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"Stay put. I'm on my way." Rachel ended the call, her mind racing.
"Something up?" Ethan asked as she re-entered the room.
"New corpse," she replied curtly, her thoughts already sifting through possibilities like silt in a miner's pan.
"Guess we're done here." Silas stood, stretching his legs.
"Sit down, Silas. This isn't over." Rachel gestured sharply. "You might not have stolen that ATV, but there's more to dig up. And I intend to find it all."
"Dig away. You won't find dirt on me."
With a heavy heart, Rachel turned to leave—another body, another piece to the puzzle. Was Silas involved? Only time will tell. The truth was buried deep, but she was determined to unearth it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dead... She was dead.
So dead.
The thoughts echoed like a mantra in his mind.
The prospector's boots slipped on the slick stone, the darkness around him a suffocating cloak. His heart drummed a frantic rhythm against his ribcage, each beat resonating with the urgency of survival. Blood, a stark contrast to the earthy tones of the tunnel, coated his hands—sticky and warm—a visceral reminder of what had transpired.
"Keep moving, keep moving," he chanted under his breath, the mantra barely audible over the sound of his own labored breathing. The air was thick with the musk of damp earth and the iron tang of blood that seemed to cling to the back of his throat.
He lurched forward, his shoulder grazing the jagged wall as he rounded a bend. Sharp rocks bit through the fabric of his trousers, drawing fresh blood to mix with the dirt and the dark stains already there. He cursed silently, the pain a white-hot flash that threatened to steal his focus.
"Damn it!" The exclamation echoed off the narrow walls, only to be swallowed up by the oppressive silence that followed.
His thoughts were a whirlpool of desperation and calculation. How far behind were they? Could he still make it out before they brought the mountain down upon him? The tunnels were an old friend and a relentless foe, their secrets shared only with those who dared to plunge into their depths.
He stumbled again, catching himself against the rock face, his fingers tracing the familiar contours like a lover's caress. A rock shifted under his weight, clattering down into the abyss beyond the edge of the path. The sound was a death knell, a harbinger of the potential collapse that could entomb him forever.
"Focus," he hissed to himself, the sound raspy and foreign to his own ears. His body screamed for respite, but he shoved the weakness away. There was no room for it here, not when every second stretched out like a lifeline slipping through his fingers.
His eyes strained against the blackness, searching for the telltale glimmer of daylight or the next marker he'd etched into the walls long ago.
The memory surged, unbidden, a serpent coiling in the prospector's mind. Her eyes had glinted with a ferocity that matched his own, the female cop who'd come too close, whose badge had meant nothing here in this kingdom of stone and darkness. He could almost feel the ghost of her grip on his shirt, her fingers like steel traps, unforgiving, unyielding.
"Should've stayed away," he muttered, his voice bouncing off the tunnel walls, distorting into the whispers of a stranger.
In the clashing shadows, he saw it again—the flash of her gun, the dance of death between them. She had moved with lethal intent, each step calculated, but so had he. They were two predators circling, both hungry for the prize that glittered beneath the mountain's skin.
"Damn you," he spat at the vision of her, the words scraping his throat raw.
He ducked under a low-hanging stalactite. Life or death, it offered no clemency.
"Got greedy, didn't you?" The accusation was a growl, torn from the depths of him. "Just like the rest."
Her end had been a thing of brutal simplicity. Desire had clouded her judgment, her oath as an officer forgotten amidst the feverish lust for gold. It was a mistake he understood all too well, a pitfall he'd skirted around his entire life. But understanding did not beget mercy, not in this place where fortunes were carved from the very rock.
"Too damn greedy," he confirmed to himself, his confession absorbed by the uncaring earth.
The prospector pushed on, the weight of her final, desperate gasp hanging in the air.
"Shouldn't have tried to cross me," he said, though there was no one to hear. "Not here. Not in my tunnels."
The earth above him rumbled with the cadence of pursuit—boots pounding, a relentless drumbeat that urged his weary legs onward. Each heavy thud reverberated through the ground and into his bones, an ominous symphony to the chase. They were close, too close.
