No Immunity

wipers cleared away arcs of snow.
    “Keep left!” The mine hole came into sight as suddenly as it had the previous night. Almost as suddenly. Louisa had time to gasp, cut left, and skirt it with a yard to spare.
    Now in the light the cavernous pit seemed even more horrifying. Nausea sloshed in her stomach. The skid marks from Jesse’s truck were outlined in white now, two deep ruts running into the hole.
    “Is that a mine?” Louisa slowed almost to a stop. “I’ve heard about abandoned mines collapsing, but I never figured them to be this size. They could put a cathedral in there.”
    Kiernan stared into the crater as long as she could see it, to remind herself of the vastness of the danger she had overcome.
    The road wound, corkscrewed downward, narrowed, but the ruts remained too wide for the BMW. Kiernan’s legs ached from bracing herself. In the daylight it was easy to see how well hidden the mine was. No one would go far on this road without a reason. What brush there was was short and provided neither cover nor silencing, and the reverberations of the engine and brakes echoed through the canyon. From the base a person could watch the car slowly descend like a pinball bouncing from turn to turn.
    But Connie’s mine hadn’t been at the base, that much she was sure of. They passed the entry7 road before Kiernan realized it. “Stop. Back up.” The narrow road angled back so sharply, Louisa had to make three cuts before she got the BMW around. Piñons grew so close, they scraped the car on both sides.
    A quarter mile onto the drive, they spotted a derelict building in the distance. “You mean, that’s it?”
    “It’s habitable inside.”
    Louisa stopped the car and pulled her gun-heavy purse onto her lap. “We’ll get out here.”
    “All we’d get for that would be exposed. We’re not surprising anyone. She’ll be expecting something.”
    When the BMW rounded the last curve, Connie was standing, rifle poised. Kiernan hoisted her head and chest out the window. “Connie, it’s me. The boys, are they still alive?”
    Connie pointed to a half-collapsed outbuilding. “Get the car into the car barn. Quick!”
    Louisa started to protest, but Kiernan held up a hand. In the silence she could hear the echo of an engine in the canyon.

CHAPTER 51

    “I’m a doctor,“ Louisa called as she drove the car past Connie into the mine’s outbuilding. “I’ve got treatment for the boys.”
    Connie waved the car in, just as the guard outside the tropical park must have waved in Grady Hummacher’s car.
    Louisa was out of the BMW before the engine was silent. “Where are they?” she demanded.
    “Shhh.” Connie pointed to the road. “Hear that?”
    “I don’t hear anything. Look, time is vital to these boys. You do have them here, don’t you?”
    Wind rustled through branches, snapping them against one another and scraping leaves into leaves. It whipped Connie Tremaine’s short gray hair like wheat in a storm. Everything was gray, the dilapidated buildings, the sky, the scree from the abandoned mine that covered the ground. The snow was falling heavily now. Connie, deadly pale and sweaty, looked as if she could fade into the landscape with a thought. She eyed Louisa warily.
    “Your answer is yes, then,” Louisa insisted. “Look, obviously you’ve gone to a lot of trouble, danger even, for these boys.” She grabbed Connie’s arm. “Don’t let them die now. Every minute counts.”
    Connie stood granite-still, arms across chest, face revealing nothing except the effort it cost her to remain standing. Watching her, Kiernan wondered how many times she had stood just so, assessing a husband or boyfriend, creditor or gunman who had tracked a runaway to her.
    Snow speckled Louisa’s blond hair, her soft, even features knit in concern. It was a look Kiernan had seen often in med-school rotation in the ER and on the faces of the staff in Africa. Louisa was shaking Connie’s arm. “There’s no time—”
    Connie jerked free. “ Listen! That vehicle’ll be in our faces in a minute. Who’s in it?”
    Suddenly the wind slackened and the approaching engine thundered.
    Louisa shot a glance down the drive. “There was no one behind us.”
    “No one visible,” Kiernan said. “That’s someone making up time.”
    “All the more reason to get the boys while we can.” Connie held up a hand to quiet the woman she didn’t know and turned questioningly to Kiernan. “Your call.” There were a dozen