“Now,” Sol bellowed. “Hylia, now!”

  Chapter 68

  Hylia swung the rifle around, pointed it in the direction of the last place she’d heard Jim’s step, and fired. The butt of the gun slammed into her shoulder, and she nearly dropped it. She’d have been better off with a bow. She pulled the lever, and a fresh cartridge slipped into the chamber. Three shots left.

  She scrambled to the top of the hill and looked over to see Jim ducking behind a log. She took a breath, squared her shoulders, and squeezed the trigger. For a brief second, she thought the gun had backfired as a burning blew into her side, taking her to the ground.

  It wasn’t her own gun that had brought her down. She lifted the gun from the dirt, but her arms refused any command from her brain. Warmth spreads across her ribs, and she tried to focus on her breath. If she could breathe, then maybe she could master her arms.

  Footsteps crossed over to her, and Jim kicked the rifle out of her inept reach. He lowered himself to her line of vision with a pistol pointed at her face. “When I shot at your father, he slithered away before I could find him. Where is he?”

  Her fingers twitched as she focused all her attention on that movement.

  Jim kneeled in the grass, stained red with her blood. “Did I kill him? Is that why you’re here alone?”

  She could still breathe. At least she had that going for her.

  “Obviously, I don’t have your niece, so I’m assuming you managed to find them. It’s too bad she won’t have the chance to get to know you.” He glanced to where Sol remained chained to the mining equipment.

  Hylia followed his gaze and caught Sol’s eyes. She focused on him, not wanting to die alone.

  “Since David never told you I killed your mother, I have to assume the little girl wouldn’t know either. I could let her live. You won’t, obviously, nor Sol.” He sighed. “I really didn’t want it to end this way, but I can’t lose my life either.”

  Hylia’s arm shifted underneath her and moved slightly. Her breathing grew labored, but she made it sound worse than it was for his account.

  “It’s too bad your father killed you, just as he did your mother.”

  She flinched, but not at the burning pain in her side.

  “Tell me where your father’s body is. I’ll need to get this pistol back in his hand. It’s the same caliber that killed your mother.” He took it out of her face and examined it. “You know, I didn’t go there that day to kill your mother. I was actually taking her the gun so she could protect herself against your father.” He wiped the sweat from his brow. “She told me some of the things he believed, and I was concerned for her safety—for your safety too.”

  She needed his attention on her. “Did you really love her?” The sentence came out in a single painful gasp.

  “I was stupid. My wife and I were going through some tough years, and I felt neglected. Your mother needed me, and I mistook that for love. I told my wife I wanted a divorce and blew up my life. I went to tell Charlotte, and she said she wouldn’t divorce David—not ever. She was going to leave, but only to convince him to get help.”

  Hylia felt no relief at that revelation, only revulsion. His words came back. I’m sorry I loved you. Jim hadn’t been apologizing for killing Charlotte but for loving her.

  “He would’ve killed her eventually, but that’s no excuse.”

  She didn’t buy his story—not completely. “And the money you stole?”

  His eyes darkened in an instant, and she had no trouble filling in the man in the shadows who murdered her mother with his face. “I didn’t steal it. I found some of David’s accounts that he’d hidden from her. I moved the money so she would have something in the divorce.”

  And she’d figured it out. Hylia realized that why and how no longer mattered—all that mattered was the man a few feet away and the little girl a few miles down the canyon.

  Plus, she’d distracted him long enough. Sol’s long shadow fell across her face.

  Jim jerked around, raising his pistol. Hylia ripped her knife out of her belt and leaped to her legs in one motion. She kept the weapon low. Jim whipped around to face her again, with Sol still a few feet away. He raised his pistol, but she charged forward.

  The knife sliced through his stomach, and his arm jerked upward—the pistol shooting into the air. He grabbed her hair with his other hand and yanked her head back, bringing the gun back down.

  Sol grabbed him from behind—his bloody face barely recognizable—and wrapped his arms around Jim’s neck. She took the blade again and sank it into his gut—twice. The gun dropped to the dirt.

  She dropped alongside it—the effort felt like fire ripped through her gut. Sol grabbed the gun and then her.

  Only once Jim’s eyes had closed for good did hers close as well.

  Chapter 69

  Zelda had her face pressed to the window as the plane took off. “The cars are so little.” She giggled, and then she bonked her head on the glass in a failed attempt to get a closer look.

  Hylia had been on a plane before, but never one in the U.S. She patted her bag for the umpteenth time to ensure she still had both of their IDs. She’d never paid that much attention, but she’d never had a real ID before.

  She clenched the passports in her fist the entire time in the airport, ready to be stopped with each step. As the plane lifted higher, she settled back in her seat, relaxing her shoulders slightly. It was so hard to believe that they were there—safe and free.

  The last few months had been a blur of getting to know Zelda and acquainting her to the broader world. Reporters had picked up on the story of a dead girl returning to life twenty years later and another little girl raised in the mountains. They called her Mowgla, as a play on the Jungle Book. Clint and the rest of the citizens of Lost Gorge kept her real name to themselves, and somehow no pictures got out.

  After the one interview Hylia conceded to, plus some time, the news moved on to the next crazy event. Hylia and Zelda Hayes faded into the obscurity and oddness of Lost Gorge. Hylia bought a small home with a backyard and a fireplace with the money left in the accounts, which had almost emptied them out. She kept a decent amount for Zelda to be given on her twenty-first birthday. The girl would have a chance to explore the world and choose her own story.

  The money had been the root of much of the evil that had befallen them twenty years ago and last summer. Part of what drew Jim to her mother had been the million in hidden accounts he’d stumbled upon when helping draw up their will. He’d imagined he would save the woman and get the fortune. She wondered if he’d considered himself the hero of his own story.

  Apparently, he didn’t wait for Charlotte to agree to his plan before drawing out some of the money. Whether her mother had found out and that’s what set off the fight that day they would never know. But Jim had lived a very good life in the ensuing years.

  Of all places, the original fortune had come from the mine—not her parents’ endeavors. Her grandfather had stumbled onto a vein just before his death and had bequeathed the silver to her father. David had used some of the money as seed for developing software. That, along with the salary of a doctor, made two people who didn’t care that much about cash very wealthy.

  Jim had died before the helicopter could haul him out of the mountains. His children offered her their father’s inheritance, anticipating a lawsuit. She refused. It had caused enough trouble.

  Her father’s body was cremated and, one day, when Zelda was older, they would walk the mountains of their childhoods and leave him in the one place he’d felt safe.

  Link’s body was brought down and placed next to Amy in Lost Gorge’s tiny cemetery at the base of the mountains. Hylia took Zelda there often, and she played in the grass while her aunt told her stories of her father as a child.

  Hylia was working through a GED program, constantly wishing she’d learned geometry already and could move on with her life. She’d also started a certified nursing program and a coding class. She couldn’t decide which path she’d pursue—maybe neither—but she wanted a better sense of who her parents had been.

  Zelda giggled again in the plane seat, reminding Hylia not much else mattered. “We’re going so high.” A few of the other few passengers smiled at her delight, but one extremely nervous passenger did not.

  “I should’ve taken drugs.” Sol grasped both armrests.

  Hylia wondered if the flight attendants should’ve strapped him in. She took his hand and ignored the pain of his grasp. “Once we’re up, I promise it’s much better. On my first flight, I tried to hide in the bathroom during takeoff.”

  “That’s an option?” he asked through clenched teeth.

  “The world is a big and wonderful place, Sol Chapa, and you’re going to be fine.” She still couldn’t believe he’d left the county—let alone the country. His cell phone had been turned to airplane mode and wouldn’t turn on until they returned. Clint swore he would not call him and promised the county would not burn to the ground while they were gone. But they were also traveling outside of forest fire season, just to be sure. They were escaping winter.

  His grip eased a bit, and he managed a nervous smile at her. “I’m more than fine. In fact, I’d say I’m downright happy.”

  “Salt,” Zelda said, using the nickname she’d given him and refused to change. “Will you swim with me in the ocean?” Zelda, more used to men in her life, had taken a great liking to the tall rescuer who came by their new home almost daily. Neither one of them had ever seen the ocean and had spent hours watching YouTube videos of it.

  He took a deep breath and settled back into the seat still clutching Hylia’s hand, their fingers interlaced. “Of course, we’ll all go together.”

  An Excerpt from Murder in the Mine

  Two weeks. That was all the time that stupid cow had to bide in a pasture before her calf could be branded. Then the pair of them would be released into the mountains to live out the spring and summer in relative peace. Instead, she’d slipped through two fences and headed into the mountains early.

  On horseback, Liam Orrick followed the errant cow’s tracks up an old game trail lined by still-bare aspens. The cow had managed to leave behind her calf in her desperate attempt at freedom. Liam, peeved at the entire situation, considered leaving her to her own devices, but he didn’t want to be stuck bottle feeding the bawling baby she’d abandoned. They’d already lost more calves than usual this season, which meant less money, and that meant less of everything else.

  The higher the cow went, the easier he could follow her tracks. While the valley below basked in the mid-May spring weather, the surrounding mountains still clung to a slushy layer of snow. He had to grudgingly admire the cow’s fortitude as the snow would be knee-deep before long.

  After a mile, he realized with dread it wasn’t fortitude that drove the cow high into the dirty snow and pines. Small drops of blood brightened the snow between the cow’s prints. When she’d delivered her calf a few days prior, he’d thought it had been a successful, healthy birth. Only an animal driven by the pain of death would wander this high up.

  Liam spurred his gelding faster up the faint trail, unsure of what awaited him.

  This part of his family’s ranch wasn’t one he was as familiar with. The trees were sparse, with more rock than greenery separating them. Somehow the cow had managed to find a faint trail he’d never noticed before.

  The cow’s baleful cries carried through the thin mountain air and echoed across the high peaks. The rocks slowed down his horse, and he dismounted, wrapping the reins on a nearby branch. Large gray boulders surrounded the area, and he could no longer tell which way the cow had gone. She’d managed to find her way through the rocks while he scrambled on top of them, jumping from one to the other.

  He made his way to a break in the trees where he spotted the black animal lying in a middle of a rock-strewn meadow. He stumbled his way to her side. She heaved in deep breaths even as blood seeped out of the birth canal. Despite the obvious injuries, birthing wasn’t what was causing her immediate distress.

  Her leg, twisted and bent at an unusual angle under her, meant there would be no hauling her off the mountain and no reuniting her with her calf.

  Liam returned to his horse and made it back to her side with a rifle before laying the barrel against her head. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer asking for forgiveness. The echo of the .22’s report replaced the cow’s painful cries. Without being able to hear it, he knew her calf cried below for his missing and now dead mother.

  He hated himself and his job at that moment. He also spared some anger toward his cousin who’d chosen the bull that had fathered the calf. The bull had been far too large for their first-year heifers, who were producing calves that tore out of their mothers. This wasn’t the first motherless calf.

  The cow’s carcass would need to be cut up and hauled down the mountain before the predators could descend. He didn’t want to encourage the coyotes or wolves to prey on his herd.

  With his always-sharpened knife, he went to kneel next to the cow. Instead, his foot slipped into a hole. He slid in past his knee, and he grabbed handfuls of slushy snow that did nothing to slow his slide. For a moment, he had an insane thought he was being swallowed up by the earth itself.

  He swung his legs in the space opening up below him. As he slipped down past his chest, his feet finally found solid ground, halting his descent. He stood still, his breath gasping and his fingers losing feeling from the snow he’d clutched.

  Once he’d managed to slow his breathing to a post-marathon rate, he crawled back out of the hole barely larger than him—but that didn’t say much. He wasn’t known for his girth. Liam sat in the slush until he had the presence of mind to grab his phone and shine a light down in the hole. Whatever was down there, the light didn’t reach the bottom. This was no animal lair but had to be a shaft into one of the hundreds of mines that crossed all through Lost Gorge Mountains.

  He stuck his head in to get a better look but when the dank air reached his lungs, he started to cough. He whipped his head out with the realization he may have stumbled into a piece of history that had been buried a hundred years ago—and buried for good reason.

  If he was right, he’d found the mine that had killed his great-great-grandfather and two others. Not only did the legendary mine still contain their bodies, but lore had it the mine held enough silver to make the town rich and enough poisonous gas to kill anyone who dared venture in.

  About the Author

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  Also by Lee Dawson

  Death in the Desert

  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BGSV6W5Q

  The town of Lost Gorge unites to find missing mountain biker, Keenley Davis. But one among them doesn’t intend for her to come home alive.

  Twenty-year-old Keen was supposed to be home by dinner, but darkness descends with no sign of her. Maybe her bike broke down; maybe she fell and got injured. Everyone figures she’ll turn up at dawn—if a little worse for wear.

  But dawn turns into day and a day turns into another. When it becomes painfully apparent she didn’t go missing on her own, suspicions abound in the small town.

  Her parents know their daughter and her survival skills. If there was a way for her to get home on her own, she would.

  The sheriff knows the town and its many secrets. Plenty of folks in this remote region have pasts to hide.

  Keen knows whoever attacked her and left her for dead in the wilderness won’t let her come out alive.

  Who will find her first?

  Fiend in the Forest

  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BGZ18LF2

  The blizzard descended in a fury that the old-timers swore they’d never seen. The roads shut down; the town shut down; the ski lift shut down. Everyone was accounted for—or so everyone thought.

  But one skier got on the chairlift and never made it to the other end. By the time the storm cleared out, all that remained was his decimated remains in the snow. Whether animal attack or murder—no one’s quite sure—nobody has ever seen a body with that kind of carnage.

  Mina Park was operating the chairlift that afternoon and can’t forgive herself for failing to save him. Now her part-time job as a deputy feels a lot more like a full-time calling. Who was he? Where did he come from? And, more than anything, what happened on that dark night that left him in such a state and by who’s hand?

  A couple of the more colorful townsfolk are convinced Bigfoot is the culprit. Crazies from all over descend on the region and head into the woods to find the elusive beast. All they find is more pain and death.

  Leaving Mina to face down the beast, or the beast in the man, before anyone else dies.

  Murder in the Mine

  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BGZ783LM

  When Liam stumbles onto a hundred-year-old murder, he releases a killer a century in the making.

  Back in 1922, part of the Lucky Star mine collapsed on its unlucky owners, entombing their bodies in the mountain. To keep anyone else from dying in the unstable mine, the townspeople dynamited the entrance and hid the location forever.

  A hundred years later, Liam Orrick, a direct descendant of one of the miners stumbles onto the abandoned mine. With the help of historian Catherine Kessler, he plumbs its deadly depths to discover two bodies—one a skeleton and one a whole lot newer.