Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

down twenty feet, then swim through what is basically a rock pipe full of cold water for a hundred-plus feet, what’s to say the shaft out of the big room isn’t backfilled like this one? The way you want to go might not exist.” She spun away from him and began to pace, alternately folding her arms and then dropping them so she could chew on her nails. “That does it. Even the condemned get a last cigarette—”

Cutter put a hand on her arm.

“Let’s have a biscuit,” he said.

“You’re out of your mind!” Maycomb snapped, eyes wide. She stepped backward, putting distance between them. “I don’t want one of your biscuits.”

“Suit yourself,” Cutter said, willing himself to stay calm. “That water’s awfully cold. Easy to get hypothermia if we’re not careful.”

“I’m not going in that.”

Cutter took a bite of biscuit, washing it down with a slug from his waterbottle. “Completely understand,” he said. “I’ll go get help. We’ll dig you out from the other direction.”

“I’m not staying here by myself!”

“Lori,” Cutter said. He was trying hard not to sound condescending. “We have only two choices here. It is safer for you to stay here, but I’m not making you do anything.”

He took a biscuit out of the ziplock bag. “In any case, I need to use the baggie as a waterproof housing for my light.” He put that biscuit in a second ziplock with two more and handed them to Maycomb. “Not sure how long it’ll be before we get you out, so you hang on to these.”

“Seriously, Cutter,” Maycomb said. “We’re talking about you going into a water slide that might be plugged on the other end. There won’t be any place to come up for air. If the way out is blocked, then you have to make the same trip again – without a breath.”

He peeled off his jacket. It would only slow him down.

“I happen to be a pretty good swimmer.”

“Well.” Lori wagged her head. “I’m a pretty good drowner.”

“I thought you were waiting here.”

“Alone?” Lori hugged herself. “Not a chance.”

“I’ll come back and get you,” Cutter said.

She sniffed. “And what if you die?”

“Then you would have died too,” Cutter said. “Make your way back to the entrance and start digging. Someone will likely get you out.”

Maycomb looked stricken, like she might throw up.

“Likely? What does that even mean? Likely…”

“Better to be honest, don’t you think?”

“No!” Maycomb snapped. “Not at all. I’d like you to paint the rosiest picture possible if you please.”

“Good to know…”

Cutter winced, lowering himself into the crystalline water. Fifty-degree air was not bad. Fifty-degree water was bone-numbing. He’d considered taking off his boots but decided against it. He’d need them on the other side – if he got there.

“Cold?” Maycomb asked.

“Not at all,” Cutter lied. Already exhausted and chilled to the core from his earlier swim from the wharf, his teeth began to chatter immediately. “Warm and toasty, like the water off Manasota Key, if I’m painting rosy pictures.”

He flicked on the headlamp inside the sealed ziplock bag. All the air had been pressed out, leaving the baggie flat but for the small light. Submerged up to his neck now, he lowered the light into the water, illuminating the eerie scene below. The underwater housing appeared to be working, for now. Pressure and time and good old Mr. Murphy tended to break things during the most crucial moments.

One hand on the ladder, his chin quivering an inch above the chilly water, he gave her a rare smile.

“Seriously,” he said, “everything is going to be just fine. I do this kind of thing every day.”

Chapter 50

All the guys at the mine called Harold Grimsson the Wannabe Viking. Any real Viking would have been drinking from the old man’s skull by lunchtime on the day they met him. The shootout had knocked him off his game – and his game was mostly a bunch of yelling and screaming to begin with, when Childers drilled right down on it.

Now Grimsson had them standing around the portal to the Cross Cut mine, while he tried to pull his head out of his ass and decide what to do. Dollarhyde was working the drone, looking for the girl. So far he hadn’t seen shit, which was making Grimsson apoplectic.

“We should blow it!” Grimsson said. “Tell me you see her down there. Rig a charge, Childers.”

Childers looked to Dollarhyde, who gave an almost-imperceptible shake of his head. Belay that order.

That’s how it went, every time things went even a little sideways.

The old man’s booming voice and huge black beard gave him the appearance of a berserker. He often appeared to go crazy, but always within unspoken boundaries, which wasn’t berserk at all when Childers thought about it. It was more like one of those side-eyed tantrums bratty kids throw where they constantly look at their mommy to make sure they don’t go too far.

Most of his edicts came on the back of tyrannical rages riding a torrent of slobber and threats. But everyone who worked for him knew him for the kind of guy who bellowed until his eyes bugged, but then looked hard at the reactions of those around him before moving forward with any plan. He liked to stand around instead, hoping someone with a better idea would argue with him. That way, if their plan worked, he could take the credit because he was in charge. If it failed, he could rub their face in the fact that he should never have followed their advice to begin with.

It would have been funny if it weren’t so tragic.

With nothing else to pound on during his rant, Grimsson slapped his own thigh, peered at the drone display in Dollarhyde’s hands. “We’ll blow it to hell and her with it…”

Dollarhyde did as he was expected and countered with a plan of his own.

“We could blow it, sir,” Dollarhyde said. “But this is a large stope and we don’t have a line of sight. That means the drone will only