by out here. Closing her eyes, she snacked on a granola bar. Low carbs are a waste for good calories, she thought and wondered if Tish would join her for a decent breakfast. She awarded herself five minutes of empty thoughts, listening to the breeze push against the dry leaves. Then she snapped on her mini flashlight and studied the latest test results, excited enough to know she was a couple tests away from a perfect formula. Mentally calculating the process, the degree changes she’d take next, her palms went clammy. Gulping water, she blinked at the printout, reading it twice.
Oh my God, I did it.
6:45 A.M. EST
A forty-forty rifle cradled in his arms, Jack sat in the tree stand, needing coffee and contemplating his life as he usually did when he was stuck in a tree waiting for deer to conveniently cross his path. Since returning to the States, his life had gone from dull to boring so he skipped dissecting it and watched the terrain below. Thinning the deer population for Fish and Game was never a challenge. Hunting one deer, that was sport, and some good eating.
A whisper of conversation came over the radio. Jack put it to his ear. “Radio silence mean anything to you shit heads?”
“Sure, in combat. Where it counts.” Lyons. Jack could tell by his Georgia accent.
“What I want to know is where are all the deer that are getting in the way of tourism?”
Jack whispered into the radio. “Flapping your jibs is scaring them off, Decker.”
“Silent but deadly you ain’t, Deck,” Lyons said, chuckling.
“I crawled out of bed for this?” Decker ragged back.
“We all did.” Mateo, Jack recognized.
“Unlike your bed, Martinez, mine wasn’t empty.” Despite the nose that had been broken more than once, Decker’s “wore braces till he was seventeen” smile drew women. Jack wondered if his mama knew her investment was paying off for her boy.
“The question is, did she care if you left?”
“Can’t say. I’m a gentleman,” Decker said and the other three snorted. If Decker’s bedpost wasn’t notched, Jack’d be surprised.
“It’s more than quiet out here, sir.”
That’s what he liked about it. Silence, the chance for meandering thoughts, life-altering decisions. But with too much company, he wasn’t getting any of that today. “Keep your yaps shut for the next hour and we’ll move down the mountain two clicks.”
“Is that an order…sir?”
Jack leaned his head back and smiled through camouflage netting covering his face. “Does it have to be, Gunny Lyons?”
The radio went silent. Jack stuffed it into his leg pocket and practically ached for coffee. The breeze chilled the air around him, and when he heard movement from below, he sat up higher for a look, quietly shifting the rifle to his shoulder. Bingo. He sighted down the scope and put the doe between the crosshairs. He pulled the trigger. The crack echoed and the deer dropped like a stone. Jack radioed his buddies before climbing down and heading toward the carcass.
7:14 A.M.
People should be warned when their luck was about to change. When she dragged her butt out of bed to work six hundred feet below the surface of Luray Caverns, Sydney should have listened to that inner voice telling her to stay put, call in sick, and languish the day away with books, a pint of Häagen-Dazs, and her trusty vibrator.
When the elevator doors shot open on her floor, her first thought was an explosion. Smoke engulfed her, stinging her eyes, cloaking everything. For a second, it was deadly quiet. Then Corporal Tanner smacked into her, his dead weight dragging her to the ground.
“Chris! Oh, Jesus.”
Blood flowed from a hole in his chest and onto her. She ripped open the man’s utility uniform and frowned harder at the Kevlar vest. A neat hole pierced right through it. She yanked the vest open, Velcro tearing loudly. She covered the wound with her hand and blood bubbled up between her fingers.
It’s in his lungs. She could hear it rattle inside him.
She cupped his face, checked his eyes. “Don’t die, Corporal, that’s an order.” Her gaze flicked wildly around the corridor; a body dressed in black lay on the floor beneath the haze of smoke. She got to her feet, trying to drag him into the elevator. But she couldn’t move him across the threshold. Smoke and frustration made her eyes tear.
Blood trickled out of his mouth. The sound of gunshots with silencers echoed back to her like a dozen soft pops. Bad guys. Coming this way. The Marine struggled to talk, but only gurgled, sluggishly lifting his weapon and pressing it into her body, into her hand.
She knew what he was trying to do. “I’m not leaving you!”
He closed his fingers over her hand. “Ammo, right…leg pocket.” He coughed. Blood splattered.
She found it, cocking the weapon and stashing the ammo in her waistband. “You gotta help me help you, Chris.”
His eyes were bleak with his coming death. “Run.”
She couldn’t. He was young and alive. She refused to leave him, gripped him under the arms, and pulled. Footsteps pounded on the stone floor and she didn’t know if it was a rescue or his killers. She rolled him inside and smacked the panel. The doors didn’t close.
“Codes, Chris. Gimme the codes!”
Weakly, he held up fingers and she pushed reset, then jabbed numbers. From the door at the end of the long cement hall, a man in head-to-toe black appeared, stepping over a body, and moving toward the elevator. When he saw her, he sprinted.
Closer. Closer.
“Come on! Come on!” She hit the panel hard. The man stopped, widening his stance to sight down the long pistol. I’m not gonna make it. Sydney swallowed hard, lifted the gun and fired first. The pistol’s kick threw her back against the steel wall. The elevator door shut and this time, she felt the unit shoot to the surface. She took a deep breath, shoved the pistol into the waistband of her skirt, then crouched. “Chris. Chris?”
His eyes fluttered for a second. “A danger…I could see.”
Her heart broke right there, but she forced a smile. “You did good, Corporal.” She stroked his cheek. He was already growing cold. “Who were they, Chris?”
His eyes glazed and she checked his pulse, then choked when she didn’t find one. Oh God. Dead, dead, dead, pulsed through her brain. She tried CPR but his lungs were filled with blood.
She couldn’t imagine what might be going on down below. Her friends. Handerson, Piccolo, Dysart? Harmless chem-rats like herself. She swiped at her tears, her hands covered with his blood and for the last few seconds of the ride topside, she lovingly held the dead marine in her arms.
When the elevator stopped and the door hushed open, Syd kissed Chris’s forehead, laid him gently down, then stepped out. Instantly she spun back and tried to stop the doors from closing so she could lock the unit on this level. The thick metal nearly took off her arm and she jerked back, cursing.
It
