“Well, it comes with the territory when you have an awesome girlfriend,” Cam confirmed. “Buckle up, Miss Bradley,” he ordered as he put his own hard hat on.

Dazed, I snapped the helmet in place, then switched on my headlamp and did the same for Rose as Cam started the engine.

Rose’s gaze swung back and forth as Cam drove us into the mine, the tunnel beginning a good twenty feet above our heads before sloping down to only five feet or so. The air was musty, thick with moisture and the tang of metal.

It tasted like blood and fear on my tongue, but I watched how excited Rose was, and the panic eased.

We traveled more than a hundred yards before the first antechamber opened up and a wooden platform appeared. Cam put the train into park and killed the engine, leaving the lights on.

“This is as far as the train goes for now,” he told Rose. “Do you want to explore a little with me?”

She nodded, then swung her backpack over her shoulders and climbed onto the platform.

“Remember it?” Cam asked me quietly.

I nodded. “How is it that every happy memory I have of playing down here was eclipsed by that one crappy one?”

He traced the bump on my nose with his finger. “We can come back and make an even better memory,” he whispered.

“You say no to hot springs, but a dark and creepy mine is on the table?” I teased.

“Eventually everywhere is on the table.” His eyes heated.

I did my best to remember that my niece was ten feet away, when all I really wanted was a table. Any table.

“Rocks,” I reminded him.

“Right. Okay, Rose, what do you know about the mine?” He turned to where she had leaned close to the chiseled stone wall, examining the rock.

“I know I’m named after it. Well, not it but the lady it was named after. Mom thought it was a pretty name.”

“It is a pretty name,” he agreed, helping me onto the newly built platform.

It was a good ten feet wide, built according to the specifications I’d given him when we’d discussed this part of the mine.

“They mined mostly gold and silver,” Rose told Cam. “The first rush came in the 1880s, but by the Great Depression, they only had a small section of silver, and they stopped mining in the fifties.”

“You know that? At nine?” he questioned.

“Every kid born in Alba knows that by the time they’re seven.” She looked up at him from under her hard hat with an expression that said she wasn’t impressed.

“Okay, smarty-pants, do you know where the three tunnels lead?”

She glanced among the three offshoots of the antechamber and shook her head.