It was Lucy who first heard the shots.
She’d been cowering more or less since Mason had untied her from the back of the four-wheeler, dragged her to cover at the edge of the clearing overlooking the Lone Jack mine. She’d curled tight around herself, her back hunched and her spine turned and wrapped in a paper-clip shape, her ears back and her tail tucked, refusing to make eye contact with Mason or anyone else, like she was hoping if she just sat still and waited, all of this would fade away.
But then she moved—she’d heard something. The dog hated loud noises, from fireworks to slamming doors, tended to duck and cover whenever anyone so much as revved an engine. And she could hear from a distance too, knew instantly when kids from the high school were setting off firecrackers on Shipwreck Point Beach, or the freighters out on the strait were sounding their foghorns.
Now Mason watched her ears perk, felt her start to shiver beside him again. He stilled his own movements and strained to hear over the drone of the state patrol helicopter high above.
At first, he heard nothing. Then Lucy flinched again, and the sound reached his ears, distant but unmistakably gunfire, rapid and angry. Mason looked to the sheriff. “You hear that?”
Hart cocked his head, frowning. “My ears are shot, son,” he told Mason. “Been a day of loud noises. What do you hear?”
Mason said, “Guns, Sheriff. Someone’s firing off somewhere. Lucy’s getting it too.”
Hart listened some more. Stuck his head above the rock they were hiding behind, looked in toward the mouth of the mine. “What,” he said, “in there?”
Mason shook his head. Best he could tell, the sounds were coming from elsewhere. From down the mountain, far away.
Then the gunfire stopped, though Lucy kept shivering. Mason listened and heard nothing, and tried to figure out what it meant.
“You’re sure there’s no other way out that cave,” he said.
“Far as anyone’s ever heard, there’s just the one exit,” Hart replied. “And we’re parked on it. Could be what you’re hearing is something unrelated.”
There was no way to be sure, but Mason didn’t think so. He stayed behind that boulder and watched Lucy try to curl herself tighter, and he felt restless and urgent and aware of time wasting, as if he was dreaming and late for an obligation, couldn’t find the car keys or the right pair of shoes. He didn’t know Logger Fetridge, but he suspected the man wouldn’t simply just dig in and hide, not knowing what awaited him outside in daylight. If there was another way out of that mine, Mason expected the outlaw would find it.
And if Fetridge found an exit, then he’d sure as hell take it.
“Give me a flashlight,” Mason told the sheriff.
Hart stared at him. “Now, hold up a minute—”
“You can come if you want, or don’t; that’s your choice,” Mason said. “But Jess is still unaccounted for, and I’m hearing gunfire.”
“Those outlaws will kill you,” Hart said. “I can’t let you do it.”
Mason stood. “I’m going, Sheriff,” he said. “You hang back if you want. But if Fetridge and Pruitt made it out of that cave somehow, I need to know about it.”
Hart studied his face and then looked toward the mine shaft again. Opened his mouth to argue. But then another gun sounded, somewhere far away, a resonant boom that even Hart could hear clearly, that seemed to rumble the earth beneath them.
Jess’s shotgun.
Mason stood and was running before the sound had died away, pulling Lucy behind him, the sheriff calling his name. Mason ignored him. He reached the mouth of the mine shaft and didn’t break stride. Pulled the dog into the darkness and kept running.