Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) (43 page)

"You spineless bastard," Rafe bit out softly. "Is that what you told your brother when you gunned him down? 'I'll manage a memorial fund in your name'?"

Aaron stiffened, his eyes glittering like a reptile's as he slowly, deliberately turned his attention to Rafe. "Ever the scene-stealer, eh, playactor? No doubt it will crush you to die in obscurity. In fact, I'm counting on it."

"Ah." Rafe's smile was sheer ice. "So the thought of me has been eating at you, has it? Rather like a cancer in your brain? Amusing, is it not, how your constituents think you clever, when you're really just stark, raving mad."

Aaron's face darkened. "I shall cut out your tongue when I'm through and feed it to the crows."

"Be my guest. I won't have any need for it to whisper from the shadows. To haunt your dreams, and stalk your sleepless hours," Rafe taunted in a macabre, throaty voice. "But then, you know that better than anyone, eh, Aaron? One corpse leads to two, two corpses lead to three, three corpses lead to four—"

"Shut up," Aaron growled, perspiration dotting his upper lip.

But Rafe pressed his advantage in that same hushed and raspy voice, causing even Silver's hair to stand on end.

"The blood can never quite be wiped clean, can it, Aaron? And who's to say if you've poisoned them, plugged them, burned them
all
into
silence
?
One little witness, yes, just one little witness runs away and
seals your doom.
You have no rest. You have no sanctuary. Tinstars and detectives and bounty hunters chase after you, hounding your heels like blood-sucking wolves—"

"I said shut up!"
Aaron's gun hand shook as he stalked forward, kicking the chest out of his way and trampling its artifacts. "I've had enough, you cocksure son of a—"

The earth trembled.

Aaron must have felt the ground move too, because he halted, half-crouching. "What was that?"

"The... the floor is shaking," Silver breathed.

A long, low howl reverberated through the chamber. An icy premonition swept the length of Silver's spine.

"Aaron, we've got to get out of here," she pleaded, raising her voice above the whistling of a sudden, inexplicable wind. "This cave isn't stable."

Aaron bared his teeth. The wildly fluttering candle flames carved his face into grotesque shadow. "Then it's time to say good-bye." He cocked his weapon.

"Townsend, don't be a fool," Rafe snapped. "Another shot will bring the whole damned ceiling down on you too."

Aaron hesitated. Perhaps he'd heard the sense in Rafe's warning. Or perhaps he'd become aware of the dust and artifacts that were swirling in ever-rising eddies around his legs. "What the hell—?"

He glanced down for only a second. But a second was all Rafe needed. He slammed into Aaron's arm, knocking it sideways. Aaron dropped the gun, but not before a shot zinged wildly off the rocks, creating another ominous cascade. Thrown backwards by the quaking earth, Silver yiked as she grabbed for a handhold on the wall. She slid down behind the chest. That's when she noticed the eerie, green glow pulsing at its center.

"Oh... my... God," she breathed, struggling to right herself. She was uncertain where to train her eyes next. The men had slammed into a wall. Locked in a grunting, flailing tangle, they were oblivious to the phenomenon rising from the chest. Roiling, swelling, the glow belched into a noxious green cloud. Sulphur and some other eye-stinging fumes assailed Silver's senses; her head started to spin. For a moment, in the feathery, fanlike plume of those gases, she could have sworn she recognized the headdress of the ghost from her nightmares.

Dear God. Could that be Nahele?

Aaron loosed a triumphant bellow. Silver cringed, her heart speeding. The knife had slid from Rafe's fingers. Aaron kicked it out of the way and threw a punch. Rafe's head struck the wall. As he doubled over, Aaron dove for the gun and took aim.

"No!"
Silver screamed.

The earth heaved again. Thrown off balance, Aaron's shot went wild. He fell to his knees, his eyes bulging as that green phenomenon closed around him. Suddenly, he was clawing at his throat, wheezing in pure terror. "The ghost!" he gurgled, his .45 spitting again.

Rafe lunged away from the cloud.

"Don't breathe," he yelled to Silver. "The gas is poisonous!"

He tackled her to the ground even before her stunned senses realized Aaron's bullets were ripping harmlessly through the cloud and striking the ceiling. A deafening roar shook the cave. Stones came crashing down as Rafe threw his body across hers, shielding her from the avalanche.

The rock slide was over in minutes. Silver quaked, hearing Rafe's labored gasps. Gunpowder mixed with dust and the lung-burning odor of poison. When she wheezed, his arms tightened around her. She wasn't sure how long they lay fused together, his heart hammering into her back, his forearm squeezing her ribs in a desperate, lifesaving hold. All she knew was he lived. And she lived. In that moment, that was enough.

"Silver?" His voice, as scratchy as tree bark, sounded urgent. "Silver, are you hurt?"

She shook her head, daring to crack open an eye. She half-sobbed in her relief to see a feeble glow filtering through the haze. Aaron's lantern had survived the cave-in. But in the miracle of its survival, she recognized their doom.

The tunnel had been sealed shut.

Another ominous rumble greeted this revelation.

"Silver, we can't stay here," Rafe rasped. Loose stones pelted his shoulders, and he shielded his head, staggering upright and dragging her to her feet. "The whole damned ceiling's about to collapse."

She coughed. "I know, but the tunnel—"

"We have to dig our way out," he said more firmly, raising the lantern for a better view. "We need Snake's pickax."

She bit her lip, knowing full well Rafe was in no condition to dig them out of their would-be tomb.

She turned right and left, squinting through the dust, trying to find some better solution. That eerie, pulsing column of green caught her eye. Beneath it jutted an expensive black boot. Aaron's leg was the only part of his body that hadn't been crushed by the rubble.

Oddly enough, the gas hovered over him macabrely, triumphantly, as if it were fueled by some spark of intention rather than that inexplicable geyser of hot air that had risen from the floor to swirl the artifacts around his ankles. Chilled in spite of the heat, Silver hastily backed away.

Rafe, meanwhile, was heading for the tunnel where Snake had been prospecting.

"It's a dead end," she panted, trying not to notice that every gulp of air felt like a prairie fire in her lungs.

He muttered an oath, swinging her way again, his dust-caked face ghostly pale in the flare of the lantern. "Are you sure?"

She wished she wasn't. "It's only half excavated. Let's look for a hole in the ceiling. Maybe we can climb our way to the next level."

He shook his head, grimacing as he raised a hand to his bloodied crown. "If the ceiling's caving, the floor above us will be no safer."

"Oh. Of... of course." Silver's throat constricted as she watched him battle his pain. She suspected the dust-laden air was the least of his problems. "Rafe, at least let me look at that wound—"

"There's no time," he panted, scrabbling back to the center of the room. "We have to get you out of here."

She quailed.
Just me?
"Rafe, please—"

"Listen."

She shivered into silence, desperately wanting to say the things she hadn't said, the things she should have said, but too afraid her confessions would sound like she'd given up. Because she hadn't given up. She just prayed Rafe hadn't either.

The seconds stretched. Silver strained her ears. Rafe was frowning, and she wondered what had alarmed him. She could hear nothing more than pebbles skating off the tower of boulders that blocked the tunnel.

Then she noticed steam rising from a newly formed crevice at the rear of the cave. Suddenly, something scrambled out of the hole. An exuberant bark reverberated off the walls.

Rafe dodged more falling rocks as he swung the lantern toward the noisemaker. "Is that... Tavy?"

A very wet, very jubilant otter bounded out of the settling dust. Pausing to shake herself, Tavy sprayed half the room with water. Then she launched herself full-waddle into Rafe's arms.

"Good God." Rafe staggered, nearly dropping the lantern as he clutched the wriggling, tail-thumping pup to his chest. His features crumpled, and for a moment, Silver thought tears might erode his hard-won composure. "What's Tavy doing here?"

"She wouldn't leave your side," Silver whispered thickly. "Tavy crawled into your coat before Snake threw you in the wagon."

Rafe's chest heaved as he fought the pain and fear that so insidiously gnawed at his reason. For a moment, Silver's mention of a river conjured old memories of picnic baskets, pack mules, and spiders. But there was something else. Something more important. He struggled to remember it through the fog in his skull.

Max's treasure map!

The memories flooded in then, of the millionaire smoking his cigar, swirling his cognac, and pointing at the parchment littering the desk in his study.
"Legend says,"
Max had confided eagerly,
"that Nahele lived deep in the earth, in a crystal cave. The prettiest thing you've ever seen, with an underground river that leads straight to the surface and a waterfall..."

The earth tremored again. Tavy popped out of his embrace like a greased watermelon. Dashing straight to the crevice, she turned, barked an encouragement, then plunged.

Rafe's heart quickened. Grabbing Silver's hand, he hurried after Tavy. Together, they watched the otter skate down a rock slide, dodging in and out of steam, until she vanished in the yawning darkness below. Moments later, Rafe heard a splash.

"Come on, Silver." He tugged her closer to the edge. "It's our only way out."

She hesitated, but the walls were shaking all around them now, affording them little choice.

"You can do it," he encouraged above the rumbling din.

She nodded uneasily, and somehow they shimmied through Tavy's crevice. Scrambling, sliding, they skated down the bridge of rubble that connected the cave to the chamber below. Steam gusted up around them; sweat dripped from their faces and hands; still, they managed to hold on to each other until they reached solid ground. Once there, they could do little more than gape.

The lantern light glanced off glittering spires of crystal. Luminescent with shades of rose, green, and blue, these spikes rose from the floor and plunged from the ceiling like fangs in some sleeping giant's mouth. The cavern was massive, perhaps the size of Silver's mansion, and the river that snaked through its center bubbled and seethed like some medicinal hot spring.

"It... it's beautiful," Silver breathed, watching the play of light across this otherworldly landscape.

Rafe nodded weakly, wiping his sleeve across his forehead. The stalagmite he braced himself against was moist and cool, and to rest there was an insidious temptation. The heat made breathing hard, even harder than the dust had in the chamber above, and he felt light-headed.

"Rafe, perhaps you should rest—"

"No," he said quickly, thrusting himself up and away from the rock. The last thing he needed was an argument about his condition. He didn't have the stamina for it. Besides, how could he tell her that if he let himself close his eyes, he might never wake up again?

Tavy's bark echoed somewhere to their left. Summoning his strength, Rafe caught Silver's hand and hurried her in that direction. He wasn't sure how long they stumbled and climbed, following the winding, hissing rush of the river.

Somewhere along the way, he peeled off his coat. Further along, she stripped down to her chemise and bloomers. He knew he had to be in a sorry state, since he couldn't work up an ounce of lust. At times, he felt as if he were floating above his body, watching them struggle along the rocky bank. At other times, he was only too painfully aware of his laboring lungs.

And then, thankfully, they reached a dead end. A wall. Falling water could be heard roaring on the other side, just as Max had said.

"I'll be damned," Rafe muttered.

"The river seems to go through a tunnel," Silver panted, leaning as far over the bank as she dared. "I can't tell how far, but with the waterfall so close, the tunnel can't be too long... can it?"

Tavy's chirping rolled across the water. Once again, she climbed up on the bank, shaking her fur. She waddled to each of them in turn, giving them a snuffle and a kiss. Rafe's throat swelled. Even Silver looked misty-eyed. Then Tavy galloped to the edge of the bank. Holding their breaths, they watched in uneasy silence as the otter baby, fearless now in her element, dived, letting the current sweep her under the mountain.

Silver hugged her arms to her chest and turned anxious, luminous eyes to him. "She made it, Rafe. I know she did."

He nodded. There was nothing more to say. Whether Tavy made it or not, they had to make the same journey. They had no choice.

He kicked off his boots. "Don't give up, Silver. Whatever happens, you keep swimming, all right?"

She bit her lip. Even so, a tear spilled down her cheek. She'd been so incredibly brave, even though he knew she was terrified, and not just for him. "We can rest first—"