Page 66 of Tormented Hearts
He didn’t argue, just lifted his flashlight. It cut through the dark, illuminating old timber supports and the glint of metal deeper in. The hush seemed to swell in his ears. Dust hung in the beam of light, the air thick with the smell of wet stone and time.
Sinead stood close to him, her warmth stroking his skin. She sucked in a gasp and turned in a slow circle, taking it all in, awe written plain across her face, eyes wide and bright when she turned to him.
“Heath.”
His heart pounded hard. “What is it, darlin’?”
Her lips were parted on a puff of air, her eyes suddenly burning. “I love you.”
The words hit him harder than anything in that mine ever could.
* * * * *
Hawk couldn’t look more astounded if one of those snakes they joked about bit him in the ass.
“Sinead—”
Before he could tell her that he didn’t feel the same, that they’d only known each other days, that no one could fall so fast, Sinead turned and marched deeper into the mine.
She heard his boots behind her a beat later. She didn’t need to see his face again to sense the shock rolling off him in waves.
She could hardly believe she’d blurted it out—three words she hadn’t planned, hadn’t rehearsed, hadn’t meant to say while standing in, of all places, an old mine.
It had to be the discovery mixed with everything they’d survived to get here that made her blurt that out. Maybe she was having a poisoned fever dream after eating so many wild nuts and mushrooms.
He shone his flashlight in front of her, and she used the glow of her phone to illuminate the rock walls. They were streaked with minerals, and the timber supports were black and looked soft with age but still held after all these decades.
The air felt different than outside. Cooler, heavier, carrying the musty scent of a place that never saw daylight and probably held the ghosts of those who lost their lives for this mine.
Her phone screen blacked out as her phone fully lost battery life, plunging half the space into shadow.
“Do you want the battery pack to charge your phone?” he asked.
“Later. We can use your flashlight for now.”
They worked their way forward by the glow of Hawk’s flashlight. A few feet ahead, a rusted metal box sat along one wall.
“There.” She pointed and he beamed the light on it. The metal box was filled with old candles, their wax yellow with time. She reached for one, and Hawk’s voice echoed through the space, making her pull her hand back.
“We shouldn’t light it. We don’t know if the air’s good back here. Old mines trap gas sometimes, and I don’t want us to find out the hard way. Not after everything it took to get here.”
She nodded. “We’ll stick with the flashlight.”
They slowly made their way farther inside. Stacked against the wall in a haphazard pile were crates, the slats gray and the nails rusted orange. Hawk passed her the light, and she held it on the nearest crate.
He pried it open with careful fingers. The wood splintered, and she gasped before she fully registered why.
Gold.
Nuggets of every size. Some no bigger than a pebble, others the size of her fist.
“Oh my god.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Heath. It’s real. It’s actually real.”
He ran his fingers through the nuggets. “A hundred fifty years and no one found this,” he murmured.
He opened a second crate and then a third, all filled to the top with a fortune in gold. The fourth crate held glass jars filled with gold dust.
They kept moving deeper, testing the ground with each step as the shaft narrowed the farther back they went. Suddenly, Hawk’s arm banded around her chest and he hauled her back against him hard enough to force the breath out of her.
