Intimate Secrets Read online

  Odell’s eyes bulged. He tore at Clay’s hands around his neck to no avail.

  “Where’s Ivy?” Clay demanded again.

  Odell’s face twisted in panic.

  “Last chance.” Clay tightened his grip on the man’s throat again.

  Odell’s eyes went wild. He tried to move his head, but Clay had him pressed against the wall.

  “She’s—” It came out a hiss.

  Clay gave him a little more air.

  Odell’s gaze flicked off to his right. “In the hole—”

  The gunshot ricocheted through the cave, deafening. Odell slumped against the wall. Another shot filled the room.

  Josie swung the beam of the flashlight in the direction she thought the shot had come from, pointing the gun toward an exit on the other side of the room.

  Something moved, then disappeared around the corner of the cave wall, but not before she’d seen another light.

  “Turn off the flashlight!” Clay cried. “You’re making yourself a target.”

  She snapped off the light, her heart thundering in her chest, as the darkness enveloped them. Who in God’s name had shot Odell?

  She felt Clay’s hand on hers. He took the gun, then the flashlight. She heard him move away from her. He shone the flashlight around the room.

  Empty. Except for the rock sculptures. And Odell’s body on the floor, blood still pumping out of the wound in his chest.

  She crawled over to him and took his face in her hands. A slight gasp escaped his lips.

  “Where is my daughter? Don’t you dare die without telling me. Do you hear me, you bastard?”

  “It’s too late, Josie,” Clay said from behind her, anguish distorting his voice.

  “No,” she cried, and shook Odell’s head in her hands.

  His eyes fluttered open. She watched him try to focus.

  “Where’s Ivy?” she cried, her voice breaking. “Tell me, Odell. Tell me, damn you, or may you burn in hell.”

  He looked up at her as if he might actually see her. “Crawl.” The word barely escaped his lips. “Crawl.” His eyes closed, and she felt the weight of his head in her hands and knew he was gone.

  “Josie?” Clay asked.

  She let Odell’s head drop back.

  “Josie, we have to get out of here. The killer will be back. For the jewels. For us. Do you hear me?”

  “I can’t walk, Clay. It’s my ankle. I think it’s broken, but I’m not leaving without Ivy.”

  He shone the light on her ankle and let out a low curse. “I’ll carry you, but we have to leave, Josie. You have to listen to me—”

  She shook her head. “We couldn’t move fast enough with you carrying me and you know it. The killer would catch us. You have to go after him.” She knew that’s what he wanted to do. He was only suggesting they leave because he wanted to protect her.

  “He might know where Ivy is,” she whispered.

  “I don’t want to leave you.”

  She could hear the pain in his voice, see it in his face. “You have to, Clay. Otherwise, he’ll come back. Like you said, he isn’t going to leave without the jewels.” Or without killing her and Clay as well.

  She watched him look toward the darkness where the killer had disappeared, trying to make up his mind.

  “Go, Clay. I’ll be all right.”

  He looked at her, then got to his feet, the decision made. “I won’t let him get past me to you. I’ll have to take the flashlight, though, Josie. I’ll leave you the candle and matches, but the candle won’t last long. Use it only when you have to. Stay here. I’ll be back for you.”

  She looked up at him, tears filling her eyes. “I’ll be here, Clay. Just come back. Then we’ll find Ivy and get out of here.”

  He touched her cheek, his gaze locked on hers. “There’s so much I should have said to you, Josie.”

  “There’ll be time. When this is all over,” she whispered, turning to kiss the palm of his hand.

  He scooped up the jewels and put them back in the bag. Then he checked Odell’s gun for ammunition, shoved it into the waistband of his jeans and, picking up the backpack, removed the candle and matches. “I’ll be back,” he said, pressing them into her hands.

  She smiled up at him. “I’m counting on it.”

  Before the last of the light from his flashlight disappeared, she lit the candle with trembling fingers. It flickered, illuminating a small circle around her, reassuring her with its paltry light.

  She blew it out and held both the matches and the candle in her hands as she scooted back against the cave wall, away from Odell. She stared into the darkness, seeing nothing, feeling only pain. Ivy. The horrible ache for her daughter suppressed even the pain in her ankle.

  Crawl. Josie closed her eyes and tried not to think about the darkness. It had a smell, a feel, a texture that closed in the moment the candle went out. She squeezed her eyes tighter shut. Don’t waste the candle.

  Crawl. She thought of Odell’s words. He’d said Ivy was in a hole somewhere. Crawl. She felt a chill scuttle across her skin.

  She opened her eyes. Tiny pinpoints of light danced in the darkness. She closed her eyes again, unable to face such blackness. End. That had been the word on the map. Circled in red. Not long after the waterfall.

  Could this be where it was supposed to end? Could the hole where he’d hidden Ivy be in this room? That would be like Odell. In fact, she remembered seeing his gaze flick to a corner of the room when he mentioned Ivy.

  Carefully, she cradled the candle in her lap and, holding the matches, struck one. The sudden flare of light blinded her for a moment. She thought she’d dropped the candle, but there it was in her lap.

  She lit it. The tiny, insignificant light pooled around her. She pushed the matches into her front pocket, then cautiously got up on all fours again. The candle flickered and she knew it wouldn’t take much movement for it to go out.

  She tried to get her bearings. They’d entered this room from the right. She hadn’t noticed a hole, but she couldn’t be sure. What she was sure of, was Odell.

  Where had they first seen him? He’d have been near the hole. Guarding his prize, his ransom.

  It took everything in her not to cry out Ivy’s name. But hadn’t Odell said he’d given her something to sleep and that calling for her wouldn’t do any good?

  She didn’t know why, but she actually believed he’d been telling the truth. She moved slowly, carefully, holding the candle as if life depended on it.

  Moving to where she’d first seen Odell, she shone the light along the wall, looking for a space deep enough to hide a child in.

  The hole, when she finally found it, was small, almost round, and appeared deep. The others she’d found had been too shallow. But this one— Her ankle was killing her. She almost welcomed the pain. It distracted her from her real pain as she lay down on her stomach and slid into the hole and began to crawl.

  Was Ivy in here? He’d said she was in a hole. He’d said he’d given her something to sleep. He’d said crawl. But he might have been lying. He might have meant something entirely—

  She caught the glint of a tiny odd-shaped object on the narrow tunnel floor. Using her one foot, she pushed herself toward it, holding the candle high.

  “Don’t go out now,” she said to the flame. “Not now.”

  She stopped and looked down at the small button in the shape of a bear’s head. Tears rushed her eyes, blinding her. Ivy had been wearing her favorite bear pajamas with teddy bear buttons.

  The candle flickered. She looked down at it through her tears and blew out the flame. It was hard to wait until the wax cooled enough that she could put the candle back into her pocket. But she did, moving methodically, carefully, slowly in a darkness that seemed denser, closer, almost suffocating.

  She didn’t need light, she told herself. She would find her daughter. Closing her eyes, she felt ahead of her, pulling with her fingers, pushing with her one good foot, dragging the other one, the pain
almost unbearable.

  She turned a corner and had to stop, the pain in her ankle making her dizzy and sick to her stomach and close to blacking out. She laid her head on her arms and wept, afraid she was going into shock. The sobs finally subsided. She thought of Ivy and slowly lifted her head from her arms.

  Just a little farther. She could go just a little farther. She had to.

  Then she smelled it. Baby powder. The scent seemed to float to her, beckoning her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Clay moved through the cave, keeping his light dim and low. His mind raced ahead of him. Who had shot Odell? And why? To keep him from telling them where Ivy was? Or something else?

  He frowned, remembering something Odell had said when he’d seen the spilled jewels. “Wait a minute, these aren’t—”

  What had he been about to say?

  Clay stopped, hidden from view behind a space in the rocks, and pulled out the bag of jewels. He’d never seen them before, only in a photograph that Williams had given him after they were stolen.

  Shining his flashlight over the glittering mass, he saw with a start that some of them had broken when they’d dropped to the rock floor.

  A sick feeling settled in his stomach as he took one of the larger diamonds and ran the sharp edge across the glass face of his flashlight.

  Just as he’d suspected. Paste. His daughter had been kidnapped for a worthless bag of glass.

  It took all his willpower not to throw the jewels against the wall. He stared down at them and sucked in his breath as his anger dimmed and realization dawned, blinding bright.

  He let out a curse under his breath. It was finally starting to make sense. Odell faking his death. Raymond turning up after two years. The missing jewels. Raymond’s calls to Texas.

  He pushed the jewels back into the bag, then looked around for a place to hide them.

  Then he moved forward, knowing now what was waiting for him. Who was waiting for him. And just how desperate the killer was.

  Ahead he heard a sound. The scrape of a boot heel on rock. He clicked off his flashlight and froze. The air suddenly seemed colder. He almost thought he felt a breeze and sensed that the narrow tunnel he was in opened into a larger space just ahead.

  He held his breath. Someone was in the next room. He felt it. Thought he could almost hear him breathing. Sense him waiting in expectation.

  The killer had the advantage. He knew the landscape in the cave and he knew where Clay would appear.

  The darkness had its own ominous feel to it. Just a cold denseness that made it feel alive. He could see where it wouldn’t take long in this kind of total blackness to go crazy, to hear the dark begin to whisper things in your ear that would drive you mad.

  He reached blindly into the open pocket of the backpack for Odell’s flashlight. It was broken and didn’t work, but he’d taken it for the batteries just in case he needed them.

  He now carefully and quietly unscrewed the end of the flashlight, took out the batteries and stuffed them into his pocket, working as quickly as he could in the dark. Then he twisted the end back on the flashlight. It was still heavy enough to cause a clatter if he dropped it. Or threw it.

  Then, making sure he was ready, he moved forward, knowing the killer was ready for him.

  JOSIE HADN’T GONE but a few feet more in the narrow confines of the hole when she felt something soft. The edge of a baby blanket.

  She held her breath as her hand closed over one small arm. Hurriedly her hand went to her daughter’s face. She felt warm breath and heard the wonderful sleeping sounds the toddler made.

  Her face streaming with tears, she dug out the candle and struck another match. The flame flared, shocking her to see that Ivy lay curled in a cocoon of blankets against a solid rock wall where the hole ended.

  A wave of panic swept over her. She felt as if the walls were closing in on them and there wasn’t enough air for them to breathe.

  But the look on her baby’s face calmed her some. She touched her hand to it again, cupping her precious cheek. Ivy stirred a little, sighing in her sleep.

  In the light, Josie could see that Ivy lay on a makeshift thin wooden sled of sorts. That’s how Odell had gotten her back in here. That meant it would be easier to drag her out.

  She noticed something else. An indentation in the wall. If she were careful, she thought she might be small enough to get turned around so she wouldn’t have to try to pull Ivy and herself out backward.

  The pain in her ankle had intensified. She wasn’t sure she could crawl backward. And she knew Clay would never hear her cries this deep in the rock.

  She put the candle down, gauging how much wax was left. She had to hurry. Otherwise she would have to do this in the dark.

  The maneuver of getting turned around spent all of her energy but she finally managed it. She lay pressed against the rock wall for a moment, watching her daughter in the flickering candlelight.

  Then she gave Ivy a kiss, snugged the blankets around her so nothing could get scraped and blew out the candle. Carefully, she put it back into her pocket along with the matches. The first thing Josie wanted Ivy to see when she woke was her mother’s face.

  Then she began the arduous job of getting them both out. Fortunately, the sled beneath Ivy slid easily along the rock floor of the hole. And this time, Josie knew where she was going and she had her daughter with her.

  She felt as though she could move mountains. Just let Clay come back, she prayed. Just let him live. His daughter needs him. I need him.

  CLAY FELT THE DARKNESS seem to change around him and knew before his hand lost contact with the rock wall of the cave that he’d reached the next room.

  He hung back, afraid the killer would suddenly shine a flashlight on him. He dug the batteries out of his pockets, waited for a long moment, then threw the empty flashlight as far and hard as he could.

  The flashlight clattered off rock, echoing through the cavernous room. A light flashed on, just as he’d anticipated it would. Off to the left. Back in the stand of stalagmites.

  Clay threw a battery at the light and was rewarded with an “umph” and a curse. The light flashed out.

  “I want my daughter, Williams,” he yelled into the huge room, then dropped to his hands and knees and moved quickly and quietly across the expanse of stone floor that he’d seen in the glow from the killer’s flashlight, Odell’s pistol still in his waistband.

  He didn’t want to kill the collector. Not until he got Brandon Williams to tell him where Ivy was.

  A shot exploded in the room, the bullet ricocheting off the rocks, then another shot.

  Clay stopped crawling across the floor to pull himself up behind one of the taller stalagmites he’d seen in the flash of light, the second battery in hand, his mind reviewing what he’d seen of the room, anticipating where Williams would go next.

  He wasn’t surprised when he heard a scuffling sound off to his right. He’d hoped to push the killer in that direction. Away from Josie and that part of the caverns.

  He threw the battery in the direction the sound had come from. Another shot rattled through the room, echoing against the rocks and followed by an oath and a loud thud as the collector must have fallen over something, too afraid to turn on his flashlight again.

  Then another shot. The bullet pinged far off to the left, a wild shot.

  “Tell me where my daughter is and I won’t kill you,” Clay yelled, scrambling quickly away the moment the words were out of his mouth.

  Two shots followed, then the loud click that Clay had hoped for. The bastard had a six-shot revolver, the most popular weapon in the West. And he was out of bullets.

  Clay snapped on his flashlight, counting on Williams’s arrogance. It wouldn’t even have crossed his mind that he might need another gun.

  But he would have more bullets, only Clay had no intentions of giving him time to reload.

  He caught the dark figure in his flashlight beam and charged him, like a linebacker dodgin
g through the stone statues.

  He could see the man digging desperately in his pocket, his gaze blinded by the light. At the last moment, Williams heaved the pistol at him and tried to turn and run.

  Clay ducked the airborne weapon and tackled the man. They went down hard. He heard the man’s head hit the solid rock floor with a crack, then Clay was on him.

  It only took a moment to realize that the man wasn’t fighting him, wasn’t moving at all.

  Clay swore as he groped on the floor for the flashlight. It had rolled over against one of the rock formations, the beam shooting across the room to the tip of a stalactite hanging almost to the floor.

  He grabbed the flashlight and swung the beam to the soft, frightened features of Williams’s face. But the collector stared up at him with a blankness that sent his heart into overdrive. Williams was still alive, but the fall and the knock on the head hadn’t done him any good.

  “The jewels,” Williams whispered.

  “I don’t give a damn about your jewels. Where is my daughter?”

  “I don’t know anything about your daughter,” he whimpered.

  Clay felt panic surge through him. “No, damn you. You have to have some idea.”

  “Odell. That was his doing. All his doing. I just wanted my jewels.”

  “And I’d have gotten them for you, just like I said I would. You didn’t have to kill Odell. You didn’t have to try to kill me. Or—” He almost said “My family.”

  “Please, you have to get me medical attention,” Williams whined. “I’m in terrible pain.”

  “Aren’t we all,” Clay snapped. He didn’t know why but he believed Williams didn’t know where Ivy was. All the man had cared about was his jewels and keeping his secret safe.

  “You hired Odell and Raymond to steal them for the insurance money…only, let me guess, they got greedy. You risked my daughter’s life for nothing!”

  “Nothing?” Williams cried. “What about my reputation?”

  “Your reputation is in the toilet and you’re on your way to prison,” Clay said, pushing to his feet.

  He picked up Williams’s flashlight. The man wasn’t going anywhere. Not hurt and in the dark.