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“I don’t think so. If they were planning to harm her, they could have done it when she came back to the village. It’s not as if Mrs. Tate could have stopped them. Greenley told me he stopped by there to apologize, but she wouldn’t receive him.”
Truman frowned as he looked around. Was Cutberth really searching for Wythe?
“Thornick’s wife claims he was coming here to attend a union meeting,” he said. “The other wives say the same about their husbands. But I haven’t called a meeting. And Wythe, when I saw him, was behaving strangely. He was sweating, despite the cold. And he wanted me to help him get that powder into the mine and seemed overly upset when I wouldn’t.”
“Why would he want to get powder into the mine in the middle of the night?” Truman asked.
“He wouldn’t say.”
If Cutberth could be believed, Rachel, Thornick, Collingood, Henderson, Greenley and Wythe had all been out tonight. Why? “He must have left,” Truman said. “All is quiet now. And the pit is locked.”
A strange expression came over Cutberth’s face. “That’s it. That’s where they’re at.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The pit wasn’t locked when I was here before.”
As soon as Wythe hauled himself out of the mine, Rachel had run to the lift, hoping to find a way out herself. But it was no use. He had made it so that she couldn’t bring the cage back down.
She had retrieved the pick, even though she knew it could do nothing to protect her from an explosion, and waited—scared and shaky—in the dark. She’d been sure she wasn’t long for this earth, couldn’t imagine how she would survive what Wythe had in store for her. She had just decided that she would rather be killed by the blast than any cave-in it might cause, that she would stand right out in the open and wait for it.
But then… there had been no explosion. She’d heard Wythe above her, cursing to himself as he climbed into the lift. He’d been upset, newly frustrated. She could tell that but nothing more. Had he changed his mind about igniting a blast?
She’d thought so. But that didn’t make her safe. A flicker of light had suggested he was bringing a lamp. At that point she’d faced a very difficult decision. Did she grab the ropes to try to stop his descent? Would she be physically capable of holding him off that way? Or did she hide to the right, hoping he would go left, where they had been before?
There weren’t many places to conceal herself on the right. That was the reason she hadn’t chosen it before. But left took her ever deeper into the bowels of the mine, meaning he could cut her off from the lift indefinitely. And now that he had a lamp, she would have no way of slipping past him unseen. The tunnels were too narrow. She would have to stay well in front of him even though he could travel much faster.
In the end, she had chosen to run left. Her other options were more of a gamble. She had to go with the odds, use as much time as possible. She was hoping that the miners would arrive before Wythe could find her.
If they didn’t… at least she had a weapon.
She had been trying to out-distance him ever since, had been dodging him and his bloody light. She kept praying he would choose the wrong tunnel. Although she couldn’t see the various openings, she knew there were more turns than the ones she was taking. But any noise gave her away, and she couldn’t move fast without noise. She was just thinking she should have tried to stop the lift instead when another twisted ankle brought her to her knees.
Gasping in pain, she watched the edge of his light draw closer. Heard his footsteps. Heard him say, “You are only making this harder on yourself, Rachel. I will kill you quickly if you quit running. If you don’t… heaven help you.”
He meant it. He was beyond angry. He was probably desperate, too—as desperate as she was.
If only she could figure out a way to get him to move beyond her.
But how?
Drawing a bolstering breath, she limped around the next bend and flattened herself against the wall. She was out of options. She had to swing her pick. But once she did that, there would be no second chances.
Either she would survive, or he would.
“Rachel?”
He was coming, drawing so close she dared not breathe. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she waited, and her lips moved in silent prayer. Please… please…
Suddenly the light fell over her. She heard his excited intake of breath, saw the knife—and, feeling as vulnerable and exposed as she had ever felt in her life, swung the pick.
She caught him with a fairly solid blow, solid enough to knock the lamp out of his hands and send him reeling. And that gave her time to swing again.
It was the second blow that did the most damage. The sharp metal end lodged in his chest so deeply she couldn’t pull it out.
He seemed as surprised as she was. He stared down at himself in horror, until the pain and the realization of what she had done enraged him even more. Cursing, and swinging at her with one hand, he yanked the pick out with the other and tossed it away. Then he lunged for her.
She tried to run, but it was no use. Her sprained ankles could no longer support her weight. Terror overwhelmed her as he caught hold of her hair. And, almost immediately, his hands circled her neck.
Rachel could feel his extreme hatred as he squeezed—squeezed until she couldn’t fight anymore. Then everything went dim, as if the light he’d dropped had gone out.
Chapter 27
It was obvious as soon as Truman reached the flats that someone had been in the mine. A broken Davy lamp lay on its side near the lift. Around the corner, in the loading area, there were more broken lights—and four bodies. Using his own lamp to see who they were, he glanced up at Jonas Cutberth, who had accompanied him into the mine.
“’Tis Thornick and the others,” he said.
Cutberth knelt to confirm it. “Two have been shot. The others stabbed.”
“I can’t believe Wythe has done this,” Truman said.
“Who else could it be?”
Truman supposed that Cutberth could have done it himself and used the excuse that Wythe had been here to get him into the mine. But he had been holding one of Truman’s pistols since they entered the cage. If he meant him any harm, Truman would’ve found out before now. “But why would he kill these men?”
“Maybe they knew something they shouldn’t.”
Truman rued the day his parents had been kind enough to take Wythe in. “He will hang for this.”
