Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Aria scrambles to her feet, “What’s wrong?”
I swing my flashlight across the wall at the top of the chamber. A massive swath of the cave is covered in ancient art.
Reeling from the double impact of kissing Aria when I should stay arms length away and the situation in the tunnel, it’s hard to get my head around what I’m seeing.
She laughs softly. “That’s amazing. I’ve never seen any cave art in person.”
“No one mentioned it to me, but we were all focused on the fact that the caves were flooding and the only sign of the missing woman was by the entrance.”
I shine my spotlight across the northwest corner of the chamber. “Very impressive art at that.”
I move along the wall, pointing my light into a darker recess. “This is a first for me too. Not that I’ve spent a lot of time in caves.”
Behind me Aria makes a sound of appreciation that makes my skin tingle. “Well, I have and I’ve still never seen art in person.”
We stand for a few seconds in silence as we use our lights to look around.
Animals, human handprints, and elaborate geometric shapes in red and black cover the smooth surfaces. Thousands of years old, protected by the mountain.
The darkness cocoons around us. Almost intimate.
My lips are still stinging, my pulse still erratic behind my sternum. Kissing Aria was a mistake. Good as all fuck, but a mistake that’s going to lead to all kinds of problems.
“Scout, there’s more there.”
Her sweet, soft voice pierces my growing angst.
When I swing the light to the right, I stiffen and narrow my eyes. This time, it’s not the art that has my attention. It’s another clue. A piece of blue webbing and a green rope.
For a few seconds, scenarios play out in my head. Very few of them are good.
“I’m glad we spotted the art, because there’s a clue that could be related to the case. You see the climbing harness?”
Aria moves across the rock ledge to stand next to me. “Where?”
I swing the light, circling the area. “Right there. Blue harness. There’s a line draped over a projection of rock.”
She cranes her neck and looks at the ceiling where the hole opens to the sky, an opening the size of a tractor-trailer tire, revealing clouds above it.
Looking around again, she asks, “Do you think someone came down through the opening? ”
“That’s my guess. Which means they could have come or gone after the flooding. Given that the harness and rope are just carelessly discarded, I’m guessing that it fell through the hole or someone threw it in.”
Or someone fell out of the rigging.
A morbid, but real possibility. Especially if they didn’t know what they were doing or didn’t have the right gear.
She looks at me suddenly. “You said they might have thrown their rope and harness in. As if they were hiding it…”
I force myself not to look at the beautiful, bright woman beside me. It’s too much.
The sane, rational part of me wants her in ways I can’t explain. The broken, angry part of me knows I can’t have her.
Words husky, I offer her a taste of praise when I want to give her a hell of a lot more than just a few hollow words. “Smart girl. You could be right.”
“I’m glad we didn’t find a body.” Wrapping her arms around herself, she makes an uncomfortable sound in her throat. “I’ve only retrieved living people during rescues. No postmortem recoveries. I know it will happen someday. But I’m glad we didn’t find her.”
Yet.
But I don’t vocalize that it could still happen. Taking one more look at the rope and harness, I memorize the location compared to the opening in the ceiling of the cave.
“We need to have a good look below the water before we leave.”
She moves back to her gear and picks up her mask and snorkel. “Do you think that harness belongs to her—the woman you guys called MZ? ”
“Could belong to anyone. I have lots of questions for the professor and his contacts about the frequency of people coming and going from these caves.”
Looking around the space, Aria taps her chin with her gloved hand. “Why would she be in here?”
For a beat, I mull over the situation with my team’s case.
Technically, Aria’s working on this mission with us, so it’s not a total breach of confidentiality to read her in on some of the details. I also know her brother’s company is solid. That’s the reason Agile would have hired them.
Quickly reaching my decision, I turn to face her. “What I’m going to tell you is not to be shared with anyone.”
Her expression turns serious, her hand falling to her side. “Of course. I understand.”
“The missing woman is an archeologist. We don’t know her exact reason for being in Vandemora yet. But I’m trying to work that out. She was known to be visiting some archeology sites in the country, including caves.”
“So, she would study history?”
“Generally yes, but there are a lot of nuances to what archeologists specialize in.” I pull up my wetsuit hood, adjusting it around my face and move to my equipment. “Let’s wrap this. I need to get someone to the upper entrance of the cave to see what they can find before the rain sets in again.”
“Do you think something bad happened to her?”
I don’t want to give much airtime to that, but we’re all uneasy. “Several days ago, we were doing some recon in the capital and saw a woman that resembled her being forced into a car. We chased them, but didn’t get her before they disappeared. Since then we’ve run into dead ends.’
Aria’s color blanches, and her hands tighten on her snorkel. “I know that has to be hard on you and your coworkers.”
Copy that. But hard doesn’t feel like the right word. Frustration simmers in my veins. “It’s never good when you fail to save someone.”
“Did she look scared?”
“She didn’t look at us.”
Aria considers that for a beat. “But did her body language look like she was in distress?”
As the memory replays in my head—the blond woman being forced into a car by two men—my body tenses and adrenaline starts to flow, just like it did that night. “She didn’t look relaxed.”
Biting the corner of her lip, Aria’s expression softens, “I hope you find her, Scout.”
“So do I. I’ve got a thing about women being in trouble.”
Her eyes drop to the ground. “About that. I need to thank you for taking such a strong stance for me about Brundage.”
“I’d do it again in an instant.”
She adjusts the snorkel’s attachment on her dive mask, thinking for a few seconds as she toys with it. “Do you really think Griff will fire him?”
“If Griff ever wants another rescue job, he will. I’ll make sure word spreads that he’s got a dangerous, loose cannon on his team if he doesn’t. That man is never getting near you in the water again.”
She slides her fins on her feet and drops off the rock ledge into the water. As I pass her tanks down to her, her brow is tight. “I have to admit, I’m a little nervous about what happens when Griffon gets to town.”
“I’m not.”
Aria makes a startled sound as she frantically looks around in the water. “What—are you expecting someone?”
I grab her arm and tug her toward me as water starts to swirl around us. “Nope.” But I’m already pulling my dive knife free of its sheath.