“Charlie, lie still.” She pulled off her flak jacket, then her T-shirt. She wrapped it as best she could around Charlie. Tears streamed down her face. Charlie was in bad shape.
“We have to get you out.” He closed his eyes and coughed up water, mud, and blood.
“Why did you follow me? You didn’t know. I could have been dead. I don’t want you to die.”
“That’s a first,” he said faintly.
“I hate what you did, Charlie, but I don’t hate you.”
“You should.”
He didn’t say anything for a long minute. Sonia heard something over and above the water. Faintly, “Sonia!”
She called out as loud as she could, “Over here! Help!”
“Sonia! We’re coming.”
She saw a bright light bouncing against the walls of the cavern.
“Help’s coming, Charlie. Hold still.”
He shook uncontrollably, going into shock.
“Charlie, hold on. It’s just a little time.”
“I want to die, Sonia. I need to die.”
“No. No, dammit! You taught me so much. I’m stronger because of you.”
“You’re strong.” He coughed and this time blood poured from his mouth. “Because of you.”
“Sonia!” Dean called.
“Here!” She waved her glow-stick. “Charlie’s hurt!”
“I’m coming!”
Sonia said to Charlie, “Dean’s coming. Help’s here. Hold on.”
“Forgive me, sweetheart.”
“I forgive you. I forgive you, Charlie, dammit!”
“Find. What happened to Ashley. Please.”
“You’ll find her. Dammit, Charlie, fight!”
The bright lights showed the cavern to be monstrous in size, and Sonia sat on a small cutout. She couldn’t believe how much water was in here. She couldn’t believe she’d survived.
“Don’t die, Charlie.”
There was a ramp and railing that went around the top of the cavern. Dean walked across the precarious edge to get to her. She willed him to be safe. She couldn’t lose him. The five minutes it took to reach her seemed like an eternity.
He didn’t say a word, just held her. He was trembling.
Sonia said, “Charlie’s hurt.”
Reluctantly, Dean let her go. He inspected Charlie’s injuries and checked his pulse.
“Honey, he’s gone.”
“No. No.” She let Dean gather her into his lap and hold her while she cried until Brian Stone came down with a rope to bring them all up, the living and the dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Four Weeks Later
Sonia had never seen so many people in her parents’ house.
She put on her best smile and walked through the crowd, greeting everyone.
It had been a perfect day up until an hour ago, when Dean left their wedding reception after giving her a quick kiss and telling her he’d be right back.
To Sonia, right back meant five or ten minutes. Not-she glanced at her watch-sixty-seven.
She made her way to the kitchen, which was surprisingly devoid of people. She crossed to the window and looked into the backyard.
Her parents were there with Riley, Max, and their cousins. She had been tickled when Max showed up with a three-day leave for the Fourth of July weekend. “I couldn’t miss my sister’s wedding,” he’d told her when he surprised her at the rehearsal dinner the night before.
The day had been perfect, but it would have been even more so if Wendell could have lived long enough to see her married to a man like Dean Hooper. He would have liked him.
Sonia didn’t know if she’d ever put to rest the trail of blood left by Noel Marchand, but knowing he wasn’t her biological father helped. It was hard to think of him as anything but-she’d lived nine years with him, traveling from village to village in Central and South America. And although she now knew he was using her to lure his prey, she remembered teaching the children English and French and basic math; she’d taken pride in the farms she helped establish. As Dean told her one night when she couldn’t sleep, focus on the positive and the good, and put the bad on a shelf.
“I know you’ll remember it’s there, but if it’s far enough from sight you’ll forget for a time. And when you do remember, I’ll be here. Always.”
Sonia turned and jumped when a man walked in.
“Sorry,” Dean’s brother, Will, said. The Hooper brothers didn’t look alike, but they had the same chocolate- brown eyes and square jaw. “You have a big family.”
Sonia almost corrected him-her family was actually small-but then she realized her friends, her colleagues, Dean’s colleagues, they were like family. She smiled. “I’m lucky.”
“Dean’s the lucky one. I never thought he’d get married to anything but his job. And giving up that post in Washington, oh, sorry. Is that a sore point?”
“Not at all.” Dean had given up his prestigious position in Washington to relocate to Sacramento and take the job as assistant special agent in charge. Some might think it was a demotion, but Dean told her he wanted the change of pace, the challenge and her.
Will said, “I thought I’ll sneak away for a few minutes. My wife wanted to take a walk through that park down the street.”
“It’s a nice place. Riley and I played baseball and soccer and basketball there all the time. There’s a little zoo if you walk all the way to the other side, right next to the church.”
“You don’t mind, do you? Thirty minutes?”
“Take all the time you want.”
“Where’s Dean?”
“I don’t know. He had an errand.”
Will’s redheaded wife came running in. “Ready?” she said and they went off on their walk, hand in hand.
Sonia turned back to the window. The Rogans, two of them anyway, were there. Sean Rogan was showing Andres something-a card game, Sonia thought. Great, just what she needed-Andres beating them at yet another game. The kid was a whiz. She didn’t know what was going to happen to him, but she was pulling every string, and she had a lot she could pull, to keep him here. Owen and Marianne loved him and wanted him. He had no one else.
Kane couldn’t make it, but Sonia wasn’t surprised. He rarely came to the States anymore. But he’d called her that morning and they talked about Charlie and the past, as well as the future. “You forgave him, he knows that,” Kane had said. “And he died a hero. That’s all he wanted.”
“I’m looking for Ashley Fox,” she’d told him. “We found Jones’s old journals and are piecing together information. But-”
“You think she’s dead.”
“Yes, But I’ll confirm it if it’s the last thing I do. Her mother deserves to know what happened.” And for Charlie.
She’d never forget the night in the mine. She’d never forget the cloying fear. It didn’t matter that she’d come out on the other side and hadn’t let her claustrophobia beat her, she still woke up shaking, feeling the weight of the
