TURNED on the radio in the '57 Chevy and spun through the dial,
hoping to pick up his favorite golden oldies station out of Albuquerque, but once again all he got was hiss and sputter. He snapped it off and took a consolation hit from the pint of Jim Beam lying on the passenger seat. He smacked and rolled his lips with pleasure, and tossed the bottle back on the seat with a thump, wiped his hand over his stubbled chin, and grinned at his great good fortune.
Biler had given up trying to figure out the bizarre incident up at the Sunrise. Somebody had stolen his Dodge and left him a beaut of a classic Chevy, keys dangling in the ignition, worth at least ten times his old shit box. Maybe he should've called the police, but it was only fair that if someone stole his truck, he should get theirs. And besides, he'd already parked a pint of Jim Beam in his gut and he was in no condition to be calling the cops. It was his truck that had been stolen, and you didn't have to report a stolen vehicle if it was your own, did you?
A sudden rumble of his right tires on the shoulder caused Biler to jerk the wheel to the left, almost swerve off the left shoulder, recover with a faint squealing of rubber, and finally get the truck steady on the road again. The dotted yellow line ran straight and true into the blackness and he put the truck right on top of it, the better to follow it. No problem, he'd be able to see the headlights of an oncoming car from a million miles off, plenty of time to move over. He fortified his concentration with another hit of Jim Beam, his lips making a satisfying pop as he removed the bottle from his mouth.
It was already past ten and Biler would be hitting Espanola at ten-thirty. Jesus, he was tired, it had been a long drive down from Dolores, just to visit his daughter and her worthless unemployed husband. If only he could pick up that golden oldies station out of Albuquerque-some Elvis would really lift his spirits. He
turned on the radio, dialed it across the spectrum, stopped at one station that seemed to hint at music behind a wash of static and left it there. Maybe as he got closer it would come in stronger.
He saw headlights in the distance and eased over to his side of the road. A police car passed him and he watched it recede, checking it again as the red tail-lights began to fade into the enormous darkness. Then he saw, with alarm, a sudden brightening of the lights-the cop had braked-followed by a momentary glimmer, and then the brighter white lights of the headlights as he pulled a U-turn.
Holy shit. Biler swept the bottle of Jim Beam off the seat and gave it a sharp kick with the heel of his shoe, scooting it up and under the seat. The truck drifted out of lane again and he quickly snapped his attention back to the road, the truck swaying with the correction. Shit, he had better slow down and drive like a little old lady. His eyes darted from the road to the speedometer to the rearview mirror. He was keeping at a steady fifty-five and he was pretty sure when the cop passed he wasn't doing more than sixty, still five under the speed limit. Biler, like most longtime drinkers-and-drivers, never broke the speed limit. After a few heart-pounding minutes he began to relax. The cop hadn't put on his bubble-gum machine and wasn't accelerating to catch up with him. He was just tooling along at the same speed, maybe a quarter mile back, nice and easy-just some State trooper on patrol. Biler grasped the steering wheel in the ten-two position, eyes straight ahead, keeping it steady at fifty-five.
Hell, nobody could drive any better than that.
16
FOR A MOMENT Sally lay in a shallow pool of water, stunned by the fall. It hadn't been a long drop after all and she was more frightened than hurt. But she was far from out of danger. Even as she was recovering her thoughts the flashlight beam was probing down from above. A moment later it fixed her and she jumped sideways as the shots came, the bullets striking the water around her with a zipping sound. She thrashed through the water toward where the flashlight beam had revealed a tunnel running off into darkness. In a moment she had turned the corner, beyond the range of his gun.
She leaned against the wall, taking great gulps of breath. Her whole body ached but nothing seemed to be broken. She felt in her breast pocket for the box of matches. Miraculously, while the outside of the box had gotten damp, the inside was still dry. The matches were the long, wooden, 'strike anywhere' variety. She struck a match against the rock wall, one scratch, two. It flared on the third try and it cast a faint illumination down the tunnel ahead, a long corridor cribbed with rotting oak beams. A shallow stream flowed along its bottom, running from puddle to puddle. The tunnel's condition looked disastrous; beams had fallen down, while small cave-ins from the walls and ceilings partially obstructed the passage. What hadn't already fallen looked like it was about to go, the rock ceiling gaping with large cracks, the oak beams bowing under the weight of shifted rocks.
She jogged down the tunnel, shielding the match, until it burned down to her fingers and she was forced to drop it. She kept going as long as she dared in the darkness, retaining the memory of what lay ahead. When she feared going farther she stopped and listened. Was he following? It seemed unlikely he would risk going down the ladder she had descended-no sane person would do it and she
had btoken too many rungs in her descent. He would have to find a rope, and that would at least give her a moment's reprieve. But no more than a moment: she remembered seeing a rope in her cell, coiled up at the foot of the bed.
Sally struggled to focus her mind and think rationally. She remembered reading somewhere that all caves breathed and that the best way to find your way out was to follow the 'breath' of the cave-that is, the flow of air. She lit the match. The flame bent back, toward where she had come from. She went in the opposite direction, deeper into the mine, wading through the water, moving as quickly as she could without putting out the match. The tunnel curved right and opened into a large gallery, with pillars of raw rock remaining in place to hold up the ceiling. A second match showed two tunnels leading off. The flow of water went into the left one. She paused, there being just enough flame to see where the air was flowing from, and decided to take the right tunnel, the only one sloping upward.
The match burned down and she dropped it. She took a moment to count by feel the number of matches in the box. Fifteen.
She tried moving forward by feel, but soon realized her progress was too slow. She had to put as much distance between herself and him as possible. Now was the time to use the matches, not later.
She lit another, continued up the tunnel, turned a corner-and found the tunnel was blocked by a cave-in. She stared upward at the dark hole in the ceiling from which an enormous mass of rock had fallen into a disorderly pile below. Several rocks the size of cars still hung from the ceiling in crazy angles, braced and propped up by fallen beams, looking like they would shift at the merest nudge.
Sally retraced her steps and took the left-hand tunnel, the one that sloped downward with the stream. Her panic was rising; at any moment the kidnapper would be down there after her. She followed the running water, hoping it might lead her to an exit, wading through a series of pools. The tunnel sloped downward and leveled out. The water got deeper and she realized it was pooling; soon it was almost up to her waist. Around the next turn she saw the cause: a cave-in that had completely blocked the tunnel and backed up the water. The water managed to escape through the spaces between the jagged rocks, but there was no opening large enough for her to pass.
She swore to herself. Was there a tunnel she had missed? She knew in her heart there wasn't. In five minutes she had explored all of the mine that was still accessible. In short, she was trapped.
She struck another match, her fingers shaking, looking around desperately for
a way out, a tunnel or opening she might have overlooked. She burned her fingers, cursed under her breath, and lit another match. Surely there had to be a way out.
She retraced her steps yet again, recklessly lighting match after match, until she came back to the first cave- in. It was a compact mass, offering no obvious holes. Lighting more matches, she searched through the piled boulders anyway, looking for a space she could wedge herself in. But there was nothing.
She counted her matches. Seven left. She lit another, looked up-and saw the hole in the roof. It was insane to think of going up in there. The light from the match was too feeble to penetrate its recesses, but still, it looked like there might be a crawl space up there where she might at least hide-if she were willing to risk the precarious, sloping pile of loose boulders.
