Chapter Twenty-Seven

Camden

We trudged down a tunnel so narrow, I could have touched both sides if I stretched my arms wide. The grade was steep, and bits of loose gravel slid where we stepped, but at least the floor was dry.

“Dad, are you sure this is the way?” I asked, my fear growing every minute that his mind would slip.

“I’m as sure as I can be. I know today is July fourth, you’re Camden, and you’re holding on pretty damn tight to Willow Bradley, so I’m lucid, if that’s what you’re asking.” He didn’t even look back, just kept moving down the dirt-covered floor.

Willow tightened her grip on my hand, but the tunnel became too narrow to walk side by side, and she had to fall behind me. I hated not being able to see her, but I wasn’t going to let her walk across any ground my weight hadn’t tested this far into the mine.

The air stirred from ahead, and Dad’s light bounced as he nodded. “See?” He pointed to the tunnel that appeared on our right as the path leveled out and widened into another large chamber. “This is an offshoot of one of the 1930s.”

“It’s not on any of the maps,” I said to myself as I took in the expansive tunnel and its sturdy beams. To the left were dozens of smaller chambers, some with wooden half walls, trimmed and topped with vertical iron bars and swinging doors made of the same, and some barren, left from exploratory blasts.

“I know it’s on at least one map,” Dad replied. “I just can’t remember where it is.” He touched his forehead. “I thought I gave it to you, but that can’t be right.”

Apprehension landed in my stomach like a brick. “Dad, are you okay?”

“Yeah. Of course. I’m fine.” But the lines in his forehead told me otherwise.

“How deep do you think we are?” Gideon asked.

“Sublevel three,” Dad declared, his headlamp illuminating the expanse of wall that was dotted with mined alcoves stretching as far as the light could reach on either side as the chamber narrowed to two tunnels that ran to either side. “Found a vein down here that wasn’t worth much, but something was better than nothing. But the miners needed air.”

His headlamp shone right, then left. Where the hell did we go from here?

“Them and me both,” Gideon said, walking past my dad and following the curve of the tunnel.

“Are you okay?” I asked Willow, noting that the rise and fall of her chest had increased.

“I just want to start screaming her name.”

“I’d hold off on that,” Gideon said, shining his light on a rubble pile in the back left of the chamber. “The entire thing is caved in over there.”

“Been like that for years,” Dad muttered. “Don’t just stand there—start looking. Don’t go moving rocks around or causing another cave-in.”

“Left or right?” Gideon asked.

My throat tightened.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dad stated, his headlamp swaying as he shook his head. “It’s a fifty-fifty shot. Pick one and start looking.”

“It matters,” I countered as Willow slipped her hand into mine.

“Split up but stay in this section,” Dad ordered. “We can search twice as fast.”

Left or right? There was no obvious choice as I looked both ways. It was a coin-flip dilemma.

“Left,” Willow said, her lamp shining on the barred chambers.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Left,” she repeated, quieter this time.

“We’ll take the right,” Dad announced and walked off with Gideon on his heels.

The first alcove was empty, save a wooden desk and a flat, raised surface that must have served as some kind of bed.

“Cam,” Willow whispered as her hands ran over the iron bars. “I remember this.”

“You’re sure?” I asked, but the way her face drained of blood told me she was certain.

She nodded. “The shadows from the bars, then darkness. Charity shrieking. Xander saying to keep calm…then I fell…” Her voice trailed off as she left the chamber, and I followed her into the next one, this one lined with shelves and an array of dust-covered canned goods. “I hit so hard. God, it still smells the same down here. It’s not this one,” Willow declared, and I got the hell out of her way as she pushed by me. “Or this one,” she said at the next and the next.

“We found the shaft!” Gideon called out loud enough to make me cringe. Did I think shouting would bring a cave-in? No. Was I sure? Also no.

Still, relief barreled through me. But…wait. Wouldn’t Rose have called out if she’d heard them? God, what if she wasn’t even here? There were miles and miles of tunnels in this place. What if she’d stumbled into bad air?

“Stop,” Willow whispered, stepping farther into the chamber.

“Willow, they found it.” I held out my hand, already focused on heading toward Gid and Dad.

“It’s a door.” She looked over her shoulder. “Cam, it’s a door!”

Ignoring the logic in my brain screaming at me to get to the shaft with Dad, I moved farther back into the chamber to see Willow tug open a rusted iron door. It swung clear of the floor, and my heart stopped as she stepped through the doorway.

“Rose!” Willow cried.

I jumped over a fallen beam and caught the heavy door before it shut.

“It won’t open from this side!” Rose wailed, and I nearly let go out of sheer surprise and knee-weakening relief.

She stood at the ledge, her back to the ventilation shaft, looking at us with wide eyes and tearstained cheeks. She was alive. She was okay.

“Rose, step away from the edge,” Willow said softly. “Come here.” She held out her arms, and my heart rate dropped with each step Rose took from the shaft.

“I’m so sorry,” Rose cried as she reached Willow and collapsed against her aunt. “I just wanted to find your pin.”

“It’s okay,” Willow promised as she held her tight, resting her chin on the top of Rose’s head. “It’s okay.”

“I couldn’t find it. I did all of this, and it’s still not here.”

“Rose?” Gideon called from across the shaft. There was another entrance at this level?

“We’ve got her!” I confirmed. “Come on, ladies. Let’s get you out of here.” The need to get them as far away from that damned shaft as possible clawed at my gut.

Willow clasped Rose’s hand and then gently pushed her ahead, toward where the tunnel narrowed to the door.

“Hi, Cam,” Rose said softly as she squeezed by me.

“Hey, Rosie.” I wanted to scoop her up, but I wasn’t going to let go of the door and have it close on Willow.

A shaky, trembling smile graced her lips as she passed me next, kissing my cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Nothing to thank me for,” I replied, then let the door swing shut once she was through. It met the frame in a heavy slam of metal.

Then I grabbed Rose and hugged her. “You scared us.”

Her tiny shoulders heaved. “I’m so sorry. The door shut behind me, and there’s no handle.”

There were about thirty ways I wanted to yell at her for scaring us, for coming down here in the first place, for listening to the ravings of a man who’d already lost his mind—even if he’d actually known what he was talking about in this instance. But her mother could do that as soon as we got her back to the surface. I just needed to feel her breathe for a second.

“You’re okay,” I promised, but I wasn’t sure if it was to the little girl in my arms or to myself.

She nodded against my neck.

I looked at Willow, but her eyes were on the door, two lines forming between her eyebrows. “Pika?”

“I can’t remember, but I know I was here.” She’d been the same size as Rose but alone for so many more hours. Broken, bleeding, and so cold, her skin had felt like ice against mine.

“Give me just a second,” I said to her and carried Rose out to where Gideon and Dad had just made it to the chamber. “Keep her,” I told Gid, handing Rose over, then went back to Willow.

She stood with the door open, her headlamp illuminating the tunnel beyond. “I want to see it. Is that weird?”

“Understandable.” There was a hook on the wall, and when I took the door from Willow and pushed it wide, the iron slipped into the ring on the door, holding it open. “I’ll go with you.”

“Thank you.”

I took her hand and stepped through the door first, keeping contact as she followed behind. The tunnel widened and opened onto a small ledge that looked over the ten-foot-wide ventilation shaft, and Willow stepped up beside me.

“You know when you go somewhere as an adult, and you say, ‘It felt so much bigger as a child’?” she asked.

“This does not,” I said, looking up and up at the fifty feet or so to the next sublevel. It wasn’t vertical, thank God, or we both would have died, but the incline was steep enough that I wondered at my own bravery back then.

“No, it’s just as awful as I remember.” She stepped closer to the edge and looked down, focusing on the jagged outcropping I’d found her on about ten feet below us. “Cam, I didn’t fall the whole way.” She looked up the shaft at the tiny pinpoint of light that marked the surface. “That’s why I didn’t break more.”

Like her neck.

“You fell from here.” I put it together, watching one of the small rocks just past my feet give in to gravity and fall. It smacked the outcropping, then fell into the blackness. I tugged Willow’s hand and pulled her back a step. This thing was anything but stable.

“But you didn’t. You came all the way down.” She looked up again, shaking her head. “How did you do it? Get down here and get us both out?”

“Sheer willpower.” I clutched her hand even tighter.

“You’re incredible. Do you know that?”

I nudged her hard hat up so the beam didn’t hit me straight in the eye. “Not really.”

“Desperation and love make ordinary people do heroic things,” Dad said from behind us, moving to stand next to Willow at the edge of the unstable ledge. “You were never ordinary, and you had both.” He stated it like a fact, not a compliment, then glanced at me before surveying the space.

“I didn’t see this ledge,” I admitted. “Or the one across the way. We climbed all the way up for nothing.”

“This one wouldn’t have done you much good, seeing as the door can’t be opened from this side.” Dad thumbed back toward the door. “And the other opening is small, too. As dark as it is in here, you wouldn’t have seen it. We’ve got three headlamps, Camden, one of which is brighter than twenty of what we had back then.”

I kicked myself for not being more observant, for putting her through more than I had to when she was already so hurt.

“Stop,” Dad snapped, seeing my guilt. “You focused on the light and started climbing, just like anyone else would have.”

“You saved me.” Willow smiled up at me.

“Hey, isn’t that—?” The ledge gave way under Dad.

“Art!” Willow screamed, grabbing for Dad as rocks crashed to the unknown bottom below.

“No!” The sound ripped from my throat.

She fell to the side, slamming her hip against the ground, and slid toward the edge as if dragged. I lunged behind her, landing on my hands and feet before hitting my stomach, then locked my arm around her waist to hold her back. I swung her legs, bringing her feet back toward the door and the more stable portion of the ledge.

“Cam!” she shrieked. “He’s too heavy!”

I crawled forward to see that she had Dad’s hand, and it was twisting her arm at an angle that was going to snap it quickly.

“Dad!” I reached for him, following the line of Willow’s arm.

“Let me go. Don’t let her fall with me!” he called up.

Willow cried out.

I felt the killing calm come over me and welcomed it like a long-lost friend.

“I’ve got you.” I gripped his wrist with my left hand and immediately felt some of the strain lift from Willow’s arm. Then I reached around the back of Willow’s hand, her knuckles white from trying to keep Dad from falling. “Let go, Pika, so I can get two hands on him. You can’t lift him out at that angle. Let go.” I kept my voice soft even as my heart slammed against my chest.

“Cam?” she asked, still holding on to him.

“I promise I’ve got him.”

She released her hand, and Dad swung to the left before I could get his hand with my right. “Got you! Willow, get Gid.”

She scrambled for the door.

“Let me go,” Dad ordered.

“You have no idea how deep that goes, Dad. Just hold on.” Rocks crumbled from the area Willow had just vacated.

“Camden.”

My eyes met his, and it struck me how calm he was. How I’d been cursing the parts of me that were like him, only to be grateful for them later on.

“Gideon is coming, and we’ll pull you up. I just don’t have the leverage,” I told him. “You’re not slipping, and I’m strong enough to hold you.” Thank God he had on a fleece jacket. My hands would have slid right off his skin.

“The ledge is going to go. Do not do this.”

“The ledge is fine,” I shouted. “Gideon!” Where was he?

“I love you, Camden. And I know I was shit at showing it. But you were just so much like me. Sully and Xander, they were your mom, but you…in everything but looks, you were me. And Cal…he was the lovable one. The good one.”

Another section of rock gave way, and I heard footsteps hurrying toward us.

“Dad, you can tell me all about it later.”

“Let me go.”

I sucked in a breath, finally understanding what he was saying. “No, Dad. No.”

“I’m not taking you with me.”

“Holy shit,” Gideon shouted, hitting his stomach and sliding up next to me.

“Gid’s here, Dad. We can pull you out.”

He stayed silent, but his expressions flickered so fast that I couldn’t tell what he was feeling or thinking. Sadness? Anger? Acceptance? Even happiness?

“Just reach up with your other hand.”

Gideon leaned forward as far as he dared and lowered his hand.

“Dad?” I begged. “I can’t do this for you. It’s your choice.”

Gideon’s gaze snapped toward me and then back to Dad before managing to lower his hand another inch.

“You have to choose, Dad.”

This was it: the moment he’d wanted. The decision was his. Another section of the ledge collapsed, ending right before my arm started, but I still didn’t look away from those eyes. Sullivan’s eyes.

His lips pursed, and his brow furrowed. Then he roared and swung up with his left hand. Gideon caught it, and we both immediately lifted, scraping Dad’s arms, then his chest and stomach on the edge of the ledge as we pulled him back onto the solid surface. Once he got to his knees, he fell forward, and we all rushed for the door, where Willow waited.

Dad looked back at me and gave me a singular, knowing nod, and I knew that was all he’d ever have to say about what just happened.

“I think this belongs to you, young lady,” he said, pressing something into Willow’s palm before walking through the door.

“I need a beer,” Gideon muttered, following Dad.

I grabbed Willow to me, holding her against my chest, not caring that her helmet dug into the layers of my jacket to press the skin beneath. “I love you.”

“I love you,” she repeated, her hands clutching the fabric at my back.

“Let’s get you out of here.” I could go the rest of my life and never see this portion of the mine again. That would be fine by me. She nodded, and we walked back into the chamber.

“Look what your dad found.” She held up her unicorn pin. It was a tiny thing, barely the size of a quarter.

“Look at that.” I brushed my thumb over her palm, but when I looked up, she was focused on something to her right. The door. “What is it?”

She tucked the pin in her pocket and turned to face the heavy iron mass. Then she brought her hand down from her chin, as if she were measuring something, and when she reached mid-chest, she moved her hand to the same level on the door.

“Cam,” she whispered.

There were two darker spots in the rust. Blood.

Rage swept over me, holding hands with a knowledge I never wanted. And it all made sense. All of that day, those that came before, and the ones that followed.

Our eyes locked, hers wide with shock, and I shut the door, letting it close with a satisfying slam.

I knew where that fucking map was.