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He knew they’d descended to the bottom of the staircase when his final footfall hit the ground with a thud that shivered his hipbone. He stumbled over something that felt like a wire.
“Cora?” Meredith called. Her voice was a bright, clear beacon in the blackness. “Cora, are you in here?”
No answer from the girl.
There was, however, an answer from God … in the form of a low, menacing groan at the top of the stairs.
“Oh, Lord.”
Chapter Twenty-one
There was a crash of thunder.
A crash of stone.
And then a chorus of a hundred small collisions, each one bashing blindly into the next.
The difference was palpable, instantly. It had nothing to do with the lighting—pitch black was pitch black—but rather to do with the air. The cool, misty breeze was instantly sucked from the space, replaced with puffs of grit, and rank, ancient damp. The air was choked with earth and secrets, as if they’d been sealed in a tomb.
“Tell me,” said Meredith, “that sound wasn’t what I think it was.”
“It was,” he confirmed. “We’re trapped.”
Her fingers tightened around his.
“We’ll be all right,” he said.
At the same moment, she said, “We’ll be fine, you know.”
And after speaking over one another, they laughed a bit together. Fitting, that each of them should think of comforting the other. They were each of them so accustomed to being the stronger in any given pair.
Once the last bits of their echoed laughter had seeped into the cracks of the stones, Rhys took the lamp from her hand and held it aloft between them. Bravery aside, she was trembling a bit.
“Don’t be concerned. You’re with me. And I’m indestructible, remember?” It was this very place that had made him so. There was no way in hell he’d die here. Clearing his throat, he went on, “We need to look for something dry and wood. Something that will burn.”
“Do you mean to start a fire? It’s not that cold.”
“No, but this lamp won’t last all night. And once we have a bit more light, I’ll go up and assess the damage.” From the quality of the air, Rhys suspected the cave-in was complete, but he would check it himself to be certain.
Keeping her hand in his, he scouted the immediate area for wood. As his luck would have it, he stumbled into a crate almost instantly. He bent and began prying the boards apart with his bare hands. It was rough going. For a crate stored for more than a decade in a damp, underground room, the wood was surprisingly strong and dry.
Once he had the top of the crate pried off, Rhys waved the lamp over it to see what was inside. Brushing aside a thick layer of straw—again, remarkably fresh and dry—he uncovered several rows of bottles. Strange, that his father would have left this much of any spirit lying about, untouched.
Curling his fingers around a bottleneck, he lifted it to the torchlight. French brandy. And, judging by the rich amber color that swirled red in the flickering light, it was brandy of a fine quality.
Well, that sealed it. This hadn’t belonged to his father. The old man had always valued quantity over quality.
“At least we won’t die of thirst,” Meredith said, taking the bottle from his hand. “I’d wager he has some foodstuffs stored in here, too. I thought he mentioned a crate of olives, some weeks ago. Or was it dates? And I know he was very proud of seizing some silver flatware recently. We could make a right fine meal down here.”
“Myles,” Rhys breathed. “This all belongs to Gideon Myles. He’s been storing his smuggled goodshere?”
She nodded. “Amongst his associates, he specializes in the hard-to-place items. When they can’t find a buyer immediately, or none who’ll pay what the goods are worth … he brings the goods up here and stores them until he can find a market for them in one of the cities. Some things stay just a week. Others, months.”
“A tripwire. The bastard had this place rigged.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t lightning that caused that cave-in. I thought I’d stumbled over a cord, just before. It must have triggered a powder explosion somewhere.”
