Deep breaths, but she got a nod from Sully. “Yeah.”
“The original mine went all the way under the lodge,” Malachi said.
She wasn’t going to let hope die now. “Get me a flashlight.”
Sully turned to Malachi, who was ascending the stairs. “Does Hudson have the original mine blueprints?”
“I’ll look.”
Orlando barked again and ran to the mine door.
She looked at the dog, who sat, wagging his tail, and her heart just simply said ...trust.
“Here.” Malachi reappeared with flashlights. “Kennedy is searching the office for a map.”
Sully took a flashlight, handed another to Harley. “We should wait for backup. The tunnels could be unstable, and it’s a labyrinth in there.”
“No time.” She turned on the light. “How long has it been?”
“Harley.” Sully’s voice carried warning. “You can’t go down there alone.”
“Watch me.”
“At least wait for the blueprints,” Sully said.
But Orlando had already gotten up, his bell jangling with his coiled excitement.
And each second felt like another breath Jericho didn’t have.
“I lost him once because I was afraid and stubborn.” She peered into the darkness, flashing the light around. “I’m not losing him again.”
“Five minutes!” Sully said. “Give us five minutes to get a team—”
She turned to Orlando. “Find.”
The dog took off into the darkness.
Here went everything.
Her light cut through decades of dust and silt, the dog’s tags jingling in the dark.
“I’m coming, JB,” she whispered, more prayer than promise. “Just hold on.”
Behind her, Sully had shouted her name again, but ahead, Orlando’s bark bounced off stone walls.
Please,please lethim be alive.
The air grew colder with each step, heavy with the scent of wet stone and decay, the earthen weight of years of mining. Water dripped somewhere ahead, a steadyplink-plinkthat echoed off walls she couldn’t see.
Orlando’s bell jingled, the only reliable sound besides her ragged breathing and the scuff of her boots on rock. The tunnel narrowed, forcing her to duck under rotting support beams, their ancient timber groaning overhead.
“Jericho!”
Her voice died in the grasp of darkness, swallowed. She stopped to listen but heard just the tingle of Orlando’s bell and the thunder of her own heart.
“Lead meto the rock that is higher than I ...”The psalm fragment floated through her mind, and what else could she do but cling to it?
She reached a fork in the tunnel, a larger cavern from which more tunnels branched. Her flashlight found Orlando, wagging his tail as if to say,Hurry up. Then he took off into the gloom of one of the tunnels.
