Chapters (84)

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Acknowledgments

He finished dressing and drove Willie’s truck back to the trailer. A few minutes later, after a thorough search, he found the bottle of Tylenol. It was empty. Had Willie taken the last few pills but forgotten? Were they oxycodone tablets? But why leave an empty medicine bottle in the drawer? As he looked around at the mess Willie Coombs called home, he concluded an empty bottle left in a drawer in this pigsty was hardly compelling evidence of anything. But still, it might be important. Maybe this was what Shirley Coombs had been looking for.

He pocketed the bottle, left the trailer and started to climb in the truck.

The next instant Stone lay unconscious on the ground, blood seeping from the wound in his head.

Chapter 39

CHAPTER 39

STONE ROSE SLOWLY to a sitting position, his limbs shaky, his head throbbing and his belly queasy. He touched the knot on his head. The blood was dried solid over the wound. He’d been out for a while, apparently. He sat on his haunches for a bit, breathing slowly, trying to keep from puking.

He finally staggered to his feet and looked around. Or tried to. He could move his hand a foot in front of him and be unable to see it. He put a hand up and it nicked the hard, low ceiling.

He was in a cave. He breathed in and nearly gagged. No, he was in a mine. A coal mine. He took a few tentative steps forward and then stopped.

Rattle-rattle.

Stone took a slow step back from the sound. It seemed like more than one snake actually. Standing in the pitch black with rattlesnakes within striking distance probably constituted a pretty decent nightmare. Most people would have been frozen to the spot, waiting to be bitten and die. Stone was not stupid, so he was scared. But he wasn’t paralyzed. He moved both arms out from his sides. One hand brushed wall, his left nothing but air. He leaned toward the left and his fingers now grazed the rough side of the mine. That the mineshaft was not very wide was not much help since he couldn’t exactly walk on walls. He reached up again and his hand hit the low ceiling. Rattlers could not see very well in the dark, he knew. But they could register his body heat and also sense any movement he made from the vibrations on the ground.