Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty: Ryder
Cracking my eyes open, I turn my head and see Delaney’s empty sleeping bag. As much as I wanted to pull her close last night, I didn’t want to send her running scared. Especially after practically telling her I’m in love with her.
“Christ.” I swipe a hand through my messy hair and down over my stubbled face. A part of me is afraid to peek outside, worried she stole a Jeep and is halfway back to the States by now.
“Knock, knock.” The zipper lowers, Delaney pops her head inside the tent and I breathe out a low sigh of relief. “Are you getting up any time today?” she playfully gripes.
“What time is it?” I squint against the sunlight streaming in through the slitted opening.
“Six a.m., Moneybags. C’mon, and get your pretty ass up.
I’ve had two cups of tea already, Linc has had three cups of coffee, Brighton is making breakfast, and you’re in here lazing the day away.
Chop-chop. We’ve got tunnels to search.” When I groan, she turns adorably threatening. “Don’t make me use my stun gun.”
I choke out a laugh and the tent flap flutters closed. With a smile, I change clothes and then amble over to the fire where everyone is gathered.
“Nice of you to join us,” Addie remarks with a smirk.
“Diamond Man needs his beauty sleep,” Linc teases, and I lift my middle finger.
“No, Diamond Man needs his coffee.” I reach for a mug and the jar of coffee grinds. “I thought you said Brighton was making breakfast. I don’t see anything.”
Brighton tosses me a small box of cereal. “Bon appétit!” she says brightly.
“Gee, thanks. I was hoping for bacon and eggs or—”
“Not out here,” Addie reminds me, sealing her trash in a ziplock bag. “The last thing we want is a pride of lions showing up because they smell bacon frying.”
“Can’t argue with that.” I munch on my raisin bran and gulp my coffee as we come up with a gameplan.
Delaney and I go over the area we searched yesterday with the others, warning them about the collapsed sections, and we decide everyone is going down into the tunnels today except Linc.
We need someone to keep an eye on camp, be available in case anyone needs anything down below, and let’s face it, he’s the most able to provide a vertical extraction if needed.
But mostly, my dude is just too big. His broad shoulders would be scraping rock walls right and left, and he’d probably tweak his back from bending over the entire time.
We harness up and, one at a time, climb down the ladder.
Once we all reach the bottom, I point out the sections Delaney and I already searched.
We barely made a scratch, but the plan is to divide and conquer.
Hopefully, we’ll get lucky and find the cache that originally made this place worth digging into.
Hell, if I’m hoping already, my biggest hope is the intel is true and this is the mine where the rest of the Phantom Orchid is still waiting to be chiseled free.
The truth is we don’t even know for sure.
“Which way are you thinking?” I ask Delaney under my breath. She’s studying the tunnels like they somehow hold a clue.
“That one.” She nods to the one on our right.
“Let’s do it.” I turn, my headlamp shining into the yawning darkness ahead.
“Stay in touch,” Addie reminds us, and then we split up. She and Brighton choose the tunnel closest to us, while Knox and Hunter head down one on the lefthand side.
As Delaney and I start forward, my mind rewinds to last night when I basically spilled my guts.
More like my heart, I suppose. She hasn’t mentioned it, and I don’t want to press her.
At the same time, I’m feeling a little fragile and a lot vulnerable.
The idea that she might walk away from me hurts more than I can even comprehend.
No woman has ever made me this crazy, but my little Crumpet has me wrapped around her slim finger.
Particularly her left ring finger where I’m envisioning a giant diamond from yours truly.
I’m wishing she would open up to me and share what’s going through her head, when my comms unit crackles to life.
“We’ve got fucking company,” Linc growls.
Shit. I glance over at Delaney. “Who?” I ask.
“A helo just landed. Fuck! Mercs!”
“How many?” Addie asks.
But he doesn’t respond and then only static fills the line.
“Addie, do you copy?” I ask. Silence. Fuck. “Comms are jammed.”
“C’mon!” Delaney grabs my arm. “We need to go deeper and try to hide.”
I know Linc can take care of himself but, at the same time, I’m worried.
There aren’t a lot of places for him to hide, but he has a gun and a vehicle.
Hunter is armed, but Addie and Brighton aren’t.
They’re damn smart, though, and I know they’ll figure something out.
Meanwhile, I’ve got to make sure Delaney and I do the same.
It’s like a maze down here, so if we’re quiet and keep behind the pillars, we should be able to sneak around and make our way back to the ladder. I don’t know if we’ll make it up before being discovered, but I want to link up with Knox and Hunter and that gun which I know is in her hand right now.
When I tell Delaney what I’m thinking, she frowns. “That’s not a very good plan.”
“Do you have a better one? Because I’m all ears.”
“I have my stun gun.” She plucks it from her bag. “What else do we have for weapons?”
I grumble a curse and shift my backpack around. Some quick digging reveals a hammer, chisel and a flare.
“I’ll take that.” She grabs the hammer. Of course, she does.
God, I love this woman.
“Why’re you looking at me like that?” she asks, sliding the hammer through a loop at her waist.
“Because you’re fucking magnificent, baby.” I kiss her hard and step back. “Let’s try to find the others. If the Voss’s goons come down—”
“They will.”
“Then we take them out, if we can. I don’t want you putting yourself in harm’s way unnecessarily.”
She nods, clutching the stun gun in her right hand and the hammer in her left. Meanwhile, I’ve got a flare. I guess it’s better than nothing.
Sticking close together, we move around a pillar and make our way into another section of tunnel, retracing our steps to the ladder.
It’s not long before we hear voices. Deep male voices.
I grab Delaney’s arm and we freeze. My plan is to let them pass since it sounds like they’re on the other side of the pillar.
But at the last second, they turn the damn corner and practically run right into us.
Instantly assessing the situation, I see there are two men, hunched over, each holding a gun.
While I bring my forearm down against one’s wrist, causing the gun to fly out of his hand, Delaney stuns the other one down low, a direct strike to the jewels.
I wince as he drops like a sack of potatoes, crying out in pain. Definitely better him than me.
“Go!” I push her forward and then turn to launch a kick at my quickly approaching opponent. He grunts when my boot hits him squarely in the chest, and I’ve never been so happy for all those evenings I spent sparring with Linc at the gym.
The merc stays low and glares before rushing at me like a pissed-off bull in a bull fight.
There’s barely any room to maneuver, and I plant my feet, preparing to get bowled over, when Delaney jumps into the mix, swinging her stun gun up and zapping El Toro right in his kidney. With a howl, he goes down.
“Nice aim, Crumpet!”
She sends me a smile then looks around. “Which way?”
“There!” I pull her away from the downed men and we race into another section of tunnel.
Our brains in survival mode, we lose all pretense of mapping our route.
And the more we run, circling around pillars and backtracking, the more confused we get.
It’s not long before we stop, breathing hard and completely lost.
“I’m not sure if we go that way or this way,” she whispers.
“Yeah, me neither.” We haven’t run into the others, and I hope to God they’re alright. But I also have a funny feeling we’re deeper in the mine instead of closer to the exit.
Something snags my attention. I can’t pinpoint the direction it’s coming from, but as my breathing calms, I hear a faint scraping noise. Cocking my head, I listen closely. “Do you hear that?”
Delaney nods slowly, also listening. It abruptly stops and I tense up. It almost sounds like heels dragging through loose gravel. Like maybe someone is approaching and—
Out of nowhere, a mercenary wearing a black bandana pops around a pillar.
He lifts a fucking machine gun, and I throw myself into Delaney, covering her body, as the asshole starts firing, sending chunks of dry stone clattering to the ground and filling the air with a cloud of pale gray dust. The loud rat-a-tat-tat sounds deafening down here, and we slam into the ground.
Chunks of gravel and sharp pieces of rock hit my back before we manage to scramble behind another pillar.
My headlamp falls off and I drop my flare, but I’m too focused on covering Delaney from the bullets ping-ponging all over the damn place to worry about retrieving them. Fucking idiot! He’s going to cause the goddamn tunnel to collapse.
I stumble over a rock as Delaney races forward into an adjacent tunnel. She’s still wearing her headlamp, so I start to follow when, out of nowhere, the worst sound you can possibly hear when you’re thirty feet underground fills the air.
An enormous rumble makes the walls around me shake, and I swear the bedrock shifts beneath my feet.
My eyes lock on Delaney and I see the fear flash across her face before the ceiling collapses with a roar.
A huge wall of rock shatters and falls, crumbling into a million tons of loose boulders, blocking her from my view.
“No!” My heart stutters and sinks. I have no idea whether the pile of rocky debris is merely separating us or if it fell on top of her.
Terror makes me want to start pawing through the pile of stones and rocks, but fury has me turning around to face the stupid motherfucker coming around the corner, machine gun in hand.
But not for long.
I spring up, yet stay low, and with the full force of the fury I’m experiencing, I launch my full body weight into his knees.
They make an awful cracking sound as they bend in the opposite direction, and the asshole goes down hard.
The gun clatters away, sliding into the dark and out of sight.
While he’s screaming about his shattered kneecaps, another merc with shaggy blond hair and a tattoo on his cheekbone races into view.
Dammit! I’m not sure where the machine gun went, but I spot the flare. As Shaggy races toward me, I swipe it up, strike the cap against the top and shove it forward. With a shout, Shaggy drops the knife in his hand and starts swatting at his burning pants.
Another low rumble shakes the walls around us, and I look up at the crumbling ceiling.
A portion breaks free, collapsing far too close, and Shaggy makes a run for it.
He manages to escape the falling debris, but Kneecaps isn’t so lucky.
He gets caught underneath and his screams reverberate through my ears until the rock pile muffles it…
and then there’s only silence. Now I’m trapped between two huge piles of rock.
But I don’t care about myself. Spinning around, I hurry over to where I last saw Delaney and start tossing rocks aside, trying to create an opening.
“Delaney!” I don’t want to shout too loudly because it might trigger another collapse, but terror has me calling her name over and over. “Delaney!” The sharp, jagged fragments tear the skin on my hands as I paw through the endless rock pile. But I don’t stop.
Because she’s not answering.
“Delaney!”
Heart in my throat, fingers bleeding, I do the only thing I can—keep digging. Because I refuse to leave the woman I love down here, all alone in this rocky tomb.