Naomi took a deep breath and went inside.
Ranger Dave was out checking the roads after the storm when he saw a car parked casually next to a pack of snow off the blacktop. He immediately recognized it from Naomi’s trips to the ranger station.
Irritation and admiration filled him. The woman didn’t give up. It reminded him of his dad saying of his mom, to whom he had been married for fifty-four years before she passed: Every day I don’t kill the woman, I admire her more.
Naomi’s car waited patiently for her, like a dog at the shoulder. The ranger pulled off a glove and touched the hood. It was cold. He noted the ice pitting on the underside: she had traveled to cities that used chemical ice. Other trips into deserts had faded the paint with heat. The empty interior seemed staged to discourage city thieves.
And in the backseat was the locator he had given her.
He straightened, his exasperation turning to worry. It was midafternoon. The child finder had headed out into a treacherous glacier district without her locator. Alone.
He weighed what to do. Wait for her, to make sure she came back safe? That would mean waiting for nightfall, and then he would have to wait for sunrise to search. In his world live rescue usually happened within hours, not days.
Ranger Dave examined the hard sky, so reticent, even now, to tell him its secrets. It was gray and full-bodied with clouds. Storms here blew in with little notice, as Naomi should know by now.
Dammit. He pulled open his truck door, grabbed his snowshoes off the passenger floor. His survival equipment was always in his pack, ready to go—climbing gear, rope, a small shovel in case he had to dig an ice cave in a storm, food, and flares.
He followed her snowshoe tracks, crossing the bank of snow to what he could tell was an abandoned road. He hadn’t even known this old road was there. But somehow Naomi had, and the flame of admiration beat a little stronger in his chest.
Ranger Dave hiked, holding his breath around the cliff face, until he finally reached the crude hole framed with wood. He had run into a few of these abandoned mines over the years—death traps for the curious.
Naomi’s tracks led right into it.
Naomi had hesitated only momentarily. Going back for help would take time. As she always did when hunting for a child—no matter how long they had been missing—she felt the rush.
There was something else, too: asking for help from others was more dangerous than doing something alone. Part of the tug of her forgotten past was the danger of those who acted nice. You never knew who was safe, her mind told her, and that conviction formed a hard wall inside her. Very few had ever made it past: Jerome, Mrs. Cottle, and her friend Diane. She felt safest going at it alone.
The mine shaft was barely large enough for her to stand, if she bent just a little. Her flashlight inspected the rocky interior. Obsidian black—old lava and rich soil turned dark with age. There was no glint of hope.
And yet the miner had continued. It was just like the male ego, she thought with some amusement. Heaven knows how many years he had spent digging this godforsaken hole.
The ground under her was slippery, and she had only gone a few feet when she noticed the mine shaft was at a decline. She was aware of the tons of earth and rock above her, a mountain’s worth of pressure.
The cold air increased, almost blowing up the shaft, and Naomi began to wonder about underground rivers—the kind of waters that flow through mountains, like hidden waterfalls—when suddenly her feet gave out beneath her, and she was sliding.
She could feel her backpack tear at her shoulders, rocks rolling underneath her, and then she was turning, falling through the air.
When she woke she realized she still had the flashlight—her hand had a death grip on it, as a matter of fact—and she was lying on her back on a pile of loose rocky dirt, fallen from the hole above her.
The flashlight had dimmed. She had been knocked out—for how long she didn’t know.
She loosened her fingers and played the dim light around. The miner had tunneled right into an underground cave. The black walls shined with water; the black water below her reflected the light. It was impossible to tell how deep it was. She shuddered a bit. She wondered how the miner had felt the moment his pick opened up not a heart of gold but a cold black cave.
At least she knew Madison was not here, she thought, playing the light into all the corners.
She was lucky to have landed on the dirt pile, and not to have tumbled into the water below her. She would be sore tomorrow, but that was about it—if she could get back up to the mine shaft. She stood up gingerly on the loose dirt. Her feet had fallen asleep. She shook them a little, feeling the tingles.
Naomi moved cautiously, looking up. She swallowed. The mine shaft was far above her—she had been lucky to fall on the dirt. Reaching it meant scaling the slippery black wall. One loose rock and she might take a worse tumble than before.
She felt slowly around the cliff face, touching the wet rocks. She took her time, examining every angle. It was too steep; the black wall actually protruded above her, making climbing impossible.
She sat back down, trying to not let fear creep around the edges of that hard place inside her she relied upon. She turned the light off, wanting to save the batteries. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that soon she would be hungry.
Naomi folded her arms around her legs and tried to stay calm. She slowed her breathing down. There was a way out, she reminded herself. There was always a way out. She would calm herself down until the idea came to her.
The sound of water dripping became her clock. Time was passing, and inside her internal panic began. She was trapped. She saw herself running across a dark field—and the anxiety that had been nibbling around the edges of her being began to blossom into real fear.
She stood up. She was going to find a way out.
“Need some help?”
A light fell around her. It was Ranger Dave. His face above the light was impossible to discern. Naomi looked up at him.
She deliberately made her voice steady. “If you don’t mind.”
Ranger Dave spent some time securing the ropes before bringing her up.
They hiked silently back up the mine shaft.
Outside it was late afternoon. Blinking in the sun, Naomi realized she had been knocked out for a few hours. She rubbed her forehead under her hat and felt a thin trickle of blood.
“Let me treat that cut,” Ranger Dave said, and there was a note of order in his voice.
She sat on a fallen log. He pulled a first aid kit from his pack, and quickly and neatly dressed the wound. He stopped to peer in her eyes, looking for signs of concussion. He saw her creamy skin, the shadow of exhaustion under her eyes, the wide, sweet mouth.
Her guileless eyes stared back.
“You were a fool to go in there,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked instead.
“I saw your car on the side of the road. I got worried.”
The look she gave him suggested she didn’t quite believe him. She stood, shaking life back into her legs, and then quickly laced back up the snowshoes.
“How did you even know this place was here?” he asked, completely rattled by her calm.
“I pulled the old claims,” she said.
“Nice. But there’s no way Madison could have wandered this far.”