Page 49 of So Insane

Frankie tried to scream in protest only to find that she had been gagged.

Shawna looked nervously at the man. “What about my girlfriend?”

“You need to find your way out,” he said again.

“Please,” Shawna said, weeping. “I love her. It’s my fault we’re here, not hers. Please let her go. If you need to keep someone, keep me.”

Frankie wept as she recalled those words, recalled the muffled screams of protest she shouted ineffectually through her gag.

“Shawna, you idiot,” she whispered. “You fucking dummy.” Then she shouted, “Shawna! Please! Where are you?”

The man had ignored Shawna and carefully blindfolded Frankie. “No!” Shawna screamed.

Frankie couldn’t see what happened next, but she heard the brief scuffle then the cry of pain as the man fought Shawna off. “Touch me again, and I’ll make you watch while I cut out her heart,” the kidnapper said.

“Okay,” Shawna said weeping. “Okay. Just please don’t hurt her.”

“You need to find your way out,” the man said a final time. “You and her both. But you will find your way from here. I will take her somewhere else. It will be cheating if you two help each other.”

“Please…” Shawna said again.

“You should leave now,” he said, “if you follow me, I will kill this one in front of you and make you watch the life drain from her eyes.”

Shawna sobbed wretchedly and said, “I love you, Frankie. If I get out, I’ll call for help. Please don’t die. I love you so much, and I’m so, so sorry.”

With the gag firmly in place, Frankie couldn’t even say she loved her back.

That was… Frankie didn’t even know how long ago. The kidnapper had led her through the caves and released her in another cavern, giving her the same command to find her way out.

She had no idea how to do that. All she had was a little penlight she kept as backup in case her primary light went out. She didn’t know if Shawna had her own penlight. She wasn’t usually as prepared as Frankie was.

And she wasn’t going to leave anyway. Not without Shawna. If they were going to die, they were going to die together. Or Frankie was going to die fighting that maniac as hard as she could while Shawna escaped.

Frankie wasn’t religious, but she prayed then. “God, please let Shawna be okay.”

The only answer she received in return was an echoing shriek that trailed off into something that sounded like laughter.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Spirit cave had smelled old and musty, the way a cave would smell if it were a horror movie and the girls really taken by ghosts. In contrast, the mine smelled mostly like dust. In a macabre way, that made it an even more accurate representation of death. Death didn’t leave behind ghosts and ghouls. It left a vacuum in which things lay unused and abandoned until they were covered in enough dust and dirt to waste away, leaving behind only the fossilized impression of what they once were.

All around, Faith saw those fossils. The entrance tunnel led into a wide cavern where rusted and twisted stretches of rail bore splintered and equally rusted carts. Some of the carts were still full of copper ore. All around, Faith could see tools and piles of wire. In another cavern, they found a pile of hard hats. The hat atop the pile had the name Frank scrawled on it in permanent marker.

Faith shivered, even though the mine was no colder than the air outside. Michael squeezed her shoulder briefly, and when Faith turned to him, she found his face as pale as hers.

“I can cross cave-diving off of my bucket list now,” she told him, mostly just to hear a sound other than the ever-present moaning. Her voice reverberated throughout the tunnel, and she lowered it when she spoke again, “How far do you think we’ve gone?”

“Not two thousand yards,” Michael said, lifting the length of fishing line.

No sooner had he said that than the end of the line slipped through his fingers. Faith made it two more yards before her own line ran out, the end frayed from whatever had sawed through it.

Faith lifted her flashlight and took stock of their surroundings. They were in another cavern, this one rougher than the others. Rusted lantern hooks on the walls told her this was still part of the mine, but evidently a less used location. The walls of the earlier tunnels and caverns were sanded relatively smooth, but here, the walls were still rough-grained. Behind them was the tunnel that led to the surface. In front of them were two tunnels, one continuing straight down and the other veering off to the left.

“Okay,” Faith said, “here’s where we—”

“No,” Michael interrupted. “No more splitting up. We pick one tunnel.”

“We don’t have time to argue about this,” Faith said, “those girls could be anywhere. We need to maximize our chances of finding them.”

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