Karma.
For the first time ever, Owen felt for his dad. Les had lost his wife, his brother, and retired from a life-long Navy all within a few years.
Talk about life changes.
Owen’s gaze shifted back to the picture of his uncle, a protective arm around his dad.
Was it possible he really fell to his death in that cave? Did he die instantly? Suffer? Was he really that stupid to go caving alone? Who had he talked to that day? Was his uncle involved in some sort of secret Anarchist cult?
Someone had to know something.
Over the last few hours, he kept reminding himself that it wasn’t confirmed—yet—that the skeleton belonged to Ray, or that the marks on the ribs were indeed proof of something nefarious. Although, Sadie seemed sure, and she didn’t come off as the type to throw around pesky little details about potential homicides unless she was certain.
Deep in thought, he glanced out the window at the fog beginning to settle above the lake. It was a cool, dark, gray morning. No sunrise today.
Fitting.
Owen slipped the pictures into a Ziplock bag and placed the box back onto the top shelf of his dad’s closet. As he turned, he noticed a small box tucked in the back. This one missing the layer of dust that the others had gathered.
He grabbed it and pulled it down.
Ray
The name written on the top was scribbled in his dad’s shaky cursive.
Ray
Frowning, Owen settled onto the bed and removed the lid. The box was filled with things that belonged to his uncle. After the funeral, his dad and Amos had packed up Ray’s house, shoved everything into a storage unit where it remained today. Except for this box, apparently.
Carefully, Owen unpacked the items one by one as more memories hit home. There was an old pair of hiking boots, ratted flannel shirt, a few T-shirts—one with Cave Dweller written across the front, another with Born to Spelunk—a few random lighters, knick knacks, and a small velvet satchel. Owen pulled the little strings and tipped the bag over.
A tarnished outdoor watch with a bright orange band, a peace-sign earring—Owen laughed, remembering Ray sporting the gold stud in the 90’s—and a silver band with a heart hammered across the top.
Owen’s brow drew together as he turned it over in his fingers. He didn’t recognize it. He slipped it on, the small ring catching on his knuckle.
No way this would have fit his uncle. A woman, yes.
He looked around the room, as if the walls were going to tell him who the ring belonged to.
Why was it in his uncle’s things?
Perhaps a gift for someone that never was received? Or, a gift returned?
A low rumble of thunder sounded in the distance.
He held the ring up to the lamp and titled his head, peering at the inside of the band.
PEG
Peg?
His mind raced thinking of all the women Ray had brought to the house, or talked about during an evening of drinking. More than Owen could count. But one thing was the same with all the women—they were all blonde, beautiful, and no-strings-attached. No way in hell his non-committal uncle would buy a ring for one of them.
Right?
Owen ran his fingers across the heart etched in the center.
Was it possible Ray had given this ring to someone, and she had given it back?
Why?
How long ago?
Peg.
He slipped the ring into his pocket, grabbed his coffee from the dresser, clicked off the light, and added one more thing to his to-do list today.
Figure out who the hell Peg is.
*
“Morning!”
Sadie turned as the SAR guys, Aaron and Kyle, stepped out of the tree line, a grin on their alert, ready-for-the-day faces that carried a touch of sarcasm as if they knew her team wasn’t looking forward to another day covered in bat feces.
Behind her, Griffin huffed out a snort while Kimi had yet to emerge from her tent.
The dull, bleak morning promised rain ahead. It was a damp, overcast sixty degrees, and according to the cuss words being mumbled behind her, too early for caving.
“How was last night?” Aaron asked, earning another grunt from Griffin.
“Aside from the rain, it was good.”
“Those tents hold up?”
Griffin nodded. “Not a drop.”
“Good. Supposed to get some more this afternoon sometime. We’ll need to be packed up by then so the water doesn’t catch us in the cave. That storm dropped a few inches north of us last night.”
“Bad storms coming,” Kyle echoed as he dug though his pack, his first words of the day.
Fantastic. She’d be towing the camper on roads as narrow as a toothpick in the rain. Maybe they could get out before it started up. She clapped her hands together, “Well, let’s get on it then.”
“We’ll check the ropes in the cave and will holler when we’re ready.”
“Sounds good.” As they walked away, Sadie spied the empty whiskey bottle next to Griffin’s tent. She grinned. “So, got a little turned up last night, huh?”
Griffin groaned as he lowered himself onto the rocks to tie his boots. “Well, something definitely turned up last night.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
Griffin glanced over his shoulder as Kimi emerged from the tent. He turned back and lowered his voice. “Uh, we need to talk.”
Something in his tone had her stepping closer. “What? We need to talk?” She flickered a gaze to Kimi. “About Kimi? What’s going on?”
Another quick glance behind him, “Can’t get into it right now, but Kimi went on a little spelunking adventure last night.”
Sadie kneeled down, pretending to tie her shoe. “She went into the cave?”
“Yep. I followed her in. She went to the Anarchy room. Don’t know what she was doing or why, but I eventually came back out and went back to my tent. She was in there for a few hours then came back out and—”
“Morning, guys.” Kimi stepped up, shrugging into her pack. Dressed in khaki pants, a red hoodie with a jacket over it, and her hair in a messy ponytail, Kimi looked like she’d gotten about as much sleep as Griffin.
“Morning.” Sadie glanced at Griffin, who was avoiding eye contact with his high school crush.
She stood, staring at Kimi a moment, waiting to see if she’d get the same “we need to talk” look that Griffin had given her. But there was nothing. If anything, Kimi was also avoiding eye contact. Maybe a lover’s spat? Maybe Kimi wanted to get out of the rain? Or, maybe Kimi needed to get away from Griffin’s epic snoring? Or, was it something less innocent?
Griffin stood, breaking the tension. “So what time do you think we’ll get out of here today?”
She stared at him a moment trying to figure out what the heck was going on. “Uh, well, before the storms hit. We’ll be out of here by lunch, hopefully sooner.” She glanced at Kimi again. The tension was as thick as the humidity from the impending rain.
Just then, Sheriff Crawly stepped out of the woods. “Mornin’.”
Sadie instinctively stiffened as their eyes met. She held his gaze, forcing his focus to stay on her face rather than her breasts. “Morning, Sheriff.”
“Looks like I just made it.” He narrowed his eyes and glanced at the cave entrance where Aaron and Kyle had just stepped inside.
Lucky her.
Crawly shifted his attention back to Sadie. “Ready for another day in the cave?”
“Always ready.”
“I’ll bet you are.” The sexual innuendo thick. What an ass.
“Will anyone else be joining us today?”
Crawly flickered a glance to the woods. “Not sure. Haven’t spoken with Colson or Tucker yet this morning. Regardless, let’s get a move on.”
She looked past him into the woods, hoping to see Owen’s tall, thick body stepping onto the rocks. The almost-kiss the night before had kept her up until the early morning
hours, kicking herself in the ass for not allowing it. When he’d given her that look, all she could think was that kissing Owen was potentially another bad decision that could end up like her latest bad decision—in a humiliating, gut-wrenching, job-threatening tornado of a mess.
She was questioning herself now, her choices, her decisions, and she hated that.
What the hell was wrong with her?
She’d awoken with her stomach in knots with regret. She’d missed an opportunity to kiss a man that gave her butterflies every time he looked at her. An opportunity to forget everything and just be happy, if only for a moment.
An opportunity of maybe something more.
Owen’s email with the dental records was blank, other than the attachment. Bruised ego, perhaps?
Geez, she’d really screwed that up. Nothing she could do about it now.
With that thought, she joined Griffin, Kimi, Crawly, Aaron, and Kyle at the head of the cave.
Aaron checked everyone’s packs. “Alright, so today will be a little different as I understand the objective is to search for more bones, correct?”
Sadie nodded. “I’d like to start in the Anarchy room again and work our way back out. My team will split up and search assigned quadrants. Anything we find, we’ll bag up and take back to the lab with us this afternoon.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Aaron glanced at his watch. “It’s almost seven now. We’ll work until ten, take a break, then start back up at eleven. Finish up by one or so. Sound good?”
Nods around the group, and after falling into line, they descended into the cave with Aaron leading, Kimi then Griffin, then Sadie followed by Kyle and Crawly.
Griffin and Kimi split off to their respective quadrants, while Aaron led Sadie back to the Anarchy room. After setting up her lights, he retreated to a nearby tunnel to do his own exploring.
Sadie focused on the drum of the drips around her as she unpacked her tools and got to work, wanting more than ever to put this job behind her and get home to a warm bath and nice bottle of red. Bottle, not box.
Just a few hours, she thought, just a few more hours and she’d be out of Crypts Cavern forever.
Chapter 15
Griffin glanced over his shoulder as he grabbed the satellite phone from his tent. Once the team had dispersed, Griffin had snuck back out to do a little investigative work of his own. He walked to the tree line and dialed the number.
“This is Paul.”
“Paul, hey it’s Griffin.”
“Hey, man. Hey… aren’t you supposed to be in a cave somewhere?”
“Yeah, I am. Calling you on the SAT phone.”
“How’s it going? Man, did you miss out last night. Amber got on stage and sang.”
Griffin laughed. “Damn dude, how many shots did you feed her beforehand?”
“Only two. Keepin’ it classy.”
“I’ll bet. How was she?”
“You mean on stage or later at my house?”
“Yeah, right…”
Paul laughed. “Just joking. She sang—drumroll please—Respect. Butchered the hell out of it but it didn’t matter because no one was listening to her, or looking at her face for that matter.”
Griffin chuckled. Every Tuesday evening, he, Paul and a few others from work went to a hole-in-the-wall bar for fifty-cent pints and cheesy karaoke. Amber, a new addition to the group, had a newly-bare ring-finger and a chest the size of two watermelons. A good combination for any happy hour. And although he would have loved to have been there, he was way too wrapped up in his rapidly developing feelings for a certain midnight sleuth.
“Sorry I missed it. Hey, I need a favor.”
“Okay.”
“You know Kimi Haas?”
“Yeah. New girl, right?”
“Yeah. She came with us on this trip, and…” he paused, realizing he hadn’t planned how to approach this. “Well, I want to know what you can tell me about her?”
“Other than that she’s hot?”
“You really need to get laid, bro.”
“Workin’ on it.”
“I mean from an HR perspective. What’s in her file?”
“I can’t just go around revealing employee’s personal files, Griff.”
“You run the HR department. You can do whatever you want.”
“But the question is, will I?”
Griffin rolled his eyes and shook his head. “God, you’re pathetic. Fine. Twenty bucks.”
This proposition was met with boisterous laughter.
“Fifty.”
“Dude I could get fired for this.”
“One hundred and I won’t tell everyone about the time you peed yourself on my couch.”
“Done. And I bought you a new couch, you asshole.”
“Damn right you did. Pull up her file.”
“Okay, hang on.”
A few clicks later… “Okay, what do you want to know?”
“First, what was her last job?”
“Let’s see, she worked at a coffee shop during college, then interned at a private lab over in Texas before moving here.”
“What about her background check. Anything there?”
A second passed. “Ahhh, very interesting… seems our gal has sticky fingers.”
Griffin’s eyebrows lifted.
“Looks like she got caught shoplifting in college.”
“No way.”
“Yep, I’ve got the police report. She claims she stood at the checkout line for twenty minutes, and after asking for someone to check her out—the manager of the store said she yelled at him—no one did, so Kimi just straight up walked out with the merchandise.”
Yelling, anger, and irrational decisions didn’t sound like the Kimi he screwed to oblivion in the janitor’s closet. Well, maybe irrational decisions.
“What did she steal?”
“Gross. Pre-menstrual relief pills.” He enunciated each word as if it were a different language. “Extra-strength.”
Yelling and anger didn’t sound like Kimi… unless Kimi had PMS.
“Crazy women. Okay, what else?”
“Nothing else on her record.”
“What about her personal life? What do you have there?”
“Let me look at the interview notes.”
A minute ticked by.
“Well this is interesting. Says here her folks died when she was little. She moved in with her grandma—only child. Then, granny passed and she was shuffled to one of her older cousin’s houses. Left at eighteen. Attended, like, four different junior high and high schools while she lived with her cousin, who moved a lot for work apparently. That had to have sucked.”
Griffin chewed on his cheek. Carefree, lighthearted Kimi had quite a rocky past. Maybe it was all a facade.
“What else?”
“Her credit’s good… oh, wow… well her high school life might have sucked but her college sure didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every penny of it was paid for.”
“What? By who?”
“By the government. Looks like Kimi’s thirty-one percent Native American.”
Native American?
He turned and looked at the cave, rumored to be haunted by Indians.
*
Owen pushed through the front doors of Ozark Outfitters and flicked on the open sign. Amos always got to work at dawn to assist early morning fishers and kayakers, but the store and cafe didn’t open until eight-thirty in the morning.
“Mornin’, Owen!”
“Morning, Ms. Doris. How are you on this fine morning?”
“Busier than moth in a mitten, son. George called in this morning. Runnin’ a bit late. Something about gout.” She shook her head. “So now I’ve gotta get everything in the kitchen ready.”
George was the cafe’s main chef—with bad feet, apparently. Ms. Doris was the cafe’s one and only waitress, and part-time pastry chef.
“What can I help with?”
“Get t
he coffee started. Lord knows I need a cup, and,” she tilted her head to the side. “Based on those circles under your eyes, you might need a shot yourself.”
“It’s a little early for shots.”
“It’s never too early for shots, son.”
Owen grinned as he followed Doris Brimley back to the kitchen, her generous hips swaying the bright, multi-colored muumuu dress underneath an apron that read Will Cook for Wine. Per usual, her long gray hair was pulled into a bun, not a single strand missing. Owen had yet to see the woman without a pair of red reading glasses perched on the top of her head. Come to think of it, he’d never seen her wear them over her eyes.
Les had hired the retired school teacher and legendary baketress years earlier. Ms. Doris was a workhorse, arriving every morning twenty minutes early and not leaving until the last customer was “fed, fat, and happy”, as she always said. Over the years, Doris had taken an interest in Owen’s personal life every time he came into town, and had even started sending him cards during the holidays. It was the only mail he ever received while at the base. She’d become somewhat of a mother figure to him, always asking about his health, telling him he needed to eat more, find a good woman.
Settle down.
Owen had grown to love and respect the woman, and wanted to do whatever he could to keep things as normal as possible for her while his dad was “away.”
“Where’s Amos?” He asked as they rounded the corner into the kitchen.
“Not sure. Haven’t seen him this morning, don’t guess.”
Owen frowned. “But there’s a few folks fishing on the river this morning.”
“He must be here, then. Just ain’t made it into the shop. Grab the French Roast, will ya? It’s a French kind of day.”
Owen did as he was told and began scooping grains into the maker. He pressed the coffee to brew, then turned to face two dark, hooded eyes boring into him.
With her hands fisted on her hips, Ms. Doris narrowed her eyes. “You know I’m not good at beating around the bush or sugar-coating anything that doesn’t have gluten. So, I’ll just come out with it. I heard about the bones found in Crypts Cavern. Are they Ray’s?”
The waitress had served Ray more than a hundred flapjacks over the years, and Owen knew they’d been friendly. Although, he hadn’t expected to be bombarded with her speculation first thing in the morning.
The Cave Page 15