A Message for Julia

He played the message five times before grabbing the machine and throwing it across the room. It shattered against the dining-room wall. He felt only marginally better.

He called her cell phone—again. It went straight to voice mail, which told him she’d turned it off. There was nothing else he could do.

Except wait.

He cursed and grabbed a beer from the fridge. Damn it all. He needed oblivion. And he certainly didn’t need half the town watching him find it.

By Thursday, when he pulled into the dirt parking lot of the Winding Trail Mine ten minutes early to shadow the afternoon shift, he was exhausted.

He wanted to finish this job and get home in time to catch Julia. He needed to do something—talk to her—anything to figure out how to make things better. There was too much anger between them and he didn’t like it. To be honest, he was downright sick of it. They were facing some tough decisions and he just wanted it done.

Linc had always been the type who yanked off a bandage. It hurt like hell but then it was over. None of this slow, methodical agony. If his marriage was going to end, he wanted that flash of pain, not this ongoing hurt.

Shaking his head, he tried to clear his mind of all those thoughts. He had a job to do and it required focus. He got out of the truck and reached into the bed to grab his gear before mounting the rough wooden steps to the mine office.

The faded, worn building, the size of a double-wide trailer, had two shabby offices in front and a larger room beyond. In the back room, which served as a locker room, he met up with the crew he’d been assigned to shadow.

Six men looked up when he walked in. They were nearly finished dressing in their long johns, flannel shirts and coveralls. Now that he was here, they would go underground.

Linc hustled to dress as they introduced themselves. He recognized Gabe Wise, the crew chief, from his previous visit. Linc immediately realized why the older man was in charge. They were a young crew and Gabe had nearly twenty years experience.

Robert Hastings, a gruff man who looked to be in his early forties, simply nodded when Linc acknowledged him. Ah, a man of few words. Then there were brothers Michael and Ryan Sinclair. He already knew them. All too well. The fight with Julia after the school-board meeting came back to him. What a mess.

As long as Ryan was old enough, there wasn’t anything Linc could do. The law said he only had to stay in school until he was sixteen.

At least Ryan was on a crew with his older brother who could keep an eye on him.

Linc guessed the other members of the group, Casey McGuire and Zach Hayes, were in their late twenties. Obviously friends, they joked with the rest of the men but kept just enough apart to show they weren’t yet a cohesive team.

All dressed and accounted for, they donned hard hats, clipped fresh batteries to their tool belts and climbed aboard the transport—a flatbed cart they called a man-trap. Linc hefted his backpack, his unofficial briefcase for trips down into the mines, up on his shoulder. Passing into the yawning mouth of the mine, he cringed. God, he hated this part. His heart and breath hitched at the thought of the tons of rock over his head. A normal reaction, he knew, but still he felt it tight in his gut.

The heavy damp scent of earth surrounded him. It felt as if he was stepping into a half-dug grave. That was one reason why he was an inspector and not a workaday miner. His goal was to keep these men safe—unlike the mine inspectors of old who’d failed his father.

The instant they were inside, Linc’s gaze darted around, scanning the low ceiling, the thick walls and the equipment they passed. There were several things he wanted to examine more closely on the trip out. But on the whole, he’d seen worse.

Nearly half an hour later, Gabe spoke. “Here we are.” His voice soaked into the dark walls. He jumped from the transport as deftly as a man half his age and the others followed, forming a line that seemed preordained. They finished the last few yards on foot.

Each man went to his position as Linc watched, taking mental and written notes. The machines roared to life as the crew started to dig for the rich, black coal. The engines’ noise prevented conversation, but the miners managed to communicate through gestures and the simple fact that they knew their jobs and their places.

With the light from his hard hat guiding him, Linc moved around the cavern, examining, checking and letting his skeptical mind search for any indication of sloppiness or intentional violations. A loud metallic chink shattered the din. The pitch of the digger’s engines changed and Linc spun around.

The grinding of metal on metal told them the cutting black had hit something abnormal.

Shit. Gabe looked to the right wall and Linc followed his line of sight but couldn’t see anything. Suddenly, the roar around them drowned out even the engines’ noise. Rock tumbled down the face they’d been digging. Linc saw rather than heard Gabe’s command, “Run!”

Robert scrambled off the loader. Mike grabbed Ryan’s arm in a grip that Linc knew had to be painful. Gabe waited until all his men were ahead of him. Casey and Zach were to his left, not moving. Why weren’t they rushing to the exit?

Linc turned and his gaze met Gabe’s. Together, they saw that Casey’s left leg was trapped beneath the caterpillar track of the scoop. Damn.

Running the few feet, Linc joined Gabe and Robert on the side of the machine. The three of them pushed but the heavy piece of equipment barely budged. Again they pushed. Again it barely moved.

Luckily, as they worked to free Casey, no more shale fell around them. But that was no guarantee it wouldn’t bury them before they took their next dust-laden breath.

Linc didn’t hear the others approach, but he felt their presence beside him. Gabe set the pace with an even rhythm and counted it off. On three they all pushed. Ryan and Mike’s young muscle added to theirs was just enough to tip over the machine.

Casey grimaced, but he clenched his jaw as he fought crying out. His pain was palpable in the chamber with them. Looking lower, Linc realized Casey’s leg was badly mangled.

The roar returned. Gabe waved them on as he shoved his shoulder under Casey’s armpit.

Zach took the other side. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Together they half carried, half dragged the injured man up the incline. Suddenly, air whooshed over them. Turning and stumbling backward, Linc watched as the ebony shale buried the machine. Silence settled with the dust around them.

Then, another roar… Every inch of ground and air around them trembled. There was no time to think. Ryan and Mike backpedaled from where a new slide of shale closed off the opening ahead of them.

Then silence. Heavy silence, almost too quiet to be real, pressed on his ears. Nothing broke it for a long minute until the sound of their rasping breaths whispered through the air.

The only light came from the lamps on each hard hat. Beams of white light bounced back at them from the black dust in the air. Linc tried not to think how much of that crap was coating the inside of his lungs as he fought to breathe.

Linc moved first, his training kicking in. “I’ll take this side.” He checked the gas meter in his pack. No danger levels—yet. He kept the meter close.

Removing the lamp from his hard hat, he used it like a flashlight. Ryan and Mike did the same. Gabe and Zach settled Casey on a level patch of ground, while Robert tried to activate the emergency radio from Casey’s belt.

Each man quickly took a section of the cavern, ringing it with light, looking for any indication of a breach in the rock. Linc found nothing. When he rejoined the others, they all shook their heads.

Even Robert. “Radio’s crushed. I can’t fix it.” He tossed the broken pieces onto the ground and cursed.

They were well and truly trapped.

The one encouraging thing was that there had been no more rumbles. Obviously, they’d hit something with the blade, but what? With luck, only this chamber was affected. Little good that did them. Linc knew from the schematics of the mine that at least fifty feet of solid rock separated them from any hope of escape.

Gabe hunkered down next to Casey. They all watched his light illuminate Casey’s leg. The steel-toed boots he wore had protected his foot, but his calf and knee had been severely chewed up by the tread of the machine. Blood soaked both his leg and the ground around him.

Gabe loosened Casey’s belt and carefully slipped it off. “I can’t stop the bleeding with just pressure.” In minutes, he’d wrapped the man’s leg in one of the thick flannel shirts he’d worn and tightened the belt around his upper thigh. “I trained as an EMT years back. I hoped I’d never need it,” Gabe said, pain in his voice. “We’ll have to watch him close.”

At least Casey wasn’t going to bleed to death in front of them. Not yet anyway.

The miners settled back, regrouping, their thoughts probably as disjointed as Linc’s.

Trapped. They were trapped.

Linc fought the panic that clawed at his chest and knew it was probably a losing battle. He closed his eyes, picturing the house he had left only a few hours before. Home. He just wanted to go home.

He didn’t dare picture Julia’s face. That would be his undoing.

CHAPTER THREE

Thursday Afternoon, 4:00 p.m.