Chapter 51

51

The sickening lurch in her gut is rapidly followed by a sudden pressure on her waist: Steed's arm jerking out to stop her fall.

The movement topples her backward, to the ground. She cries out, the impact reverberating up her spine.

Stones dislodged by her slip are falling away, pinging off the rock with a tinny echo.

"Shit," Elin gasps, her heart hammering in her chest.

Steed lets out a low whistle as he helps her to her feet. "Christ, that was close."

Craning their necks, they peer down at what's opened up in front of them: the rock face tumbling away, a grayish rubble scree, into a huge, hollowed-out bowl.

They're at the very edge of the quarry and hadn't realized.

What would have been a clear delineation between woodland and the area around the quarry is wildly overgrown, part of the forest itself. Any natural markers that might signal the quarry is near have been smothered by vegetation.

Elin's eyes graze the perimeter, the steep drop to the ground below, littered with boulders and smaller rocks.

Nothing to break her fall on the way down, nothing she could have clung to or grabbed at.

She could have been down there. A bigger step, not such a quick reaction...

"Wouldn't have liked your chances if I hadn't been here." Steed tries to make light of it, but she glimpses the flicker of fear in his eyes.

She nods, still gazing at the drop. "Pretty dangerous, having this here, no warning sign. It's a ways from the retreat itself, but guests might still come this far. Why no markers?"

Steed wanders to the right. "Here!" he says a few moments later, beckoning to her with a flourish. "There's a sign."

Walking toward him, Elin sees it, upended in the undergrowth. An official sign, several yards wide, made of a rigid, ribbed plastic. Big red letters: danger. quarry . A blocky image of a drop.

"Looks like it's been disturbed," Steed says uneasily, pointing to the bottom of the wooden post that the sign is attached to.

Elin's eyes drop down to the fresh soil staining the timber. She stares, discomforted. "Fairly recently too." Her theory that the powder transferred to Bea and Seth came from here isn't beyond the realm of possibility. She's now even more compelled to explore the quarry.

"So how do we get down?" Steed's looking around, eager to get moving.

They kick their way through the scrubby ground, scanning for a route as they skirt the lip of the quarry. They're about a quarter of the way around when Steed calls out, "Looks like we've got a path here."

She spots it too: a winding path snaking down to the quarry floor. It might have been made up of well-defined steps once, but they, too, have succumbed to nature, sprouting bleached-out wisps of grass and weed.

When they reach the bottom, Elin walks into the center of the quarry. Her skin prickles. She's immediately struck with an eerie sensation of recent abandonment, as though it's just been left, mid dig, the floor littered with the castoffs of the quarrying process—vast chunks of stone interspersed with smaller ones.

"You try that side." Elin points left. "I think it's a case of don't know what we're looking for until we find it."

Taking their time, they walk around, looking for something that might hint at what Seth or anyone else might have been doing here. "Anything?" she says a few minutes later. "Looks like a wasted trip from where I'm standing."

"Same," Steed replies, then stops. A sudden pull of breath. "Actually... look at this. Here," he says as she makes her way across, and points to a break in the undergrowth that's smothering the far wall of the quarry. The curtain of low-hanging ivy has been disturbed—strands clearly pulled out from the roots.

Steed tentatively grasps several ropes of the ivy and rips them aside, shuddering as they fall back against his hand and shoulder.

An opening.

"Wasn't expecting that..."

Elin doesn't reply, taken aback—the ivy is concealing a hollow in the rocky face, a few feet from the quarry floor.

It's dark, impossible to see what's inside, so Steed pulls out his flashlight and flicks it on, moving it slowly around in front of them.

The opening is deep, the beam immediately swallowed up in the darkness.

"A cave?" Steed murmurs.

"Looks like it."

Scrambling up and into the hollow, Steed keeps the flashlight out in front of him. While the cave narrows, it doesn't stop as he'd first assumed, but instead bends to the right. "Definitely a cave, going back a fair way too. Looks like it leads somewhere." He turns back. "Want to go in?"

Elin hesitates. A flicker of trepidation: What if someone's in here? Waiting?

Going into a space like this blind is risky, but at the same time, she hears the voice in her head, a voice that's been sounding out ever since she got to the island.

This is what you love. Why you do the job you do. For this: the feeling of pushing yourself to your very limits.

She'd tried once to explain to Will what it felt like, a moment like this. But words can't even begin to conjure it, that high-wire fizz, when it feels like you're nothing but your senses, nothing but nerve and muscle and blood pulsing through your veins. Outside of yourself. Perhaps that's the appeal: escaping the space inside your head.

Finally, she nods. "You lead."

Once she's clambered up into the cave, she pulls out her own flashlight and they start moving forward, but within a few yards, Elin is coughing violently. The air is laced with something chalky, as if she's breathing in pure dust. She can taste it, feel it coating her lips, tongue.

All at once, a gripping claustrophobia—her lungs tightening, as if they're holding on with a viselike grip to each inhalation. It's been a few months since she's needed anything other than her preventative inhaler, but it's warranted now.

Quickly pulling it from her pocket, she puffs. One, two, three.

"You okay?" Steed asks. "Pretty dusty in here..."

"Fine. Asthma, that's all. I'm usually all right, but this is extreme." As the medicine hits her lungs, her shoulders relax.

Once her breathing settles, she lightly touches the wall, tips the flashlight down to her hand. Her fingers are coated in a fine powder.

Steed examines it. "Reckon it could explain the transfer?"

"It's possible. Perfect place for stashing gear. Can't imagine it sees much traffic."

Curiosity piqued, she keeps moving, reaching the curve in the wall. As they follow the final section, the column of light thrown from her flashlight is teeming with powder—tiny, glimmering particles suspended in the air.

The cave opens up again.

Elin sucks in her breath.

Eyes, staring out from the darkness.

Eyes locked on hers.