Ghost Canyon (The John Decker Supernatural Thriller Series Book 7) Anthony Strong (popular romance novels .TXT) 📖

the same. Their eyes locked briefly, and Decker suppressed a shudder of revulsion. “He’s just as frightening as I remember.”

Chapter Eight

They made their way up the canyon path toward the mine opening. Charlie went first, followed by two paramedics and the three-person search and rescue team. Glenn, Charlie’s rookie partner, was last.

When they arrived at the Ghost Canyon Mine, the search team commander, a man named Ryan Colbeck whom Charlie had worked with a few times before, took charge. He made sure everyone was wearing their protective headgear and handed each member of the group a flashlight. His colleague, a young woman named Sasha Martin, gave out two-way radios. Before entering, she warned the group to stick close to each other. It was easy to get disoriented underground, and she didn’t want to lose anyone. Then the group stepped out of the sunlight and into the mine’s cold, dark world.

They proceeded slowly, with the search and rescue team taking the lead. Glenn looked around anxiously, his flashlight beam bobbing off the walls and ceiling.

“First time in a mine?” Charlie asked, glancing sideways toward his partner.

“Yeah.” Glenn nodded. He looked uneasy. “How far in do we have to go, anyway?”

“About half a mile according to our witness back in town.” Charlie kept his own flashlight pointed straight ahead. He knew from experience the dangers that lurked in old mine tunnels. “You okay with that? You look a little green there.”

“It’s narrow in here, that’s all.”

“You can go back and wait for us at the entrance if you want,” Charlie said.

“Not a chance.”

“Just putting it out there.”

“Yeah, and how would that look if something happened to you down here, with me waiting back up top like a sissy. We’re partners. Where you go, I go.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

Charlie returned his attention to the mine tunnel. There was an obstruction up ahead. At first he wasn’t sure what it was but quickly realized it was old ore carts abandoned when the mine closed. He wondered just how much junk was actually down here, rotting away in the darkness. Judging by the amount of crap littering the ghost town they had just come from, probably quite a lot. It amazed him how people left so much stuff behind when they moved on, especially out in the desert where there were entire communities abandoned once the flow of precious metals that sustained them dried up. He guessed it was just too much trouble to move everything. When he was a kid, his parents had taken a drive out to Death Valley. They’d stopped at a settlement full of nothing but tumbleweeds and dust. At one time it had been a booming frontier settlement that made its money pulling a mineral called rhyolite out of the surrounding hills. All that now remained were a few crumbling stone buildings that had long ago lost their roofs. But the thing he remembered most was the train station. It was the only structure that had survived intact. It sat empty and dark, the rail line that brought prospectors and bankers and women of ill repute to that desolate town long gone. It was hard to tell where the tracks had even been. It was a sad and lonely place. A moldering temple to the lust for money that drove men into a harsh and hostile wilderness. It was somewhere he would never forget.

“Watch your step,” Colbeck shouted back as they edged their way around the ore carts. “There are some sharp edges here. Don’t want anyone to cut themselves.”

The sudden voice snapped Charlie back to the present.

“You see anything yet?” He shouted forward to the front of the group.

“Not so far,” came the reply. This was a man Charlie hadn’t met before, but who Colbeck had introduced at the mine entrance as Enrique.

They carried on walking and met no more obstacles. After a while Glenn spoke again. “You believe what that guy back in town said?”

“About what?” Charlie asked.

“That something is down here, and it killed his colleagues.”

“Not really.” In Charlie’s experience, there wasn’t much that hung out in old mines. There might be rattlesnakes around the entrance, or even a bobcat or two looking for a cool place to lay awhile. But this far into the tunnel there should be nothing bigger than a bat, and maybe a few spiders.

“Then what do you think happened?”

Charlie was about to answer when a shout went up at the front of the group.

“The tunnel splits here. I see something. This might be the place.”

“I guess we’re about to find out.” Charlie pushed his way past the paramedics and joined the search and rescue crew, who had come to a halt twenty feet ahead at a spot where the adit branched, and two new tunnels ran in opposite directions to each other.

“This matches the place described by your witness,” Colbeck said.

“What do we have?” asked Charlie. He glanced around but didn’t see much, and certainly not a pair of mutilated corpses. “Doesn’t look like there’s anything here.”

“There’s something, alright.” Sasha trained her flashlight onto the tunnel floor. The beam picked out a dark viscous stain sitting atop the loose rock and dirt.

“That looks like blood,” Colbeck said. “A lot of it.”

“There’s more here,” Enrique said, playing his flashlight across the rock walls. “Spatter. Something nasty went down here, that’s for sure.”

“Then where are the bodies?” Charlie asked. He sensed someone behind him and turned to find Glenn off his right shoulder. Lingering a few paces behind were the two paramedics, who looked lost without a victim to work on.

“Maybe they’re wounded and wandered deeper into the mine.” Glenn said.

“Not with this much blood.” Colbeck shook his head.

“And not without these.” Sasha bent down and plucked an object from the floor near the tunnel wall. She held it up and Charlie saw it was a bloody flashlight with a smashed lens. She nodded further down the drift. “There’s another one over there.”

“Put that back where you found it and don’t touch