Page 16 of Reset

Sarah seemed to be reading his mind. “How much earth is pressing down on us? All it’ll take is one crack giving way and we’ll be buried alive.”

“Not alive,” he corrected. “We’d be crushed like a grape under a boot.”

There was a second of stunned silence before she burst out laughing. It was slightly hysterical, but he’d take it.

Suddenly, the laughter cut short.

“I see something,” Sarah said.

Ryan peered into the darkness. There was definitely something up ahead. “A door, maybe?”

“Oh, I really hope it’s the exit,” Sarah said.

With each step closer, it became clear that they’d hit a corner. To the right, a new tunnel veered off into the darkness. Straight ahead was a large iron gate.

Slowly, incrementally, the glow from the flame revealed the size of the gate. It filled the tunnel top to bottom, with no space around it or between the bars to squeeze through. It was old, rusted, and obviously made by hand. If Ryan had to guess, he’d say the gate was installed at the same time as the tunnel was built.

As they drew closer, a soft orange lamp clicked on in the area beyond the gate. That was definitely a more recent addition. They froze, waiting to see if the light meant someone was coming. Ryan’s ears strained, but all he heard was their breathing. The air didn’t stir. There was no movement other than the ones they made. They were alone.

With that realization, he took a steadying breath and became aware of Sarah’s whole body shaking.

“Hey, it’s okay.” He patted her shoulder, a little awkwardly. “Nobody’s there.”

“The light freaked me out when it suddenly came on,” she confessed.

“Motion sensor.” He moved closer to get a better look at the gate.

Sarah hurried to his side. “Can we open it?”

“I need more light.” A small candle and a dim bulb weren’t going to cut it. He reached into the jeans pocket and pulled out his phone, switching the flashlight on.

Sarah pointed at the rusty lock. “If there’s a lock, that means you can pick it, right?”

Unfortunately, he had to shatter her hopes. Angling the light through the bars, he pointed at a brand-new, diagonal length of steel, wedged between the center of the gate and the floor. “See that? It’s a security bar. Or, at least a custom-made version of one, and it looks like it’s been added pretty recently too. It’s fitted into a welded plate on the gate and locked into the floor plate over there. The only way to dismantle it is from the other side. They must leave the gate open when they’re on this side of it. Otherwise, they’d be trapped in here with us.”

Her hold on the candle tightened until her knuckles were white. “So, we dig under.”

“That isn’t going to work either. See how the part that opens sits against iron struts? The bits you’d have to step over when going through the gate? Those struts are embedded in the rock, and there’s no way to tell how far down they go.”

Her shoulders slumped. “There’s no getting past this, is there?”

“No.” Ryan switched the flashlight off to save the phone’s battery.

“Why is this happening to us?” Sarah asked, looking more than a little lost.

“I wish I knew.”

“I’m not sure I can handle this, Ryan.” Her voice was small. She wasn’t seeking pity. She was only stating the facts as she saw them.

Ryan cupped her cheek. “Sure you can. I’ve only known you a couple of hours, and even I can tell that you’ll be able to handle whatever comes our way.”

Her eyelashes dropped. “Yeah. A couple of hours,” she said softly before straightening her shoulders and stepping away from his touch. “It seems to me that I have a choice. I can either freak out, have a panic attack, run into a wall, knock myself out, and lie there waiting to die. Or I can pull up my big girl panties, use my brain, work alongside you, and die trying to get out of here.”

There was no way not to admire her resolve. Although… “I don’t like that both options end in death.”

“Might as well be realistic, odds are against us. Roughly twenty percent of all cave rescues end in death for those stuck or lost. Mining accounts for eight percent of the world’s death toll. Which is a massive amount when you take into consideration that only one percent of the population work in mining.”

Given their situation, it was pretty damn awesome the way she made him want to laugh. “How do you know this stuff?”