Page 54 of Love Me Fierce

I swallow my thickening fears. “Lead the way.”

He clips in, checks his systems, then disappears over the edge. Minutes later, I’m standing on the rocky floor of the mine. Water is seeping in through cracks in the walls and pooling in the shallow dips in the floor. The water must drain through more cracks under our feet, or we’d be submerged. Scanning the area with my light, the microscopic minerals embedded in the wet rock glint back at me. I squat down to search the rock floor, my fingers scraping through the wet sludge.

After fifteen minutes, finding nothing, I’m tracing a crack in the floor when a dark curve catches my eye. Down here everything is jagged and rough, the rock’s color a uniform dove gray, so it stands out.

“See something?” Hutch asks, his beam crossing mine as I close in.

From the small toolkit in my pocket, I pull out a pair of forceps and kneel on the wet rock. I pinch the edge of the object and gently tug it back from the depths of the fissure. It’s so corroded, I’m afraid it’s going to snap.

Hutch gets down opposite of me, adding more light. “Is it attached to something?”

“It’s wedged in,” I say.

Hutch lowers further, his cheek almost to the wet ground. “Give me the tool kit.”

I set it on the other side of the crack.

“Let me get a picture first.” With my free hand, I open the camera app and snap several, then set my phone aside.

Hutch uncaps a thin scalpel and gently levers it beneath the object. With both of us working, the object slips loose.

I drop it into my palm. The elements haven’t been kind. It’s blackened and tarnished and fragile, but the shape is distinctive.

It’s a key.

With the little loop at the top where it once hung from a chain.

Hutch looks away with a hard sigh.

“Does it look like Marin’s?” I ask him, my stomach tensing because I hate putting him through this.

“I think so, yeah. Same shape.”

I kneel so I’m closer to the fissure and get a few pictures showing the area where we pulled it from and the pendant in my palm. Hutch opens an evidence bag from the kit, and I carefully slip the key pendant inside.

Zach comes over the radio. “How’s it going down there?”

I pull the radio from my pack. “We’re just about done.”

“Are you bringing back souvenirs?”

“Affirmative.”

Even though I’m sure this news brings up a thousand questions, over the radio isn’t the place to share them. He clicks the mike in affirmation.

I use the Sharpie to label the evidence bag then tuck both items into my pack. I get out my Maglite and use the stronger beam to inspect the area where we freed the pendant. Could there be more in there? I shine the light from all angles, but the fissure isn’t very deep, and the only things stuck inside are pale grains of sand.

“Marin’s necklace was thin. If it’s the same kind, I don’t think it’d survive five years down here.”

I give the area one more sweep of my Maglite, but my gut says he’s right. The gold necklace, if it was ever here, is gone.

I pack everything up and sling on my pack. Hutch helps me hitch the ascending devices onto the ropes.

“Remember, slide with your right hand, then step into the sling and unweight your left foot, then slide the ascender with your left, and so on. You’ll get a rhythm going.”

“Right.” I huff into the darkness and get going.

The action and Hutch’s steady encouragement grounds me, and soon I’m climbing.

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