by Ann Charles
“Let me guess,” she said, her vocal chords still husky with sleep. “You need a ride.”
Sleep-wrinkled, soft-lipped, and bare-skinned, she was one hundred percent TNT—the old, unstable kind, sure to go off in his hands when he lit the fuse. Definitely hazardous to his mental health.
“Mac.”
“What?”
“You’re staring.”
Mac dragged his gaze away from the two perky points pushing out the soft cotton beneath Tweety’s smiling face. Sweet Jesus! He’d add his money to Manny’s wager—those had to be real.
He wiped his damp palms on his jeans. “I was just ... uh ... wondering if canaries really drink milk.”
Lame excuse. Hall of fame lame.
“Right.” Her smirk had a “bullshit” tilt at the corners.
“Jess said you’re skipping work this morning and hiking to Socrates Pit.”
Her silky shorts left a lot of bare leg available for examination.
She crossed her arms over Tweety and leaned against the doorframe. “Maybe.”
He pretended not to notice as the hemline of her pajama top crept up her stomach, showing an inch of bare flesh. “Did you hear a word I said the other night?”
Her face reddened several shades. “Yes, I did.”
“Then what are you thinking?”
“None of your damned business.”
“If it involves you and that mine, it is my damned business. If anything happens to you while nosing around alone up there, I’m responsible.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’m going to hike up there, take a few pictures, and be back before anyone realizes I’m gone.”
“I doubt that,” he said, unable to hold back a grin. “Not with the way you climb.”
“Oh, bite me.”
He’d love to, starting with her creamy thigh. He held out his hand. “Give me the camera. I’ll take the pictures for you.”
She lifted her chin. “Absolutely not. I’m going to find Henry on my own, thank you very much.”
“Claire,” he warned.
“No, Mac. You’re not stopping me. Get that through the thick wall in your skull.”
He held her stare. The wind chimes on Manny’s awning clinked out a ding-ping melody. The slam of a car door echoed across the park.
“Fine.” The stubborn woman left him no choice. “Get dressed. We’re leaving.” Having her along would force him to adjust his plans for the day, not to mention test his tolerance for all things Claire. But at least he could make sure she made it there and back.
“Now you listen here,” she started.
He climbed the first step and stood nose-to-nose with her. “Claire, you have five minutes to put some clothes on before I do the job for you.”
She grinned, a devilish glint in her brown eyes. “Tempting.”
Siren! “In front of your grandfather,” he added.
“Eeek!” She slammed the door in his face.
* * *
The hike up to Rattlesnake Ridge reminded Claire why she needed to stop eating fried pork rinds before bedtime.
By the time they’d reached the mouth of the mine, her trachea had become a steam pipe leading away from the boiler furnace in her lungs.
In addition to struggling under a sun that was doing its damnedest to turn her brain to ashes, memories of her idiotic behavior the night before last kept her in a constant state of silent humiliation.
Keeping two eyes out for the ridge’s notorious namesake—rattlers, she stepped over prickly barrel cacti and tufts of yellow primroses. The air smelled of super-heated rocks, and she fantasized about taking a quick dip in one of the water-filled mine shafts Mac had warned her about.
While the inside of Rattlesnake Ridge offered respite from the blistering ball in the sky, the entrance was still warm enough to melt a slab of butter given time. Sunlight flowed in through the toothless mouth.
Mac had promised they’d hop over to Socrates Pit as soon as he grabbed a couple of samples he’d left Saturday night. He’d told Claire she could save her breath and wait for him in the pickup, but curiosity to see one of Ruby’s mines propelled her out under the blue sky—that and the need to wipe the smirk off Mac’s lips.
She mopped her face with her T-shirt and glanced over at Mac, who kneeled next to a red plastic crate full of rock chunks. His unzipped pack lay at his feet with funky gadgets and gizmos spilling out of it.
“You sure have a lot of toys.” Claire picked up a fancy-looking compass and turned in circles, trying to figure out what the numbers encircling the pointer represented.
Mac plucked the compass from her fingers and slipped it into his shirt pocket. “They’re very expensive tools, not toys.”
“It’s just a compass.”
“It’s a Brunton 5010 GeoTransit Compass with a hinge clinometer.”
“A Geowhatzit?”
“This little baby gives me the ability to calculate horizontal and vertical angles from a single point.”
“Makes you sound like Superman. You know, ‘able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.’” Claire chuckled at her own cleverness.
Mac didn’t even crack a grin.
“Maybe not,” she said, sobering. “How does it work?”
“I measure a couple of angles, and with the use of a little trigonometry, I have the answers I need. It’s pretty simple.”
Simple, her ass. Claire couldn’t believe she’d found someone who used trigonometry in everyday life. She hadn’t used it for so long she couldn’t remember how long ago she’d forgotten it.
She watched him organize rock samples and make notes in his waterproof field book for a while before giving in to the question dancing on the tip of her tongue. “How well did you know Joe?”
“Ruby’s husband?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not very. I only saw him twice.” Mac continued writing, not sparing her a glance. His pencil scratched across the waxy paper.
“Did you know he drove a Mercedes?”
“I know he crashed one.”
“Let me rephrase that. Did you know he drove a $90,000 Mercedes?”
His fingers scribbled away. “How do you know it cost that much?”
“I found the sales receipt in Joe’s office.”
Mac shrugged. “He drove a pricey car. That’s not a crime.”
“He told Ruby he inherited it from a favorite uncle.”
“So, he’s a liar. He probably had a logical reason for not telling her the truth.”
“He paid cash for the car.”
Mac’s pencil stopped. “Maybe he inherited money from his uncle and bought the car with it.”
Good point. She hadn’t thought of that. “Have you ever been in his office?”
He looked at her, his gaze guarded. “Nope. Not my business.”
She brushed off the innuendo. “What about that antique store he had in town? Did you ever go in there?”
“Never had a need to.”
Mac wasn’t making this easy for her. “Do you have any idea of the kind of antiques he sold there?”
“Old ones.” A grin surfaced on his face for the first time since they’d left the R.V. park.
“A real one-man Laurel and Hardy show, aren’t you?”
“You bring out the best in me, Claire.” Laugh lines spread from the corners of his eyes.
“Do you think it’s odd that he didn’t share anything about his sales job and antique business with his wife?”
“No. He was old school, didn’t think a man’s job was his wife’s business. She served another purpose.”
“Thank God for bra burners everywhere.”
His gaze dipped to her chest for a split second. “Besides, Ruby had enough to keep her busy fixing up this place. The campground was in pretty bad shape when Joe bought it. She didn’t have the time to get involved with his other business ventures.” Mac scribbled in his field book again.
“He has some pretty valuable stuff in h
is office. First edition books, a traveling writing desk, and an old camera, to name a few.” Claire didn’t mention how valuable, because she wanted to hop on the Internet in Yuccaville’s library before tossing out figures. It didn’t take a psychologist to see that while Mac would swallow facts whole, she’d have to cram guesses down his throat. “Ruby could really cash in on some of that stuff.”
“Unless you find a satchel of cash, none of those antiques can help Ruby. It’d take too much time to liquidate it all.”
No shit, Claire thought, fighting the urge to reach out and knock him upside the head. Was it too much to ask for a little participation in her game of delusional suspicions?
“I found a couple of articles on some valuable antique thefts in Joe’s filing cabinet.” When Mac didn’t say a word, she added, “I wonder why he kept them in there.”
Mac snapped shut his book. “Claire, you’re making something out of nothing, just like with Henry. Face the facts: the dog ran off and Joe liked to dabble in antiques. End of story. Nothing dubious. Just plain, white-bread life in Jackrabbit Junction.”
Frustrated with how black and white he saw the world, she decided not to tell Mac about the passports—not until she could identify the squished-face man in the picture.
Maybe Joe’s antique store could offer some answers. Ruby had said she’d cleaned it out, but there might be clues to Joe’s past still hiding in the corners.
Claire cleared the dust from her throat. “Have you heard anything back from your lab friend regarding that leg bone?”
“Not a word.” He picked up a fist-sized rock, turned it over, and studied it.
Rather than grab Mac by the earlobe, drag him outside, and throw him down the steep hillside, she decided to do some exploring. She flicked on the spotlight in the hard hat Mac had given her to wear and stepped further into the mine.
“Where are you going?” he called after her.
“To see what’s around the bend.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
She sighed. “I’ve been in mines before.” The Black Hills were honeycombed with old silver and gold mines, leftover from bygone days of hope, sweat, and despair. “I’ll just be a couple of minutes.”
“Yeah, right. Be careful. And don’t pick at the walls.”
Claire drilled his profile with a dirty glare, and then hiked into the blackness. A set of rusted steel rails led the way.
Ore carts, rather than pack mules, must have carried rock debris from the mine. She’d seen similar sets of tracks in several of the silver mines back home in Galena, some leading to a bored-out cavern, others to dead-end tunnels. And sometimes, they disappeared into dark, chilly water.
Over the years, she’d collected trinkets—like a pick-ax with a splintered handle, a miner’s lamp with a candle still in it, a handmade leather glove—pieces of history solid in her hands.
To the right of the tracks, a small cavern had been carved out of the wall.
A shaft, fenced off by four one-by-eight inch boards, sank into the earth not ten feet from the rails. Claire edged over and shined her hard hat light into the hole. Water, still as a sheet of black ice, rimmed the lip. A wooden ladder rose out of the watery depths. The square-headed bolts pinning it to the rock were barnacled with rust. She dropped a pebble into the water, watching it sink out of sight, and shuddered.
Deciding to explore a little further, she followed the tracks around another bend, and another, and another.
She slowed when she came upon a straight stretch dotted with shallow cavities—called stopes, if she remembered right—in the ceiling and walls.
Standing on her tiptoes, she peeked into a pair of wall craters. The first was two feet deep and sprinkled with pebbles and dust. The second was three times deeper, and littered with dried twigs, sagebrush scraps, and cactus spines—a nest, probably home to a rat, squirrel, or skunk.
Her light bounced off something shiny in the bedding. She blew into the nest, coughing when dust whirled up her nose and down her throat. Waving away the dust, she withdrew a brass knob from the debris. Under her light, she admired the bevels and shape.
How it had ended up inside Rattlesnake Ridge mine was beyond her.
She stepped backwards, her gaze glued to the knob, and tripped over the rails. Arms flailing, hard hat flying, she slammed back-first into the opposite wall where a rock gouged her left hip. Her hat crashed to the ground, a clink of breaking glass followed by darkness confirming its demise.
Way to go, Grace. She rubbed the knot already forming on her upper butt cheek. At least she’d managed to hold onto the knob. She stuffed it into her pants pocket.
A scraping sound came from deeper within the mine. She held still, blood thundering in her ears, suddenly aware of a rancid, foul odor under the smell of stale dirt.
Something clacked—a stone smacking into another maybe; then clinked—like rock on steel rails. Gulping past her suddenly-dry tongue, she stared into the depths of the mine, but saw only blackness.
The clacking sound continued, interspersed with the tapping sound like hooves crossing the rock floor. Huffs of breath merged with the racket. Darkness squeezed tight around her, sweat coated her upper lip.
Holy fuckballs! Something was coming her way, and she doubted it was selling Avon.
Without light, she felt like a mouse cowering in the corner of a snake tank. Stinky armpits were her only weapons.
Then she remembered Manny’s camera.
Scrambling, she dug in the leg pocket of her khakis. The compact body of the digital camera was cool to the touch, ready to aim and shoot. She slid open the lens protector, wincing as the whir of the camera grinding to life resonated off the walls.
The clicking and clacking stopped, the huffing and puffing muted. Whatever was coming had heard the camera.
Claire stared blindly at where the LCD window should be, her fingers feeling for the shutter release button as she pointed the camera in what she hoped was the right direction.
She pushed down on the button, waiting as the dim meter light spilled from above the eyepiece and bounced off the rails in front of her. Then a fake shutter sounded and a bright light flashed.
An image displayed on the LCD screen, glowing in the blackness, showing two rails leading around the bend up ahead. Besides the brown rock walls and ceiling bracketed by shadows, the picture was empty.
The clicking started again, mixed with clattering, coming closer, faster than before.
Huffs of breath, steam-vent loud, pulsed.
Claire pushed down on the button again, the metering light measuring ... measuring. “Damn it, take the shot!”
Suddenly, the racket ceased, and she was no longer alone.
The hairs on the back of her neck and forearms screamed, ‘Retreat! Retreat!’ Stench hit her like a serving tray, making her eyes water, her stomach recoil.
Then the camera finally cooperated and a flash whitened the mine for a split second.
Before she could do so much as take a breath, a high-pitched, deafening squeal blasted her eardrums.
In the LCD screen, red eyes stared at her. A pair of two-inch long canine teeth, bright white amidst the mine’s brown innards, speared out of the jaws along the sides of the beast’s snout.
As if spurred by some unseen demon, its hooves smacked onto the rock floor as it raced toward her in the pitch black.
Claire stood Popsicle stiff, the camera clutched in her hands, and screamed along with its squeals.
A dull thud of muscle and bone connecting with solid rock cut through the pandemonium, followed by a deep grunt.
Claire swallowed her next scream, her ears straining to hear what her eyes could not see.
A short burst of snorts came from her right—too close.
The flash must have temporarily blinded it, confused it. She needed to get the hell out of there!
Turning her back to the beast, she snapped off a shot, cursing through the metering hesitation. As soon as she could see her e
xit path on the screen, she ran, stumbling into walls and over loose rocks and steel rails as she snapped pictures.
Snorts raged from behind her, driving her forward, gaining on her.
She blindly rounded yet another bend, her shoulder knocking into a support timber. She pinballed off it, careening over the rails, and slammed into a solid body with a grunt of surprise.
Mac’s familiar scent registered in her panic-soaked brain as they tumbled to the floor, where a board did a lousy job of softening their fall.
The sudden silence that followed was broken by two things: a plop as something fell into the water-filled shaft beside her, and a steady whoosh of breath through a four-inch snout.
Claire clambered to her feet. Mac’s penlight lay on the floor next to him. Scooping it up, she shined it in the direction of her attacker. “Mac, get up!”
Mac cautiously rose. “Jesus.” He grabbed the light and pushed her behind him. “That thing reeks like rancid meat.”
“What the hell is it?”
“A javelina.”
“It looks like a pissed-off pig with fangs to me.”
“Stay back.” He tucked her further behind him. “It’s a sow—a pregnant one. They leave the herd to have their piglets. You probably stumbled onto her as she was burrowing in, preparing to squeeze a couple out, and scared her.”
“She scared me back, so we’re even. Now tell her to leave.”
“Maybe we should do the leaving. She was here first.”
As if it understood what they were saying, the javelina slowly backed up, keeping its gaze locked on them as it slipped back around the bend, deeper into the mine.
“What’s she doing?” Claire whispered against his shoulder.
“If she came here to have babies, she’s probably already in labor. Now that you’re out of her territory, she’s going to go back and finish what she started.”
The javelina gave them one last snort, then left.
“Whew!” Claire pocketed the camera, then pinched her nose shut. “It’s too bad she didn’t take her smell with her.” She moved up beside Mac and glanced down at the shaft next to them. “We came close to taking a swim.” Then she remembered the plopping sound she’d heard after they’d fallen. “Shine the light down there. I heard something drop into the water.”