Chapter 28
Mia
The darkness ate my flashlight beam.
Within ten steps, the late-afternoon light behind me had faded to a pale glow. Within twenty, it was gone completely. The world narrowed to the weak yellow circle I carried and the rock pressing in from all sides.
The mountain was above me. Around me. Tons of stone and earth with nowhere for it to go but down.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Forced myself to feel the faint current of air against my face. Air meant openings. Openings meant ways out. I wasn’t trapped. There was air. I could breathe.
But Oliver was behind me. Counting down. Thirty minutes, but I didn’t believe him. He hadn’t played fair the first time, and he wouldn’t play fair now. He could be moving already, stepping into this darkness with the confidence of someone who knew these tunnels much better than me.
I wanted to run. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to flee blindly until I found a way out or hit a wall.
But that was how you died in a place like this. Running blind. Panicking. Making noise.
I made myself slow down. Made myself count. One step. Two. Three. Not because the numbers would save me—they wouldn’t—but because counting meant I was still thinking. Still choosing. Not just prey fleeing in the dark.
How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten?
The tunnel curved left, and I followed it.
The stone was rough and damp beneath my trailing fingers, slick in places with moisture that seeped from somewhere deep in the mountain.
The ceiling was high enough here, the passage wide enough, but I could feel the weight of everything above me. Pressing. Waiting.
Air on my face. I focused on that. There was air.
Somewhere ahead, water dripped. The sound bounced off surfaces I couldn’t see, impossible to locate. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Like a clock counting down Oliver’s head start.
The tunnel branched—left or straight ahead. I paused, sweeping my flashlight down each option, straining to hear footsteps behind me. Nothing yet. But that didn’t mean anything.
The left passage was wider, the ceiling higher. The faint current of air moved against my face, stronger here—suggesting a larger space somewhere beyond. The straight path narrowed almost immediately, the walls angling inward like a throat preparing to swallow.
Wider was better. Wider meant room to breathe. Wider meant moving faster when Oliver came.
When. Not if.
I went left.
The temperature dropped as I moved deeper. The silk dress was useless against the cold—a cruel joke, just like last time. My arms prickled with goose bumps. My breath came out in small clouds that disappeared into the dark.
Every shadow felt like a figure. Every sound could be footsteps. I kept glancing over my shoulder, heart lurching each time my flashlight beam found nothing but empty tunnel behind me.
But it wouldn’t be that way for long.
Another branch. Right or straight. I chose based on air movement again, following the faint current. Trying not to think about how Oliver probably knew exactly where each passage led. Trying not to think about the fact that I was underground and could be crushed at any second.
The walls narrowed.
I stopped. The tunnel ahead was tighter than what I’d passed through—maybe four feet wide, the ceiling dropping to just above my head. Still passable. Still room to move.
My chest constricted anyway.
Just go. It’s only a tunnel. You’re not trapped. You can turn around anytime.
Except I couldn’t. Behind me was Oliver, waiting, coming for me. What he had planned would be a lot worse than going through a tunnel.
I closed my eyes. Made myself feel my feet on solid ground, focused on the air moving in and out of my lungs.
I tried to move but still couldn’t. My legs wouldn’t obey. I barely heard the whimper that came out of my throat over my labored breathing.
But I still couldn’t move.
You’re okay, Kitten. It was Coop’s voice, low in my head, steady and calm. Breathe.
Not real. I knew it wasn’t real. But I clung to it anyway.
Take one step for me. Let’s go. We’ve got to move. We’ve both got to survive.
Was Coop alive? If he’d survived, I could too. I had to.
I took a step. And then another one.
Yes. Gruff, full of pride. I knew this was just my mind, but it was still working. Keep going.
I opened my eyes and kept moving.
A few seconds later, the tunnel opened into a larger chamber, and I nearly sobbed with relief.
The space was maybe twenty feet across, the ceiling lost in darkness above my flashlight’s reach.
Old mining equipment rusted in one corner—a cart with broken wheels, picks and shovels scattered like bones.
The air moved more freely here. I stood still for a moment, letting it wash over my face, my arms. Proof that this place wasn’t sealed. Proof there was a way out.
But I still had to get away from Oliver. Had to hope there was some way out of this mine that he didn’t know about. He couldn’t possibly know every single route and where it went.
Three passages led out of the chamber. I swept my light across each opening, looking for any sign of which way led to freedom.
Nothing. Just more darkness, more rock, more mountain pressing down.
I chose the middle passage and moved on.
The tunnels twisted and branched and doubled back on themselves, a maze carved into the mountain’s heart. I kept counting my steps, marking the turns. Left, right, straight, right. Probably useless, but if I got turned around, if I needed to backtrack, maybe the numbers would help.
The tunnel I was following dead-ended without warning. Rock filled the passage ahead—a collapse, ancient by the look of it, the debris settled and solid. I’d have to backtrack. Find another way.
I turned.
And froze.
Light.
Not my light—another beam, brighter and whiter, sweeping across the tunnel walls somewhere behind me. Moving with purpose.
Oliver.
I clicked off my flashlight. The darkness crashed in like a physical weight, so complete I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. But I could see that other light, distant still but getting closer. Sweeping back and forth as he searched.
Too soon. Way too soon. There was no way thirty minutes had passed.
That lying bastard.
I pressed myself against the wall, not breathing. The cold rock bit into my shoulder blades through the thin silk. His light swept closer, painting shadows that stretched and shrank across the stone.
“Come out, come out, little prey. I have such plans for you. Are you scared here, where there’s so little air? I would be if I were you.”
His voice echoed through the tunnels, bouncing off surfaces until it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
I edged backward, feeling my way with one hand, not daring to turn on my light. My fingers found an opening in the wall—a side passage I’d missed in my rush to escape the narrowing tunnel.
I slipped into it.
The passage was tight. Barely shoulder-width, the walls rough and jagged. I had to turn sideways to fit, the rock scraping against my chest and back as I squeezed through.
Breathe. Just breathe. It would open up ahead. It had to. But once again, I froze.
One step at a time, Kitten. You can do this. But move. Right now.
The passage narrowed further. I could feel the ceiling lowering, pressing down. The walls squeezed in. My lungs couldn’t expand fully.
Oliver’s light swept past the opening behind me. I held my breath, heart slamming against my ribs, certain he would see the gap, would follow, would find me wedged into this crack in the earth like an insect pinned to a board—
The light moved on.
His footsteps faded. Following the main tunnel. Following the dead end that would buy me time.
It won’t take much time for him to double back, Kitten. Move. Now.
I forced myself forward through the narrow passage. Inch by inch, the rock tearing at the stupid dress, at my skin. Something sharp caught my palm, and I felt warm wetness—blood, though I couldn’t see it in the total dark.
Then the walls fell away.
I stumbled into a wider space, gasping. Clicked on my flashlight with shaking hands. Another chamber, smaller than the last. One passage leading out.
I took it.
Time blurred. More tunnels. More branches.
More desperate choices made in the dark.
My hands were slick with blood now—torn on rough stone, scraped raw from feeling my way through blackness.
My knees ached where I’d crawled through low passages.
The dress hung in tatters, silk shredded by the mountain’s teeth.
But I kept moving.
That’s it, Kitten. You’re tougher than this place.
Oliver’s voice found me occasionally, echoing through the stone. “You can’t run forever, Mia. Aren’t you tired of worrying about when this whole place might collapse, burying you? Slowly suffocating you?”
I didn’t answer. Did everything I could to keep Oliver’s voice out of my head and hang on to Coop’s.
But I was slowing down. I could feel it—muscles burning, movements growing clumsy from the cold that had seeped into my bones. And Oliver knew these tunnels. Knew the shortcuts. Every time I thought I’d lost him, that bright beam would appear from a direction I didn’t expect.
I was smaller. Faster in the tight spaces. I could squeeze through gaps he couldn’t follow, when I could force myself.
It wasn’t enough. Eventually, I’d hit a dead end I couldn’t escape.
Then I rounded a corner and stopped. Another area that had collapsed. But this time, a gap existed where the rock had shifted, leaving a narrow opening.
And through it—impossible, miraculous—the vaguest patch of sunlight. An exit. Open air.
Freedom.
I moved toward it, heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat.
I had to climb through a small hole to get to the collapsed section.
My shoulders barely fit, but one push and I was through and able to stand inside the cavern and see the literal light at the end of the tunnel. It was right there. A way out.