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For the next ten minutes, all she could hear was the quiet rasping of her breath, and the crunch of their shoes on the ochre gravel. A couple of times they walked straight through a large spiderweb, strung between two trees, and Dale cursed while he wiped away the web. Between the spiders, the snakes and the toads, Daisy was really glad Dale was out the front.
She recognized the bulky shadows of the abandoned cottages as they slid by on the left-hand side. Dale kept them within the cover of the scattered acacia trees, rather than exposing them out in the open. She hadn’t seen the large, wooden, mine-shaft elevator in the middle of the township, but that’d be far behind by now, as they continued to skirt the edges of the old village.
They kept going, Dale following a path that led away from the main township, toward the base of the escarpment, running parallel to what would’ve been the main street when the town had once thrived. It was darker in here as trees crowded in, their branches blocking out the starlight, and the escarpment loomed tall in front of them.
Dale slowed, then stopped in his tracks. He leaned in and whispered in her ear. “I’m not exactly sure how far down we need to go, distances are hard to gauge in the dark.” He raised an arm and pointed down the length of the escarpment. “There are at least three or four abandoned shafts in this direction, but I’m not sure—”
The sound of a gunshot split the air. What the…?
Dale was quicker to react than she was, ducking behind a trunk and dragging her with him.
Daisy covered her mouth with her hands to stop herself from crying out. What was that? Who was shooting? River? Was River involved?
She tried to tear herself out of Dale’s arms and run toward the sound, but he held on tight. She was strong. She struggled against him. But he was stronger. She opened her mouth to scream River’s name, but a hand clamped over her face before she could utter a sound.
“Calm down,” he growled into her ear. “Do you want to get us both shot?” His voice had a hard edge to it she’d never heard before, and it was that hard edge that finally got through her near-hysteria. She relaxed in his arms, letting herself go limp. He was right. If someone was shooting, the last thing they needed was to draw attention to themselves.
But she was desperate to find out what was going on. Dale cautiously released her mouth. They both peered around the edge of the trunk. Lights were flickering in the distance. A flashlight, perhaps. She glanced at Dale and they communicated silently, both agreeing they needed to get closer. Dale took Daisy’s hand and forced her behind him as they wended carefully between the trees. She wasn’t sure she enjoyed being pushed behind, being told what to do. Dale thought he was protecting her, but she was quite capable of protecting herself. It was her brother in potential trouble out there. She let the feeling drop; it’d do no good to rage against gender bias right now.
As they crept closer, Daisy made out a lone figure pacing to and fro in a small clearing. Closer and closer, and she could see the figure was that of a man, and the cliff face behind him contained a wooden casing, perhaps where the mine shaft was boarded up. Now they could hear him talking, a phone held to his ear. They finally got close enough to see it wasn’t River. This man was shorter, stocky, and stalked around with a menacing grace that had Daisy’s alarm bells ringing. This man was dangerous; she could feel it. Perhaps River had been right all along.
The man stopped talking, and shoved his phone in his pocket. And then he looked down at something on the ground at his feet. A dark, shapeless lump. The shape moved and groaned.
Oh, God. It couldn’t be.
That wasn’t River, was it?
She released her grasp on Dale’s hand to run toward her brother. But Dale had her around the waist before she’d even gone two steps. She sank down onto the ground, a low sob escaping from deep inside her chest.
Dale cupped her face with his hands and forced her to look at him. Don’t do anything stupid, his eyes seemed to plead with her. All she could think was that she needed to protect her brother. She’d been doing it all her life. It was ingrained in her psyche, instinctive. He was her flesh and blood, and she would do anything for him. But slowly that all-encompassing dread, that terrible urgency drained from her body, replaced by a hard-edged fear and a cooler head. After a few seconds, she nodded at Dale and he released her.
What were they going to do now? They had to rescue River, there was no doubt about that. But how?
Dale pulled his phone out of his rear pocket and glanced at it. Great idea. She agreed wholeheartedly that it was time to call the cops. Or at least call the lodge and get someone to come and back them up. But then he grimaced and shook his head. He had no signal. Shit. Why hadn’t they brought a sat phone? Too late now.
She crawled through the underbrush, snakes and cane toads be damned, needing to get closer, to figure out the lay of the land. Dale was close by, shuffling quietly through the red dirt beside her. Rocks and leaves and sticks dug into her knees. So instead, she used her toes and hands to walk like a monkey across the landscape, making sure she stayed hidden from view by bushes and tall grass. When they were within a hundred yards, she hunkered down behind the wide trunk of a bottle tree, Dale by her shoulder.
Now she could see exactly what was going on. A small, hurricane lamp sat atop a rock near the entrance to an abandoned shaft, casting just enough light to see by. The entrance looked to be completely boarded up. Was this the tunnel River was talking about? River lay on the ground, but he’d stopped moving. He was very still. The other man was pacing around the small clearing, and she could clearly see the gun in his hand.
The man abruptly stopped pacing, and cast a sharp gaze out into the darkness, as if he’d heard something. She held her breath. He continued to stare for many long moments. Then, just as suddenly, he gathered up the lamp and disappeared out of view.
What the…? She frowned at Dale and he shrugged in return, equally puzzled. There had to be some sort of false door, or perhaps the man had disguised the entrance, so that it merely looked boarded-up from a distance.
Everything was plunged into darkness when he took the lamp with him. Daisy couldn’t quite believe their luck. The man had gone. And he’d left River lying there. Now was their chance.
“Quick.” She motioned with her hand. “Help me get River.”
“Are you completely sure it’s your brother?” Dale whispered. She merely nodded. There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in her mind. Even without that owl hooting its premonition, she could feel it in her bones. “But what if that guy comes back?” Dale asked. “Why would he leave River just lying there? Surely, he’ll return any second?”
It was true. The man was highly unlikely to leave River lying there. Perhaps he’d ducked inside to get something. Like a shovel to dig a gravesite. The terrible thought spread across her mind like a virus. That was it; she’d do this on her own, if she had to. Drag River across the dusty ground to safety. But it’d be much quicker and easier to move River with Dale’s help. She knew she was asking a lot; had already asked a lot from him. But she’d ask again, for her brother’s sake. She stared at him, waiting for him to decide.
Dale got to his feet. “Come on. Let’s make this quick.”
She wanted to hug him, pour out all her gratitude, so he knew how much this meant to her. It wasn’t the time, however. Her eyes needed to adjust to the darkness, but she didn’t have time, and so stumbled, half-blind in the direction of the clearing. They were making more noise than they should, but that couldn’t be helped. She made out the faint outline of the top of the escarpment and they went deeper into the shadows beneath it. Dale was a few feet away; she could hear his footsteps and faintly make out the shape of his head as he stalked through the grass beside her. As they got closer, she slowed, almost feeling her way with her feet, her hands outstretched in front.
She stopped abruptly when she heard a low moan directly in front of her. She’d almost fallen over River because it was too murky to see where she was going.
Dropping to her knees, she felt around until she came in contact with something warm, wet and sticky. It took her a few seconds to realize it was River’s blood seeping onto the ground. She recoiled in horror. Steeling herself, she leaned forward again, this time finding River’s back, patting her way up his body until she found his head.
She leaned over and whispered, “River, it’s me, Daisy.” He gave another moan but didn’t speak. He was in a bad way. Where had he been shot? In the chest? In the stomach? She couldn’t see in the dark.
“Over here,” she called quietly to Dale. “I found him. Quick.” They needed to get him away.
Dale was beside her. He quickly gathered River beneath the shoulders, and she took up his feet as they lifted him off the ground.
All of a sudden, everything around them was illuminated into stark brightness. Someone had turned a spotlight on them. She made the rookie mistake of turning toward the light and was instantly blinded.
“Don’t move, or I’ll shoot,” a deep voice rang out from behind the spotlight.
Fuck. Dale had been right. It was a trap all along. She’d dragged Dale into terrible danger.
