Kat barked.
“I see a hand!” one of the deputies yelled.
Lola redoubled her efforts. Tears streamed down her face.
“Fingers are moving,” someone else said.
“That’s Donita Willets’s ring!” Van Dyke said. “Her aunt gave us a photo.” She took the hand in hers.
Rocks began to fly off the mountain, exposing a forearm, and then an elbow.
Lola stepped back, allowing the others to work. She looked up at Tom Horning.
“The route in from here to that big room where Donita was supposed to be was flooded?”
“The stope,” Horning said. “Yes.”
“Could a person swim it?”
“Theoretically, yes, but they’d have to be a hell of a swimmer—”
Lola threw herself flat against the rubble, pressing her face to the rocks. “Hold on, boss, we’re coming for you!”
Beason shot her a quizzical look.
“You hear him?”
“No, sir,” Lola said, digging again, “but if Donita Willets was on the other end, and now she’s here, then Cutter went and got her.”
“And you know this how?”
Van Dyke gave Donita’s little hand a squeeze where it stuck out of the crevice. She smiled at Lola. “Because he does the right thing, right now.”
“Damn straight,” Lola said.
Fifteen agonizing minutes later, they pulled the girl free of the slide. Lori Maycomb followed, coughing and sputtering. Van Dyke wrapped her wet sister-in-law in a wool blanket and led her to the first-aid tent, not quite forgiving her, but not ready to throw her back in the mine either.
Cutter crawled out next, soaked to the skin and covered in a layer of mud and shards of rock.
He swayed uneasily on his feet as he pushed himself out of the mountain. Lola caught him by the arm. Amazingly, he let her hang on and envelope him in a frantic hug. She would have kissed him if she thought he would have stood for it. He was alive. That was all that mattered. Unwilling to let him out of her grasp, she held him at arms’ length, to check his injuries. His left eye was swollen completely shut. His right squinted at all the lights.
Lola held him up while the other deputies crowded in around him.
When he spoke, his words came slurred, drunk from shock and exhaustion, and to her delight, he leaned on her for support.
“What’s going on? Y’all having a party?”
Chapter 57
The ophthalmologist in the Juneau emergency room dug six pieces of stone out of Cutter’s eyes. Three of them bore flecks of gold. The doc put those in a tiny glass vial and sent Cutter on his way with a bandage over his left eye, an order for a good night’s sleep, and a promise to go in for a follow-up when he got home.
The flight back to Anchorage wasn’t until after noon. He went to the hotel for his second hot shower of the day; then Lori Maycomb joined him and Lola for a burger at McGivney’s.
“Rockie couldn’t make it?” Lola said, when Maycomb showed up alone.
“Turns out it takes more than a near-death experience to un-hate somebody,” Maycomb said. “But she’s trying.”
“She’d better,” Lola said, sipping her lemon water. Her hair was up, and sweat beaded across her forehead from her intense workout in the hotel gym. “Did Rockie tell you we arrested two of the women and one of the guys who threatened you on the beach?”
“She did not,” Maycomb said.
Lola gave a satisfied nod. “Looks like they were all three former employees of Valkyrie Mines. Dollarhyde had apparently brought them back on for some contract work. The lady from HR admitted to hearing him talk to them about convincing a Native reporter she needed to leave Juneau for a while.”
Maycomb closed her eyes and sighed. “Thank you.”
“How you feeling?” Cutter asked.
“Honestly,” she said, “I feel like I need a cigarette.”
Lola looked up from her water. “But not a drink?”
“So far, so good,” Maycomb said.
“I’d think recent events proved you’re tough enough to handle anything,” Lola offered.
“Wish it worked like that,” Maycomb said. “Gotta take it one day at a time, every time. As soon as I start thinking I’m tough enough to go this on my own – that’s the day I’ll screw it all up.”
Cutter gave her an understanding nod.
“I’m fine, though,” she said. “Really. For now, anyway. And I got some cool material for my novel.”
Cutter passed her the little glass vial the doctor had given him. “This is all the gold I’ll ever get out of a mine. I want you to have it. You saved my life. Gunalchéesh.”
Maycomb’s jaw dropped. “You heard Donita say thank you in Tlingit one time and you remembered it?”
Cutter shrugged.
“I know, right.” Lola spoke around the straw clenched in her teeth. “Welcome to my world.”
Cutter’s phone buzzed in his shirt pocket. It was Mim.
“Excuse me a minute,” he said. “I need to take this.”
“You’re writing a book?” he heard Lola ask as he scooted out of the booth and walked toward the door, his phone still buzzing.
“Yeah,” Maycomb said. “Your boss gave me the theme without knowing he was even doing it.”
“How’s that?”
Lori Maycomb sat transfixed on the door where Cutter had disappeared. “You’ll have to read the book.”
Cutter answered the call and found a bench outside under the hotel portico, where he could whittle while he talked. His hands were bloodied and sore from frequent collisions with rough rock, but he couldn’t stand to have them idle.
“What did the doctor say about your eyes?” Mim asked first thing.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Fine you won’t die?” she asked. “Or fine you’ll have a cool eye patch?”
“Fine, I’ll be fine,” Cutter said, chuckling. “No cool eye patch, unless you think a white piece of gauze is cool.”
“Seriously, Arliss,” Mim said. “Your eyes…?”
“He said I’ll be good as new in a couple of weeks. The chief ordered me to take at least a week off.”
“Good for her,” Mim said.
Cutter paused with his knife, looking at the wood, seeing nothing. Later maybe. He folded the blade and put it away. Just as
