warn him.
“Listen,” said Steve, and something in his voice made me think he’d realized the same thing I had. “You hide, with the girl. I can bluff through this.”
“What if she called him?” Mike didn’t sound worried at all, but as excited as if he’d been handed a birthday present. “We need to get rid of him, too.”
“I can handle this, Mike. I’ve done it before. I’ve got every reason to be here.”
“Don’t get squeamish. With him gone, Helen McCulloch will turn to you to run things, and you can suggest she sell this land back to me. Or hell, marry the grieving widow, then you sell me the land.”
I didn’t think I had any room inside me for one more emotion, but indignation managed to squeeze in with the others. I was sure it was Kelly who had hit Mac the night before, and the only thing that surprised me now was that he hadn’t killed him. Maybe he’d tried but hadn’t been able to get down the ravine.
Steve hesitated long enough for me to know he was thinking about what Mike Kelly had said. And if he could think about it, he could do it. Or at least stand by and watch it be done.
As soon as Ben rounded the hill, he would see Steve’s truck and it would be too late for them to hide me. Steve would have to go along with Mike’s plan or give up and go to jail. I was not taking bets on that.
With a burst of energy I didn’t think I had, I rolled under the diesel truck and out the other side. My head seemed to keep moving after my body stopped, but I couldn’t spare the time to be sick. I pushed myself upright, swallowing the bile that rose in the back of my throat.
Surprise had given me a precious head start. I staggered to my feet and ran.
The pounding of my steps was like a hammer to my skull. In the corner of my eye, I saw Ben’s truck, and his stunned face through the windshield. My goal wasn’t to get to Ben, but alert him to danger by my wounded-gazelle-like flight across the pasture. I wasn’t worried about myself. I didn’t consider the possibility that either of the men could catch me. I was all-star varsity soccer. I was Braveheart in Urban Outfitters. I was Supergirl.
I was seriously delusional.
Steve Sparks did catch me. Didn’t even have to hit me on the head. The jarring stop rattled my bruised brain, and I slid into genuine, dark, dismal unconsciousness, seriously wishing I hadn’t compared myself to William Wallace, who had met such a very sticky end.
38
this time I woke up cold, not hot, and not moving. At least, I tried to convince my stomach of that. I cracked open one eyelid, then the other, and my vision was filled with Ben McCulloch, lying on his side facing me, and looking like hell.
I’m not sure what alerted him to my waking, but he asked, “Are you okay?”
Swallowing first, I managed to croak, “That’s a hell of a question from a guy who looks like he went two rounds in a cage match.”
He smiled ruefully, then winced as the motion pulled at his split lip. “Have you ever been to a cage match?”
“No,” I admitted.
“I don’t look that bad.”
But he did look bad. Awful and wonderful and frustrating. His lip was swollen and split, and so was the bridge of his nose. There was blood all over his face and his cheek was bruised, and he was going to have a black eye soon, too.
“Where are we?” I tried to lift my head to look, but it was so heavy, I left it down for a little while longer.
“A cave.” He paused and corrected himself. “A mine, I guess. Twenty-first-century claim jumpers. It really is a plot out of a movie. They’ve been blasting small sections, trying to follow a vein of ore. That was the sound we kept hearing.”
“Gold?” That motivated me to sit up. Or work at it, anyway. My head still pounded, but my stomach seemed willing to behave.
Ben rolled over on to his back with a groan. “Don’t be greedy, Amaryllis.”
“Ben, this could be Los Almagres. The lost Spanish mine.”
He chuckled, then winced. “It would serve that bastard Mike Kelly right. Your Mad Monk’s expedition might not have made it back to Mexico with a report, but others did. Los Almagres was abandoned because they never found