Oliver tossed it to me—small, cheap, the kind you’d find in a gas station bargain bin. I clicked it on. The beam was weak and yellowish, barely cutting the darkness.
The mine entrance waited.
Every instinct I had screamed to run the other direction. To take my chances with Bishop’s gun and the wilderness beyond. Anything but walking into that hole in the earth.
But there was nowhere else to go. And my thirty minutes were already bleeding away.
The blackness beyond the entrance was absolute. My flashlight beam disappeared into it like a stone dropped into deep water. The air coming from inside was cold and damp and ancient, carrying the smell of wet rock.
Behind me, Oliver’s voice carried clearly in the still air.
“See you soon, Mia.”
I ran into the mine.
Chapter 28
Mia
The darkness ate my flashlight beam.
Within ten steps, the late-afternoon light behind me had faded to a pale glow. Within twenty, it was gone completely. The world narrowed to the weak yellow circle I carried and the rock pressing in from all sides.
The mountain was above me. Around me. Tons of stone and earth with nowhere for it to go but down.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Forced myself to feel the faint current of air against my face. Air meant openings. Openings meant ways out. I wasn’t trapped. There was air. I could breathe.
But Oliver was behind me. Counting down. Thirty minutes, but I didn’t believe him. He hadn’t played fair the first time, and he wouldn’t play fair now. He could be moving already, stepping into this darkness with the confidence of someone who knew these tunnels much better than me.
I wanted to run. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to flee blindly until I found a way out or hit a wall.
But that was how you died in a place like this. Running blind. Panicking. Making noise.
I made myself slow down. Made myself count. One step. Two. Three. Not because the numbers would save me—they wouldn’t—but because counting meant I was still thinking. Still choosing. Not just prey fleeing in the dark.
How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten?
The tunnel curved left, and I followed it. The stone was rough and damp beneath my trailing fingers, slick in places with moisture that seeped from somewhere deep in the mountain. The ceiling was high enough here, the passage wide enough, but I could feel the weight of everything above me. Pressing. Waiting.
Air on my face. I focused on that. There was air.
Somewhere ahead, water dripped. The sound bounced off surfaces I couldn’t see, impossible to locate. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Like a clock counting down Oliver’s head start.
The tunnel branched—left or straight ahead. I paused, sweeping my flashlight down each option, straining to hear footsteps behind me. Nothing yet. But that didn’t mean anything.
The left passage was wider, the ceiling higher. The faint current of air moved against my face, stronger here—suggesting a larger space somewhere beyond. The straight path narrowed almost immediately, the walls angling inward like a throat preparing to swallow.
Wider was better. Wider meant room to breathe. Wider meant moving faster when Oliver came.
When. Not if.
I went left.
The temperature dropped as I moved deeper. The silk dress was useless against the cold—a cruel joke, just like last time. Myarms prickled with goose bumps. My breath came out in small clouds that disappeared into the dark.
Every shadow felt like a figure. Every sound could be footsteps. I kept glancing over my shoulder, heart lurching each time my flashlight beam found nothing but empty tunnel behind me.
