Chapter 11 #5
“I am so sorry we are trapped in here.”
She heard what he wasn’t saying. I am so sorry we might die in here.
“How far along was Mary?”
“Thirty weeks.” The words seemed to scrape his throat. “I was supposed to drive her that day, but I got caught up at work.”
“Was she not supposed to drive?” There were conditions like that. Preeclampsia. Placenta previa. Bedrest orders.
“What? No. Nothing like that. She told me I didn’t need to drive her, but I just liked to…I don’t know why. I just liked to…”
“Control the situation?”
He dropped his head forward, his gaze fixed on the ground, on the bloodstained gauze scattered around them. “I do have a problem with that. But that time, if I had been driving then—”
“Then maybe you would be dead too. You didn’t cause her death, and you didn’t trap us in here. You need to stop believing you can prevent every bad thing from happening.” She winced at the fierce tone, but he needed to hear them.
“I am starting to realize that.”
He scooted closer—close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his body in the cool cave air—and framed her face, both palms warm against her skin. His thumbs pressed at her temples, where her pulse hammered.
“But I also want you to know, fault or no fault, I will not give up trying to get us out of here. And when we get out of here, I am going to convince you that you belong in Arizona, not Pennsylvania. Not because the park needs you. But because I need you.”
The words hung in the air between them—raw, honest, terrifying.
She wasn’t sure who moved first.
Maybe it didn’t matter.
His lips found hers, and this kiss was different from all the ones before—deeper, slower, full of everything they hadn’t said and might never get the chance to say. Full of promises and hope and desperation.
Meg’s hands slid up his chest and felt his heart hammering beneath her palms—proof that he was here, alive, real. His fingers threaded through her hair, careful of her headlamp, and tilted her head to deepen the kiss.
She could taste salt and stone dust, could feel the tremor in his hands that matched the one running through her entire body, could feel three years of grief and loneliness pouring out of him into this moment.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, Noah rested his forehead against hers. His eyes were closed, his expression almost pained—as if this hurt as much as it healed.
“We’re going to get out of here,” he said again, fierce and certain, like he was making a vow.
“Yeah.” Meg’s voice was barely audible. “We are.”
For a moment, she let herself believe it. Let herself imagine walking out of this cave with Noah beside her. Imagine what came after. Imagine morning coffee that didn’t have an expiration date. Imagine staying instead of running.
Maybe she could actually stay.
“Isn’t this sweet?”
The deep voice came from the entrance of the cavern.
They jerked apart, their heads turning toward the sound. Meg’s heart lurched.
A man stood obscured by the beam of a powerful flashlight—bright enough to make her squint.
Rescue.
It had to be rescue.
Relief flooded through Meg so quickly it made her dizzy and almost laugh with the sudden release of tension. Made her want to cry and scream and collapse all at once.
We’re saved. Oh thank God, we’re saved.
But then he stepped forward.
This was no ranger.
Head-to-toe black like he’d been birthed from the shadows. Tactical pants. Dark jacket. Not the tan and green of the park service. Not the bright colors of search and rescue.
Noah had gone rigid beside her, every muscle in his body tense and coiled. When she looked at him, his face had drained of color with his eyes wide.
“Jeremy?” His voice was uncertain.
The man stepped forward into the combined glow of their headlamps, and Meg’s relief curdled into something cold and sick—a twisting in her gut. A primal warning screamed through every nerve ending.
The face was similar to Jeremy’s—she could see the echo of features Noah must have recognized.
But this version was older and harder. The boyish features had sharpened into something that looked like it had been carved from the same unforgiving stone as the cave walls.
Deep lines bracketed his mouth—not laugh lines but the kind carved by bitterness and rage. And his eyes—
His eyes were dead.
Flat and empty and wrong. Like looking into a doll’s eyes.
“Close. Jeremy and Lydia’s dad.” The man’s voice was flat and emotionless. “Ryan Bradley. And I’ve been looking for you, Dr. Lewis.”
That’s when Meg saw it.
The gun, pointed directly at her chest. Black metal catching the light from their headlamps. The barrel looked impossibly large from this angle.
Her breath stopped. Every muscle in her body locked in a way that had nothing to do with panic attacks and everything to do with pure, primal fear—the kind that lived in bones and blood and the base of the brain.
“You—” The man’s voice cracked, then steadied into something harder and colder. “You need to be held responsible for the death of my daughter.”