“Over here!” Abby called out excitedly. “I think I’ve found the main corridor!”
Gage shined the beam of his headlamp through the opening, illuminating the darkness beyond. “You’re right. Same floor plan as Velásquez’s hacienda. All the rooms down here open off a central hallway.”
Mateo swung his pick, and they knocked the hole open wider. Gage ducked through into the passage, and Abby joined him. Dim light seeped through the rotting floors overhead, but it wasn’t enough to see without their lamps. Ten yards down the corridor, the floor had caved in, as it had in most of the rooms along the passage.
The rain was falling steadily now, dripping through the floor over their heads. The wind made an eerie sound as it raced over the land and whistled through the trees.
Gage heard a rumble of thunder, and heavy drops began to fall, rattling like pebbles on the old wooden floor overhead, running through cracks and rotten places in the wood. More rain poured into the opening above the original chamber, splattering on the broken tile floors.
“I don’t like this,” Gage said. “We’re basically working in a basement that could fill up with water.”
Through a gap in the timbers overhead, Abby looked up at a slice of the turbulent sky. Gage tracked her gaze, but it was impossible to see anything but a tiny patch of dark gray. Even that glimpse was blurred by the downpour of water.
“Doesn’t look good,” Gage said.
“Keep working!” Santos commanded, nudging him with the barrel of his rifle and ending the discussion.
They went back to work with their picks and shovels, tearing open the walls of the next chamber, but finding no sign of the gold. Mateo climbed out of the pit, and he and Paulo rigged a pulley system to haul buckets of mud and debris out of the hole, giving them more room to work.
Gage glanced over at Abby. They had removed their rain gear, which was too bulky for the strenuous work. The rain had plastered Abby’s blouse and jeans to her body, outlining her full breasts and curvy behind. She was the only woman for miles around, and he had seen the men watching her.
Especially Santos, who viewed her every move with undisguised lust.
Gage’s jaw went tight. Santos and the others would stay away from her as long as she kept digging. They wanted the gold even more than they wanted her.
They worked into the afternoon without pause, digging and clearing, Gage occasionally returning to King’s charts, checking them against what they had found so far. The rain steadily increased, and the wind went from a fierce keening to an eerie howling.
Then the clouds opened up in a violent deluge, and sheets of rain poured out of the sky. In minutes, the water was knee deep, mud and leaves from above sliding into the hole on top of them. Santos climbed the rope ladder and took a safe position where he could watch them working below.
Abby swung her pick, loosening a portion of the wall at the back of one of the chambers, the water in the pit well up to her thighs.
Gage gripped her arm. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Abby nodded, her relief clear. They sloshed through the brackish water back to the rope. “Get a good grip and coil the rope around your leg to brace yourself as you climb up.”
Abby started up the rope.
“Keep working!” Santos called down, his rifle aimed at Abby.
“We’ll drown down here, and you’ll never get your gold!” Gage shouted into the wind. “You want to explain that to Velásquez?”
Paulo appeared at the edge of the pit. “Let them come up,” he said, shoving Santos aside. “They won’t do us any good if they are dead.”
Santos backed away, and Abby continued to the top of the rope and out of the pit. The rain was relentless, flooding into the chamber in a river of water, mud, and rotting wood, leaves, and debris.
Gage grabbed the rope and started up, hand over hand. Halfway to the top, he heard a grinding sound and looked up to see a wall of mud sliding toward him, pushing rocks and heavy beams in front of it.
He tightened his hold on the rope, but one of the timbers hit him square in the chest, knocking him back into the pit. Gage heard Abby scream, and everything went black.
* * *
“Gage!” The force of the wind tore the words from her lips as Abby ran toward the open pit in the ground. Gage’s head disappeared beneath the muddy water, the heavy beam forcing him under.
“Abby, no!” Mateo raced toward her as Abby dropped feet first into the thick, swirling black water below.
The muddy torrent closed over her head, and there was no way to see. Using her hands and scissoring her legs, she reached out in search of Gage’s big body, but she couldn’t find him.
Her heart thundered, and fear gripped her as she came up for air, then went down again. Chunks of wood, sharp-edged fragments of tile, then her hand closed over what felt like a piece of cloth. Abby’s fingers wrapped around Gage’s arm, and she started pulling, but he was unconscious, unable to help, the heavy timber weighing him down. As hard as she tugged, she wasn’t strong enough to haul him to the surface.
