Solitaire

Graham flushed scarlet. “You’ve gone too far this time, Donovan,” he sputtered. “Unless you’re suddenly working with the U.S. Mine Safety–”

Slade turned conspiratorially to Cat for a moment. “That’s who ought to be called in to handle this situation. Tunnel B is just begging to fall. But then, Graham–” he turned to the red-faced man “–you wouldn’t stand to get as much of a tax loss if you didn’t have someone of Ms. Kincaid’s stature sign on the bottom line, stating that your mine is not only inoperable, but a disaster of the first degree.”

“Look, Donovan, you’ve no right,” began a riled Graham.

Slade, ignoring him, swung his attention back to Cat. “You’ve been a mining engineer for over ten years. And there isn’t anyone in our business who doesn’t respect or admire your work in constructing mines under almost impossible circumstances.” Slade jabbed a finger toward the Emerald Lady mine. “But your life and your knowledge, not to mention your neck, aren’t worth risking for that pit. I’m telling you, that shaft is deadly. Don’t go in there. Let Graham get the U.S. mining officials to do it instead.”

Cat was momentarily swayed by the fervor of his request; Donovan’s deep Texas accent flowed through her like a cool breeze on a hot jungle night. Then she blinked, realizing that he had literally spun her into his web with his husky, coaxing voice. Irritated that she had let him affect her at all, she said, “Mr. Donovan, I think Mr. Graham and I can handle this. In case you forgot, mine inspection is part of being a mining engineer.”

Graham pulled out a white silk handkerchief and mopped his perspiring brow. “It most certainly is! Ms. Kincaid’s specialty is troublesome mines; that’s why I called her. And I resent your inference, Donovan, that I’m doing this for a business loss. Nothing could be further from my mind. The Emerald Lady is the best, and we’ll hire only the best if we get into trouble.”

Slade snorted. Graham was lying through his perfectly capped teeth. Slade wondered briefly why Cat couldn’t see through Graham’s ploy. Who had raised her to never question another person’s motives?

“Please–” he opened both his callused hands out toward Cat in a final, pleading gesture “–don’t go in there. There was a heavy rain here last night. Give the mine another day to settle down. Water’s leaking like a sieve in there, and in the crosscut. The supporting timbers are rotted. A day. Just one.”

There simply wasn’t enough time for this, and Cat stepped up to Donovan, her jaw set. “My schedule doesn’t permit the luxury of an extra day. I intend to inspect this mine right now, Mr. Donovan. I don’t have time to stand here and discuss this issue. By this afternoon–” she looked at the gold Rolex watch on her darkly tanned left wrist “–at 2:00 p.m., to be precise, I have a flight back to New York City. I have to be in Australia by tomorrow evening.”

Rain began falling at a steady clip, spreading a gray pall over the heavily forested area that surrounded the mine. Slade interpreted this as a warning. Cat merely regarded it as an inconvenience.

She picked up her white miner’s hard hat, which had accumulated scratches and dents from many years of use. Each depression was from a rock large enough to have injured her. Cat tested the light strapped to the front of the hat before settling it on her sable-colored hair. Then she plugged the jack into a battery pack that she carried on a web belt around her waist. As she finished her preparations, Cat tried to ignore Donovan, whose tightly throttled energy had the room in a state of electric tension.

“Donovan,” Graham began, “I don’t care who you think you are. You’re trespassing on private property.” He glanced around. “If you don’t leave, I’ll call the sheriff on my car telephone and have you booted out of here on your–”

“Save your threats, Graham. I’m staying until Ms. Kincaid is safely out of that mine.” His blue eyes narrowed on Graham’s porcine face. “And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it unless you think you’re big enough to throw me out of here.”

Cat shook her head and picked up a safety lamp. Lighting the regulation-size lantern, she watched with satisfaction as the yellow flame grew. She straightened up.

“You going in with her, Graham?” Slade prodded savagely.

“Of course not. She’s the mining expert.”

Slade’s mouth twisted into a lethal line. “You wouldn’t be caught dead in there because you know just how unsafe that pit is.”

Cat opened the door and nailed both men with a look of authority. “You two can stay here and argue about the mine’s merits, but I’m going into it.” She looked directly at Slade. “And don’t follow me in. Understand?”

He grimaced and nodded. “Whatever you say, lady.” Then his icy composure gave way to concern. “But I’d like to see you come back in one piece.”

Cat tilted her head, a question in her eyes. What had the scuttlebutt been about the man named Slade Donovan? Later, after the mine inspection was over, she’d search her memory. The name sounded familiar, but was he tied to good news or bad? Judging from his bull-in-the-china-shop tactics, it probably wasn’t very good.

“I’ll be out in about an hour, Mr. Graham, unless I find something, then it will take a bit longer.”

“Fine, fine. Take your time. I’ll be waiting.”

Slade took a step toward her. “Get in and then get the hell out. Any miner with an ounce of brains could tell twenty minutes after entering it that the mine’s broken.”

Cat gave him a cool look, then pulled the miner’s hat brim a little lower across her eyes. “In about an hour, Mr. Graham…”

Helplessly Slade watched her leave and move out into the downpour. The lightweight pale blue canvas jacket she wore darkened immediately with splotches of rain. Muttering a curse, Slade elbowed past Graham. Cat was halfway across the empty, muddy expanse, heading toward the yawning dark hole of the mine shaft, when Slade caught up with her.

“Ms. Kincaid–Cat–here, take this with you.” He thrust a portable radio into her hand. “It’s waterproof,” he quickly explained. The rain slashed across his face, and his hair darkened as it became plastered against his skull. “Just in case, okay? Don’t give me that look, either. This is a safety measure. There’s no one here to help you in case something does go wrong.” He drew to a halt just inside the shaft. Slade gave her a pleading look, knowing he couldn’t intimidate or push Cat into doing what he wanted. He’d heard she had a mind of her own and now he had to deal with that.

Cat stuffed the radio inside her jacket to protect it. The damp, stale air flowing out of the mine swept around them and a chill worked its way up her back. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll take it with me. But you stay here. I’ve had enough of your strong-arm tactics, Mr. Donovan. You’re just lucky Mr. Graham didn’t call the sheriff. You could be in a lot of hot water. He’s a fairly influential man in mining, even if his reputation is less than virtuous.”

“Lady,” Slade confirmed, grinning, “Graham’s sunk more worthless pits around the world than I’ve sampled ore.”

“Let me get on with my business, Donovan.”

“Yeah, go ahead. How about if I buy you a steak for lunch when you’re done?”

There was something intriguing about Slade Donovan that Cat couldn’t quite put her finger on; her sixth sense–or was it female curiosity–urged her to accept. “Lunch,” she grudgingly agreed. “But a short one.”

“I know, you’ve got a plane to catch.” He smiled, the tension in his face easing momentarily.

Cat flipped on her helmet light, holding the safety lamp out in front of her. “See you later, Donovan.” Watching where she placed her rubber-booted feet, Cat began her trek down the gentle incline of the adit, or main shaft. Darkness closed around her like a consuming embrace, and the only light was the muted yellow glow of the safety lamp. She inhaled the dankness of the silent shaft. Like most emerald mines, it wasn’t deep; it ran shallow, following either sedimentary or pegmatite veins that hid the green rock in calcite nests. The floor was littered profusely with limestone slabs, evidence that the mine hadn’t been worked in quite a while.

Cat stopped at every few timbers and studied them carefully with her practiced eye. The overhead roof, or manging wall, of pale green limestone dripped constantly. Most of it was due to the dampness inherent in a mine. But Slade had been right: trickles of water had followed fissures in the sediment and wound their way down into the mine itself. Rock bolts should have been placed in the wall to strengthen it. Without them the wetness would weaken the wall. As Cat ran practiced fingers across the stull, or timbers, supporting the limestone roof, she saw that the main shoring points would have to be immediately replaced and new ones installed.

The thin beam of light from her helmet probed the blackness as Cat raised her head to assess the damage to each post and stull. The adit split into a Y, known to miners as a crosscut. This was the beginning of Tunnel B. The air leaving the shaft was desultory and pregnant with a stale, musty odor. Cat wondered if the dew point was high enough for it to actually rain within the mine. Again, Slade had been right: Graham hadn’t even begun to put the necessary care into this mine to make it a decent place to work. If Graham was as knowledgeable as Donovan had said he was, he had no excuse to have skimped on proper ventilation and pumping equipment. Moisture was eating away at the powerful oak and hardwood beams that kept the walls from collapsing and the roof from dropping, and some unlucky miner could lose his life beneath it. She turned down the crosscut, a secondary tunnel off the main adit, and carefully inspected each support. The limestone had turned a rust color where water had leaked through from above, indicating iron in the sediment above the exposed vein. Cat smiled grimly. Slade had accurately predicted the condition of the shaft: there was no way emeralds were going to be found in this kind of rock. The only type that held emeralds was calcite limestone, and none was in evidence here. Even though she wasn’t a geologist, she’d seen plenty of rock, and she was knowledgeable enough to make the assessment on her own.

The deeper she went, the more oppressive the air became. The incline became vertical–what miners called a winze. Cat halted at the lip of the winze. She held the safety lamp high, looking for the reason for the vertical descent of the shaft. Normally, it was because the vein of calcite or pegmatite went off in an unexpected direction. But judging from the iron-marked limestone, Cat could see no discernible reason for it. She ran her fingers lightly over the hardwood timber; the surface was slick with algae and wet from the constant leakage of water. Above, the main horizontal stull was fully cracked and sagging. Again, Slade’s words came to her about the back of the mine being broken.

Cat’s lips tightened and she stood quietly. All around her, she could hear the plunk, plunk, plunk of water. The passage gleamed from the liquid seeping in through the walls. Should she go on? Chances were, if one timber was cracked, the others would be, too, indicating that the entire roof was caving in. It was only a matter of time until the limestone, weakened by water flow through the natural fissures, would collapse. Why did Graham want her to investigate the worthiness of this mine? It was a total loss. So much money would have to be poured into shoring up the crosscut alone, she wondered if the mine’s calculated yield was worth that kind of expense. Cat thought not, but that wasn’t any of her business; that was Graham’s decision to make.

The floor of the mine was slippery with mud and slime. Cat took each step carefully, for she had no wish to cause any undue vibration that might further weaken the supports. Automatically, she pressed her wet fingers against her jacket where the radio lay next to her heart. Slade was turning out to be a pretty decent person after all; his advice had been good, and the radio was a definite asset.

Pushing thoughts of Slade aside, Cat concentrated on the overhead stulls. She stopped every ten feet and examined each one thoroughly. About three hundred feet into the winze, Cat crouched by the left wall. The limestone had cracked, and a healthy spring of water gushed through the opening, running down into the shaft. That wasn’t good. It indicated a major structural weakness in the rock wall glistening beneath her fingertips. Slowly rising, Cat cautiously moved to the other side of the mine and continued her inspection.

She had gone another two hundred feet, almost to the end of Tunnel B according to the map, when a sickening crack echoed through the shaft. In one motion, Cat turned, sprinting back toward the beginning of the crosscut. Suddenly, a rumbling sound began. The hollow, drumlike roar rolled through the shaft like mounting thunder. She couldn’t tell whether the winze was caving in behind or in front of her. Water several inches deep rushed down the shaft, and she splashed through it. She leaped to the lip that signaled an end to the winze. Slipping, Cat skidded to her knees in the muck and mud of the crosscut. The safety lamp bounced twice and then the flame went out.

Loud snapping and groaning noises followed. Cat’s breath tore from her as she scrambled to her feet; the only light left was the one on her helmet. Water was rapidly rising from foot to ankle level; she knew a crack in the wall up ahead had given way. Had the entire wall caved in, leaving her no escape?

Behind her, Cat heard the limestone manging wall grate, and she automatically ducked her head, keeping one hand on her helmet as she raced toward the intersection of the adit. Only two hundred feet more, she guessed, gasping for breath. A crash caromed beside her, and rocks began falling. She halted, breathing hard. Should she retreat or–fist-size pieces of limestone began raining down around her. She was trapped! Cat shielded her face and lurched forward, dust and rock hailing down as she slogged forward, staggering and stumbling.

Suffocating dust filled Cat’s mouth, nose and lungs. She coughed violently, unable to breathe. Blinded by the dust, which was thicker than smoke, she tripped. As she did, the manging wall where she had stood seconds before dropped to the floor. A rock the size of a baseball crashed onto her hard hat, knocking it off her head. The hat and light bounced crazily, sending a skittering beam of light through the dense grayness. Another rock struck her shoulder, spinning her around. Cat threw her hands up to protect her head as she pitched backward. She slammed into the jagged rocks, the breath ripped out of her. Seconds later, more than a ton of rock and soil filled the chamber where she was trapped. A cry tore from her as the rest of the other wall collapsed, nearly burying her. Pain lanced up her right side and Cat sank back, unconscious.

* * *

With a violent oath, Slade raced down the mine shaft. He had heard the ominous crack of timbers, sounding one after another like breaking matchsticks. He shouted for Cat, but his voice was drowned out by a deep roar that sent icy fear up his spine. A rolling cloud of dust engulfed him and he turned back, hacking and coughing, his hand across his nose and mouth as he stumbled out.

Lionel Graham came lumbering out of the mine shack, his eyes round with shock. Slade ran toward him and grabbed him by the lapel of his expensive English raincoat.

“Damn you, Graham, it’s happened! Now you get on that car phone and call for help. Now!”

“Y-yes, of course. Of course,” he sputtered, and hurried toward his car.

Slade spun around and ran back to the mine opening, pulling out the radio he kept in a leather carrying case on his hip. The red light blinked on, indicating that the battery was sufficiently charged and ready to be used.

“Cat? Cat, can you hear me? This is Slade. Over.” He released the button. All he could hear was static. His mind whirled. Was she dead? Buried alive? Or had she been given a reprieve, and been trapped in a chamber? If so, how much air was left? He knew from his own grim experience that dust could suffocate a person. He ran into the mine and went as far as he could before the choking wall of limestone dust stopped him. Again, he called her. Again, no answer. Damn it to hell! He wanted to wrap his fingers around Graham’s fleshy throat and strangle the bastard. He might as well have set Cat up to be murdered. But right now, Slade needed Graham’s influence to get local miners together to begin excavating the mine to search for Cat.