Point Blank

through, the rest was easy.
    She swung her legs in front of her, raised her flashlight, and beamed it together with her head lamp around the space. According to the map, the chamber was good-sized, some thirty feet across and forty feet wide. She didn’t see the opposite wall, she didn’t see anything. She pulled out her compass. Yes, the opposite wall had to be due east. Everything was where it should be. She realized in that moment that the air wasn’t stale or dank, which one would expect in a cave chamber sealed for 150 years. She sucked in air that was fresher than the air in the main passage. Now wasn’t that a kick—she had to be close to an unmapped exit, and wouldn’t that have been handy for the men who hid the gold? Slowly she got to her feet and looked straight ahead. It was like standing in a dark pit, but she’d done that before, and with a head lamp you’d see the boundaries, wouldn’t you? She sucked in more of the wonderful fresh air. There was an underlying scent, something rather sweet that she couldn’t quite identify. For a moment she felt disoriented. She paused, and continued to breathe slowly and deeply, waiting for her head to clear, for the world to right itself. She felt a sort of dull heaviness in her arms and legs but then it was gone and her head seemed clear again. Time to move. She took a step forward, carefully planting her foot on the solid earth. What had she expected? To step off into space?
    She laughed aloud, to prove she could. Her own voice sounded fresh and alive, clear as Mrs. Monroe’s when she called to Woodrow to finish his business and come in. What a strange thought that was. She felt something familiar niggle at the back of her brain—excitement mixed with fear, she thought, and smiled. Oh boy, was she pumped, even a little dizzy with it. But not stupid. She had no intention of gaily striding forward and stepping into a pit right before the finish line. She had to be smart, like Indiana Jones. She had to feel for trip wires and booby traps. Now that was a weird thought. She felt a shot of dizziness that made her stumble. She eased down to her knees, laid her flashlight on the ground in front of her, and began to slide her palms along the floor. The floor, thank God, continued smooth and sandy, though it seemed to shimmy a bit when she got up close. There weren’t any gnarled old vines tied across the chamber to unleash poison-tipped blow darts or to fire old rifles that surely wouldn’t work anymore. She heard nothing but the sound of her own breathing. Truth was, she was so excited it was hard to keep herself crawling and not do a mad sprint to the short passageway just beyond the chamber. The gold was there, in a small alcove, waiting for her, untouched since those bone-weary soldiers had hauled it in and drawn the map so they could return for it. Only no one had.
    She continued to ease forward on her hands and knees. Every little while, she moved the flashlight out ahead of her again. It seemed like she had crawled for a long time. Too long a time.
    She suddenly felt disoriented, again felt that strange heaviness in her arms and legs. She stopped, brought the flashlight up, and looked at the map. She could hardly read it and wondered why. She knew it said thirty feet to the opposite wall, she knew that, but for some reason she couldn’t get her brain around the idea. Surely she’d crawled thirty feet. It seemed like she’d crawled forever. Well, all right, maybe she’d crawled for a good three minutes. She looked at her watch. Thirteen minutes past two in the afternoon. She looked at the map yet again, tangible, as real as she was, her guide to the underworld, her guide to the River Styx. She laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. Where had that come from? She tried to concentrate. She was in a cave chamber, nothing more, nothing less. She had to be near the opposite wall, had to be. Then she’d take those three long steps to the right and there would be a small passageway—it was a passageway, wasn’t it?—and it led…
    She heard something.
    Ruth froze. From the moment she’d finessed the pathetic lock and begun her trek into the cave, there’d been only the noise made by bats and the sound of her own voice, of her own breathing. But now she held her breath. Her mouth was suddenly as dry as the sandy floor beneath her boots. She strained to listen.
    There was only silence, as absolute as the blackness.
    All right, she’d take silence. Silence was