“One, Donovan. And it’s not looking very healthy.”
“You know enough to place yourself under it, with your back up against it, don’t you?”
“Y-yes. Once I feel up to crawling over there, I’ll do it.”
“Can’t you walk over to it?”
“Too dizzy. I’d fall and skin my knees.”
He almost smiled. “Wouldn’t want you to skin up those pretty knees.”
“You’re full of Texas baloney, Donovan.”
He laughed. “I told you before, Cat, with you, I’m honest.”
“Sure, an honest geologist. That’ll be the day.”
“Guess I’ll have to prove it to you, won’t I?”
“Right now I need a knight on a white charger. Come and get me, Donovan.”
“Would you settle for thirty firemen, fifty miners and some drilling equipment instead?”
“Sounds wonderful.”
He heard the sudden wobble in Cat’s voice, as if she were close to tears. Slade tightened his grip around the radio. “Look, it appears that about ten feet of earth and rock are separating us, Cat. Unless we run into some limestone sheets weighing a ton or more, we ought to be able to reach you within twenty-four hours.”
“Slade?”
Slade blinked the sweat from his eyes, hearing the fear in Cat’s voice for the first time. “What is it, sweetheart?”
“C-could you contact my parents? Tell them what’s happened? Especially my brother Rafe? They live in Colorado. The Triple K Ranch. If I give you the phone number, could you call them? Please?”
“Sure, anything you want.”
Relief cracked her voice. “T-thanks. Here’s the number.”
Slade committed it to memory. “I’m signing off, Cat. The miners will be here any minute. I’ve got Graham’s permission to organize and run this rescue operation. If you need anything, call. Otherwise I’ll contact you in about an hour.”
“Just let me know if you can reach my family.”
“I’ll personally make the call. Graham’s got a phone in his car.”
“Thanks, Slade. It means a lot to me….”
“I can tell.” As he left the dankness of the mine, his mind shifted to another matter. Slade knew very few geologists or mining engineers who had sunk roots and had a family or children. He also knew from reading articles on Cat Kincaid that she wasn’t married. As Slade got to his feet and began his trek to the adit, he wondered what man in his right mind would let someone as rare as Cat Kincaid out of his sight, much less out of his life. There was a special quality about her that he longed to explore. She was like an emerald mine waiting to be discovered: enticing, mysterious and filled with rich promise.
Gray light filtered through the adit, telling him he was near the opening. Well, he’d discovered one thing about Cat: family meant a great deal to her. Rafe was obviously a brother she could look up to, admire and lean on in times of trouble. Lucky guy, he told himself enviously.
As Slade walked out into the pall of rain, he glared at the gray sky overhead. They didn’t need more water; it would loosen more dirt and the rain would trickle through the weakened limestone, making the rescue effort even more precarious than before. Slade had good instincts, and his gut sense had often saved his life in the past. Now, that voice screamed out that another cave-in was near. His instincts also warned him that if this was Cat’s first cave-in, she would need emotional support to get back the courage to someday walk into the darkness of another mine.
*
Cat could barely move her head. She sat with her back against the rough, splintered surface of the post. Five hours had elapsed. Slade had called once an hour and sweet God in heaven, how she came to rely on him; he was her support system against the fear that threatened to consume her. Each passing hour made it become harder to control her rising panic.
Her spirits had plummeted when Slade had not been able to raise anyone at her parents’ ranch right away. Cat felt alone and vulnerable in a way she’d never before experienced. Rafe–she needed Rafe’s steadying presence. He was always the one to get them out of a jam when they were kids growing up in the Rocky Mountain wilderness. There had been times when she was scared to death, but because Rafe reassured her that it would be all right, she took dangerous chances with him. When Slade informed her he couldn’t reach anyone at the Triple K, her fears loomed up again.
Slade had told her he had the first shift with the miners clearing away the debris. Cat couldn’t hear the strike of pickaxs or the grind of huge auger drill bits boring holes to loosen the soft base so it could be shoveled away. The wall, Slade had said, was at least ten feet thick, perhaps twenty. It could, at worst, be days before she could be rescued.
At 10:00 a.m., Slade was able to make contact with the Kincaid Ranch. After a tense conversation, he made his way to the wall and called Cat. After four tries, she still didn’t answer and Slade grew worried. Another five calls. Nothing. Had Cat passed out? Was she sleeping because of the concussion? Slade tried to contain his apprehension.
*
Cat finally floated out of unconsciousness and weakly raised her left arm. The luminous dials on her Rolex told her she had been asleep for nearly six hours. She lay on the hard pebbled floor on her left side to ease the pressure on her right. Experimentally, Cat lightly ran her fingers over her ribs, feeling how swollen her flesh had become beneath her damp canvas jacket. Not good, she thought blearily. The radio clicked, telling her that Slade was trying to contact her.
The radio lay near her head and she depressed the button. “S-Slade?”
“Cat? My God, are you all right?”
A grimace pulled at her lips. “Fine. Went to sleep, didn’t I?”
“Yeah. Six hours. You scared the hell out of me.”
“S-sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Listen, I got hold of your family and everyone’s flying out here to see you. They’ll be landing soon and I’ve arranged to have someone meet them at the nearest airport. Your parents, brother, sister and her husband are coming.”
Tears leaked down her face and she couldn’t trust her voice.
“The whole family’s coming?”
He laughed. “Yeah. I’m impressed. Not many families would fly to the rescue.”
“We’re close.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I’ve had better days, Donovan. How are things out there?”
“We’ve got thirty men on line for you, sweetheart. We’re hauling about a ton of dirt and rock an hour. I’m shoring the shaft up with new post and stull every three feet as we go.”
Cat nodded, trying to lick her dry lips. “How many tons do you figure is between you and me?”
Slade’s voice was apologetic. “About fifty tons of material. If we can keep up the pace I’ve set, we’ll have you out of there in roughly fifty hours.”
Fifty more hours in the damp darkness. It seemed like an eternity. Could she control her fear? It was so black, she couldn’t even see her hand if she held it up in front of her nose. And she was thirsty. Her tongue felt swollen, her throat rough as sandpaper. She would have to crawl the width of the footwall to sip that trickle of life-giving water along the opposite wall.
“You’re doing a good job, Donovan. I’m going to owe you a lot by the time you get me out of here.”
“Don’t worry, I intend to collect for my services, lady.”
Cat smiled, allowing his voice to cover her like a blanket of balm. “Whatever you want, Donovan, within reason.”
Slade chuckled indulgently. “Don’t worry, the price won’t be so high you won’t want to pay it. Look, I’ll check in on you an hour from now.”
Panic nibbled at her crumbling control and Cat gripped the radio, dreading the return to silence. “For some reason, I trust you, Donovan. I shouldn’t, but I do.”
His voice came back, husky but velvet to soothe her shattered composure. “Hold that thought, Cat. I’ll be here for you, that’s a promise
.”
*
Two things happened in the next hour. The entire Kincaid family arrived at the Emerald Lady, and Slade could not raise Cat again on his radio. Rafe Kincaid, the brother, was close to exploding, firing questions faster than Slade could answer them. The tall, strapping Colorado rancher took off his Stetson, rolled up his sleeves, grabbed a hard hat and went into the mine to help in the rescue effort. So did Jim Tremain, Dal’s husband. Slade liked Cat’s family; Sam and Inez Kincaid, Cat’s parents, and Dal Tremain, Cat’s younger sister, helped to set up a place where coffee could be dispensed in the nearby shack and sandwiches could be made for the hardworking rescue crews. Millie, the Kincaid’s housekeeper, who was apparently an integral part of the family, watched Dal’s months-old baby, Alessandra, while Dal worked.
Within an hour of their arrival, the Kincaid family had organized chow lines for the hungry miners. Meanwhile, Slade had returned to the mine to continue directing the rescue. Slade tried to reassure Rafe that his sister had probably lost consciousness again due to her concussion. Rafe glowered at him, as if it were his fault, but Slade shrugged it off. Let the rancher expend his anger on the pickax he was wielding, instead of blowing up at him.
*
Cat tasted blood. She lay on her left side, shivering. What time was it? How many hours had passed since she had last lost consciousness? The luminous dials of her watch blurred and she blinked. Her vision was being affected and that frightened her. The radio was pressed protectively to her breast and she shakily turned it on, the red light glowing brightly in the darkness. Almost immediately, Slade’s voice came through, soothing her fragmented nerves.
“Cat?”
She heard the anxiety in Slade’s voice and was grateful for his undiminished caring.
“I’m alive,” she announced, her voice weaker than it had been earlier.
“Thank God. What happened? You’ve been out ten hours.”
“I can’t hang on to consciousness, Slade. Keep blacking out.”
“Don’t worry about it. Let me go get your parents. Your family arrived some time ago. They’re helping in the relief efforts. Rafe and Jim Tremain have been using a pickax and shovel the last ten hours. That’s quite a family you’ve got. Hold on…”
Tears began to stream down her grimy cheeks when she heard her father’s gruff voice, and then her mother’s. Cat tried not to cry. She tried to sound brave and calm and steady, everything she wasn’t. But when Rafe was put on, her voice cracked, betraying her real emotions. Whether it was the avalanche of tightly withheld feelings or the strain of her entrapment, Cat was barely coherent. There was so much she wanted to say; instead tears flowed in a warm stream down her cheeks, and her voice was wobbly and fragmented.
“S-Slade…” she choked.
“He’s done a fine job, Cat,” Rafe came back. “He knows what he’s doing. Look, you just hang on. We’ve got an ambulance and paramedic crew standing by to take you to the closest hospital. Keep your chin up, Baby Sis. We all love you. Just remember all the times you and I dared danger and won. It’ll be the same this time. I promise you.”
Rafe grimly handed the radio back to Donovan. Neither man looked at the other; if they had, they would have seen tears forming in the corners of their eyes. Slade’s face was slack with exhaustion and streaked with dirt and mud. He took the radio from Rafe.
“Cat?”
“Y-yes?”
“Thirty-five hours to go, sweetheart. You’ve got a passel of people out here who love you. Just remember that.”
*
Grim, unshaven men, their eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed from too much dust, their hands bruised and bloodied with scrapes and cuts, continued on. Day had turned to night and then day again. The rain had stopped and so had Cat’s infrequent radio exchanges. Yet, the Kincaids’ courage inspired the rescuers, and there wasn’t a man among them who slept more than a few hours between the mandatory six-hour shifts at the end of a shovel, a wheelbarrow or pickax. No one complained, and Slade found that phenomenal.
Rubbing his bleary eyes, Slade held up his watch. A portable generator provided light in the damp expanse of the mine. Five hours…five hours before they broke through and made contact. Was Cat on the left wall near the stream? No stranger to cave-ins, he worried about her dehydrating. The people who knew of his escapes had said he’d had nine lives. Well, Cat had better have nine lives; she’d need them to survive this one.
*
Cat wasn’t sure what pulled her from her floating state. Was it the whoosh of fresh air into the staleness of the chamber or the frantic sound of steel-bladed shovels tearing a hole through the last of the wall that held her captive? Or was it actually recognizing Rafe’s hushed voice, and Slade’s? Whatever it was, she pulled on the last of her reserves and turned her head, which was now lying in a trickle of water, toward the men’s urgent voices.
The light from Slade’s helmet slashed through the thick silence of the chamber. His eyes widened as he found Cat covered with filth and dust, her hair caked with mud around her pale, translucent face. She lay on her left side, stretched out across the stream of water. Thank God she’d had the foresight to move to the water; all she had to do was turn her face and sip from the shallow stream. His admiration for her survival instincts rose. Next, Rafe came through the six-foot opening, followed by a paramedic with a thin oak body board and a neck brace.
Slade reached her first, his hand closing protectively over Cat’s shoulder. He leaned over from his kneeling position, his face close to hers. He whispered her name twice before he saw her long dark lashes flutter and barely open.
Cat saw a lopsided smile pull at Slade’s mouth; his face was tense, his eyes burned out with bone-deep exhaustion. She saw a flame of hope in them, too. She tried to form his name on her parched, cracked lips, but only a hoarse sound issued forth.
“Shh, sweetheart. Your knights in shining armor have arrived. All I want you to do is lie very still while we get you on this body board and truss you up like a Christmas goose.”
She wasn’t able to comprehend all that Slade said as he leaned over her. The warmth of his breath coupled with his husky voice flowed like balm across her, filling her with new strength. A small smile tugged at Cat’s mouth. She felt Slade’s long fingers close gently across her shoulder, and she knew he understood.
An incredible aura of care surrounded Cat during those twenty minutes when the three men worked on her. She was conscious for minutes at a time, lapsing in and out of the arms of darkness. Rafe’s voice or his familiar touch on her hair would draw her back to consciousness. She began to anticipate Slade’s knowing, professional touch as he and the paramedic turned her over, placing her on the body board. She had grown used to the pain in her right side, but the callused pressure of Slade’s fingers as he fitted the brace around her neck brought tears to her eyes.
The jab of a needle brought her to greater awareness, but once they had her strapped securely to the thin oak board Cat lost consciousness again.
*
Slade handed Sam Kincaid another cup of coffee as they stood in the waiting room of the surgical floor of the hospital. He wasn’t sure who looked worse: he or Rafe. They were muddy, their hair plastered down from untold hours of sweat. Every muscle in Slade’s body screamed for rest and the luxury of a hot shower. He wrinkled his nose; the brackish odor of the mine and his sour sweat smell surrounded him. He glanced at his watch. An hour ago Cat had been taken to the emergency room, attended by a number of physicians and nurses. None of the family had been allowed to go with her. Why didn’t someone come out and tell them how she was?
Slade hadn’t tried to hide his own emotions as he’d sat alongside Rafe in the ambulance. Cat had been chalk white; even her freckles had looked washed out. Her once-beautiful sable-brown hair was a stringy mat of mud and blood. There’d been a three-inch gash across her scalp, and she had bled heavily, but he was more worried about the skull beneath her scalp. Just how bad was her concussion? Judging fro
m Cat’s pallor and her prolonged bouts of unconsciousness, it was serious.
A doctor came through the double swinging doors, his face unreadable. He headed for the elder Kincaid. The entire family, with Millie and Slade, surrounded the doctor before he drew to a stop.
“Mr. Kincaid?”
Sam Kincaid nodded. “Doctor? How’s my girl?”
“I’m Dr. Scott,” he said, extending his hand. “Cathy is in serious condition, Mr. Kincaid. She’s suffered two broken ribs. She’s extremely dehydrated and we’ve got her on two I.V.s to restabilize her.”
Slade closed his fist. His voice was strained. “And her head injury, Dr. Scott?”
Scott’s narrow face became impassive. “Severe concussion. She keeps lapsing in and out of consciousness.” His brow furrowed. “Is your name Slade?”
“Yes. Slade Donovan.”
“Cathy is asking for you. We need to try and keep her awake. I want to keep her from going into a coma.”
Inez Kincaid’s thin face grew still. “A coma, doctor?”
“Yes. If I can keep Slade with her, she might rally enough to fight back and stay awake. We’ve got that portion of her head packed in dry ice to reduce the swelling.” He looked up at Slade. “Let’s get you cleaned up a little, son, and then, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to remain with Cathy for a while.”
Slade nodded. He followed Dr. Scott down the immaculate hall to a lounge. A nurse gave him a green surgical shirt and a pair of trousers to replace his filthy clothes. Slade took a quick hot shower and fought the deep drowsiness that tried to claim him. It wasn’t yet time to sleep off the past forty-eight hours he’d been awake.
The nurse, a petite blonde with blue eyes, smiled once he emerged from the lounge. “Now you look like a doctor, Mr. Donovan. Follow me, please.” She took him to the intensive-care unit, where each patient’s room was enclosed on three sides with glass panels. Cathy looked dead. She matched the color of her sheets. Her hair had been washed clean and an ice pack placed carefully against her skull. The sigh of oxygen and the beeps of the cardiac unit made Slade grow wary. So many machines to monitor her fragile hold on life, he thought.
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