A Message for Julia (7 page)

She shivered and, despite the raincoat, cold slipped down her collar. At least she felt something.

Quick movements caught her eye, and she looked over in time to see Patrick hurrying across the grounds. Was he headed to the tent? Oh, God. What was happening? Had the crew been found? Were they… She didn't finish her thought.

As she turned, she saw the huddled mass of people beyond the property-line fence. The press. She knew they were here to cover a story. This was their job, no matter what the outcome.

Hank stood there, a silent sentry. His squad car sat behind him like an added reminder of the boundary. Still, Julia pulled up the hood of the borrowed, too-big raincoat to hide her face.

As she ran, she heard the crackle of the paper in her pocket. She hadn't put any names on it. Heck, she hadn't even thought to call anyone to let them know what was going on. It now occurred to her that her parents wouldn't appreciate being notified by CNN.

Linc's parents wouldn't need notification. The senior Mrs. Holmes had been gone two years now. She'd never have survived this. Julia closed her eyes and said a prayer to her mother-in-law for strength. She didn't even know
how to contact his brother. She hadn't seen him since grade school. For him, CNN would have to do.

Moving on, she nearly slipped in the slick mud. Suddenly, a strobe light went off and Julia looked up. She instantly regretted it as half a dozen more flashes broke the darkness. The photographers had gotten a clear view of her face. She knew they probably wouldn't be able to identify her yet, but it was apparent from her lack of mining gear that she wasn't part of the rescue crews.

She wanted to curse and scream at them, but that was exactly what they wanted. They were here to get proof the families were falling apart, that they knew something the press didn't. Every one of them wanted to be the first reporter to get “the scoop.”

Rather than give it to them, Julia pulled the coat closer and leisurely walked—as best she could through the muck and mud—to the tent. Keeping her eyes straight ahead, she hoped her expression remained neutral.

The gentle rat-a-tat of the rain on the canvas wasn't soothing. It grated on her nerves. Patrick wasn't anywhere in the tent that she could see. Maybe she'd been wrong. Where was he? Had she missed a report? The tent seemed no more tense than it had before. She relaxed a little.

Julia shoved her way through the crowd, looking for Patrick. She emerged on the other side of the tent to find nothing.

He wasn't anywhere to be found. Suddenly, even with all the bodies pressing close, all the voices floating around her, she felt very much alone. She didn't want to be alone anymore.

She should have called her parents already; despite the distance between them, they were her family. They might not be as loving as she'd like, but she knew she could count on them.

A row of phones sat on one of the tables for the families to use. Most everyone's cell batteries were dead and the heavy mountains made service spotty anyway.

Shirley Wise was using one phone, and Julia waited until she'd finished before walking toward the table. Her hand shook as she reached out to pick up the receiver.

She seldom spoke to her parents; their disapproval of Linc was so overwhelming. She hadn't even told them that she and Linc were separated. She couldn't think about that now. The whole world was falling apart. With trembling fingers, she punched in the familiar number.

“Hello.”

“Mom? It's Julia.”

“Oh, dear. We were just talking about you.” Her mother's voice was so calm, so normal, so oddly comforting. “We saw on the late news where there's been some kind of mine disaster down there. Is it near you?”

She should have called sooner. Her stomach wound into knots as she forced her lips to form the words. “Linc's one of the men trapped.” She was surprised at her mother's silence. She hadn't realized the woman had it in her.

“Is he…?”

“Is he what?” Julia couldn't let her mind go any further.

“Um, still alive?”

Julia actually appreciated her mother's hesitance. “We don't know, Mom.”

For the first time since her marriage had failed, since this whole ordeal had begun, Julia's strength wavered. Once again she was a little girl frightened by nightmares. She wanted to feel her mother's arms and hear her reassurances—no matter how false—that everything would be fine. She had no idea what she was supposed to do. Everything seemed to crash in around her. The arguments of the past months. The pain of finally leaving Linc. The overwhelming fear that she might lose him permanently.

“Julia? Hon? Are you there?”

She wanted to say yes, but couldn't speak before a sob shattered from her throat. She doubled over, struggling to catch her breath. Her mind filled with nothing but desperation.

Hold on. Be strong. Can't let go.

“We're on our way, sweetheart.” The line went dead.

Thursday Night, Nine Hours Underground

L
INC CLOSED HIS EYES.
He was exhausted. Beyond exhausted. He'd been awake far too long. Since Julia had moved out, he'd done little more than doze. And then today.

Even breathing taxed his strength. The air was stifling and hard to pull into his lungs. And cold. He shivered in response to his own thoughts as well as the temperature.

Gabe snored loudly a few feet away. The kid kept mumbling in his sleep. Robert was silent, which told Linc that the man was as awake as he was. Zach and Mike sat near Casey, talking softly, though Linc couldn't tell if it was to each other or to the injured man.

Sleep was tempting, but fear had so far made it impossible.

“You want to sleep?” Mike's voice cut across the dark shadows. “I'll keep an eye on the meter.”

“Probably should get some rest,” Linc admitted despite the fact that every atom of his body was fighting to stay awake. “You okay?” Linc recalled Mike's emotions from earlier.

“I'm fine,” Mike assured him.

“Give me a couple hours then I'll spell you.”

Mike stood and came over to get the meter from Linc's pack. “I'll wake you.”

Since they'd settled here, Linc had spent little time doing anything but thinking, worrying and praying. Now he lay down, closed his eyes and willed sleep to come. But although he was exhausted, his brain wouldn't shut off.

“I can handle it, you know.” Mike seemed to notice he wasn't sleeping. “You can relax.”

“It's not that I don't trust you.” Linc sat up and leaned back on the cold, hard wall. “My mind's too busy.”

“I know. I can't stop thinking about Rachel. This pregnancy's been hard on her. She's been sick a lot.”

“Been there, done that.” Linc fought the smile. Julia hadn't been sick often with their baby but when she was…

“Yeah, there isn't much I can do. I feel so helpless. Nearly makes me lose
my
lunch.”

“Sucks, doesn't it?” Linc felt memories tug at him. He couldn't let the hurt of remembering Julia's brief pregnancy come back to him. Not now. Lord, not now.

Why did the past keep reaching out from the depths of the dark to ensnare him? Was this what they meant by your life flashing in front of your eyes before you died?

Mike's memories of Rachel were here and now, but the memories that grabbed Linc were from a long way back. From a time before the world fell apart.

The first time he'd taken care of Julia when she was sick had been back in college. She'd been drunk. They'd
had a fight, about what he had no clue now, but her roommate had gotten the bright idea to help her drink her troubles away. Linc had been left to clean up the mess—literally.

Julia had called him, making no sense as she'd had a few drinks. Worried, he'd gone over to her dorm room, and even totally wasted, she'd turned him on. She'd tasted like sweet lemonade, denied passion and just plain hot woman. He'd liked it.

Just as he'd been about to kiss her again, she'd pulled away and her face had paled as her eyes grew wide.

He remembered picking her up, throwing her over his shoulder and praying she wouldn't puke on him before he got her to the restroom down the hall.

He'd broken into a run and slammed through the ladies' room door—no one had been inside, thank goodness. He hadn't cared about what anyone else might have thought.

What had worried him was someone seeing Julia like this and having her be humiliated.

He'd lowered Julia to her feet in the nearest stall…just in time for the hard lemonades she'd drunk to return to this world.

Holding her hair back, he'd waited and soothed her. She'd finally sunk to the floor and tried to curl up on the cool tile. He'd joined her and held her, gently rocking the misery away. He remembered pulling off a length of toilet paper and wiping her mouth as she stared back at him through tear-filled eyes. She'd looked like hell, not the pretty, confident woman he knew.

He couldn't help but smile thinking about her reaction
when she'd realized where they were. He'd dried her tears before lifting her into his arms and heading back to her room. She'd snuggled close, and he'd tried to ignore his body's reaction to the soft woman plastered across his body.

He'd failed miserably.

Thursday Night, 11:30 p.m.

T
HE NOISE OF THE FAMILY
members in the tent faded away. “You go ahead and cry it out.” Mamie's aged, gnarled hand curled gently around Julia's tightly clasped fingers. She didn't remember the old woman sitting down. “It won't fix anything, but it might soften some of those sharp edges cutting into your heart.”

She might have laughed if the sentiment hadn't fit so well.

“Why, when my Reggie was trapped back in…”

Julia tried to focus on the old woman's words, suddenly aware of how many people had been through times like this. Maybe she should listen to someone else's memories for a while instead of letting her own torment her. A nice idea not easily done.

Even as she listened, she realized how difficult life had been for Mamie, for so many coal-mining families. A small window opened into Linc's past, a past he'd hidden from her.

She couldn't help wondering why everything had to be so hard. She knew people had always thought life was too easy for her. Born into a rich family, she hadn't had to worry about her father going to a dangerous job like
Linc's father had at the mines. No, her father hadn't had that excuse.

But he'd left her just the same. A day full of business meetings and evenings of cocktail parties and charity events hadn't allowed much time for a child. She'd had to fight for every bit of attention she'd gotten from her parents.

Many of her friends had turned to outrageous and even dangerous behaviors to get their parents to notice them. She'd known that wouldn't work with her father. So she'd gone the other way. Doing everything perfectly. She'd been so good in school her classmates were often jealous. Boys, like Linc, took a perverse pleasure in trying to shake her out of that perfection. Eventually they'd all moved on. All except Linc.

“You got a good man down there?” Mamie's voice broke into her thoughts.

Nodding, Julia wiped her eyes with her fingers. Linc was a good man. It wasn't all his fault that their marriage was a mess. Her eyes blurred again. Mamie handed her an old-fashioned, embroidered handkerchief that was almost too pretty to use.

“It's washable.” Mamie seemed to read her mind. Julia laughed and dried her eyes.

“Any little ones?”

How many times had that question been asked of her or Linc? Every time, rather than the pain easing, it only grew worse.

She could only shake her head in response. She used the handkerchief anew. “We've tried.”

Mamie didn't push but didn't turn away, either. Julia
looked up and met the woman's time-worn gaze. There was no pity, just sympathy and perhaps an understanding she might never know the details of.

“I…I had a miscarriage.”

“I'm sorry, dear.”

“Me, too. The doctors never really knew why, and I haven't been able to get pregnant since.” She didn't add that the chances were slim since she hardly saw Linc. Their troubled marriage had cost them so much. She blinked away the tears that blurred the sight of Mamie's hand folded over hers.

Julia couldn't remember the last time she'd talked about the baby, but something about Mamie inspired trust.

Linc certainly wouldn't discuss it. Past arguments came back to cut her heart again. Her requests that they see a fertility specialist. His adamant refusals even to discuss it. “What's meant to be will be,” he'd said over and over. She'd finally stopped bringing it up and the baby that had never really been now ceased to be.

Suddenly, voices sounded outside the tent, startling them both. Julia stood and Mamie followed, holding tightly to Julia's supporting arm.

Patrick Kelly strode into the tent, two other men right behind him. While Patrick wore a hard hat and his shirt was smudged with dirt, the other two men were covered in grime. Their teeth looked inordinately white against their coal-blackened skin. She couldn't tell if they were smiling or not.

Patrick climbed up onto a folding chair in order to
be seen by everyone and to get their attention. Silence immediately descended.

Julia stood tall. She might cry and she might hurt, but she was determined to face this with as much strength as she could muster.

She didn't let go of Mamie's hand, though.

“Everyone.” Patrick lifted his hands as if in supplication. “We have some good news. First, the ventilation system is working. We aren't getting any readings of high gas.”

A round of applause met that bit of information. Julia stood, waiting for the rest. Dreading anything but news that they'd found them.

“I'm not going to lie to you. I already promised that,” he began. Julia groaned. Just say it, she wanted to scream.

The news wasn't as bad as she'd anticipated. One of the pumps had given out, but they were shipping another one in from just across the county line.

“We've located the cavern where the men are most likely trapped.” Patrick paused, waiting for the crowd to stop murmuring.

One of the men with Patrick moved forward and launched into an explanation of how they were going to try something different as Patrick stepped down. Julia understood about half of it, and wasn't sure she wanted to know the how of it. She just wanted them to tell her
when.
To tell her
if
there was anything to even hope for.

“I know what you're thinking, Jack.” Patrick met Jack Sinclair's gaze. Jack was standing at the front of the
group. “We do have a solution. Something they didn't have back in eighty-five when the Wilson Mine blew.” Memories of that failed rescue still haunted so many in the mining industry.

“Thank God,” Jack whispered.

“There's a type of drill they used up in Quecreek. It goes down from the surface straight into the cavern. It'll carve a hole in the earth big enough to pull them out.”

Julia recalled the heroics of Quecreek. The round-the-clock digging, the drill that broke and was fixed by a team within hours. Every mining disaster since then had fallen short of Quecreek's success. She tried not to think about that.

“We don't have it here,” Jack pointed out.

“It's on the way. It'll be here in three hours.”

“Three hours?” Rachel Sinclair abruptly sat on a metal folding chair. She hooked an arm over her belly, hugging her unborn child. “They could be dead by then.”

“No.” Patrick shook his head. “We've calculated it. We think they'll be fine then…if they're fine now.”

What he didn't say, every face in the room showed. But
were
they okay now? That was the million-dollar question. One none of them could—or would—answer.

“This is the only solution we can come up with right now,” Patrick continued. “When the drill gets here, we're going to set it up on the other side of the north ridge. You won't be able to see it from here.”

“Why there?” Rita asked.

“They're in the back half of the mine,” her husband
told her, his voice thick with fear. “They ain't coming out the mouth.”

“You're right, Jack,” Patrick continued. “We can't get to them from the current opening to the mine. They'll be coming up through a rescue shaft we'll be drilling. We'll keep you posted.”

While no one broke into cheers, there were no breakdowns either. Everyone just stood waiting, as if maybe there would be more and yet knowing there wasn't.

“I'll be back as soon as I know anything.” With that, Patrick and his men were gone.

Julia sank back to her seat. Mamie sat more slowly.

“Well, that's that.” The older woman looked suddenly very tired.

“Have you eaten anything?”

“No.”

“We need to keep up our strength.” Now who was taking care of whom?

“My thoughts exactly.” A man's voice startled them both. Julia turned to find Trish and her father standing behind them. They each held steaming bowls. Walt handed one to Mamie and the other to Julia. They pulled up chairs to form a small circle. No one ate much, just stirred and sipped the warm soup.

No one spoke. There wasn't much to say, but for the first time in years, Julia didn't feel so alone.

Thursday Night, Ten Hours Underground

L
INC AWOKE SUDDENLY
. It took him ages to remember where he was and to fight the panic that held a hard
grip on his chest. He stood, needing to move, to get the dream out of his head. He'd been holding Julia, their bodies close.

He shook his head to banish the images, then looked around at the other men. “Where's Mike?” he asked them all, knowing Robert was the most likely to respond.

Robert was his predictable self. “He went out to stretch his legs a while ago. He's determined to find a ventilation pipe or something.”

“How long ago?”

Gabe checked his watch. “Ten minutes.”

They hadn't talked much about trying to find something to tap on. Just like building the walls, it was an old mining standby. They wouldn't know if anyone heard them, or even if the pipe was still connected to anything, but miners were trained to do it anyway.

If the rescue crews had the seismic equipment out they'd hear it. Seven raps for a live crew of seven. It was universal and anyone in the industry—or who knew anything about mining—knew what it meant.

Mike was the most desperate to get out. Linc grabbed his lamp. The battery was low but he had to risk it. Mike had been gone too long.

He looked around for the meter but didn't see it. Mike must have taken it with him.
Damn.
He picked up his breathing apparatus, hoping he wouldn't find any bad gas, but prepared in case he did.