Chapter 34
Io stopped inside the new branch and crouched low, chalk scraping softly as she marked the tunnel wall.
She varied the height of each line, but white chalk still blazed against the aged stone.
In the glow of her phone, the mark looked almost luminous, a fragile thread to keep them from vanishing into the dark.
As she straightened, her light skimmed across Cal’s face for a heartbeat. Long enough to see it. Trust. Not resignation. Not reluctant agreement. Real trust. Warmth unfurled in her chest, quick and bright. Cal believed in her.
The feeling evaporated as the Russians’ movements echoed through the oval chamber behind them.
Too close. Far too close. Io tightened her grip on the chalk and pushed forward.
Not as fast as she wanted—the floor was jagged, uneven, treacherous—but faster than she’d ever choose to move underground if they weren’t being hunted.
They gained a little distance. The Russians’ voices thinned, muffled by stone. Maybe they’d paused to examine the sunburst symbol the way she’d wanted to, but couldn’t risk.
Didn’t matter. Any extra space was a gift, and she’d take it.
The corridor bent sharply, forcing Io to angle her light across the rough stone.
Every jagged edge jumped in and out of shadow, twisting into shapes her brain wanted to label as threats.
There could be snakes down here. Other venomous things.
She shoved the thought aside and kept moving. They’d make it out. They had to.
The air grew damper, cooler, and the steady drip-drip-drip of water echoed from somewhere ahead, a hollow metronome counting down their time.
A hundred and twenty-five steps. She marked another stretch of wall, barely slowing before pushing on.
Another fork. Three possible paths.
Io swept her light across the walls, searching for the hollows Sungrave had described. But all she saw was erosion, stone worn down by centuries of water and neglect, nothing distinct enough to trust.
Io skimmed her light over the rock face again, slower this time, hunting for the indentations she knew should be here. Nothing. Just water-worn blocks, smoothed by decades—maybe centuries—of erosion. The steady drip-drip-drip tightened her stomach.
The water had erased the trail marker.
She clenched the chalk until her fingers ached. Three choices. Russians behind them, gaining. Cal’s trust pressing warm and heavy against her ribs. He believed she could get them out of here.
And she had nothing.
No time to debate. No time to think. But she could get a second opinion. “No hollows,” she whispered.
“Take your best guess.”
“Left tunnel might circle us back the way we came.” The tight curve of it sent a cold prickle down her spine.
Cal nodded. “There’s a breeze on the right.”
He said it evenly, without pushing her one way or the other. He really did trust her, and that faith settled warm and steady in her chest. Io drew a deep breath. With the left ruled out, she still had two choices. Maybe this time she leaned on Cal’s instincts.
“We’ll go right.”
She angled her phone so the beam cut down the tunnel. More jagged, eroded stone. A dark maw. Io stepped into it—and felt it. Not a true breeze, but a shift in the air. Something different.
She paused long enough to make a mark, then moved on.
It didn’t take long for the passage to narrow enough to press in on her. Cal was going to get scraped up squeezing through, and if it tightened any farther, he wouldn’t fit at all.
The floor angled upward. Behind her, Cal hissed a soft breath, but when she glanced back, he signaled he was fine. She pushed on.
Drip-drip-drip. The sound grew louder, echoing off the stone like a warning.
Io rounded a curve—and stopped cold. For a heartbeat she thought it was another sharp bend, but as her light swept higher, her stomach dropped.
“Tunnel collapse,” she whispered.
Jagged shards of rock were piled nearly to the ceiling. Too unstable to climb. One wrong step and the whole thing would come down on them. She’d chosen wrong. Straight had been the path. Straight had been the way out.
And now she’d led them into a dead end.
“We have to go back,” Io said.
“Before the fucking Russians reach the split. Let’s move, Thing.”
Cal took the lead this time—the passage was too narrow for her to squeeze past him, and he’d insist on being between her and the direction the mobsters would come from anyway.
His pace was quick. Too quick for the tight space. More scrapes for him because of it, but they were out of time.
They had to reach the triple split. Had to take the center path. Had to get there before the Russians were on them again.
Every drip-drip-drip made her pulse jump.
Each one marked time slipping away. She couldn’t hear Petrova’s team, but that meant nothing down here.
What she could hear was Cal’s skin scraping against the rock as he forced his way through, but he stayed silent, just the steady crunch of his boots on debris.
Io tracked each chalk mark she’d made on the way in, counting them like lifelines.
There hadn’t been any turnoffs, but confirming each chalk mark reassured her they were heading back the right way. Still, the wasted time gnawed at her. There had been air in that passage, but it must have drifted over the cave-in.
She wouldn’t make another mistake. The left tunnel felt wrong. The right tunnel was blocked. Straight would work.
Straight had to work. She wasn’t losing Cal.
He slowed as they neared the split, listening. Men’s voices floated toward them—Russian, low and urgent. She wished she understood the language. Cal did, but she didn’t dare ask for a translation. Too risky to speak.
Io drew a quick X with her chalk, marking this as a dead tunnel. If they had to backtrack again, they couldn’t risk taking it a second time.
Cal signaled her to move, and Io did.
Not left. Definitely not left. Her gut screamed that loud and clear. She slipped into the center branch, barely slowing to swipe her chalk across the wall. The Russians were too close now.
Much too close.
The center tunnel swallowed them. It was nearly as wide as the main passage, the one between the church and the convent. The air hung heavy and stale, but the drip-drip-drip had vanished, and a thin thread of tension eased inside her.
The water torture was gone. Unfortunately, the Russians weren’t. A sharp order—probably Petrova—echoed down the stone, so close it made her flinch. As if he were right beside her.
Acoustics. It had to be some weird acoustics.
“Move,” Cal breathed against her ear.
Not acoustics. They were that close. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Another oval room. Another sunburst carved into the wall.
Io slashed her chalk mark beside it. There was an indentation she wanted to examine—something important, maybe—but not now.
Now there was only getting Cal out of here alive.
She wouldn’t let those bastards kill her husband.
If she had to throw herself between him and a bullet, she would.
Because he trusted her.
Because he had faith in her.
She’d die before she let him down.
The oval chamber funneled into another corridor, narrower this time, the ceiling pressing low enough that Io had to bow her head. Cal was probably ducking behind her, but she didn’t look back. She marked the wall with a quick stroke of chalk and pushed forward, barely daring to breathe.
She had a pistol strapped to her ankle. Cal carried multiple pistols and knives. A shootout down here could trigger another collapse, but at least they weren’t defenseless.
The air shifted, became warmer, thicker. Humid. The smell of rotting wood seeped in again, twisting her stomach. They might not need gunfire to bring the ceiling down. The tunnels were unstable enough on their own.
Another split.
Three hollows carved into the left wall.
Io didn’t hesitate. She veered left.
The men’s voices surged behind them, louder now. Too loud. They were gaining.
Cal’s arm shot out, pinning her tight to the wall. A flashlight beam swept past, so close it grazed the toe of her boot. Another pass. Another near miss.
The mobsters moved down the right-hand passage. At least that’s what it sounded like.
She hadn’t marked this tunnel yet. That was the only thing that saved them.
But it wouldn’t last. They’d double back. Pick up the trail. Cal must have thought the same thing because he urged her forward. Io nodded, pulse still hammering at medical-alert levels, and moved.
Safety demanded she mark the wall. Every instinct screamed for it. But she couldn’t leave a beacon pointing the Russians straight at them. With no symbol in either corridor, maybe—maybe—they’d hesitate.
Io clenched the chalk, fighting herself. Fighting her own caution. She loved adventure, but skipping a mark wasn’t adventure. It was reckless. It was stupid.
And she had no choice. Not yet. Not when marking the wall might get Cal killed.
She just had to find somewhere safe to chalk.
Somewhere Petrova and his crew wouldn’t spot easily.
The ceiling lifted again, giving her a little more room to breathe. They rounded a gentle curve, and Io found a pocket beneath a jut of eroded stone. Perfect for a hidden chalk mark. Relief loosened her shoulders. With that safety measure in place, her steps grew more confident.
Without warning, her foot slid. Io lurched, and Cal’s hand shot out, catching her arm and steadying her.
Her light skimmed the floor, revealing a slick patch of wet stone.
A thin trail of moisture trickled down the wall, crossed the floor, and pooled against the opposite side. Shallow. Draining somewhere.
They hit another near ninety-degree turn and Io gasped.
A body of water stretched out to her right, dark and still. Not a puddle. Not a trickle. A lake. The chamber around it was oval like the others, but massive. More of a room than a tunnel, carved by time and water into something ancient.
The surface reflected her phone’s beam in a thin, trembling line. She didn’t want to know what lived in that water.
The path along the left wall narrowed to barely a single-person width. A jagged stone jutted out at shoulder height, forcing her to twist sideways as she shimmied past.
Even being careful, her boot hit slick stone and slid. Io’s stomach dropped as her weight pitched toward the black water. The chamber tilted around her, a cold rush of fear flooding her chest so fast she couldn’t breathe.
Then Cal’s hand clamped around her wrist.
The jolt of it snapped through her like an electric shock. Her shoulder wrenched as he hauled her back, her body slamming into his chest hard enough to rattle her teeth. For a second she couldn’t tell if she was upright or still falling, only that his grip was the one solid thing in the world.
He didn’t let go. Not even when she found her footing. Not even when she dragged in a shaking breath.
Io pressed her free hand to the wall, grounding herself. She’d almost gone in. She’d almost been swallowed by that dark water. And Cal, Cal had caught her without hesitation, without thought, with a force that said losing her wasn’t an option.
She swallowed hard, nodded once, and eased forward again, her pulse still hammering in her throat. Relief surged through her. Thank God for Cal. She would hate to fall into Lake Anaconda.
She allowed herself one more second to recover, then pushed on, heading up the incline of the narrow path.
Her thighs burned as the slope steepened, but she wasn’t about to complain. Anything that put distance between them and that potential pool of death was welcome. Besides, climbing meant going toward the surface. Maybe they’d find a way out.
Russian drifted toward her as the path leveled out. They were in the same tunnel now. Io’s pulse spiked, but she breathed through it and kept moving.
Another oval chamber opened ahead. This time she actively searched for Sungrave’s symbol. There’d been one in every room like this. If she was still on the right path, there should be one here too.
And there it was.
She marked it with chalk and stared at it, longing twisting in her chest. Damn it. If only there were time to open it.
Petrova’s barked orders cracked through the tunnels, far too close. Her heart lurched. No more hesitation.
Whatever hid behind that sunburst would have to wait.
Just like the other chambers, a fork appeared shortly after they left it. Three hollows carved into the right wall.
Io pointed.
Petrova barked more orders. The Russians were in the oval room, right on their ass. Io started down the passageway, ready to sprint if the floor stayed dry. Another burst of Russian echoed behind them, followed by the scrape of stone against stone.
A clink. A rumble.
Io froze mid-stride. The sound swelled, deepening into a roar that shook the walls around her. Men screamed—cut off abruptly as the thunder rolled on and on.
It felt like forever before it stopped.
Cal didn’t tell her to hurry. Didn’t push her forward. “Cave-in?” she whispered.
He shrugged. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
She grabbed his arm, panic flaring. “Cal—”
“It’s okay. Hang on, Thing.”
And then he was gone.
Io shifted in place, pulse hammering. Just because the rumbling had stopped didn’t mean a secondary collapse wasn’t coming. The air felt wrong, too still, too heavy. She wanted Cal with her. Safe. Not back there. Not anywhere near that sound.
It seemed to take forever before he returned. When he finally spoke, his voice was steady, almost normal. “We don’t have to worry about Petrova or his henchmen. They’re dead.”
“Was it a cave-in?”
“Remember that booby trap we had to disarm at the convent? That sunburst had one, too. My guess is a pressure-counterweight setup. Petrova and his assholes must’ve messed with it.
Triggered the whole thing. A shit-ton of rock came down on them.
” Cal shook his head. “We better hope there’s an exit this direction, because that room is blocked now. ”
Io swallowed hard as the weight of his words settled in. If they hadn’t been pursued, she might have triggered it. She might have killed Cal. Killed them both. A cough tore out of her as dust drifted into the corridor.
They weren’t safe yet.
She had no idea if this passage led anywhere. They could wander down here until they died.
Io tightened her grip on the chalk and squared her shoulders. Fuck that. They’d survived the trap, and she’d be damned if they didn’t survive the labyrinth, too.