Texas Gothic - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,123

over her heart. “I just did. You gave me a coronary. We are going to have to invent an entire new category of the heebie-jeebies for you.”

Mark appeared over her shoulder, lacking his usual upbeat luster. “The troopers are yelling at us to stay back until proper rescue workers get here. They’re worried the cave-in is still unstable.”

Ben let me go, after making sure I could keep my own feet. “Tell them to get a move on. Amy needs to go to the hospital. She’s not as hardheaded as I thought.”

Mark nodded. “Ambulance is already on the way. We found a guy with a head injury, dehydrated, but mostly coherent, except for talking about a ghost hitting him on the head. When we saw the dust, and felt the quake, we weren’t sure …”

I waved that off for more pressing concerns. “Warn them there’s a whole network of caves under here, Mark. It’s a mine. Mike Kelly and Steve Sparks have been blasting underground, following the vein.… ”

I trailed off, thinking about the ghost’s warning. Had he known the caves were going to collapse? Or had he caused it?

“The blasting must have destabilized the caverns,” said Ben. “They’re in there, somewhere.”

My stomach twisted in guilt, even though they’d been plotting to kill us. I looked at Ben, hoping he would understand. “Was there any way they could have survived?”

He ran a comforting hand down my arm and linked my fingers with his. “If we did, maybe they did.”

I hoped so. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death. Even secondhand, through my connection with the ghost.

The field was full of emergency vehicles: state trooper units, the sheriff’s department, the fire department, an ambulance, and the CareFlite helicopter on standby.

I offered to get Lila to look for the missing men, but another rescue-dog team was on the way. The EMTs wouldn’t let me do much but sit and watch and wring my hands with guilt. They wanted me to go in for an MRI, and Ben was threatening to haul me off to the hospital by force, but Mark pointed out that he’d probably keel over from his own injuries if he tried.

The state troopers were on hand to confiscate the blasting caps and the dynamite I hadn’t seen. They had no trouble chalking up the collapse to an accident by a pair of claim jumpers, though Deputy Kelly insisted that, while he didn’t condone what his brother did, since Mike worked for a mining company, he would know how to handle explosives. The state law enforcement didn’t necessarily agree, and had some pointed questions for the deputy about why he hadn’t noticed someone was blasting underground in his part of the county.

I’d figured that Sparks and Mike Kelly had used the old Mad Monk stories to stir up the ghost hysteria—to keep people speculating about any strange sounds rolling through the hills—but I hadn’t really thought about whether they’d included the other Kellys in their plans.

Phin hung up her phone and slid it into her pocket with a decisive motion. “Mom is on her way to the hospital to meet us. Let’s go. No arguing.”

I looked up at her from my seat in one of the patrol cars. “But I want to see if they find Kelly and Sparks. Steve Sparks just got in over his head, I think.”

“Amy, they tried to kill you.”

“I know.”

“And they collapsed the cave with their own blasting caps and dynamite.”

There, I paused. “No. Well, yes. But. It was the ghost’s last act. I felt our tie unknot. I found him, and he saved me.”

She considered that for a second. “Well, that’s a fair trade. I’m sorry I called him ungrateful.”

“But that makes me responsible for …” I gestured to the massive hole in the ground, and the emergency vehicles all around us.

“How do you figure that?”

“I called the ghost. And it led us to it and then it warned me …”

She gave me a long look. “Could you have warned Kelly and Sparks?”

“No.”

“Did you make them explode dynamite and hit people on the head and try to kill you?”

“No.”

“What a relief. I was worried you’d developed an over-inflated opinion of your powers of mind control and time travel. Because that’s what it would take for all this to be your fault.”

I just stared at her, wondering if it was my headache that made her sound like she had actually mastered irony. Gingerly I touched the lump under my hair. “I don’t know what