“Well…yes,” she conceded, finally.
He eased back, still holding her there with his body, but not up in her face, the way he had been.
She was a tiny thing, he’d realized when he’d had her plastered against him just now, slender as could be. Young, too, if she really was a student, like she said.
He didn’t think she was going to try to get away any longer, so staying that close to her was more of a distraction than a help at the moment. And he was quickly discovering she had all the necessary attributes to be very distracting to a man.
Travis fought to put those kind of thoughts completely out of his head as he backed away just enough so that he wasn’t touching her anymore but could still grab hold of her quickly if he needed to.
“You know if I haul you out of here and call the sheriff, he’d treat you to at least a night in jail,” he said.
She sighed. “You don’t really want to do that. Do you?”
“If it kept you from trying some damned fool stunt like this again, yeah, I do.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I just—”
“Have to find that stupid diamond? Yeah. I’ve heard it before—”
“Do you have any idea what kind of an opportunity this is?”
“Oh, yeah. Millions of dollars at stake, and you think all you have to do is find it.”
“No. Not the money,” she claimed. “Finding it. If the Santa Magdalena Diamond is really somewhere on this ranch, it’s the find of a lifetime. Scientists spend their whole lives studying and searching, and most of them will never discover anything like this. It’s amazing! How could anyone who’s serious about a career in science pass up that opportunity?”
Travis frowned, hearing the honest enthusiasm in her voice. Same as with those archaeology students and their supervisors who were on the ranch last summer studying the petroglyphs.
He didn’t really understand getting that excited or being so fascinated with those drawings, but he’d seen that kind of enthusiasm and pure joy of discovery before in them.
So she took stupid risks, but that yearning to explore, to discover, he at least understood better than those fools out to make millions by simply getting lucky and stumbling upon a treasure. He believed in hard work much more than luck, so he could understand a bit of what drove her and wasn’t quite as annoyed as he was before.
And maybe he even envied her that kind of excitement and yearning. Travis, at thirty, was a man content with his life most days. But every now and then, it felt a little too settled, too predictable.
A little empty.
He didn’t remember the last time he was as excited about anything as she was about the chance of discovering the old diamond. A feeling he certainly wasn’t going to stand in this old mine and try to analyze.
“Come on,” he said, finding her helmet and putting it back on her head, wincing as the light hit him square in the face and quickly turning away. “You’re done exploring. We’re going up top.”
She sighed once again. “Couldn’t you just let me look around? I mean, we’re already here. What’s it going to hurt?”
“The next level is a hundred feet below the surface,” he told her.
“I know.”
She sounded like the idea thrilled her.
Then he realized something. “You know? What do you mean, you know?”
“From the maps,” she said.
“You have maps of this mine?”
“Of course. The people who originally worked the mine kept maps. Not as precise as what we’d make today, but you can find those historical documents if you know where to look. And scientists who’ve explored the mines over the years kept maps, too. I told you, I’m serious about this. It’s not a crazy pipe dream to me. I’m a scientist. And you could help me.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
She shrugged. He was close enough that he could feel the movement. “For the money?” she tried. “There’s supposed to be a jeweled chest full of old Spanish coins, too. Silver coins. I mean, even a cowboy could appreciate the chance to have that kind of money. This could be the kind of fortune that would let you buy your own ranch someday, if you wanted. And…you wouldn’t really even have to help me, if you didn’t want to. You could just…not tell anybody I was here? Maybe not tell anyone if I came back and searched some more? I’d pay you, if you wanted, just to…not tell anybody what I was doing.”
“You’d go back in here by yourself?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes. And you could stay topside, just to be there in case I did get in trouble. All you’d have to do is call for help. I have friends who’d know what to do to get me out.”
Travis swore under his breath. “I think you’re nuts to take that kind of risk.”
“And I think some people spend their whole lives without ever taking a risk at all, which to me is even worse.”
He shook his head. “Well, I think this is a ridiculous conversation to be having while buried under tons of rock. Start climbing.”
She hadn’t climbed more than two steps on the ladder when a howling, whistling sound swept through the mine.
And then, as the howling died down for a moment, there was a tapping sound, far away and not that loud. Like the beating of a drum. Solid objects hitting other solid objects. And then more howling.
“What the hell is that?” he asked, as they both froze for a moment.
He told himself if it was what he feared—falling rocks—he’d have been hit by something already. Unless it was father down inside the mine or up near the entrance and just hadn’t made it to them.
Not yet, anyway.
“Wind,” she said.
Okay. Yeah. He felt it, now that he wasn’t thinking obsessively of being pelted by rocks. Still, that wasn’t all.
“Wind and what else?” he demanded.
“I’m not sure,” his gutsy explorer said, not sounding nearly as confident as she had been a moment ago.
He swore, feeling every bit of that distance between him and the surface. “Let’s get out of here. Now.”
She took off for the top, seeming to know her way in the dark a heck of a lot better than Travis did. He went scrambling after her. When he made it to the horizontal shaft near the surface, she found his hand, grabbed it and pulled him along behind her.
The eerie howling got louder with every step they took and at every moment, Travis still expected to have rocks come hurling down on him, but they never did.
He bashed his head a couple of times on the way out, not able to see that well in the tunnel and moving faster than a man of his size should in a shaft of that size.
Near the entrance, she was sure she smelled rain. But there was no way rain would account for the other sound she heard.
The space around them opened up, but it was still oddly dark, and then Travis realized they’d made it out of the mine, to the long, deep rock overhang that created a covered area sheltered from the elements.
Good thing, too, because outside the sky was nearly black, the world around them a gloomy gray. Out in the open, he saw what looked like miniature, eerily white golf balls bouncing off the ground.
Hail.
It was coming down something fierce, pounding into the ground and then bouncing around until it settled for good. The wind sounded