Chapter 11 #2
Noah’s hands cradled her face and anchored her. His palms pressed against her cool cheeks, his thumbs at her temples, where he could feel her pulse racing.
“Listen to me,” he said quietly. “I found a shaft. It leads up, breaks through to the surface. I sent a flare. Someone might have seen it. Help might be coming.”
He didn’t mention that the shaft was too steep for him to climb now with his injured leg. So if no one saw the flare, there wasn’t any hope. That they were completely alone down here with no way out and a kid who might die.
“Help is coming,” he repeated, as if he could make it true through sheer force of will. “But until it gets here, we do what we can. And right now, Alex needs you. So breathe with me. In and out. That’s it.”
Meg’s breathing gradually slowed and matched his. Their exhales mingled in the small space between them.
Her eyes closed for a moment. Then they opened again.
Clearer now.
Focused.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Okay.”
She pulled back slowly.
Noah released her hands and immediately missed the connection.
She looked down at the scalpel. Her fingers wrapped around the handle with purpose instead of fear.
When she looked up again, the doctor was back—the one who’d walked into this cave despite her fear, who’d covered Alex with her own body during the explosion, who’d stayed calm while Noah had fought his own panic.
“I’m going to need your help.” Her voice was stronger now and clinical. “I need you to hold the headlamp steady, keep the field illuminated. And if he wakes up during this—”
“I’ll hold him.” Noah shifted position and ignored the protest from his leg. “Whatever you need.”
Meg nodded once—sharp and decisive. Then she turned her attention fully to Alex’s leg.
She palpated the swollen tissue carefully. Her fingers found the landmarks she needed and pressed gently.
Noah watched her face and saw the moment when everything else fell away. The fear. The cave. The water somewhere behind them. The impossibility of what she was about to do.
And all that remained was the doctor and her patient.
“Okay, Alex,” she said softly. Even though the boy couldn’t hear her. Even though he was unconscious. “Let’s save your leg.”
She positioned the scalpel, her hand steady now. The blade caught the light.
And she made the first incision.
Blood welled immediately—dark and thick. The metallic smell filled the small space.
Noah held the light and watched the woman he loved perform surgery in a cave with nothing but determination and a pocketknife and faith that bordered on reckless.
And he sent up another silent prayer.
If they somehow survived this, he was never letting her out of his sight again.
Teague’s lungs burned as he crested the limestone cliff, his fingers raw despite his gloves—the synthetic fabric worn thin at the tips. The plateau spread before him—pockmarked, scarred, a battlefield waiting to claim more victims.
The low desert ground coverage sported a deeper shade of green than usual—sage and rabbitbrush drinking up yesterday’s downpour.
The rain had stopped twenty minutes ago, but those heavy gray clouds?
Not done yet. They were still swollen with water waiting to fall, and pressed down on the horizon like a lid about to seal them all in.
Forty minutes. He’d been climbing for forty minutes since that flare—brilliant red, arcing across the sky. His heart hadn’t stopped hammering from that moment. The explosion in the cave had nearly convinced him this was a recovery operation. Bodies, not survivors.
But that flare meant life. Hope.
And he needed to move. Fast. Because Noah and Meg were trapped somewhere below in a cave system that could collapse any second.
Teague unclipped from his last anchor—the carabiner making a satisfying snick as it came free—and scanned the terrain.
Where had the flare come from? Too many shafts to narrow it down—dark mouths yawning open in the rock.
Some barely wider than a coffee can. Others big enough to drive a truck into.
If he’d calculated the angle right, that narrowed it to maybe ten.
Maybe.
His radio crackled. “Teague, what do you see?”
Eden’s voice—sharp, focused. Grounding. He could picture her in dispatch, bent over maps spread across the desk, her blonde hair falling forward as she cross-referenced coordinates. Probably had three screens going.
“I see a dozen holes, give or take.” Teague moved to the nearest shaft. He dropped a glow stick—the chemical tube tumbled end over end. It fell maybe fifteen feet before hitting bottom with a hollow thunk. Too shallow. “Most of these are probably dead ends or collapsed.”
“Probably isn’t good enough.” Papers rustled over the line. “The SAR team’s about an hour out. Liam got the group to where they could walk out alone, and he’s headed back to help you. But he’s still forty-five minutes out. You need to wait for backup before going down.”
“Forty-five minutes?” Teague was already moving to the next shaft—wider, darker, with the edges worn smooth by centuries of water erosion. “They may not have that long.”
“But you going down the wrong shaft won’t help anyone.”
He dropped another glow stick. This one fell and fell, green light fading into deep darkness—twenty feet, thirty, forty. Still falling. Good sign. A draft pulled at his jacket—air moving through the system.
Better sign.
“This one’s deep. Strong draft. I think this is it.”
Eden’s chair creaked over the line. “You think? Teague, wait for—”
“Can’t wait.” He knelt at the edge and examined the rock.
His headlamp beam played across the surface.
A narrow vertical crack ran near the shaft’s opening—perfect for a thread anchor.
He began feeding rope through it, but the limestone crumbled under his touch, fragments pattering down into the darkness.
“I saw that flare come from this area. This shaft has the right depth, the right airflow. It’s them. ”
“Or it’s a dead end and you’ll be stuck when they actually need you.”
Teague paused and tested the crack again. More fragments broke away. The rock here was degraded—too much exposure, too much weathering. “Rock’s crumbly here. I’m setting up a thread anchor but—”
“Stop.” Eden’s voice cut through with no hesitation. “The canyon rock there is notorious for that. You need to distribute the load. Add piton anchors—at least two, maybe three if you’ve got them. Thread it through all of them.”
He pulled back from the edge and reached for the pitons in his pack. She was right. A single anchor in this degraded limestone was asking for failure. “Good call.”
He worked quickly and drove the first piton into a more solid-looking crack ten feet from the shaft.
The metallic ring echoed across the plateau with each hammer blow.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Then a second piton. A third.
He created a web of anchor points and threaded the rope through the natural crack, then clipped it to each piton and tested each connection with his full weight.
“Four anchors set. Load distributed.”
“Better.” Eden’s tone softened slightly. “I still think you should wait for Liam.”
Teague pulled out the portable relay transverter and set it up near the opening.
It would allow him to communicate with Eden while he descended.
He then clipped his descender to the rope, the figure-eight device smooth and familiar in his hands.
He checked his Petzl ascender—the cam mechanism moved smoothly when he squeezed it.
Everything looked good. Equipment squared away. Mind focused.
“I’m going down. I’ve switched to the VLF radio and set up the relay. Keep the line open. If I’m wrong, I’ll climb back up and try the next one.”
“If you’re wrong, you might not get the chance to climb back up.”
Something in her voice—not just professional concern but something deeper. More personal. Teague had noticed it before, the way she worried about his climbs more than seemed strictly necessary. He’d started to wonder what she wasn’t telling him about her past.
“I’ll be fine. I’ve climbed worse than this.” He began his descent, feeding rope through the figure-eight descender. “Talk to me. What else do those maps show?”
Eden’s papers shuffled. “The shaft you’re in should intersect with the main cave system at around sixty feet if it’s one of the original mining shafts. But Teague, some of those shafts were never properly shored up. The rock could be unstable after the seismic activity two weeks ago or—”
“Or explosions set by a madman.” His voice flattened. “Yeah, I’m aware.”
Maybe he didn’t know for sure who had set the explosion, but the description Liam had gotten from the kids on the hike out? Sounded a lot like that Jeremy kid from their first rescue in the caves.
The shaft narrowed as he descended, forcing him to angle his body with his shoulders scraping rock.
His jacket caught on protrusions—probably tearing, but he couldn’t spare the attention to care.
His headlamp illuminated walls scarred with old pick marks—definitely a mining shaft, hand carved over a century ago.
Thirty feet.
Forty.
The air grew colder and damper. His breath came out in visible puffs now.
Fifty feet, and the shaft kinked slightly to the left. Teague adjusted his position, feeding the rope through the descender at a controlled pace. He was good at this—had been climbing since he was fourteen.
Sixty feet.
Seventy.
The shaft should be opening up soon. But the walls stayed narrow and constrictive. His instincts, usually reliable, started whispering warnings.
Eighty feet.
His boots hit something solid—not cave floor but a wall of collapsed rock and debris. Limestone chunks ranging from pebbles to boulders.
Dead end.
“Dang.” Teague played his light over the rubble and looked for any gap, any opening that might lead through.
Nothing.
Just tons of fallen rock, probably collapsed decades ago.
Wrong shaft.
His radio crackled. “Teague? Status?”