AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She bends to grab the jeans, intending to bag them and set them aside. But then her hand freezes midair, her breath caught in her throat. Very slowly, she reaches down and picks up a small object that has rolled out of the front right pocket.
“Silas,”she breathes, opening her palm to reveal the impossibly shiny surface of a chunk of jet-black obsidian. Silas stares down at the burnished surface of the stone in Meg’s hand as his eyes widen in recognition.
“Oh my God.”
Darcy leans in, inspects the stone, then looks between them with a furrowed brow. “What?” she snaps.
Meg can’t speak. Her mind is churning too fast, snagging on memory again before being cast back into the present. Obsidian glints in her mind’s eye. The sound of splintering wood fills her ears as she remembers the way her foot crashed through the boarded-up, unmarked mine.
“Do you think ... could he have ...?” she says, then stops, still fixated on the rock like it’s a sacred object. To her, it is. Dare she hope Silas feels the same?
Darcy’s patience breaks. “Will someonepleasetell me the significance of this chunk of rock before my head explodes?”
Meg and Silas look at one another; then both begin to talk.
“There’s only one place I’ve ever seen obsidian up here,” she tells her, in a tight rush. “The Long Lake mine shaft.”
“My fireplace mantel,” Silas counters at the exact same time.
Meg is startled. “Your mantel? You mean this is our—my—stone?”
Instantly, she’s reliving that day ... the Jeep and the mine and the summer heat.You saved it?she wants to ask.All this time?
But Silas rises abruptly, and the moment passes. “It was on my mantel,” he says. “Spence must have grabbed it—”
“But if he didn’t?” Meg presses. Because doesn’t he see what this means? “If thisisn’tthat rock, then ...”
Silas picks up the thread of Meg’s logic and takes it swiftly to its conclusion. “Then that means they’ve been there. In the mine.” His face falters. “But I’ve never told them about it.”
“That doesn’t mean they didn’t stumble upon it.”
Silas weighs this possibility, a thin thread of hope that’s beautiful to see teasing the corners of his mouth. “Do you really think he could have wandered that far? To our—the—mine shaft?”
She envisions it ... the hike around Long Lake. The climb up the slope. What has she thought more than once in the past twenty-four hours? That any kid of Silas’s would push boundaries. Test limits. Go the distance. “I do.”
Silas nods. “Which means we’re close, but we’re searching in the wrong place!”
Their eyes lock on one another, the tight confines of the com van narrowing to include only her and him and the few short feet between them. When Darcy’s voice cuts back across the small space, they both startle.
“What mine shaft? Start at the beginning. Because if our people are wasting their time on the wrong grid, I need to know.”
“I have a rock just like this,” Silas explains. They all study it. Is it the same one Meg gave him all those years ago? “This may be it ... I don’t ...” He looks closer, the pad of his thumb tracing the smooth planes. “I don’t know. But if it’s not ...”
“We know where Spencer got this one,” Meg finishes for him.
Darcy picks up her radio to contact a deputy standing by at the lodge. “On the mantel in the dining room?” she confirms beforetransmitting, and Silas nods mutely. She relays the location into her handheld, and they wait while the deputy goes in search of it. A minute goes by before her radio squawks back to life.
“Base?” the deputy prompts.
“Go ahead.”
“The item in question is here. Chunk of obsidian about two inches in diameter.”
At first the words are devoid of meaning. Could this all be falling into place? If they’re just grasping at straws, why is Silas already pushing past her to the topographical map on Darcy’s desk, his finger tracing a path from Long Lake due east, toward the mines? Why is Santos already on the radio, confirming the current location of each field team in an attempt to gauge which one is closest to their new target area? Darcy is standing by, ready to relay the coordinates once they have them at their fingertips, and Meg cautiously allows herself to believe: it’s not just her, clinging to nothing but thin air. This really is their big break.
“I can’t remember the bearing,” Silas says in frustration, bent over the map.
Meg joins him, running a finger over the thin, curving lines that lap across the topo map’s surface. She pictures his map from so long ago, probably long lost, with the unmarked mine punctured so perfectly with his pencil tip. She closes her eyes, recalling that hike through the woods to the mine in the heat of the sun. It’s Fourth of July and they’re standing at the edge of the lake and he’s turning her by the shoulders, pointing her in the direction they need to go. The compass needle is quivering, hovering between the tiny white numbers spanning the dial, and she can feel the rough edge of the baseplate in the crook of her fingers. She recalls Silas’s breath on the back of her neck as he bent forward, his hands braced on her shoulders, and she remembers the needle swinging and vacillating and, finally, resting.
