Bull in a Tea Shop Read online

  Lowering the weapon, Maddox looked up nervously as sand sifted down from the ceiling at the concussion of the gunshots. The whole mine was probably unstable. Gotta be careful. Don't want to bring it down on us.

  Then he heard the sweetest sound in the world—Verity's voice, muffled, calling from further down the tunnel, "Who's out there?"

  "It's me!" Maddox shouted back.

  Snatching up a flashlight, with the guard's rifle bouncing against his bare side, he hurried toward the sound of her voice. A heavy wooden door soon blocked his path. Made of thick, weathered timbers, it didn't block the way entirely. There were narrow gaps at the sides where the timbers had warped and the ill-fitting door had been hammered into place. Through one of these gaps, Verity's dirt-smudged fingers flickered pale in the flashlight's beam. Maddox met her hand with his own, and they twined their fingers together, unable to get closer.

  "You found me." Her voice was relieved, but not panicked. "I knew you would."

  "I'll always find you. No matter what."

  She gave a choked laugh. "That would sound so cheesy coming from someone else, but you make me believe it."

  "Always." He glanced over his shoulder. That gunfire would bring pursuit, as soon as they got past the fear of encountering an enraged bull in extremely close quarters. "Stand back. I'm going to try to push this out of the way."

  "Can you?" Verity asked. Her voice retreated as she backed off.

  "I don't know. Get well back. I'm going to try to move it just enough to break the bolts holding it in place, but I don't know what'll happen."

  "Be careful," Verity said, her voice more distant now.

  Maddox shifted, and let out a snort of pain as his body bulked out in the close confines of the tunnel and his horns dug painfully into the compacted dirt of the shaft. It was even narrower here than closer to the entrance; he could barely move. But that was a help. It gave him better traction to push.

  He lowered his head and pressed his forehead into the door, then bore down with all the strength of his great body.

  Nails shrieked. The door shifted in its frame. Dust sifted down, powdering his hide and getting in his eyes.

  "Maddox, stop!" Verity cried. "You're going to bring the tunnel down!"

  He paused his efforts and stood still for a moment, his flanks heaving as dust continued to sift down and things creaked and groaned ominously around him. While he held still, the unnerving creaking stopped as the tunnel settled into its new configuration.

  "It's not worth it, Maddox," Verity called through the door. "We can find another way."

  He shifted back, gasping in relief when the tunnel was no longer pressing on his shoulders and horns. "I might be able to pivot the door enough now that you can get out. But we've still got a problem back there. Ducker's outside, and he's got hired guns with him."

  "Can you get in here with me? Hide until they go away? There might be a back way out."

  Maddox pushed at the edge of the door, dislodged slightly in its frame, but still securely wedged in place. It scraped a few more inches and then refused to move any further. "I'm not sure—"

  Boots pounded in the tunnel behind him. He turned around, putting himself between Verity and the men who had just appeared with flashlight beams dancing and jumping as they ran.

  Maddox snatched up the rifle and leveled it at them, squinting against the lights. At his feet, the stolen flashlight lay where he'd dropped it, pointed at the wall and haloing him in a dim pool of light. "You want to do this? If I go down, some of you are going with me. Is he paying you enough for this?"

  "Where the hell did you come from?" Ducker's voice demanded. Maddox couldn't tell which one he was, behind the glaring flashlights. "And why the hell are you naked?"

  "Surprising how easy you and your boys are to distract," Maddox said. Behind him, he heard scrabbling as Verity struggled to pivot the door further and enlarge the gap. "I'd look behind you, if I were you."

  "Maddox, it's not moving!" Verity whispered loudly.

  "Get back," he whispered. Taking a deep breath, he dropped the gun and kicked the flashlight with one bare foot. In a dancing whirl of shadows, he shifted.

  From the viewpoint of the men in the corridor, the bull must have exploded out of nowhere. Maddox lashed out behind him with his powerful hind feet, and felt the door give. There were yells of shock, and gunfire erupted as he shifted again. He tumbled backward and fell through the gap between the door and the wall. A bullet burned across his ribs, another across his thigh. The sharp edge of the door scraped his shoulder painfully.

  Verity caught him, pulling him along with her. More bullets splintered the wood of the door, but Maddox and Verity stumbled up the tunnel, shielded from view. Although askew, the door still blocked most of the corridor behind them.

  He hadn't been able to grab the flashlight. They were in total darkness now, lit only by the gleam of flashlights from somewhere beyond the door. Light shone through the holes and through the gap between the door and the wall. His kick had swung it a couple of feet, enough to create a big enough gap for one man to get through.

  "Stay down," Maddox murmured. He put himself between Verity and the door. "If they come, they'll have to come single file."

  "Are you hurt?" she whispered.

  "Not bad," he whispered back, trying to ignore the trickle of blood down his leg.

  Now that the gunfire had died away, there was silence from the other side of the door, broken only by occasional, ominous groaning from the ceiling. Maddox was acutely aware of the countless tons of rock and dirt above them. Sweat ran down his face and tickled the small of his back. Give him an honest fistfight any day; he'd gladly take that over this trapped feeling, especially with his mate's life at stake too.

  "Where did the damn thing go?" he heard Ducker shouting from behind the door. "Never mind! If it's in there with them, I hope they enjoy themselves." There was a murmured discussion too distant to make out, and then Ducker called, "Mr. Murphy! Are you listening?"

  Maddox didn't respond. He could hear Verity's sharp, quick breaths behind him.

  "Very well, if that's how you want it. Goodbye, Mr. Murphy."

  And then there were no more voices. Flashlight beams flickered behind the door, and then everything was still and quiet, lit with a faint glow.

  A trap? It had to be. They'd left men behind, surely.

  The ceiling groaned again. More gravel pattered down, and Verity gave a little gasp. Trap or not, they couldn't stay here.

  "Wait for me," he murmured, and crept forward on bare feet until he could peek around the edge of the door.

  The men were gone, but what they'd left behind made his blood run cold.

  Dynamite. Hissing and spitting as its fuse burned down.

  He turned and sprinted back to Verity. "Go, go, go!" No time for stealth now. Their only hope was to put as much distance between themselves and the explosion as possible, and hope it didn't bring the entire cave system down.

  "What's going on?" Verity gasped as he pulled her along, stumbling over rocks and fallen timbers.

  "They've got the place rigged to explode." Any second now. "Down, down!"

  Maddox pushed her down as gently as possible and threw himself over her. He bulked out into the mass of his bull with knees bent on either side of Verity's suddenly small and fragile body, bowed his head and felt her arms come up around his neck. Don't, he wanted to tell her—she had to stay beneath him, let him cover as much of her as possible. But she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his hide, and then the tunnel shook under them and rocks came down on them in a lethal rain.

  Chapter Eighteen: Verity

  "Maddox?" Verity managed to get the word out through a coughing fit. The air was full of dust, thick and choking.

  The noise had finally died away, the shuddering and tremendous sense of motion around her had ceased, and there was still space beneath Maddox's neck for her to breathe. To her vast relief, she could feel the slow, h
eavy beating of his heart, vibrating through the great chest trapping her legs.

  "Maddox!" She gave him a sharp shake, and heard the rattling of pebbles around her. "Maddox, wake up. You're crushing my legs."

  Maddox groaned faintly, and then the great bulk her arms were wrapped around suddenly dwindled to smooth human skin. Verity let out a startled cry as rocks and dirt shifted all around them, pushing on their bodies. But they weren't completely buried; they couldn't be, because she could still breathe.

  "Maddox?"

  "Verity," he murmured. His hand brushed the side of her head, then found its way to her face. "You okay?"

  "I'm not hurt. Not badly." Though a long way from okay; she had a feeling they both were.

  "Can't see a damn thing. It's dark as a tomb in here." Then a huff of a laugh tickled her neck. "Guess that's nothing you aren't used to, though."

  She couldn't help but smile. "Yeah, for me it's nothing unusual." She felt along his bare back until her hand encountered dirt and rocks. "How buried are we?"

  "Can't tell. Can you move?"

  Together they struggled to push the rocks away from their legs until they could crawl on top of what felt to Verity like a loose and unstable mass of dirt and rocks and splintered timbers. She reached above her head and touched wood, then felt her way along a beam that had bent in the middle, with sharp-edged cracks running through it. Although she touched it very lightly, she felt a faint shudder run through it, and heard groaning in the walls around them that chilled her soul.

  "I think we should get away from here. This whole part of the tunnel might collapse."

  "Can't even tell which way we came from. Can you?"

  Verity could, but she had a bad feeling it didn't matter: the tunnel behind them was almost certainly blocked. She confirmed it by feeling her way over the rocks and dirt. In one direction, it filled the tunnel all the way to the ceiling. The other way, deeper into the mine, was the only possibility.

  "Come on." She took his big hand in hers. His fingers were cold, reminding her of the feeling of his bare body pressed against hers a few moments earlier. "Where are your clothes?"

  "Outside. Guess I'll just have to deal."

  Hand in hand, they felt their way over and among the loose rocks half-blocking the tunnel. "Careful," Verity murmured. Even through her shoes, she could tell there were broken boards, sharp rocks, and possibly rusty nails in the mix of debris underfoot.

  The going got easier as they made their way farther up the tunnel, with the floor mostly clear and solid underfoot. Still, Verity slowed down even more here, realizing that there could be any kind of dangers up ahead, including vertical shafts they wouldn't know about until they fell down one.

  "Something wrong?" Maddox asked quietly.

  "Just worried about stepping on something in the dark. Can you see at all?"

  There was a whisper of sound that might have been Maddox shaking his head. "Dark as the inside of a black cat."

  "See if you can find anything we can use to feel out the path ahead, like a loose board or a stick."

  They eventually found what felt like a pile of loose boards, warped and tinder-dry after lying in the mine for unknown decades. Verity found one that was slim and light enough that she could swing it in front of her. She guided Maddox's hand to the pile of boards, and he picked up a bigger, heavier one.

  "You go ahead and guide both of us. You're better at this. I'll just keep hold of your hand and leave my other hand free for defending us if I have to."

  "Sounds like a deal," she said, forcing a smile until remembering that he couldn't see it in the dark. "We're a heck of a team, huh?"

  "Yeah, we are." He leaned close to her and kissed ... well, the top of her ear, but he was probably aiming for her cheek, and then he put an arm around her and just held her for a moment. "Verity, I'm so sorry I left. So sorry I scared you. Sorry about Ducker and—"

  "Okay, you just stop right there. I got myself in trouble with Ducker all on my own. There are more than enough bad decisions to go around here."

  "Fair enough," he agreed. "But I promise I'll never leave again. Not for any reason."

  "I'm going to hold you to that," she told him, and tilted her head back for a kiss.

  ***

  Verity led them through the dark, moving slowly, feeling her way ahead with the board. Maddox was limping heavily; she could tell by the way he jerked at every step, his fingers tugging at hers.

  "How are you doing?" she asked quietly. "Do you need to stop?" It was chilly down here; he must be cold, aside from possibly being more badly hurt than he wanted to admit.

  "I'm fine," he said, and she had to take his word for it. They didn't really have any other options.

  She had thought it would be utterly silent underground, and was surprised to find that it was not, though it had seemed that way to her when Ducker had first left her in the mine. But the longer she was down here, the more she became aware of other sounds, echoing strangely in the network of tunnels. Faint creaking and groaning in the walls—but not close, she didn't think. Rattles and plops of falling rocks, dripping water; at first she mistook it for footsteps, but after awhile she came to accept it as part of the background music of the caves.

  She was very surprised to find that she liked it down here. In fact, once they got back to the surface (she refused to consider that they might not) she thought about asking Bailey to look into local caving opportunities and find out if there were any guided tours and whether she might be able to learn how to do it herself.

  Would caving be an appropriate hobby for a blind woman? Well, I'd save a bunch on headlamp batteries, she thought, and smiled to herself.

  They went through a number of junctions and branches in the tunnels. Verity paused to mark each of these with a stone placed in the middle of the tunnel; hopefully it would be enough to allow them to backtrack if they had to. They came to a couple of dead ends and had to go back and try the other way, but the tunnel network seemed to go on and on, never ending.

  "There must be another way out," Verity told Maddox, pausing to pick up some more rocks for tunnel-marking. She put them in the pocket of her skirt. "Surely it wouldn't make sense to have just one way in and out of the mine."

  "I don't see why not."

  "But it's inefficient, especially if you're mining close to the surface. If you have more entrances, you can get more people in, and take more material out." She hesitated, listening to the sound of Maddox's heavy breathing. "Should we stop for a few minutes?"

  "I just want to get out of here."

  She had assumed his issues were physical; now she began to wonder if the problem was more psychological. "Is it bothering you, being down here?"

  "Bothering me?" He gave a short laugh. "Isn't it bothering you?"

  "Not really. I mean, I want to get out, of course. But I'm sure there's a way. I'm not naked, though," she felt compelled to add.

  "I just can't stop thinking about how far down we are. I never thought tight spaces bothered me, but this—! And it's so damn dark. Of course I know how it sounds, me complaining about that, it must annoy you—"

  "No, of course not. I'm used to it, but it must be very hard to cope with if you're used to using your eyes to find your way around."

  "It feels like the dark is pressing on my eyes. I can't even tell if they're open or closed."

  She squeezed his hand. "Focus on the other things you can feel from your body. The ground under your feet. The ..."

  Wind on her face?

  "Maddox, do you feel that?" She turned her head, trying to recapture the slight breeze that had stirred her hair. "I think it was a draft. Some kind of air movement."

  They started walking again with renewed energy, and soon she was certain. When they came to the next branch in the tunnel, she was able to choose by holding a hand in front of each option. There was definitely air movement in the tunnel they were now in, and the air smelled fresher.

  "I'll be damned." There was a hoars
eness to Maddox's voice that worried her, but he sounded more energized. "You were right. There is a way out."

  "Let's not get too excited. It might just be a ventilation shaft."

  But it wasn't. She could smell juniper and creosote brush. She began to hurry, but Maddox caught her arm and pulled her to a halt.

  "What?" she said, but he touched a finger to her lips and she hushed.

  "There's definitely an opening up there. I can see the stars." Wonder, for a moment, filled his whispering voice. "But they might've posted a guard on the exits. It's what I would've done. You stay here while I go scout ahead."

  Despite what she'd said about not minding being underground, everything in her now yearned to get out of the confines of the tunnel walls and feel the night wind on her face again. But she could see his point. "Okay, just hurry. I'll wait here."

  Maddox squeezed her hand, and his quiet footsteps, hitching with a profound limp, receded from her.

  Chapter Nineteen: Maddox

  Free! He'd never been so glad to see the stars overhead or feel the night breeze on his chilled body. It was all he could do not to throw himself through the cave mouth and run laughing down the hillside.

  But he didn't—for a number of reasons, including the fact that stepping on a rattlesnake with his bare feet wasn't going to improve his night.

  Instead, he pressed himself to the wall just inside the entrance and listened carefully. He heard the sounds of the night, small rustlings and a distant coyote howling and somewhere a far-off car on an unseen road.

  He hadn't expected being trapped underground to affect him so profoundly. He wasn't claustrophobic, at least not that he'd ever noticed. But it was such an incredibly helpless feeling, knowing that he couldn't get out, couldn't even shift into his bull in some of the narrow places they'd gone through. And the darkness. He knew it didn't bother Verity because she was used to it, but he'd found himself getting jumpier and jumpier, never knowing what direction danger might be coming from.

  He'd far rather confront his enemies head-on.