She thrashed, squirmed and cried out with what was left of her breath. “Help! Help me!”
The tiny flashlight fell from her mouth, illuminating a small air pocket that had formed around her head. She saw dirt and ice six inches from her on all sides. Saw it shift a little closer as the cave-in settled.
“Help!” she whispered when she ran out of breath to scream. Cold, salty tears streamed down her face and ran into her mouth, and all she could hear was the pounding of her heart.
Calm down, she told herself. She had to calm down. Think! She tried to count her breaths, but she couldn’t breathe, so instead she counted her heartbeat, which was too loud, too fast.
McDermott had been right behind her. He would get her out.
But what if he can’t? asked a scared little voice in her soul. What if he’s too late?
The panic crested again, and she moaned, wishing she could be anywhere else. Out with the girls for a round of Friday-night drinks. Visiting her mother, even. They weren’t really close anymore, hadn’t been since Alissa’s father had left and her mother’s middle name had become Bitter. In that moment Alissa wished she could see her mother now and say she was sorry for having been a snotty teenager and a distant adult. Sorry for having blamed her mother because her father had never come back for that promised visit. And in a crazy way, she was sorry she’d never searched for him, if only to tell him that he was a rotten jerk.
Her tears dried to cool wet tracks on her cheeks. The air inside the small pocket warmed and grew stale. She thought she heard a shout and dull thuds, but they were too far away. And she was all alone.
“You’re going to be okay,” she said aloud, her voice strengthening as the debris allowed her an inch of breathing room. “They’re going to get you out of here.”
She felt a hint of movement beneath her outstretched hand. Not shifting soil this time, but living flesh. Then she remembered. She was holding the girl’s ankle!
“Elizabeth? Lizzie, is that you?” she called, not knowing whether her voice would carry far enough, but devastatingly grateful that the girl was alive. “If you can hear me, wiggle your foot a little.”
The foot moved.
“Okay. Hold on for me, okay? They’re going to get us out of here.” Alissa bit her lower lip and forced her voice to be even. “I want you to stay calm and relaxed, okay? I’m a police officer, and my friends are digging us out right now.”
She’d meant Cassie and Maya, who had been on the search team farther up the canyon and who must be frantic with worry. But her brain fixed on a picture of McDermott. She pictured him digging down toward her, eyes as dark as they’d been when the two of them danced.
Incredibly, the image brought a measure of calm.
Alissa drew a shallow breath to keep talking, more for her own sake than the girl’s, but her words were cut off by a roaring shift of dirt. A far-away shout of panic.
The air pocket collapsed. Icy cold weight bore down on her.
And she couldn’t breathe at all.
FASTER. HE HAD TO DIG faster, spurred by the knowledge that it had been a damn trap all along. The anger of it burned through Tucker’s gut as exertion flamed in his muscles. He got his fingers around a chunk of rock and frozen soil and heaved it aside.
He cursed as he worked, cursed Alissa for not waiting for backup, cursed himself for not being close enough to stop her. Cursed the bastard who’d left a note with his name on it, then ambushed an officer.
A female officer.
Her sex shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. Or maybe it wasn’t just that she was a woman. Maybe it was this particular woman. Ever since that night at the bar, she’d been at the edges of his mind, tempting him to forget his own rules.
“It’s settling!” shouted a tall blond woman he recognized as one of Alissa’s friends. Cassie something. The other searchers had all converged on the spot, drawn by the small, deadly explosion and Tucker’s bellow of shock and rage.
“We’ve got to get them out of there.” Chief Parry scraped at the snow and dirt with gloved hands. “There can’t be much air!”
Alissa’s image flooded Tucker’s mind, all honey-colored hair and warm blue eyes. Her remembered taste lingered on his tongue, though he’d told himself to forget it.
With a nearly feral roar, he lifted an ice-crusted boulder and heaved it aside.
“There!” Cassie yelled. “There she is!” She darted toward a scrap of cloth and a laced boot. “Get down here and help me!”
The others surged forward, but Tucker elbowed them aside. “I’ve got her!” He dropped into the hole and touched the limp body of the woman he was supposed to have been backing up. Who was supposed to have been backing him up.
This was why he didn’t work with a partner. He was no good at teamwork.
He whispered a prayer, or maybe a threat, as he checked her over and found nothing obviously wrong. She was stirring when he lifted her up and out of the hole. His muscles strained, though she couldn’t weigh much more than 110, 120 pounds. He looked down and realized her hand was caught on something. He saw a flash of denim and shouted, “There’s the girl!”
His shout brought a flurry of activity, of renewed digging, but Tucker focused on the woman in his arms. She moaned as he hauled her up and out of the ragged hole and carried her to the side of the canyon, where he could lay her flat as the BCCPD helicopter landed nearby.
She didn’t stay down long. Within moments she was batting at his hands and struggling to sit up. But her attention wasn’t focused on the rescued girl, whose motionless body was being strapped to a backboard for loading into the chopper.
No, Alissa was staring at the place where the kidnapper’s bomb had blown away part of the tributary canyon wall.
“Look!” She pointed to the scarred rock and dirt.
He saw it then, and let out a soft curse at the object that had tumbled from the disturbed earth.
It was a human skull.
ALISSA WAS COLD and sore and scared, but she’d think about it later, when she was alone and nobody could see her lose it.
She’d been buried alive. She deserved some hysterics, but she’d learned to put off the tears long enough to deal with the immediate problem. When she was younger and her mother had been struggling to keep them together, the problem had usually been money—an irate landlord or a cold Denver apartment in January.
Now the immediate problem was a crime scene. Actually, it was two crime scenes, one on top of the other.
Who did the skeleton belong to? How had the person died? How had it come to be buried there? And what were the chances that the rigged explosion would accidentally open another, far older grave?
Very slim, which suggested they had been meant to find the grave. But why?
McDermott touched her arm. “They’ve got Lizzie loaded on the chopper. They’re waiting for you.”
“I’m fine,” she said automatically, though her lungs ached at the words. She moved away from his touch, uncomfortable with how her chilled body yearned to lean into his warmth. She glanced at him and saw that his eyes were as dark as she had remembered, only with irritation, not passion. “Thanks for pulling me out.”
She would never admit that thinking of him had kept her sane in those last few minutes. She’d used him as a mental crutch, that was all. A focus.
Instead