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Rachel glanced over. "Excuse me?"
"I mean... I know I shouldn't have, but I covered them and everything. I thought I was being clever." She grimaced, shrugging sheepishly.
Rachel quirked an eyebrow. "I'm going to be honest with you, Mrs. Veely. I didn't even know someone had tried to cover the trail. It was very obvious to me."
Ethan gave a little chuckle, which he hid as a cough.
"Thank you, Lila," Rachel said finally, each word measured and precise. She rose, the legs of her chair scraping softly against the floor. "If you can think of anything else, please let me know."
Ethan joined her as the two of them moved towards the door once more.
"Traffic footage?" he asked under his breath.
"You got it," she muttered back. "Red ATV. Let's see what we can find."
CHAPTER SIX
The prospector's breath mingled with the damp, earthy scent of the tunnel as he pressed forward, his boots silent against the uneven ground. His fingers tightened around the handle of the knife, slick with blood that felt warm even in the chill of the subterranean void. With a methodical motion born of necessity rather than remorse, he drew the blade along the tough fabric of his wrist, watching through narrowed eyes as the crimson stains transferred from metal to cloth.
Ahead, the tunnel seemed to constrict, as if it were clenching its teeth against the intrusion. The prospector paused, tilting his head ever so slightly. A series of ragged pants cut through the silence, their tempo erratic and beseeching. They were joined by a soft whimpering that swelled into desperate cries, the sounds echoing off the stone walls and burrowing into the prospector’s consciousness.
The moans and cries were coming from up ahead.
He stilled, his instincts on edge. The cries spoke of terror, of vulnerability, and though the darkness cloaked him like an ally, his heart thrummed a steady beat of caution against his ribs.
His grip on the knife shifted, the tool now an extension of his will, as he resumed his progress. Each step deliberate, measured to avoid betraying his presence. The prospector's mind circled the sound ahead like a raptor eyeing prey—the crying a beacon in the oppressive blackness, guiding him, testing him.
With each footfall, anticipation coiled tighter within him, a spring wound to near breaking. He could feel the weight of the unseen woman's fear permeating the stale air, her sobs a cadence to which his pulse unwittingly synchronized. It was not pity that stirred within him; it was the clinical detachment of a hunter tracking his quarry through the labyrinthine belly of the earth.
The cries intensified, sharper now, more frantic. They were close—so desperately close—and yet she remained unaware of his ghostly presence. The prospector felt the tension stretch taut between them, an invisible thread ready to snap.
The clicking echo of rocks beneath boots punctuated the silence, a rhythm in the bowels of the earth. Through lenses that turned night into day, the prospector navigated the jagged tunnel with an ease that belied the darkness enveloping it. His eyes, augmented by the green hue of night-vision goggles, captured every stumble of the blind woman as she faltered over uneven ground, her hands clawing at the void for stability.
A breath—a soft, quivering exhale—slipped from the woman's lips, forming a prayer to cut through the umbral shroud. "Please," she whispered into the darkness, a solitary word stretched thin by desperation. It was not a plea to be heard but a reflex, the instinctive invocation of the imperiled.
The prospector moved like a shadow, his presence an unspoken threat hovering just out of reach. He observed her struggle with the clinical curiosity of an entomologist studying an insect trapped in a web. Each bob of her head, each sharp intake of breath, painted a picture only he could see—the portrait of fear incarnate.
His heart thrummed in his chest, a steady drumbeat that seemed to sync with her uneven gait. There was power in witnessing this unseen, unheard by any other living soul. The silence between them stretched, filled with words unspoken, cries unheard, and pleas unacknowledged.
Her fingertips brushed against the rough wall, seeking guidance, seeking salvation. The prospector stood still, a sentinel amid the stone, watching the woman’s silhouette blur with each faltering step. Her ankle twisted cruelly on a misplaced rock, sending her to her knees with a muffled thud. The impulse to assist was absent.
He could see her, but she couldn't see him.
In the distance, the faintest drip of water from stalactites to stone sang a dirge for the lost and the forsaken. It resonated in the prospector’s ears, a reminder of the inexorable passage of time in this subterranean world.
In the cloistered darkness of the tunnel, the prospector's night-vision goggles cast an eerie glow on his impassive face. The lenses flickered with each measured step he took, mirroring the cold green of a predator's eyes. His gaze fixed upon the woman, a mere shapeless form in the void to any unaided eye, her ragged breaths and stifled sobs a discordant lullaby.
A rat scurried past, its tiny claws skittering over stone, yet she remained oblivious to all but her own despair. He watched her, emotion as absent from his visage as light was from the abyss around them. Her vulnerability seemed to him no more than a ripple in a vast, indifferent ocean—a momentary disturbance, inconsequential and fleeting.
The prospector's hand tightened around the hilt of his knife, the blood dried upon the blade a dull testament to its recent use. With a swift, deliberate motion, he struck the flat side of the knife against a wooden support beam. The sharp clang sang out, a gong of fear that echoed off the walls and shook loose decades of dust from the timeworn timber.
Particles danced in the beam of the prospector's headlamp. The sound rolled down the tunnel, a harbinger of unseen threats, growing fainter and fainter until it was swallowed by the cavernous maw of the mountain.
The prospector observed dispassionately as the woman flinched, her body coiling instinctively away from the unseen danger. Her hands flew to her ears, as if to block out the reverberations that no longer troubled the air. She was a stray leaf caught in the storm, and he, merely an observer watching the tempest's play.
There was no pleasure derived from her panic, no satisfaction gleaned from her pain. For him, it was a calculated act, nothing more—a necessary diversion within this labyrinthine game of cat and mouse. As the ringing faded, leaving only the sound of her jagged breaths to fill the void, he stepped forward, towards her.
Ten feet away.
