Death is Forever

of matches and candles, if it comes to that.”
    For a long moment Cole looked at Erin. Her face was drawn into taut lines of unease. She was a woman who loved light, who had made it the core of her professional life. Being in the cave’s total absence of light, even for a few seconds, had shaken her.
    “You don’t like it down here, do you?” he asked.
    “I liked finding that diamond. The rest of it I can put up with for a while longer.”
    His grin flashed in the sidelight from her lamp. “Fifteen more minutes. If we don’t find anything by then, we’ll head back. It’s too damn dangerous for you.”
    “But not for you?”
    “I know the risks. You don’t.”
    “So how risky is it?”
    “If we live, I’ll dream about this and wake up sweating,” he said bluntly. “We’re damn fools for being down here.”
    “Abe survived.”
    “God watches over fools and drunks.”
    “So we’re half safe,” she retorted.
    Cole laughed. “Close your eyes, honey.”
    “Why?” she asked even as she closed them.
    “So my light won’t blind you.”
    She felt the smooth warmth of his lips, the rough brush of beard stubble, and the heat of his tongue as the kiss deepened suddenly, fiercely. He stripped away the weight of the rucksack, pulled her off her feet, held her hard and close.
    Almost as soon as it began, the kiss ended, leaving her shivering with more than the chill of limestone and water.
    He peeled off his khaki shirt and gently stuffed her into it, ignoring her protests at the third layer of clothing.
    “I’ll just rip it to pieces in the next narrow passage,” he said calmly, handing her the rucksack.
    “You’ll freeze without your shirt.”
    “I’ve easily twice your mass. I retain heat much better than you do. Ask any biologist.”
    Before she could argue any more, he turned and began making his way along another passage. This one was tall and so narrow that walking sideways was the only way to go. This channel, too, showed signs of having been filled with water at some time in the past. It also had arrows gouged in its sides at every point where new openings occurred.
    The sound of running water came from everywhere around. Erin felt like she was pushing a bubble of light and air through a maze of waterfalls and cascades. She wondered how far down they’d come into the limestone mass but didn’t ask.
    She really didn’t want to know the exact size of the massive weight of stone pressing down overhead.
    She put the thought out of her mind and concentrated on orienting herself in the three-dimensional maze. Each time she thought she’d figured it out, she found she hadn’t. It was impossible to visualize their progress as they twisted and turned, crawling up and down and sideways to the sound of running water.
    If it hadn’t been for the arrows, she’d have been utterly lost. She wondered if it was the same for Cole.
    She didn’t ask.
    As Cole pushed around a corner, he felt the pressure of limestone walls fall away. He walked three steps and turned slowly in a complete circle, discovering everything within reach of his helmet light. Erin came and stood beside him, adding her own light to his.
    From all around came the sound of water rushing and falling and cascading through unseen solution channels in the limestone. The ceiling was beyond the reach of their light. So was every wall but the one behind them. Air moved faintly, stirred by countless currents of water pouring into the space that had been dissolved by a thousand, thousand seasons of rain.
    Cole looked at his watch. “Four minutes. No more.”
    Erin was too captivated to argue. The unmistakable sensation of space around her was both welcome and eerie. The opening was alive with the thousand voices of water, water whispering, murmuring, rushing, pouring, pounding, tumbling, seeping, dripping, sliding. There was water everywhere she looked, a world alive with silver drops and dense blackness.
    A huge, shallow pool expanded into the dark as far as her helmet light could reach. Hidden currents caused streaks of light to twist over the water’s surface like a ghostly silver aurora.
    For the first time since she’d entered the limestone maze, she longed for her camera. Except for her first brush with the long arctic night, she’d encountered nothing quite so alien yet so beautiful as the underground lake.
    The roving cone of her light fell on mounds of water-rounded chunks of limestone. The rubble piles poked up through the