Sagan stood. “He’s not alone.”
“His name is Rocha,” the woman said.
“Bene, this is my daughter, Alle.”
“The son of a bitch shoved me over the side,” she said. “He tried to kill me.”
Bene heard the shock in her voice.
“But you saved my life,” she said to Sagan. “Why did you do that? You jumped in and grabbed me. You went over the side first. You could have been killed.”
“I’m just glad there was water here,” Sagan said.
“We have to go,” Bene said. “I know Rocha. He’s trouble. And they’re both coming this way.”
He angled his light down and crept toward the edge. “It’s a short drop. Do it fast.”
They all three hopped down, the water now only ankle-deep.
Quickly he found the next edge and aimed his light. A series of short steps made a steep descent.
Then he noticed something.
A glow from below.
“What is that?” Sagan whispered, apparently seeing it, too.
“I don’t know, but it’s the only way to go.”
The men behind them were armed. They weren’t. Their only choice was to use the darkness to their advantage.
He switched off his light.
“Down,” he breathed.
———
ZACHARIAH SAW A LIGHT BELOW, FLICKING ON AND OFF. SOMEBODY was on the move, careful how long they betrayed their location.
Rowe? Sagan?
He and Rocha had utilized the rock ladder for the first change of levels, but now they simply hopped down each ledge. This cave was a natural chute that channeled groundwater, one level at a time, into the earth like a massive fountain. Before the dam had been destroyed rain would have been all that seeped inside. Now water poured with a peeling rumble, and he wondered where it led.
The light below had stopped strobing.
Were they armed?
Knowing Rowe, the answer was yes.
Unfortunately, he had to use the same trick, switching his flashlight on and off, since there was no way to see anything in the void.
But then he noticed something in the depths.
Light.
And constant.
What was that?
They kept descending.
———
TOM HOPPED OFF THE LAST LEDGE AND STARED AT THE AMAZING sight.
They’d made it to the bottom.
He estimated they were more than a hundred yards underground, the gushing torrent launching off into a dark, misty void in the far rock wall. The cavern that rose around them stretched at least a hundred feet high and that much wide. White stalactites dropped from the ceiling. Ten torches, projecting from the wall thirty feet up, illuminated the space, their fires spangling the darkness, trails of sparks popping skyward like comets. More climbing niches etched into the wall stretched below each torch, which explained how they were lit.
But by who?
And why?
No more darkness provided cover.
Nowhere to hide.
“What is this?” Alle asked.
He noticed that the water from above had lost nearly all of its strength, sapped by the many levels of varying lengths and depth. Several of the steps had been angled, forming pools that further arrested the flow. Here, at the bottom, the final remnants poured off the last ledge in a transparent sheet that stretched thirty feet wide and eight feet tall, pooling into a lake. To their right, the lake spilled over a rocky ledge and cascaded a few feet down to the river, which had the effect of keeping the lake level constant. A moldy smell of wet earth filled his nostrils. On the far side was another slit in the rock, large enough to walk through, a narrow ledge before it. There was no way to get to that ledge without crossing the lake. They stood on the only dry patch in the oblong-shaped cavern, the rock
