Page 63 of Glimmer in the Darkness

She shifted beside him, lowered to a prone position, and pointed toward the rear of the cave. “Do you see that?”

He glanced in the direction she pointed but saw nothing.

“You have to get down here.”

He lay beside her. Sure enough, from this angle, he saw something deep in the cave. A…glimmer of light. “What is it?”

“I saw it when Hallie and I were tied up, but I didn’t know what it was.” She stood and walked that direction. The ceiling lowered, and she crouched, then crawled forward. “When he came back, he untied us. I guess he felt safe because he stationed himself at the mouth of the cave. There was no way to get past him.”

The ceiling lowered more. James had noticed this place but hadn’t explored it in his perusal of the cave because Cassidy had gone straight to this spot and looked. He got on hands and knees and followed.

In front of him, Cassidy wiggled, doing something, but he couldn’t tell exactly what. Then, she twisted around until she faced him and handed him her handgun. “I don’t think I’ll be able to squeeze through with that on.”

He took it, studied it. A Glock 9mm. Good gun.

Cassidy crawled backward. To where, he didn’t know. It seemed they’d reached the end.

Except she kept going.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A way out.” She disappeared down a shaft so narrow, he hadn’t noticed it and was sure he wouldn’t fit. He crept forward and looked. The ground gave way to an opening. The stone overhang lowered here, so that the space was barely wide enough for Cassidy’s thin hips. No way he could go forward. But she was gone.

“You okay?” he called.

“Can you make it through?”

“No chance.”

“Back up. I’ll just come around the other direction.”

The thought of her out there, alone, sent acid to his stomach. “Can you just come back through?”

“Hard enough getting out. Not sure I can get back in. Hey, while you’re in there, will you look around? I lost… something special to me back then. I think it came off when we were getting away.”

We?

As in, her and Hallie?

He’d ask her about that later.

He took out the flashlight and backed toward the mouth of the narrow passage, eyes open for whatever Cassidy had lost. There was nothing—

“Wait!” She called. “I found—”

A gunshot cut off her words.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Cassy!” James’s shout reverberated off the narrow stone passageway as he crawled out. It widened and he hurried on hands and knees until he crawled into the cavern, jumped to his feet, and bounded out of the cave. He held her gun at the ready, running too fast along the narrow path between the steep wall and the sharp drop-off. He sprinted past the spot where they’d climbed up and around a bend, then slid down a short slope and around another corner. He skidded to a stop behind the thick branches of a pine that grew out of the hillside below.

Cassidy lay facedown on the ground, arms covering her head. A protective posture, which suggested she was alive.

He lurched forward. “Cassy! Are you—?”

“Get down!”

He hit the rocky soil just as another gunshot rang out. He peeked up from his prone position beside Cassidy. Aside from the occasional treetop, this area was exposed. The shooter had to be below them on the mountain. On this side, with the lake between Mt. Ayasha and Mt. Coventry, there were no other ridges with a vantage point. James should be safe if he stayed low. He crawled to Cassidy’s side. “Are you hit?”