Chapter Fourteen

Clay moved through the cave, keeping his light dim and low. His mind raced ahead of him. Who had shot Odell? And why? To keep him from telling them where Ivy was? Or something else?

He frowned, remembering something Odell had said when he’d seen the spilled jewels. “Wait a minute, these aren’t—”

What had he been about to say?

Clay stopped, hidden from view behind a space in the rocks, and pulled out the bag of jewels. He’d never seen them before, only in a photograph that Williams had given him after they were stolen.

Shining his flashlight over the glittering mass, he saw with a start that some of them had broken when they’d dropped to the rock floor.

A sick feeling settled in his stomach as he took one of the larger diamonds and ran the sharp edge across the glass face of his flashlight.

Just as he’d suspected. Paste. His daughter had been kidnapped for a worthless bag of glass.

It took all his willpower not to throw the jewels against the wall. He stared down at them and sucked in his breath as his anger dimmed and realization dawned, blinding bright.

He let out a curse under his breath. It was finally starting to make sense. Odell faking his death. Raymond turning up after two years. The missing jewels. Raymond’s calls to Texas.

He pushed the jewels back into the bag, then looked around for a place to hide them.

Then he moved forward, knowing now what was waiting for him. Who was waiting for him. And just how desperate the killer was.

Ahead he heard a sound. The scrape of a boot heel on rock. He clicked off his flashlight and froze. The air suddenly seemed colder. He almost thought he felt a breeze and sensed that the narrow tunnel he was in opened into a larger space just ahead.

He held his breath. Someone was in the next room. He felt it. Thought he could almost hear him breathing. Sense him waiting in expectation.

The killer had the advantage. He knew the landscape in the cave and he knew where Clay would appear.

The darkness had its own ominous feel to it. Just a cold denseness that made it feel alive. He could see where it wouldn’t take long in this kind of total blackness to go crazy, to hear the dark begin to whisper things in your ear that would drive you mad.

He reached blindly into the open pocket of the backpack for Odell’s flashlight. It was broken and didn’t work, but he’d taken it for the batteries just in case he needed them.

He now carefully and quietly unscrewed the end of the flashlight, took out the batteries and stuffed them into his pocket, working as quickly as he could in the dark. Then he twisted the end back on the flashlight. It was still heavy enough to cause a clatter if he dropped it. Or threw it.

Then, making sure he was ready, he moved forward, knowing the killer was ready for him.

JOSIE HADN’T GONE but a few feet more in the narrow confines of the hole when she felt something soft. The edge of a baby blanket.

She held her breath as her hand closed over one small arm. Hurriedly her hand went to her daughter’s face. She felt warm breath and heard the wonderful sleeping sounds the toddler made.

Her face streaming with tears, she dug out the candle and struck another match. The flame flared, shocking her to see that Ivy lay curled in a cocoon of blankets against a solid rock wall where the hole ended.

A wave of panic swept over her. She felt as if the walls were closing in on them and there wasn’t enough air for them to breathe.

But the look on her baby’s face calmed her some. She touched her hand to it again, cupping her precious cheek. Ivy stirred a little, sighing in her sleep.

In the light, Josie could see that Ivy lay on a makeshift thin wooden sled of sorts. That’s how Odell had gotten her back in here. That meant it would be easier to drag her out.

She noticed something else. An indentation in the wall. If she were careful, she thought she might be small enough to get turned around so she wouldn’t have to try to pull Ivy and herself out backward.

The pain in her ankle had intensified. She wasn’t sure she could crawl backward. And she knew Clay would never hear her cries this deep in the rock.

She put the candle down, gauging how much wax was left. She had to hurry. Otherwise she would have to do this in the dark.

The maneuver of getting turned around spent all of her energy but she finally managed it. She lay pressed against the rock wall for a moment, watching her daughter in the flickering candlelight.

Then she gave Ivy a kiss, snugged the blankets around her so nothing could get scraped and blew out the candle. Carefully, she put it back into her pocket along with the matches. The first thing Josie wanted Ivy to see when she woke was her mother’s face.

Then she began the arduous job of getting them both out. Fortunately, the sled beneath Ivy slid easily along the rock floor of the hole. And this time, Josie knew where she was going and she had her daughter with her.

She felt as though she could move mountains. Just let Clay come back, she prayed. Just let him live. His daughter needs him. I need him.

CLAY FELT THE DARKNESS seem to change around him and knew before his hand lost contact with the rock wall of the cave that he’d reached the next room.

He hung back, afraid the killer would suddenly shine a flashlight on him. He dug the batteries out of his pockets, waited for a long moment, then threw the empty flashlight as far and hard as he could.

The flashlight clattered off rock, echoing through the cavernous room. A light flashed on, just as he’d anticipated it would. Off to the left. Back in the stand of stalagmites.

Clay threw a battery at the light and was rewarded with an “umph” and a curse. The light flashed out.

“I want my daughter, Williams,” he yelled into the huge room, then dropped to his hands and knees and moved quickly and quietly across the expanse of stone floor that he’d seen in the glow from the killer’s flashlight, Odell’s pistol still in his waistband.

He didn’t want to kill the collector. Not until he got Brandon Williams to tell him where Ivy was.

A shot exploded in the room, the bullet ricocheting off the rocks, then another shot.

Clay stopped crawling across the floor to pull himself up behind one of the taller stalagmites he’d seen in the flash of light, the second battery in hand, his mind reviewing what he’d seen of the room, anticipating where Williams would go next.

He wasn’t surprised when he heard a scuffling sound off to his right. He’d hoped to push the killer in that direction. Away from Josie and that part of the caverns.

He threw the battery in the direction the sound had come from. Another shot rattled through the room, echoing against the rocks and followed by an oath and a loud thud as the collector must have fallen over something, too afraid to turn on his flashlight again.

Then another shot. The bullet pinged far off to the left, a wild shot.

“Tell me where my daughter is and I won’t kill you,” Clay yelled, scrambling quickly away the moment the words were out of his mouth.

Two shots followed, then the loud click that Clay had hoped for. The bastard had a six-shot revolver, the most popular weapon in the West. And he was out of bullets.

Clay snapped on his flashlight, counting on Williams’s arrogance. It wouldn’t even have crossed his mind that he might need another gun.

But he would have more bullets, only Clay had no intentions of giving him time to reload.

He caught the dark figure in his flashlight beam and charged him, like a linebacker dodging through the stone statues.

He could see the man digging desperately in his pocket, his gaze blinded by the light. At the last moment, Williams heaved the pistol at him and tried to turn and run.

Clay ducked the airborne weapon and tackled the man. They went down hard. He heard the man’s head hit the solid rock floor with a crack, then Clay was on him.

It only took a moment to realize that the man wasn’t fighting him, wasn’t moving at all.

Clay swore as he groped on the floor for the flashlight. It had rolled over against one of the rock formations, the beam shooting across the room to the tip of a stalactite hanging almost to the floor.

He grabbed the flashlight and swung the beam to the soft, frightened features of Williams’s face. But the collector stared up at him with a blankness that sent his heart into overdrive. Williams was still alive, but the fall and the knock on the head hadn’t done him any good.

“The jewels,” Williams whispered.

“I don’t give a damn about your jewels. Where is my daughter?”

“I don’t know anything about your daughter,” he whimpered.

Clay felt panic surge through him. “No, damn you. You have to have some idea.”

“Odell. That was his doing. All his doing. I just wanted my jewels.”

“And I’d have gotten them for you, just like I said I would. You didn’t have to kill Odell. You didn’t have to try to kill me. Or—” He almost said “My family.”

“Please, you have to get me medical attention,” Williams whined. “I’m in terrible pain.”

“Aren’t we all,” Clay snapped. He didn’t know why but he believed Williams didn’t know where Ivy was. All the man had cared about was his jewels and keeping his secret safe.

“You hired Odell and Raymond to steal them for the insurance money…only, let me guess, they got greedy. You risked my daughter’s life for nothing!”

“Nothing?” Williams cried. “What about my reputation?”

“Your reputation is in the toilet and you’re on your way to prison,” Clay said, pushing to his feet.

He picked up Williams’s flashlight. The man wasn’t going anywhere. Not hurt and in the dark.

“You aren’t going to just leave me here?” the collector cried.

“You’re damned lucky I don’t kill you.”

Clay turned, his only thought to get back to Josie, get help. Medical help for her. Rescuers for Ivy. Then they would comb the caverns. The guides would know all the secret hiding places in the caves. He would search every inch of it. They’d find Ivy. They had to.

He almost ran back through the caverns toward where he’d left Josie, a promise on his lips to make everything up to her. First by finding their daughter.

He hadn’t gone far when he thought he heard voices. The sound sent a chill through him. His heart pounded harder. He had to be imagining it.

He slowed, suddenly afraid that he might be losing his mind. As he neared the room where he’d left Josie, he saw the flicker of light. The candle he’d left her. He thought she must have been talking to herself. She sat huddled in a corner, the candlelight flickering on her body. Then he saw that she held Ivy in her lap.

They both looked up, their faces glowing in the light, as he stumbled to them. He could barely breathe around the lump in his throat. Or see, his eyes so blurred with tears. How? Where?

He fell to his knees beside them, his heart bursting.

“You found her.” It was all he could say as he wrapped his arms around them both and burrowed his face into them, overcome with emotion.

He felt Josie’s hand on his face.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “Everything is all right now.”

“I have to go get help,” he said after a few minutes. He didn’t want to let them go. Ever.

“Ivy and I will be fine.”

The candle had almost burned out. He handed her the flashlight he’d taken from Williams. “I’ll be back as soon as I make the call.”

She smiled up at him. “I’m counting on you.”