Finley had recommended they retrace the steps she’d taken with Ed when they’d visited together. Today they’d start with the train tour, then mine for gold, then finish with the gift shop. Luke had agreed because he’d assumed he’d be okay with this tour. This glorified toy train was like a kiddie ride at an amusement park. This wasn’t a basement. They weren’t underneath a building.

Turned out, he wasn’t okay with this. Maybe he’d never be able to go underground again—not in any way—after the earthquake. His heart was pounding, and he was having trouble getting enough air.

He sat next to Finley in an open-topped train car so small it barely fit two people on its wooden bench. Finley’s thigh and upper arm pressed against his. The rounded roof of the tunnel zipped by inches from the top of his head. The cars in front of theirs held an older couple, a mom and dad, their three kids, and the engine where their driver/tour guide sat. The only light beamed forward from the front of the train. It brightened the tracks ahead but left him and Finley in shadow. He’d made the mistake of glancing back once into the black hole behind them.

What if the train lost power? They’d come to a stop in blackness.

Memories of El Salvador overwhelmed him.

Cold sweat gathered on his forehead. Angrily, he used the sleeve of his jacket to wipe it away. He was pretty sure they’d said this tour would last twenty minutes. How long had it been so far? It felt like seventeen minutes, but he had a sinking feeling that it had only been seven.

He thought of the cubic tons of mountain above them. The weight of it. The depth—

Concentrate on Finley. She was warm and comforting. She was close. Because she was close, he would be fine.

Over the clatter of metal wheels on track, the tour guide talked into a headset that broadcast to speakers mounted inside each car. An older lady, she had short hair dyed an unnatural shade of caramel and a huge overbite. Occasionally, light bounced off the veneers on her upper teeth.

She finished providing information about the Cherokee who’d once inhabited these mountains. Unfortunately for them, gold had been discovered in their homeland.

“A deer hunter named Benjamin Parks is recognized as the first to discover gold in these parts when he tripped over a rock, picked it up, and saw that it was full of gold,” she said in a thick Georgia accent. “Rain had been washing gold off the mountainsides for centuries, you see.”

How much time had now passed? Luke was having to think hard about his inhales and exhales.