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“She was here,” Shep shouted to the sheriff. The dogs snuffled and ran a fairly straight path through the woods, leading their growing party of volunteers to a wall of rock.
It was a dead end.
“No!” Shep punched the air, wondering why the dogs had led them here.
Adriel climbed the hill. “The rubble is no more than a stone’s throw from here.” His expression was sober.
Shep’s heart sank at the very real possibility that Prim had been caught in the explosion.
A raucous bark from Rook had him spinning back to the wall of rock.
“Uh…there’s a tunnel here, folks.” Marco Perez pushed aside a curtain of vines and shone his flashlight inside.
The barking dogs dashed past him. Shep followed them. It grew abruptly dark — so dark he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. The only light was from the flashlights they hastily flicked on. Marco stayed at Shep’s side, roving his beam back and forth across Shep’s. They’d jogged roughly half the length of a football field before the tunnel narrowed. They had to proceed single file from there. Not too many yards further, they reached a pile of rocks.
The tunnel was collapsed in front of them. The dogs lunged against the rocks, pawing at them and breaking a few loose.
Marco glanced up. “I’d say this is roughly below the roped-off area outside.”
“Which probably means we have the explosion to thank for this mess,” Shep growled. There was no way he was quitting now. The dogs were trying too hard to press forward through the rock, which had to mean Prim had been brought this way by her captor.
More volunteers surged through the tunnel behind them.
“Time to dig,” Shep hollered.
It was a painstakingly slow process in the narrow tunnel. They ultimately formed a long, single-file line and started passing rocks down the line to clear the area.
One hour blurred into the next as Shep and his team made steady progress. The wall of rubble thinned. Shep imagined he heard voices on the other side. Calls for help.
He shook his head, trying to make the voices go away. The mind was a powerful instrument that could play powerful tricks on a person under as much stress as he and his friends were under. He didn’t want to give in to the madness. He needed all his wits about him right now.
The voices stopped. He drew a heavy breath and kept working. Then the voices started up again, louder than before.
The dogs started to whine in excitement. That was when Shep realized it wasn’t just his mind playing tricks on him. There were people trapped on the other side of the rock.
“Prim,” he hollered, digging with all his might. A small hole appeared near the top of the rubble.
“Help,” a woman shouted.
It was a voice Shep had feared he would never hear again. “Prim!” He craned his neck to reach the opening, putting his mouth as close to it as possible.
“Shep!” She sobbed his name. “The water’s rising. I don’t know how much longer we’ll last.”
Water? What water?His gaze narrowed on the small trickle of fluid oozing from the hole and dribbling down the wall. It was so dim in the tunnel that he hadn’t noticed it until she’d pointed it out.
His heart tightened beneath his ribs. “Dig faster,” he shouted.
The more they dug, the more water gushed from the cavern on the other side. Shep and his comrades were soon standing ankle deep in cold, dirty water.
He lost track of time, working like a madman until Prim half-crawled and half-tumbled into his arms. She was soaked to the bone.
“Oh, Shep!” Her arms closed around him. “You came for me.” Her voice was muffled against the side of his neck where her face was burrowed.
“Of course, I came for you!” He held her tightly, vowing to never let her go again. “You mean everything to me.”
Her whole body trembled. He wasn’t sure if she was going into shock or coming out of it. Her limbs were cold. So cold.
“Coming through,” he called urgently, edging his way past the volunteers.
