Sonnet fell, seeming to float backward, almost suspended in a mist of flying snow. A half a second later, she landed, hitting the soft drifts and sinking out of sight. Her scream disappeared along with the rest of her.
“Sonnet!” Zach yelled her name with hoarse desperation. His speed, given the fact that he was wearing snowshoes, was amazing. He all but flew to the spot where she had landed, calling for her.
Daisy came nearly as quickly, her camera bouncing forgotten against her chest.
Zach was on his knees, reaching down into the snowy well into which Sonnet had fallen. “Say something,” he yelled. “Please, Sonnet, I’m begging—”
“I love hearing a moron beg,” came an annoyed, slightly muffled voice.
Daisy felt sick with relief as she took off her snowshoes and joined Zach in digging Sonnet out. They were idiots, all of them. They had no business up here in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of winter, messing around where no one could find them if they got in trouble. When it came to doing stupid things, Daisy was the champ, but even she could tell this was a bad idea.
“Thank God for all this snow,” Sonnet was saying as Zach grabbed both her hands and tugged her forward. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks glowing. “It was my soft place to fall.” She swam through the soft, powdery snow. “Thanks, you guys,” she said.
“Let’s go back,” Zach said. “I’m freezing. Here, I’ll help you with your snowshoes.”
“Hold on,” Sonnet said. “Hand me one of those ski poles.”
“What is it?” Zach asked, passing her one.
“I think I found something.”
“Probably the mother of that hibernating thing you woke up,” Zach said.
“No, look.” She pushed at the snow, and instead of running into the side of the rock face, the end of the pole kept going.
“Another cave,” Sonnet said.
“Big deal,” Zach said. “It’s probably—”
“Check it out.” The snow collapsed and Daisy found herself looking at an opening in the rock face, this one big enough for all of them to fit inside if they went on their knees.
“Now this is a cave.” Zach switched on his flashlight and shone it around. Once they knelt to squeeze in, there was enough headroom to stand.
All right, so it wasn’t as impressive as the one Sonnet had described. There was no glittering blue crystal lining the walls, like Merlin’s cave. It was hard to distinguish the ice from the rock because it was coated with a fine layer of dust. Beneath their knees, the floor was uneven and covered with grainy dirt like the kind left behind in the snow banks after a long winter. She took a few pictures. As the flash swept through the space, it illuminated places that looked as though they had lain undisturbed in darkness forever. “Maybe we’re the first people ever to come here,” she suggested.
“Yeah, except for whoever left that gum wrapper behind.” Zach shone the flashlight beam on it. “Juicy Fruit,” he said.
“You guys.” Daisy was reviewing her pictures on the camera. “Check this out.” She turned the small screen toward them.
“Not your best work,” Sonnet said.
“No, look at the back of the cave.” It showed up clearly in the photo. What appeared to be a random pile of rubble was actually a stack of rocks in different shapes and sizes.
Sonnet grabbed the flashlight. “So how crazy is that?”
“Look at the rocks,” Daisy said. When someone built a wall, she knew, it was for a purpose, either keeping something in or keeping something out.
She held the light while Zach and Sonnet pulled some of the rocks away. “It was probably some bored kids from Camp Kioga,” Sonnet said.
“How bored would I need to be to put a stack of rocks inside an ice cave?”
Daisy grabbed the light and peered over the top of the rock pile. An eddy of cold air—colder even than the air of the outer cave—wafted over her face. It reminded her of the walk-in freezer at the bakery—a freezing blast with a faint aroma of something that didn’t belong. A mustiness.
“Give me a boost,” she said to Zach. “I think I see something.”
He laced his gloved hands together. She stepped in and immediately conked her head on the ceiling of the cave.
“Hey,” she yelled, blinking away stars of pain. She aimed the flashlight beam and gasped. Here, the walls of the cave were definitely rimed with ice, the crystals winking in the beam of light. And there was something on the floor of the cave, another pile of rocks, or maybe—It wasn’t, thought Daisy. It couldn’t be. But…
“You all right?” Zach asked. “You’re shaking.”
She looked down at him. “You have to see this.”
“What is it?”
She didn’t want to say. She wanted so badly to be wrong. Moving carefully, she stepped down and motioned for Zach to check it out.
“Hey, are you all right?” Sonnet asked her. “You’re white as a sheet. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I think I just did,” Zach said.
Daisy could tell from his voice that she hadn’t been mistaken. “Help me up again, will you?” she asked. “I need to take some pictures.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Rourke got up early and went for a run on the trail by the river, with the dogs loping along with him. There was a gym shared by the fire station and PD, but he preferred getting out in the air and pushing himself until his lungs screamed from the cold. Then he showered and dressed for the day, straightened his house and fed the animals.
Having had Jenny there, even for a brief time, drove home a truth he’d been avoiding for many years. He lived a lonely, emotionally sterile life and he longed for something more. There. It was out, something he didn’t want to admit but couldn’t escape. Before this latest thing with Jenny, he’d convinced himself to be content with his pets and his one-night stands; now he couldn’t pretend any longer. There were things he
