Oh crap. Boonie’s mom had gone downhill over the years. Not that his stepdad was that hot, but Candy Gilpin was a basket case on a good day. In a genuine crisis she’d be uncontrollable. Like, shooting at people uncontrollable.
“Fuck,” I whispered, running across the dusty ground to my place. Tossing my backpack on the porch, I grabbed my bike and pedaled down the driveway and out onto the road. Boonie couldn’t be that far behind, could he?
Two minutes later I saw him, looking more like a man than a boy as he walked toward me. My bike skidded to a stop so hard I nearly crashed.
“What the fuck?”
“The mine,” I gasped. “There’s a fire at the Laughing Tess. Your stepdad’s underground and your mom needs you.”
Boonie’s face paled and I started to climb off my bike, planning to give it to him. He was already off and running. That’s when I happened to glance up at the sky and I saw it.
A pillar of thick, black, oily-looking smoke was rising slowly, over the ridge.
Holy shit. What the hell had happened down there, half a mile underground in the darkness?
________
Funny how we turn disasters into dry, sterile numbers.
Three. That’s how many days it took for the fire to burn out. Sixty-six. That’s how many self-rescuing breathing devices failed because they hadn’t been repaired or replaced on schedule. Eighty-nine men died, most within the first hour. Some were found sitting in front of open lunch boxes—that’s how fast the smoke took them out.
And then there was the worst number of all. Two hundred fourteen. Two hundred and fourteen children lost their fathers that day. One of them wasn’t born until months after the last funeral.
Seven days after the fire started, they pulled out two men alive. They’d sheltered under an air vent nearly a full mile below the surface, breathing shallowly and praying as tendrils of dark, poisonous smoke ebbed and flowed less than twenty feet away.
Boonie’s stepdad was one of them.
The New York Times plastered a picture of the survivors across the front page, showing them as they stumbled out into the light for the first time. Afterward there were congressional hearings on mine safety, although according to the local union it didn’t change anything. The Laughing Tess shut down for six months. Then she was up and running again, business as usual because the price of silver was rising.
None of this mattered to Boonie and me. His stepdad announced on live TV that he’d never go underground again. Then he packed up the family and they left Callup for eastern Montana.
I didn’t see Riley Boone again until my junior year of high school. By then I’d been dating Farell Evans for nearly eighteen months
Chapter Two
SIXTEEN YEARS AGO
DARCY
“Get your ass up here!” Erin yelled, laughing so hard I could barely understand her words. She’d already scrambled to the top of the embankment ahead of me. My boyfriend, Farell, boosted me up behind her, and I didn’t miss how his fingers slipped under my jean skirt to grope my ass. Someone was horny. He’d started drinking before the graduation ceremony, although I hadn’t realized how much until we were driving up the gulch toward Six Mile Cemetery for the after party. He’d nearly gone off the road twice, scaring the hell out of me.
I hated it when he got like this.
Fortunately, we made it okay and I was definitely ready to party. There were only forty-two students in the class of 1992, so they were more than happy to have us juniors along for the ride. I’d probably be here even if my boyfriend wasn’t a senior. Half the high school was.
I’ll never forget the first time he’d asked me out—it was one of those Cinderella moments. He was tall and strong and smart. Not only that, he played quarterback on our football team. His family had lived in the valley for a hundred years and they owned the White Baker mine. Practically royalty by Silver Valley standards.
My mom already had my wedding dress picked out, although I had my doubts. Farell would be heading to the University of Idaho in the fall and I’d seen way too many couples break up when that happened.
Fortunately, I’d only have to get through another a year before joining him. My family was broke, but I’d always worked hard in school. I wanted to get a business degree. The school counselor told me that between my grades and our family income, I’d have lots of scholarship opportunities.
I planned to make the most of them.
Popping up and over the top of the bank, I staggered to the side. Farell, Colby, and Bryce followed, then we all started across the darkened cemetery toward the party.
Six Mile had close to ten thousand graves, although you’d never guess it. Back during the gold rush, thousands of people flooded the valley. Callup might only have eight hundred residents now, but in those days we’d been the biggest city in north Idaho—home to a strange mix of miners, whores, gunfighters, and preachers. Even a bunch of nuns. You name it, they came here and when they died, they’d been buried on the steep hillside above Six Mile Creek. Now pine trees had taken over. From the road you couldn’t even see the place.
I loved it here.
Peaceful graves stretched along the thickly forested hillside in every direction, covered in moss and brush. Stone markers, wooden crosses, statues, and crudely built crypts . . . thousands of memorials for people long forgotten.
At night it turned into something else entirely.
“This place is creepy as fuck,” Erin whispered with thrilled glee. She clutched my arm as the boys whooped and wandered off. I couldn’t argue with that. We stumbled along the slope toward the party, which was back behind the memorial for the men who died fighting the 1910 wildfires. A terrace overlooking the grounds had been built out of smooth river stones, and was lined with benches. A rough concrete bowl sat in the center. I think once upon a time it was supposed to be a pond or something. Tonight it would be our fire pit, with the terrace itself providing the perfect place to set out the kegs.
Yeah, I know. We were horrible kids.
We were also the third generation of Callup residents to party up here, so at least we came by it honestly. Everyone in town knew where the graduation party would be, of course. Same place it’d been for the last twenty years—traditionally the cops gave a free pass on graduation night.
I stumbled on a tree root and tripped, falling into a headstone. Farell came out of nowhere to scoop me up, throwing me over his shoulder and running up the slope like I was a football. I screamed and slapped at his back.
“You’re gonna kill me!” I shouted. Farell laughed and his buddies cheered us on. Then Bryce caught Erin and it turned into a race. We reached the memorial at the same time to the sound of hooting and clapping. Farell lowered me to the ground and pulled me in for a kiss, tongue shoving deep into my mouth. He tasted like beer and the taquitos we’d eaten at his house during the reception.
I liked kissing Farell. Hell, I liked more than kissing him—we’d been sleeping together since I was sixteen and he was usually in tune with my needs. He pulled away and looked down at me, grinning like an idiot.
“Fuckin’ love you, Darce.”
Then he let me go and swaggered off, sharing high fives with the other football players before heading over to the keg. My eyes followed him, feeling that strange sense of loneliness that always came when he turned away. Farell was a bright, shining spotlight. When he focused on me it was like staring into the sun. When he left I found myself blinking, blinded and startled by the sudden loss of warmth.