The light beam continued its systematic movement from the floor to the top of the chimney. It explored each point on the compass from south, to east, and finally back to where it began on the north side of the cavern. Next they made spot checks of areas they wanted to scrutinize further.
Lee tracked every detail of the search for them looking for any signs of—
“Have they spotted this place, yet?” At her question, his tense muscles jumped. He banged his head on the rear wall of the crevice shattering his concentration.
When he twisted his neck to look at Jennifer, he realized she was squeezed so far into the wedge-shaped crevice she could see very little of what their pursuers were doing.
He tried to shake the cobwebs from his aching head. “I don’t think they could possibly see it unless they crawled up to the fifty-foot level where—”
“Fifty feet.” Jennifer’s whisper sounded panicky. He could feel her body trembling.
He blew it. Knowing how high on the wall they were perched she might not climb another step if they ever got the chance.
Before Lee could alleviate Jennifer’s fear a voice with a heavy accent spoke from the cavern floor.
“They are not here. Let’s try the other tunnel. Perhaps some of these tunnels are connected.”
“Then we must hurry. It’s already 1:00 p.m. and the batteries in the light are getting weak.”
After two or three minutes of sliding and grunting noises the light was gone.
They came almost directly to the cavern Lee thought could never be found. They had some way of tracking Jennifer and him. If such strong evidence led them to the hiding place the goons might still believe they were hiding in this cavern. Maybe leaving was only a pretense. One of the gunmen could be sitting in the darkness below waiting to blow them off the wall when they revealed themselves.
He needed to tell Jennifer about his suspicions before either of them did anything to compromise their hiding place. It was now so quiet in the cavern a loud whisper might be heard fifty feet below. After wiggling a bit, he put his mouth directly over Jennifer’s ear. “Someone might still be down—”
“Stop it.” Jennifer’s hand came up from somewhere in the compressed tangle of their bodies and clamped firmly over his mouth. “You’re tickling my ear. I can’t stand that.” Her whisper was too loud.
He waited for a moment.
No response came from below. Maybe they actually were gone.
The temptation to reply became too great. He pried Jennifer’s hand from his mouth. “You mean you’ve never let a guy tickle your ear? You’ll never get me to believe—”
Jennifer’s slap closed his mouth. It also echoed throughout the cavern. Her body sagged against him, and he knew she realized what she’d done.
How could he have done that to her? If the light came back on they’d be dead and it would be his fault. He held onto her hand and with his other arm pulled her head against his.
No whispering this time.
They both waited in silence for a response.
One minute passed. Then two minutes. No light probed their location. No sound came from below.
He placed his hand against her cheek and gently spoke. “I think they really are gone.”
“And I’m very sorry for…you know,” Jennifer whispered back.
“Not as sorry as you’d have been if that light had come back on.”
“Don’t make fun of me, Lee, I feel—”
“No. Don’t apologize, Jenn. It was my fault. When I’m this close to you I get a little craz…well…you just saved my life by packing me in here like one more sardine going into a can. And you bought us a lot of time by proving the goons weren’t playing a trick on us when they left. I would’ve kept us squished in here for another half hour and by then—”
“They might have finished searching the other caves and come back here.”
He nodded and banged his head on the rocks again. “Something like that. But they have a lot of other places to search and if we can believe them their flashlight is fading fast. I don’t think they’ll be back here any time soon.”
He led her out of the crevice to a small ledge near its opening. They could stand safely on it without clinging to the wall. Here more light seeped in from the opening above.
Jennifer leaned her back into the wall and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Why are you always trying to make me feel better about things?”
He frowned. “Sometimes I just make you feel worse. But…does making you feel better bother you?”
She removed her hand. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m not sure I have a good answer except that, well, I just want to.”
She looked up into his face. “You mean you do it because it’s what you think God wants you to do?”
How much should he say? He wasn’t sure. But it had to be something meaningful or it would be a lie. If, in the process, he overstepped the bounds of propriety he would deal with that later. He decided to go with the best policy, honesty. “No, Jenn, I want you to feel good about things.”
“Oh.” Jennifer lowered her head. She obviously understood both his meaning and its implications. When she raised her head her expression changed.
He wanted to read every nuance of that expression, but the dim light masked the details. He wasn’t a person who swore, but at that moment, he could’ve cursed the darkness hiding her face from him.
On the positive side, all of the evidence he compiled so far told him Jennifer possessed a refreshing innocence. He was determined to find out if he was right and, if so, to understand how this came to be—how a woman this beautiful refrained from living a lifestyle that used her beauty to her own advantage. The solution to this puzzle might impact the entire direction of his—
“Lee, where did you go?” Jennifer peered into his face.
“Sorry, Jenn. Sometimes I get distracted.”
“So I’ve noticed.” She averted her gaze and stared into the darkness below them.
He wanted to pursue this sudden, apparent shyness, but they’d been on this ledge far too long. “Jennifer, we need to talk about what we do when we exit this rock through the hole above us.”
“And who is it you’re addressing now, Jennifer or Jenn?”
A clever trap. He chose to ignore it. “I would really rather stick to one name.”
“And which would that be?”
He hesitated before answering. “Jenn,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Jenn.”
“Oh. You mean the name?”
“Yes, I do.”
She cocked her head and grinned. “I do? C’mon, Lee. Just because I let you call me Jenn doesn’t mean you can start the ‘I do’ talk.”
“But you do give me permission to call you Jenn from now on, right?”
She smiled. “Yes, I do, too.”
It seemed to him that, in that moment, they passed a milestone in their relationship. Everything changed. There had been times during their panicked flight for life they’d dropped all formalities. But now all the aloofness disappeared. Despite their precarious perch and the lurking danger all felt informal, warm, and good. Still he was glad the partial darkness of the chimney hid some of his facial expressions. Light might have exposed too much.
Doesn’t matter. She probably deduced it all anyway, because—
“Lee?” Jennifer waved her hand in front of his face.
“Huh?”
“Distracted again? The plan, Lee? How are we going to get out of this cave and off of this mountain, call for help, and make sure the bad guys get caught? You know…that plan?”
Reality—the other reality—the one with danger—the one where things were not all warm and good—came flooding back.
He took a deep breath. “So, here’s the plan. As long as the goons keep looking in the caves for fifteen or twenty minutes—and believe me, they still have a lot of caves to look in—this plan will work. Even if they come out in five minutes it still works.”
“Do I get to have any input?”
“Of course. I value your ideas. They kept us alive last night.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Last night my driving kept us alive.”
“Last night, you’re right about last night.” He raised his index finger. “But today there is one thing that needs to happen exactly as I’ve planned it.”
Jennifer’s forehead pinched into a frown and her gaze bored into him. “I know. It’s the part where you play the rear guard and stay behind to protect me like…like those Cheyenne dog soldiers?”
“I didn’t know you were into history.”
“I’m not. I just learned about them from a movie, Last of the—”
“Dogmen.” He smiled. “So you’re into adventure and romance?”
A brief smile lit her face. “I’m on this mountain with you, aren’t I?”
Not only was this woman sharp, she was intuitive. How did psychologist, Isabel Myers Briggs, classify people like her? The personality type indicator would denote a wonderful, schizophrenic mixture of logic and intuition, that permitted the scientist to run with the logic and then somehow to leap ahead with intuition to places people had never gone before. “INTJ.” Introversion, Intuition, Thinking, Judgment. That seemed like Jennifer. At least, it represented her intellectual side. The emotional side remained a mystery he wanted to solve.
“That’s what you plan to do, isn’t it?”
“Huh?”
“Sometimes I wonder where your mind goes when it wanders off like that. But you know what I’m asking. So tell me right now, or you can forget about your plan.”
“Please hear me out on this, OK?”
She folded her arms and leaned into the cave wall. “All right. I’m listening.”
Sure she’s listening.
He took a deep breath. “I know this mountain like I know the palm of my hand. No, even better than the palm of my hand. There is a way to get us out of here safely.”
Her arms remained folded. “OK, what’s my part? Out with it before I change my mind.”
Before she changes her mind?
Had he actually gained a concession from Jennifer? If so, it might be one that saved their lives.
“OK, first you have to climb the remaining twenty-five feet to the hole in the chimney. I’ll be with you each step of the short—”
Her arms unfolded and she clutched the wall. “You mean this nearly one-hundred-feet-above-the-cave-floor climb?”
“You already climbed about three-fourths of it. You know you can do this.”
Jennifer took a breath and blew it back out. “OK. Once we’re on top, what then?”
“The biggest danger once we’re out of the cave is they might get a clear shot at us if they’re not in the caves.” He illustrated his point with animated hand gestures. “If they come over the ridge top shortly after we exit the chimney we could also be in danger.”
“Lee, please don’t do that with your hands. Hold onto something. And can we please eliminate that clear-shot danger?”
He decided to hold onto her shoulder. “The best thing we can do to eliminate it is to go now.” She didn’t seem to mind, so he continued. “They’re still in the caves, probably in the same cave system where they nearly found us. If they are in or around any of the caves they’re on the wrong side of the ridge to see us.”
She removed his hand from her shoulder. “So you’re proposing that we crawl out the chimney top, and then run like heck down the other side of the mountain? That’s the plan?”
“Something like that.” It felt like he was losing the battle on all fronts. “Please hear me out before you comment. Please, Jenn. I thought this through several times and it’s the safest and best way to go.”
“OK. I’m pretty sure where you’re going. Go ahead, finish.”
“When we crawl out of the chimney we’ll both look carefully to make sure they aren’t near the top of the ridge. I know a lookout spot near where we’re exiting. We can use it for surveillance—to be sure they can’t see us over the ridge top and to make sure they won’t get to the ridge top in time to stop us.”
“You mean in time to shoot us with that flying-dirt machine gun.” Jennifer’s face contorted into an expression that hurt him as much as it apparently hurt her.
Is she going to start crying?
The stabbing pain in his gut returned. “I didn’t think you saw that. You were completely exhausted.”
“I saw enough to know what they were doing and what you did.” Her arms encircled his neck before he could react. She leaned into the wall, drew him close, and squeezed hard. Choking back sobs. When the sobs subsided she stepped away and withdrew her arms.
So tender and weak, yet so strong.
He still had a lot to learn about this incredible woman and he wouldn’t tolerate further interference from the disparaging thoughts coming from the left side of his brain. Learning all about Jennifer was something he now wanted to do more than anything life on earth offered him.
So, where did Lee Brandt stand right now? Fifty feet up on a cavern wall being hunted by terrorists. That was the good news. A moment ago, he murdered the left side of his brain for blaspheming Jennifer. Before that, he told her he cared for her personally. The only thing he left out was how deeply he cared. Well, that’s where he stood, Lee Brandt, a sorry male member of the human species.
Her index finger touched his nose. “You did it again, Lee. It’s becoming obvious where you go. Shall I tell you?”
“No, Jenn.”
She knew all right, but she wasn’t frowning.
That was encouraging.
But right now, he needed to flesh out his plan or he might die a sorry example of a human male.
“So, here’s what we need you to do. When we climb out I’ll show you an old logging road. It will take you down the backside of this ridge to some houses.”
“I haven’t heard about anything taking you anywhere.” She stared into his eyes.
He ignored the comment, not the eyes. “A few years ago this would have been at least a mile run to the houses. But with all of the new development in the area it’s probably more like one-half mile downhill all the way. Can you handle that—two laps around the track, all downhill?”
“I can handle it. What do you have to handle, Lee?”
Jennifer wasn’t going to be happy about him staying behind for any reason, or for any length of time.
He needed to be convincing.
They didn’t have time to argue.
“The part I have to handle can only be a one-man job. It requires intimacy with this mountain.”
She leaned against the cave wall with folded arms again. “I’ve had some of that over the last few hours. But, mountain man, what else does it require? For you to get shot so I can get away?”
“No. But I won’t lie to you. There is some risk, but much less than the risks we’ve already taken. And when it works I can easily join you while the bad guys are so occupied up here on the mountain the police can just walk up and arrest them.”
Jennifer’s frown tightened into a scowl. “Lee, that’s the biggest bunch of baloney anyone has ever tried to feed—”
“It’s not baloney. It’s justice for the goons and freedom for us all rolled up into one.”
“But, you’re not going to tell me—”
“Jenn, I don’t like buts.”
“But the goons—”
“I really don’t like buts, especially theirs. Which, by the way, I have plans for.”
Jennifer closed her mouth, pursing her lips.
He doubted her silence came from an appreciation of his pun. Most likely it was to regroup and attack again.
Unexpectedly, mysteriously, her expression mellowed. “If I agree to this you’ve got to promise me you won’t take any chances. Promise me you’ll do quickly whatever male pride thing you have planned and then run down this mountain to meet me.”
“I promise. And I’ve got some good reasons for keeping my promise.” He tried his most convincing smile, hoping she could see it in the light from the crack in the chimney.
For the first time Jennifer had cut him some slack on something she disagreed with. What did that mean?
“Will you do one more thing for me?” She leaned close to him.
“If I can you know I will.”
“Pray for us before we start. Pray hard, if that sort of thing isn’t being presumptuous with God.”
“I will and it isn’t.” And Lee did pray really hard.
When he finished and raised his head Jennifer put a hand on each side of his face forcing him to look into her eyes. The dim light exaggerated the size of her brown eyes.
The intense look was gone. Her gaze looked warm and inviting.
“Thanks. Now I hope I’m not being presumptuous.” She pulled Lee’s head down until their lips met. The kiss she gave him was warm and full of promise. As kisses went it was a short one. Coming from Jennifer it was long on meaning.
She pulled her head back a few inches and peered deeply into his eyes. It seemed as if she read all of his thoughts and emotions. This time he masked nothing, allowing her to find whatever she looked for.
When she was through inspecting his soul she smiled. Leaving him no time to savor the moment, she pushed him out onto the cavern wall and took two steps up.
“Let’s roll.”