Read Online Now and Forever by Mary Connealy - Free Book Online Page B

studied her. He seemed to look deep into one eye, then shift his gaze to look into the other, as if he were trying to see past the surface, see into her mind and read all her secrets. She sincerely hoped that wasn’t possible.
    “Let’s go, pretty lady.” Tucker faced forward. Shannon slid her arm around his waist. They set out, one step at a time. Shannon knew that their time and strength were limited by their food and water. They could last another day, maybe two. Three would be very tough.
    After that, this long black tunnel would become their tomb.

    Tucker’s head took longer to clear every time he woke up.
    He eased Shannon’s head off his shoulder and sat up. His leg hurt so bad he might as well have been resting it on the fire. It scared him to think how weak he was getting and how every day, with the strain he put on himself and the poor food and lack of water, how much smaller his chances were of healing well.
    He ate a bite of the jerky when he was too hungry to resist, and he knew Shannon was doing the same. His sipsof water got smaller every time he took one. Only a bit of water sloshed in the bottom of the canteen now.
    Shannon’s fresh-air tunnel didn’t lead to the outside world. Instead it just went on and on and on. Tucker felt as though he were walking to the center of the earth, guided only by a cupful of fire.
    They’d stop and rest when they found a spot with a coal deposit. Or if they found a deposit too early on and felt they had to continue on, they’d fill Tucker’s battered sack with coal. But then they’d have a heavy weight to tote along.
    Scooting over on his backside, he leaned against the cavern wall, wondering if they had made any real progress. Was it possible these tunnels twisted around and they’d been walking in circles?
    He’d taken to marking the walls with a chunk of coal. There were no marks left behind from an earlier pass. And he felt like they were moving in an upward slope, but every step was hard. Maybe that was what made him feel like they were climbing.
    He absently watched the oily black smoke curl up from the coal fire. It was still flaming high, so he hadn’t slept long. The ache from hunger in his belly made it hard to sleep for very long.
    He stared at the ceiling of the cave, less than ten feet overhead. Suddenly he realized the ceiling was winking at him. With a jerk forward, he stared more closely, unsure what it was he’d seen.
    “Shannon, wake up!”
    She sat up so quickly, he wondered if she’d even been asleep.
    “What’s wrong?”
    He pointed straight up. “I see a light.”
    With almost a desperate willingness to see what he wanted her to see, she studied the rock overhead. “I can’t see a thing.”
    “It might be where you’re sitting. I think I’m seeing a star. If it’s night, it makes sense that you might not see one even from a few inches away.”
    “A star? Like there’s a hole that leads to the outside?”
    Tucker didn’t know whether to celebrate or give in to a desire to panic. What if it was a hole? A hole too small to climb through or too high to reach. It was the kind of thing that could drive a man mad—to be this close to escape and not be able to get out.
    “It’s definitely starlight. And the cave ceiling is not more than ten feet up. Give me a chunk of coal. I’m going to see if I can throw it through the hole. Maybe I can get an idea of how big it is.”
    Shannon handed the coal over.
    Hefting the egg-sized piece of black stone, Tucker judged the distance, then winged his coal upward. It went sailing straight out.
    “That doesn’t tell us much.” Shannon looked from the ceiling to Tucker.
    “Except that there really is a hole. We need sunlight so we can see what we’re dealing with. If it’s big enough, we’ll find a way to reach it tomorrow. You can stand on my shoulders and pull yourself out and go for help. If you can’t reach it, maybe we can find rocks big enough to stack and reach it that way. If we