Short Fuse: Elite Operators, Book 2

by Rebecca Crowley

  Roger squinted at Warren over his shoulder. “Didn’t you read up on gold mining before you came out here?”

  Warren’s eyes narrowed, but before he could speak Nicola interjected, “Every operation is different. I want to make sure he’s familiar with this one.”

  Roger said nothing more as he motioned them into the metal grate-walled cage, already packed with boiler-suited mineworkers, and pulled the door shut with a clank. As he signaled to the cable operator that they were ready to descend, she leaned in to speak to Warren.

  “This elevator travels at more than thirty miles per hour. The mine is a little under two miles deep. The gold seam itself is barely two feet wide, but wait ’til you see how much equipment and personnel it takes to get that to the surface.”

  “How many employees are there onsite?”

  “Around two thousand.”

  The elevator began to descend, slowly at first, then rushing toward the bottom with a speed that still made her feel like her stomach was back at the surface. Exposed rock walls seemed to fly past them with blurry speed, and the heat and humidity in the cage grew with each passing second. She took deep breaths, swallowing the flash of claustrophobia that always accompanied these five-minute elevator rides. This cage seemed tighter and hotter than most, and as she craned her neck to see around Roger’s bulk at her side, she realized why.

  “There are too many people in here,” she murmured, her mental headcount climbing over forty.

  “What?” Roger called over the din.

  “Forty-two, forty-three… There are—”

  The elevator shuddered to a rough halt at the bottom, and before she could say another word the miners swarmed toward the door, shoving it open and stampeding out into the tunnel. One miner stomped on her foot, another’s elbow whizzed past her ear, and if Warren hadn’t grabbed a fistful of her boiler suit and tugged her backward she would’ve been trampled by a man so busy adjusting his battery that he wasn’t watching where he went.

  He kept his hand on her back as he leaned down to ask if she was all right. She nodded, chiding herself for the tingling thrill that emanated from that tiny point of contact. She’d been in worse mines than this one—she didn’t need a man to reassure her.

  Although needing and liking weren’t necessarily the same thing.

  “They’re all in a hurry to punch in so they don’t miss a second’s wage.” Roger rolled his eyes as he motioned for her to precede him out of the emptied elevator. “Those are Latadians for you—their manners are even worse than their work ethic.”

  “Are you aware there were forty-three people in that elevator? Its maximum capacity is thirty-five.”

  Roger shrugged as he led the way through the cavernous entrance to one of the many tunnels twisting out from its walls. They passed one in which the miners from the elevator were shoving onto an underground train, turning into a tunnel meant for pedestrians where Roger evidently stored a golf cart for his own use.

  “You know what these guys are like,” he explained, wedging himself behind the wheel and gesturing for them to join him. “They show up late, miss the elevator, squeeze onto the next one.”

  “Then you need to have someone monitoring the passenger load so there’s no overcrowding. Seven people is a lot of extra weight, and if they had to be evacuated—”

  “I’ll look into it,” Roger grumbled, but Nicola was already squinting up at the electric bulbs strung along the ceiling.

  “Is there a problem with your power supply? Several of these lights are out. In a pedestrian tunnel also in use by golf carts you need to ensure the illumination is adequate.”

  Roger didn’t reply, but he did press harder on the accelerator. A rustle from the backseat told her Warren had crossed his arms, and for the second time that morning she was glad he was there.

  They drove in tense silence, the electric whirr of the golf cart’s battery-powered engine echoing off the rock walls, which were lined with a tightly strung net to support the structure and reduce the impact of cave-ins. The air was heavy and cloying, thick with the industrial smells of diesel, sulfur and rock dust. In some stretches the lighting was so dim that the miners they passed didn’t seem to appear until they were almost at her side, blue boiler suits surging out of the darkness, faces shadowed to inhuman blurs beneath the brims of their hard hats.

  Roger stopped the golf cart outside a room dug into the tunnel wall, one of many designed to double as administrative spaces and refuges in a collapse. As they climbed out of the golf cart she squinted up into one of the ventilation shafts in the ceiling.

  “Where are the evacuation ladders?”

  Roger exhaled peevishly. “They kept rusting so we took them out. It’s not like they’d be much use in a mine this deep anyway. That part of the safety code is more relevant for old sites, not new ones like Hambani.”

  Nicola gritted her teeth. She was getting very close to fed up with Roger’s slipshod safety management and bad attitude. “You shouldn’t be operating without ladders. Even if someone couldn’t make it all the way to the surface, they could survive a rockslide or a blast in that shaft, then climb down to a refuge. I need those ladders installed today. And I want to see your personnel logs. If you have extra people in the elevator, you may have extra people on shift.”

  Roger’s narrowed eyes let her know exactly how he felt about her demands, but he stalked off to a filing cabinet at the other end of the room.

  “There are way too many code violations here, especially for such a new operation,” she fretted aloud, turning to Warren.

  “And there was no security check on anyone boarding that elevator,” he agreed. “All they do at the gate is glance at the ID, but it would be easy for someone to stow away in one of the bunkhouses or pass someone their ID through the fence.”

  “Roger boasted to me this morning that they do end-of-shift strip searches to make sure none of them are stealing gold. I know theft is a big problem in this industry, but you can’t treat your employees like criminals. They have to be kept safe, too.”

  They shared a second or two of considered silence, watching Roger rifle through a drawer. Then Warren pivoted to survey the rest of the room, plucking at the front of his boiler suit.

  “Is it always this hot?”

  “Believe it or not, it’s air conditioned down here.” Nicola lifted her ponytail off the back of her neck and fanned the exposed skin. “Slurry ice is pumped through the tunnels to keep it cool, otherwise it would be about a hundred and ten degrees, Fahrenheit. And you might notice the higher pressure at this depth. Most people feel sluggish and heavy, like you’re walking underwater. It also means you bleed faster, so be careful.”

  “How much gold do you get from the rock?” he asked, running his fingertips across the rough surface of the tunnel wall.

  “Very little. A ton of rock usually only produces about an ounce of gold. That’s why we have to keep developing the technology to go deeper.”

  “Or trade a different, renewable resource.”

  She opened her mouth, primed for an argument, then reconsidered. She’d learned to love this industry the long way around—so would he.

  “Three billion years ago this was a lake. The land we were walking across this morning was underneath the water.” She leaned down and picked up a pebble from the floor, and then reached for his hand and held it open, palm up. His hand seemed big and strong beside hers as she placed the stone in the center of his palm, electric pulses of yearning shooting along her nerves with every feather-light brush of their flesh.

  “This stone is ancient.” She pushed his fingers closed around it. “It’s billions of years old, and it’s totally untouched by the sun’s rays. And now it’s yours.”

  His smile was reluctant, but unmistakable. “I guess that’s pretty cool.”

  Actually, no it’s not. Thrusting herself against his ch
est and pressing her lips to his might be pretty cool. Letting him shove her against the wall, rip open her boiler suit and lick the space between her breasts would definitely be pretty cool. The little rock? Not cool at all.

  Not that it was likely to happen. She shouldn’t even be thinking like that. Except now that she had, it was as if the imagined contours of Warren’s bare body had overtaken every other thought she’d ever had, would ever have, until her brain was empty of everything but his shoulders, his back, the indentation of his spine…

  “Here it is.” Beads of sweat stood out on Roger’s forehead as he hurried back to where they stood, proffering a manila folder.

  Warren wandered off as she opened it and leafed through the pages inside. She was used to a low standard of paperwork—many of the people filling it in often had little education or poor fluency—but for a mine with an English-speaking South African at its helm the quality of what she read was appalling. The rotas had incomplete employee information, missing ID numbers and shift times, and as she turned pages she discovered entire days were absent from the records. She shut the folder, gearing up to launch a scathing inquisition when Warren called to them from the back of the room.

  “What the hell is this?” He raised what looked like bagged fertilizer in one hand and a large, plastic gas can in the other.

  Roger rolled his eyes. “What kind of explosives expert are you? That’s a bag of emulsion and a bottle of—”

  “Sensitizer. I know. I also know that when you add one to the other, you get an explosion big enough to blast a hole a train could drive through. As such, it’s maybe not the best idea in the world to have them sitting next to each other in a so-called evacuation area, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Roger glared at Warren, not even bothering to look sheepish. Warren put the explosives down and surveyed the rest of the room before slowly walking its perimeter. Roger’s panting breaths quickened and slowed in a twisted game of hot and cold as Warren looked under a table, opened a first-aid box, pulled out a drawer.

  He turned to a freestanding metal cabinet, and Roger began hyperventilating, rushing forward as he blurted, “Wait, don’t touch that one, let me explain—”

  Warren swung open the door. Three rifles were propped up inside, below a shelf stacked with ammunition.

  “What the hell do either of you know about working in Latadi?” Roger demanded, eyes bulging and teeth bared. “You weren’t here—you have no idea. You sit in your air conditioning with your spreadsheets, and you have no idea what it’s like underground. Voertsek, the both of you, I don’t have time for this kak.” He snapped his wrist in a dismissive gesture and stomped out to the golf cart, switching it on and tearing away so quickly the whine of the electric engine took only seconds to recede.

  She locked eyes with Warren. His shone with amusement. “I guess we’re walking back.”

  Warren drummed his fingers on the wall at his back, squinting up at the bright blue sky. Their two-hour tour of the mine had been topped off by the discovery that only one of the five showers in the outbuilding next to the hoist house had running water. He’d spent the last ten minutes leaning on the latch-less door to keep it closed while Nicola showered, trying not to think about what was happening on the other side of the warped wood.

  The problems they’d found in the mine worsened after Roger’s departure. The farther inside they went, the looser the safety and security standards became. Nicola recorded one code violation after another, and although he found several more incidences of improperly stored explosives, he was far more concerned by the prevalence of firearms underground. There were two more cabinets like the one they found in the first refuge, and when he confronted a mineworker carrying a rifle over his shoulder the man explained in broken English that he was a shift leader, as though that explained his need for a loaded weapon.

  He sighed, shifting his weight as he recalled the crease of concern that spliced Nicola’s forehead, her distracted mutter about needing to phone the regional compliance manager. He’d taken this job expecting to do a demonstration or two on explosives safety techniques, double-check the security procedures, maybe point out a faulty metal detector and be done with it. If he’d known he’d be prying automatic weapons away from untrained mineworkers he would’ve asked for a lot more money.

  There was a light rap on the other side of the door, then Nicola’s muffled voice telling him she was done. He stepped forward and the door swung open to reveal Nicola’s reddened cheeks, her hair dampened to the color of rust, hands clutching a too-short towel that barely made it from her breasts to the tops of her thighs.

  He clenched his teeth, jerking his gaze to the ground. “Sorry, I didn’t–”

  “It’s my fault, I was so distracted with everything underground I left my clothes in my locker.” She rolled her eyes and motioned toward the shower. “All yours.”

  He had to laugh at her dismissal, adjusting the hard hat so the brim shaded his eyes. “Do you really think I’m going to let you walk all the way back to the changing room like that?”

  She arched a brow. “I didn’t realize I needed to ask for permission.”

  “Be sensible. There are two thousand people on this site, maybe five of whom are female. After twelve hours digging up rock, a view like that would test even the best man’s impulse control.”

  “Are you suggesting I’m responsible for other people’s abilities to restrain themselves?”

  “Of course not. I’m suggesting I walk back with you so you don’t have to choose between a one-handed defense and a dropped towel.”

  Something in her expression changed, darkened, and she took a step closer, bare feet leaving damp footprints in the dusty earth. She caught her lower lip between her teeth as she looked up at him, blue eyes clear and searching.

  “You dismantle bombs for a living. How do I know I’m safe with you?”

  “You don’t.”

  “Except, I do. And that bothers me.” She tugged on the edge of the towel, unwittingly exposing another half inch of the porcelain-perfect curve of her breasts.

  He cleared his throat, dragging his gaze up to her face. “Why is that?”

  “I’m not the trusting type.” She tilted her head. “How do you do it?”

  “Earn your trust?”

  She smiled. “Defuse bombs. I thought I was hot shit being able to give presentations to hotel ballrooms full of shareholders, but there were no explosives involved.”

  It was his turn to smile as they regarded each other with burgeoning warmth, the momentary silence broken only by the distant hum of machinery and the creak of the shower door as a light breeze swung it on its hinges.

  He liked this woman. He liked her a lot. And not in the way he was used to, not with the lusty, thrill-of-the-chase exuberance that usually marked the beginning of his infrequent and always fleeting affairs. He was incredibly attracted to her sexually, yes, but that attraction already brought with it a set of emotional complexities he hadn’t foreseen. He wanted to sleep with her, sure. But he also wanted to make her laugh, to learn all about her life in America, to find out how she’d gotten so tough yet stayed so kind. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to support her.

  He wanted to get her out of this hole in one piece.

  “I don’t think about it. I’d lose my nerve if I did. Empty mind.” He tapped the side of his hard hat. “And steady hands.” He extended his right hand in the air between them, palm down.

  Slowly, deliberately, Nicola reached for that hand. She laced her fingers through his and pulled him closer.

  It was a small signal but a bold one, and he was mesmerized by her calm expression. Her hand was so soft and delicate against his larger, rougher one. It made him wonder what her body would feel like against his. Sweet and supple. Smooth and yielding.

  Tentatively, as though she were a watchful impala rather than an eminently capable wo
man, he extended his left hand across the short space between them and brushed his thumb across her cheek. Her skin felt like silk, and as he swept the pad of his thumb over the ridge of her cheekbone he watched her gaze flick briefly to his mouth, then back up to meet his eyes.

  That look set him aflame with a lust so heady, it took every shred of his willpower not to drag her into his arms, fist his hands in her fiery hair and thrust his tongue between her lips. He wasn’t sure when or how this fuse between them had been lit, but there was no question it was burning bright and hot and faster than ever.

  Time seemed to slow to a hushed, hesitant crawl. She inclined her head almost imperceptibly, and her grip on his palm tightened. He slid his other hand into her thick fall of hair, warm and wet from the shower, until his fingertips cupped the back of her neck. The dirt shifted beneath his boot as they drew together with painful slowness. He increased the pressure at her nape in minute increments, the tip of her thumb digging into the hollow between his knuckles.

  A gust of wind slammed the door against the wall of the outbuilding with a bang that resonated so loudly in the tense silence it felt calculatedly cruel. Nicola jerked back in his grip and although she didn’t drop her hand, the slight twist in her expression told him she’d just realized what they were doing.

  Two colleagues who’d only met the day before, standing outside, in the center of a bustling mine site, she in a towel and he in a filthy boiler suit.

  Seconds away from a kiss so hot it rivaled the temperature at the bottom of the mine.

  He cleared his throat, constructing a cooling-off sentence that would be more of a yellow traffic light than a red one when something caught his attention.

  “Do you smell that?”

  She frowned. “Just rock dust and gasoline.”

  “No, there’s something else.” He scanned the area around them, working feverishly to complete the circuit that was already setting off squealing alarms in his brain. The scent was sickeningly sweet with a metallic chemical undertone—cyanide? Acetylene? Oh, shit, it was—