Page 1 of Shadow of Death
PROLOGUE
Caves
Carey Allen paused, looked around, and breathed in deeply. She loved this area of Colorado just outside of the bustling city of Denver. The sky on a day like today was amazing. Blue just touched with delicate white puffs of clouds here and there. And the air! It was fresh, clean, delicious, and the scent of nature was wonderful.
Of course, she shouldn’t have been where she was without permission and a guide, but she was an experienced hiker. She had climbed all manner of mountains, and she had received her diver’s certificate at Lake Mead and gone on to cave dive! Hey, it was America. She was an adult, she knew what she was doing, and she had every right to be here.
She closed her eyes for a minute, listening to the sound of the nearby waterfall. Then she dove into the freshwater lake, shuddered slightly at the chill that seized her, then let it fall off. Surfacing, she looked back to the shore.
Don Blake was watching her with admiration, she hoped. She’d had a crush on the man for the longest time, and she’d enticed him out by telling him she knew the caves here and had explored them on her own before. He waved to her.
“Come on in! The water is great!” she told him.
“Freezing!” he countered.
“Wimp!”
He laughed. Don was anything but a wimp. He’d served two tours in the Middle East and was still in the reserve. Tall, not dark but red-headed, and very handsome. Working with him at Barrington Advertising, she’d fallen a bit in love the minute they had met—something, she hoped, she’d kept to herself. She had tried very hard to always be casual, fun, and flirty, not like a puppy with a wildly wagging tail.
But when they had talked about the caves, he’d shown a real interest in her.
“Wimp?” he returned and, as she knew he would, shed his hiking boots and socks, dropped his backpack and dove into the water.
Carey swam toward the waterfalls and the entry to the caves she knew she would find behind them. She hadn’t slipped in here in months, but nature had created the phenomena of the falls and the caves over hundreds of thousands of years. They couldn’t have changed much in a few months.
She crawled up the rocks that rose behind the falls and waited for Don. He arrived shortly, dripping as he joined her on the rocks. They’d both worn tank tops that would dry quickly, but the hiking pants would take longer. In the crisp air Carey had loved so much, it was cold.
“Follow me!” she said.
There was a winding path that led into a slew of caves, some deeper than others. And, of course, as they progressed, it grew darker within.
She stopped, turning to Don and smiling. “Well, I guess this is as far as we go—”
He was frowning. “What’s that light?” he asked.
She turned. He was right. There was a strange glow coming from deeper within the earth.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Shall we?”
“Well, of course!”
They headed in the direction of the light. Nearing it, Carey suddenly felt the earth slipping beneath her feet. She’d hit an odd angle in the earth and it...
Led to nothing.
She fell and fell, landed hard, hurt everywhere, and wondered if she had broken bones.
She tried to move and cried out to Don.
“Careful! There’s a slope and...nothing.”
He didn’t answer her. The dim light they had seen was pale here, barely alleviating the darkness. She turned, trying to see if her limbs would work and to assess her position.
That’s when she saw him.
The dead man.
