Wham!
The sudden explosion of pain was so devastating that he saw bursts of bright color as he collapsed to the floor, dazed.
All at once, the outer building lit up behind him. It cast just enough glow into the passage to see what he’d hit.
The ceiling! It was so low that he had smacked his head on a shoring timber. He scrambled up and continued in a hunched position.
As he pushed onward into the dwindling light, he tried to piece together what had happened. He’d seen the Range Rover, but not the smaller three-wheeler parked beyond it. So he was guessing that the kidnappers had brought Meg in the SUV. He assumed that his parents hadn’t arrived yet, or perhaps weren’t coming at all. Harris had never been positive about that.
The bear attack, though, was straight out of left field. Bad luck — or maybe good luck. It might have provided the diversion that had allowed Meg to escape into the mine. But someone was in there with her — someone with a gun.
A fourth kidnapper? Someone even Mickey doesn’t know about?
The tunnel split into side passages and crosscuts. It grew darker with every step away from the entrance. He had to risk calling out, if only to let his sister know she wasn’t alone.
“Meg!” He was shocked at how his voice reverberated through the underground maze.
Just as absolute black seemed to be closing in on him, he noticed a dim flickering in the tunnel ahead.
A flashlight!
Its warm glow was almost as welcome as the swelling of hope in his heart. He raced for it, knowing the odds were fifty-fifty that he was running toward the unknown gunman. At least part of him understood that this was not a wise move. But he could not — would not — pass up a chance to bring his little sister out of this nightmare. He made a wrong turn, blundering down a crosscut into a side chamber. But when the glimmer disappeared, he knew to retrace his steps until he saw it again.
He followed the tunnel around at a jog and froze, shielding his eyes. The sudden onslaught of the torch was so brilliant that he was momentarily blinded.
A voice — definitely not Meg’s — said, “Aiden?”
“Rufus?” Aiden managed enough of a squint to make out the Blog Hog’s slight form about forty feet ahead. “What are you doing here?”
“I came with your parents,” Sehorn replied.
“Mom and Dad? Where are they?”
“We got separated,” the blogger told him. “This place is like a rabbit warren!”
“And Meg’s in the mine somewhere?”
“We’ll find her together,” Sehorn decided. “It’s too dangerous for you to be wandering around without a flashlight.”
“We’ve got to hurry,” Aiden hissed urgently. “There’s a fourth kidnapper around somewhere, and he’s got a gun!”
“Clever boy.” Sehorn raised his weapon and took careful aim.
It was fugitive instinct — survival instinct. Aiden slammed himself against the rock wall just as the Blog Hog pulled the trigger.
The noise was deafening. The report of the pistol seemed to crack between Aiden’s ears. The bullet whistled past him down the tunnel.
He took off, his bewilderment rivaling his terror. Why was the Falconer family’s biggest supporter shooting at him? Pebbles from the ceiling rained down on his head and shoulders as he ran. One stone chunk was large enough to hurt, yet he knew that nothing was as dangerous as the next shot from Sehorn’s gun.
Another blast resounded in the mine, but Aiden was already flinging himself through the opening to the side chamber. He stumbled on some steel tracks, went down, and somersaulted up again without missing a step. All his efforts were now focused on a single goal: escape from Rufus Sehorn.
The fourth kidnapper — the Blog Hog. An enemy pretending to be their friend. Total, utter betrayal.
Aiden could see a little here, but that was just a reminder of how much peril he was in. The light was coming from Sehorn’s flashlight, a bobbing glow that meant death was not far behind him.
He scrabbled along, pawing the stone walls, taking every fork and detour. He was losing himself in the mine, seeking the cover of velvety blackness.
One thought sustained him: If I’m going to save Meg, first I have to save myself.
* * *
Meg was getting better at feeling her way through the dark, probing with her hands as she shuffled her feet forward.
More difficult than moving was controlling her panic. Her brief joy at seeing her parents was now turned to a terrible dread for their lives. They were being hunted just as she was, and she had no way to help them, or even find them. They were all at the mercy of Tiger and that horrible little man — two HORUS killers.
HORUS. So that was what her kidnapping had really been about — to lure Mom and Dad out of the spotlight so they could be quietly executed. And HORUS would go on supporting terrorists, far from the public eye.
Meg’s plan, if you could call it that, was to draw the killers deeper into the mine, and then somehow sneak past them, find Mom and Dad, and make a break for it. It was a thousand-to-one shot — maybe a million to one — but her experience as a fugitive had taught her never to give up.
When she bumped up against the obstacle, she knew instantly that this was not merely the dead end of a tunnel. The walls of the passages were semi-smooth rock. This was a pile of rubble, ranging from pebbles to boulders. An old cave-in.
The thought chilled her. She had heard stories of miners trapped deep within the earth, locked in claustrophobic blackness as the air ran out.
She was backing away along the smooth wall when she heard something that brought her back to her own far more immediate problem.
Two gunshots.
Her mind reeled. They weren’t aimed at her. Who, then? Were those the shots that had made her and her brother orphans?
This time, fear was a smaller part of her reaction — an explosion of anger and a determination to protect her family. She flailed blindly in search of some sort of club. It came to her hands almost at once. The cave-in had dislodged some shoring timber, and here was a jagged piece of wood roughly the size of a baseball bat. She snatched it up and headed back where she’d come from.
Feeling her way with one hand and brandishing the weapon with the other, she stalked through the passage. The decision to fight rather than fly may not have been smart, but it definitely felt right.
When the collision came, it was a complete shock. Whoever hit her must have been running. She bounced off, landing flat on her back, and heard the other person fall, too.
This is it!
She scrambled up and reared back with her timber to deliver the home run swing.
Her attacker lunged at her. Arms locked around her midsection, and her blow missed. She tried to break free by bringing the wood straight down on the bear hug that held her. She struck something solid, and a voice cried, “Ow!”
A very familiar voice.
“Aiden?”
He held her so tightly she could hardly breathe.
The mine’s low ceilings had been a problem for the others, but for Emmanuel Harris they were a virtual impossibility. Bent almost double, he navigated by flashlight, straining to pinpoint the location of the echoing gunshots. But who could tell how sound might travel in a place like this? In the midst of his discomfort, he was aware that his actions had been very un-FBI. The three kidnappers were outside the mine, while he was inside. And he’d allowed Aiden to lose himself in a danger zone where there was shooting. In the past few days, Harris had bent more rules and disobeyed more instructions than Mike Sorenson ever would in twelve careers. But there were lives on the line, and that was all that mattered.
As he stepped into the intersection of two tunnels, he shone his flashlight as far as it would go in every direction. In the corridor to the right, the beam swept across a single fleeing boot.
In an instant, he was off and running in an ostrichlike gait, his neck stretched forward.
“FBI!”
&nbs
p; He ducked down the crosscut, and there they were, cowering in the light of his torch — John and Louise Falconer.
“Have you seen Aiden?” Harris demanded.
“Aiden?” Louise echoed. “You brought Aiden here?”
“It’s a long story,” Harris said impatiently. “Where’s your daughter?”
“Somewhere in the mine!” John explained in agitation. “We lost her! He was chasing us — and shooting!”
“Who?” Harris barked. “Who was shooting?”
“Rufus Sehorn!”
“The Blog Hog?” Harris was thunderstruck. Yet he had never quite trusted the odd young man.
“He’s with HORUS,” Louise explained tearfully. “That’s what all this was from the start — a plot to get rid of us and make it look like a botched kidnapping.”
“HORUS,” the agent repeated. A sinister name he’d believed to be in the past.
“Please save our children!” Louise begged.
Harris pointed back in the direction he’d come from. “Two lefts and a right, then follow the headlights from outside. I’ll look for the kids.”
“We’re coming with you,” John said immediately.
The FBI man had expected nothing else. He was getting used to these Falconers. They did not shy away from anything. And they never followed instructions.
“All right,” he said with a sigh. “Stay behind me. And no talking.”
* * *
For Aiden and Meg, the reunion was short. So much had happened to each of them in the past week. But there was no time for storytelling. Just as it had been in their fugitive days, once again everything had come down to survival.
As they compared notes, their situation began to look bleaker and bleaker. Wandering in a labyrinth of underground tunnels … pursued by the Blog Hog … Mom and Dad lost, or worse.
They held hands as they walked — not for support, but to keep from losing each other. Visibility was absolute zero, like being wrapped in endless black drapery.
“Why did you have to come here, Aiden?” Meg blurted miserably. “At least one of us could have been away from this mess!”
He was irritated by her attitude. “Shut up, Meg. You’d have done the same thing and you know it.”
They fell silent, both amazed that they could find something to bicker about when there was so little time and so much information they needed to share. Meg had never even heard the names Mike Sorenson and Rufus Sehorn. And she told him of her three kidnappers and how Mickey had helped her escape.
“He’s on our side now,” Aiden updated her. “The other two are out of the picture. The one with the beard is in bad shape. Harris says it was a bear attack.”
Meg was dubious. “A bear was chasing him, but it was just a cub.”
“Well, it must have been some cub. You should have seen that guy — it was like he’d been mauled by a T. rex! The blood — ”
“Aiden!” she hissed suddenly.
“Yeah?”
“I can see you.”
He squinted into the gloom. It was still very dark, but he could distinctly make out his sister’s features several inches away. And that meant —
“There’s a light around here somewhere,” he whispered.
They froze, watching and listening. The glow was diffused, pooling ahead of them at an intersection. They could hear faint shambling footsteps.
Aiden and Meg exchanged uncertain glances. It could be Harris and help, but also Sehorn and death. Running away might save their lives, but it could also cost them their chance at rescue.
It was worse than indecision. They were paralyzed as the light grew brighter.
We’re blowing it! Aiden thought in agony. How many times had their lives depended on split-second action? Yet he found he could not make this call, the most important one of all. He looked at his sister — younger, but tougher and gutsier. She had never failed to rise to every challenge. But now she was frightened and exhausted, cowering next to him. Whatever their fate, it would be out of their hands.
When the light exploded around the corner, it was like a sunburst, spectacular and blinding. Aiden couldn’t see the figure behind the torch, but he knew it was too short to be Harris.
When the first shot came at them, it wasn’t even a surprise. The bullet whizzed dangerously close to Aiden’s shoulder and struck behind them with a metallic clang. Both Falconers wheeled.
A small, narrow-gauge coal car sat there on a rusted siding. There was a pockmark on the front where the slug had struck and ricocheted off.
With a single mind, brother and sister were galvanized into motion. Another shot whined past as they sprinted for the wagon and dove inside, ducking as low as they could get. Four more bullets slammed into the metal walls, bouncing in all directions. The sound filled the tunnel like a violent thunderstorm.
“We’re sitting ducks!” Meg gasped. “All he has to do is walk over here!”
And then a deep voice from far away boomed, “Sehorn!”
Aiden’s heart leaped. Harris! The agent had found them.
The firing continued, but in the opposite direction. Now Sehorn was shooting at the man from the FBI.
The pungent smell of gunpowder filled the passage. And something else — a coarse pebbly dust descending from above.
Meg squeezed her brother’s arm. “Aiden — listen!”
He felt it as much as heard it. The noise was separate from the gunfire — an intense grinding that set his teeth on edge, and raised a nameless horror inside him.
“Run!”
The two scrambled out of the coal car and took off down the passage away from the battle.
Weakened by shock waves and ricocheting bullets, the ceiling gave way behind them. With a monumental roar, hundreds of tons of rock came pelting down and filled the passage. Rufus Sehorn disappeared under an avalanche of crushing rubble. The coal car was buried as the earth reclaimed the tunnel.
The world went dark.
* * *
Harris bounded through the collapsing passage, one arm around John Falconer, the other gripping Louise. Dust choked them — dust and the terrible realization of what had happened.
The Falconers ran for their lives but had no interest in living. They had just witnessed their two children buried alive.
Meg must have lost consciousness for a moment — but only a moment — because the air was still full of pulverized rock, and the rumble of the cave-in had not yet died away. She was flat on her face on the ground, partially covered in debris. “Aiden — ”
“Right here.” The voice was close to her ear.
She shook off the loose stones and struggled to her feet. Her outstretched arm encountered nothing but tons of shattered rock where the tunnel had once been. All light had vanished, along with any sound from the other side of the pile. They were sealed in an underground tomb.
Aiden was at her side. “If the collapse had gone on for a few more feet, we would have been crushed like Rufus.”
“Lucky us.” Meg’s voice was hollow.
Aiden grasped at a medium-size boulder. Grunting with effort, he rolled it aside. The motion touched off a minor rockslide that filled the empty place with at least three times as much rubble.
“Don’t,” Meg ordered sharply. “That HORUS guy must have been fifty feet away. And who knows how long the cave-in goes on the other side of him? It would take years to dig out of here. We’ll starve before that. Or die of thirst or suffocation.”
She felt him nod. This, then, was how it was going to end. The Falconer way — separation, heartbreak, tragedy. Mom and Dad were out of prison but locked away from their children. Aiden and Meg were reunited but doomed.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t find you before it was too late,” Aiden croaked, his voice hoarse with dust and emotion.
She searched for something to say, something that might bring them both comfort — as if anything could. Bereft of words, she wrapped her arms around him.
They clung to each other. Surel
y, no two siblings had ever been through so much together. It had been a life-and-death roller coaster from the moment of their parents’ arrest. But now it was clear that the ride was over. It was almost a relief to give up the struggle.
And then a strand of her hair blew across Aiden’s cheek.
“Meg — ”
“I felt it, too!” she exclaimed.
They were trapped in a collapsed tunnel deep inside a mountain. Where was fresh air coming from?
“An air shaft!” Aiden exclaimed in wonder. “They drilled them in these old mines so the workers could breathe!”
“But how do we find it?” Meg urged. “It’s pitch-black in here!”
Aiden unzipped a pocket of his ski suit and pulled out a tissue. He peeled off and discarded a layer, then tore a thin strip of the fine gauzy paper. He held it up with one hand and checked the result with the other. It hung limp for an instant, and then began to flutter against his fingers. He took a step in the opposite direction of the airflow.
He nudged Meg. “This way. Move slowly. Don’t create any breeze.”
“What are we doing?”
“Shhh. I made a wind sock.”
Slowly — agonizingly slowly — they backtracked the air current toward its origin. More than once they were forced to stop and wait for the Kleenex to catch another draft. The movement of that flimsy scrap of tissue bore the weight of any chance of a future for Aiden and Meg Falconer.
It took a long time that seemed even longer. They shuffled deeper into the mountain in search of the source of the hope-giving wind.
“Wait — ” Aiden rasped suddenly. “I lost it.”
They stood still, scarcely daring to breathe. Nothing.
“Oh, no!” moaned Meg. “What did we do wrong?”
All at once, a cool draft tickled the hair on top of her head. She looked up. Was it real, or were her eyes fabricating what her heart yearned to see? A single faint star twinkled down at her.
They hadn’t lost the air current — they were standing directly underneath the shaft!
She felt around the mine ceiling and reached into the opening. Her fingers closed on a cold metal rung, fastened onto the rock.