Lisa Gardner - The killing hour

“It’s possible. Search-and-rescue isn’t easy, Nora Ray. The Coast Guard passed back and forth over your spot five times before seeing your red shirt.”

“I was lucky.”

“You were smart. You hung in there. You kept trying.”

“Do you think this girl is smart?”

“I don’t know. But I’m willing to settle for lucky if that gets her home.”

Nora Ray nodded. She resumed walking and Mac zigzagged through another abandoned building. Already past four o’clock. His heart was beating too fast, his face felt dangerously hot to the touch. They were pushing too hard for the conditions. Raising their core body temperatures to dangerous levels and going too long between drinks. This was no way to manage a rescue operation and yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

Nora Ray was right; if the girl was in the cavern, they could literally be standing on top of her right now. So close, yet so far away.

Then, through the buzzing drone of the insects, he finally heard a welcome cry. It was Kimberly, somewhere off to the left.

“Hey, hey,” she yelled. “I found something. Over here, quick!”

Lee County, Virginia

4:53 P . M .

Temperature: 101 degrees

“HELLO, HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME?” Kimberly had found an eight-inch-wide duct sticking up through the ground like a section of stovepipe. She peered down the tube, trying to see where it led, but encountered only darkness. Next, she waved her hand over the top. Definitely a draft of cooler air coming up from somewhere. She tried dropping a small pebble. She never heard it land.

Mac was running over. Nora Ray as well. Kimberly leaned closer to the pipe, cupping her mouth to amplify her voice. “Is anyone down there?”

She lowered her ear to the mouth of the pipe. Did she hear movement? Sounds of something shifting way down in the dark, dank depths? It was hard to be sure.

“Hellooooooo!”

Mac finally drew up at her side. His hair was spiky with sweat, his shirt and shorts plastered to his skin. He dropped to his knees beside her and added his voice to the pipe.

“Is anyone down there? Karen Clarence? Tina Krahn? Are you in there?”

“She might be asleep,” Kimberly murmured.

“Or unconscious.”

“Are you sure that goes to the cavern?” Nora Ray asked.

Kimberly shrugged wearily. “As sure as I am about anything.”

“But that can’t be the entrance,” Nora Ray said. “No one could fit down that hole.”

“No, it can’t be an entrance. Maybe it’s an airhole, or a skylight. Someone at least took the time to engineer the pipe. That’s gotta mean something.”

“The cavern’s big,” Mac muttered. He tried the pebble trick and got the exact same results. “From the website it sounded as if it were several rooms connected by long tunnels, and some of the rooms are the size of small cathedrals. Maybe this pipe leads to one of those chambers, letting in some natural light.”

“We need an entrance,” Kimberly said.

“No kidding.”

“I’ll stay here and keep yelling. You and Nora Ray see if you can’t find another opening. Maybe you’ll hear my voice echoing through and that will help. Besides…” Kimberly faltered. “If one of the girls is down there, I don’t want her to think we went away. I want her to know that we’re coming. That it’ll be over soon.”

Mac nodded, giving her a look that was hard to read. He and Nora Ray resumed their frantic scouring of the woods. Kimberly got down on the dusty ground, placing her mouth next to the rusty pipe.

“This is Kimberly Quincy,” she called. She wasn’t sure what to say, so she started with the basics. “I’m with Special Agent Mac McCormack and Nora Ray Watts. We’ve come to help you. Can you hear me at all? I can’t hear you. Maybe, if you’re too weak to yell, you could try banging on something.”

She waited. Nothing.

“Are you thirsty? We have water and food. We also have a blanket. I understand the caverns are cold, even this time of year. And boy, I bet you’re sick to death of the dark.”

She thought she heard something this time. She paused, holding her breath. A thud against the rocks? Or maybe a cold, frightened girl, trying to drag her body closer to the hole in the sky?

“A whole team is coming. Search-and-rescue specialists, karst specialists. They’ll have all the proper gear to be able to get you out of there. And trust me, if you think it’s cold down there, wait ’til you find out how hot it is up here. Must be a good hundred degrees in the shade. You’ll be missing that cool hunk of rock in no time. But I bet you’ll love seeing the sun again. And the trees and the sky and all the smiling faces of us rescue workers, who can’t wait to meet you.”

She was still talking. Rambling, really. Funny, her voice had grown thick.

“You don’t need to be afraid. I know it’s hard to be alone in the dark. But people are here now. We’ve been looking for you a long time. And we’re going to go into the cavern, we’re going to bring you back up to the light and then we’re going to find the man who did this, so it never happens again.”

Sounds now. Loud, startling noises like the crunch of gravel. Kimberly jerked her head up in excitement, then realized the noise wasn’t coming from the stovepipe. Instead, she saw two dusty trucks pull in straight ahead. One had a sticker of a bat glued to the driver-side window.

A door banged open. A man sprang out, already running to the back, jerking down his tailgate, and tossing out gear.

“You the one that reported the lost caver?” the guy yelled over his shoulder. The second truck had already come to a halt and was now shedding two more men rushing for gear.

“Yes.”

“Sorry for the delay. Would’ve been here sooner if not for that damn tree. What can you tell us of the missing caver?”

“We believe she’s been abandoned in the cavern for at least forty-eight hours. She doesn’t have proper gear, and was probably left with only a gallon of water.”

The man drew up short. “Huh? You want to try that again?”

“She’s not a caver,” Kimberly said quietly. “She’s just a girl, a victim of a violent crime.”

“You’re kiddin’?”

“No.”

“Ah hell, I’m not sure I want to know anything more after that.” The man turned to his two companions. “Bob, Ross, you catch that?”

“Girl, no gear, lost somewhere in the cavern. You don’t want to know anything more.” The two other men didn’t even look at Kimberly. They were busy pulling on long johns in hundred-degree heat. Then they grabbed pairs of thick blue coveralls and jerked them on over the long underwear. Both men were sweating profusely. They didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m Josh Shudt,” the first guy said, coming over and belatedly shaking Kimberly’s hand. “I wouldn’t say I’m the leader of this group, but I’m probably as close as it gets. We have two others on the way, but given what you say, the three of us should probably head on in.”

“Does this stovepipe go to the cave?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s a skylight in the main chamber right beneath your feet.”

“I’ve been talking down it. I don’t know if she can hear anything…”

“She probably appreciates that,” Shudt said.

“Can I go with you?”

“You have any gear?”

“Just what I’m wearing.”

“That’s not gear. In a cave, it’s fifty-five degrees every day of the year. Feels like a fucking refrigerator, and that’s before you get into the water. To enter Orndorff’s Cavern, we gotta descend forty feet by rope into knee-high water. Then we get to wiggle through thirty feet of watery tunnel that’s ’bout twelve inches high. Good news is then we enter the main chamber, which has a forty-foot vault. Assuming, of course, we don’t run into a rabid raccoon or a ring-necked snake.”