In Cave Danger Read online

  THE BODY IN THE CAVE

  I took a long breath of frosty air in through my nose and tried to concentrate on Gam’s advice. Keeping my eyes focused on the intricately carved walls, I could almost smell the hot magma and steam. I imagined bubbling red lava erupting out of the cone-shaped volcano and snaking its way through the cedar forest. Trees and wildlife would have been annihilated in its path. White streaks cut through the dark walls where water had seeped in from above. I wondered how many years a trickle of groundwater had been finding its way deep below the earth’s surface.

  Did generations before me traverse these same dark corridors? Was the cave a sacred space or simply a shelter from summer’s blazing heat in the high Oregon desert?

  I was only a few feet away from where the cave closed in tighter. This is it, Meg, I told myself. You’ve got this.

  As I started to crouch down I noticed something bulky blocking the tunnel. A wave of dizziness washed over me. In my preliminary research I’d read about cave-ins. They didn’t happen frequently. But once was all it took, and Kira had warned us repeatedly not to touch the ceiling. “These ancient rocks can cave in at the slightest touch.”

  I bent closer to get a better look at the rocks. To my horror I realized that those weren’t rocks blocking the tunnel. It was a body.

  Books by Kate Dyer-Seeley

  SCENE OF THE CLIMB

  SLAYED ON THE SLOPES

  SILENCED IN THE SURF

  FIRST DEGREE MUDDER

  IN CAVE DANGER

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  In Cave Danger

  Kate Dyer-Seeley

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  THE BODY IN THE CAVE

  Books by Kate Dyer-Seeley

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Teaser chapter

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 by Kate Dyer-Seeley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-0511-2

  First Kensington Mass Market Edition: December 2017

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0512-9

  eISBN-10: 1-4967-0512-2

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: December 2017

  Chapter 1

  Darkness closed in with each step. I clutched the cool steel hand rail. It felt like ice. The catwalk wobbled under my feet as the last sliver of sunlight evaporated behind me. How secure were the old rickety steps? And how much farther down did I have to go?

  Blackness stretched as far as I could see. The only light in the deep cave came from my headlamp. It cast an eerie yellow halo on the tubular rock wall. I cinched my pink Columbia jacket tighter and inched onward. Despite the fact that temperatures were expected to break heat records later in the day, the temperature in the lava cavern was a brisk forty-two degrees.

  I tried not to look ahead, keeping my light focused on my pink hiking boots and the metal grate below my feet. One misstep and I could easily plummet to one of the many giant and jagged boulders on the cave floor. My breath looked like a wispy ghost in the reflection of my light, and I could hear my heartbeat thump in my head. What was I thinking? Why had I signed on to explore Oregon’s longest lava tube?

  Have I mentioned that I’m extremely claustrophobic? Tight spaces are not my friends. As if the dark and cold weren’t enough, this was just the beginning of our descent. I knew from my research that the ancient lava flow stretched for a mile and would take us more than 150 feet and deep underground.

  I shuddered. This was a mistake. A big mistake.

  Classic move, Meg, I scolded myself. You got yourself into this expedition. Now you’re going to have to see it through. If a team of expert cavers and Oregon’s most senior congressman weren’t behind me, I would have bolted, but there was no turning around now.

  The sound of someone clearing their voice behind nearly made me trip. “Hey! What’s the hang-up in the front?” It was Dupree, an adrenaline junkie who worked part-time for the Forest Service as a cave guide.

  I wished that Kira was here. Kira was Dupree’s official boss. She was the director of the Forest Service Department in Bend, Oregon, and knew every inch of the lava cave. Unlike Dupree, her idea of exploring the caves meant taking things slow and steady. She never would have pushed me to move faster, especially on the dangerous steps that were the only route in or out of the cave.

  “Keep moving, Meg!” Dupree yelled from behind. “We’ve got maybe ten or twenty stairs to go.”

  I was almost to the bottom. Thank God.

  However, I wondered if he had been messing with me when he suggested that I go first.

  “You lead the way, Meg,” he had said as he tightened the string on his army green ranger hat while we gathered around him at the bright and sunny cave entrance. “We’ve got some dudes with long legs in our group. You’re the shortest, so you can set the pace.”

  It had sounded like a logical plan, but I was moving so slowly that I had created a bottleneck on the stairs.

  At that moment my foot slipped. I reached out and caught my hand on the damp cave wall. Had I made it to the bottom? Using my other hand as a shield I cautiously stepped forward. My foot landed on solid rock. Yep. I was down. Thank goodness. I said a silent prayer to the Universe and retrieved my handheld lantern from my pack. Kira had insisted at our safety meeting last night that we have at least two light sources with us in the cave. I took her instruction to heart and had packed an extra lantern and flashlight. There was no way I was taking a chance of having to traverse the cave in the dark. Plus, I was here on assignment for Northwest Extreme. I needed as much light as possible to take pictures of the massive volcanic wonder that had formed more than eighty thousand years ago.

  The Lava River Cave was part of the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. In addition to providing adrenaline junkies a subterranean adventure, it was also a living example of the region’s fiery past. The high desert of Central Oregon had a volatile history, making it one of the mo
st popular tourist destinations for geology and outdoor lovers. From lava forests with standing casts of old growth trees to obsidian flows and calderas, the area provided a glimpse back in time and unique landscapes to explore.

  I flipped the switch on my lantern, and a warm glow highlighted the cave’s striated walls. It looked as if I had stepped into another world. The rocks shimmered. Stalactites—or were they stalagmites—shot out of the ceiling and stretched along the walls. Ice clung to the ceiling and sparkled on the boulders. It was absolutely gorgeous. I paused and took in a long breath, inhaling the cold and the musty scent. Maybe this was worth it after all.

  I unzipped my pack, pulled out my camera, and quickly clicked a round of shots of the ceiling above and the cave walls. My heart rate sped up as my camera lens focused on the tube in front of me. No wonder they called it a lava tube. I’d read about each section in my research, but seeing what lay ahead sent a shiver down my spine. A huge archway with fifty-foot ceilings stretched as far as my light would let me see. After that it was pure blackness. Oh no.

  Panic welled in my throat. No way. There was no way I was doing this.

  I started to back up, and I bumped into Dupree.

  “Hey, wrong way.” He nudged me forward. The light from his headlamp hurt my eyes. Spots danced across my vision.

  I held my hand to my forehead to shield my eyes. “Uh, shouldn’t we wait for everyone else?” I tried to think of other ways to stall. “Don’t you want to go first?”

  His voice echoed slightly as he responded. I could hear water dripping from above and the sound of the rest of our group clambering down the stairs. “Nah, go ahead. It’s going to take a few minutes to get everyone down. Straight ahead. You can’t get lost. The cave only goes one way. You can wait for us in the Echo Chamber.”

  My lips betrayed me. I felt them moving and faintly heard the word “Okay” escape from my mouth. I stumbled forward in a daze of fear. In addition to being afraid of small, tight spaces, I have a tendency to act as if I love the thrill of the adventure as much as the real athletes I’m tasked to cover for Northwest Extreme. I don’t. I would have gladly traded my hiking boots, pack, and lantern for an iced mocha by the side of the pool. Just because I wrote for an outdoor magazine didn’t mean I actually had to enjoy the outdoors, did it? I mean, wasn’t the sign of a great reporter to be able to write about something without having experienced it?

  As much as I wanted to wait for the rest of our group to descend and then use the opportunity to sneak back up to daylight, I didn’t want anyone to think I was weak or want word to get back to Greg, my boss and dreamy editor, at Northwest Extreme. He was already in talks to sell the magazine. The last thing I needed was for someone to tell him that I couldn’t get the job done.

  You’ve got this, Meg, I told myself as I took a timid step deeper into the cave.

  My knees quaked as I continued on. I tried to focus on the cave’s beauty. Gam, my grandmother who works as a spiritual healer, would have said, “Margaret, set your intention. Instead of choosing to focus on fear, shift your perspective and focus on the beauty.

  It was good advice. However, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if an earthquake struck. There was evidence all around me of cave-ins. Boulders littered the sides of the tube in huge piles at least three times my size. Cracks and fissures branched in every direction on the ceiling. What would it take for one of the overhangs to break loose and come crashing down on me? Or what about animals? I’d read that there had been a cougar sighting at the entrance a few years ago. What if I came face-to-face with a cougar or Oregon black bear?

  Stop it, Meg.

  I took a long breath of frosty air in through my nose and tried to concentrate on Gam’s advice. Keeping my eyes focused on the intricately carved walls, I could almost smell the hot magma and steam. I imagined bubbling red lava erupting out of the cone-shaped volcano and snaking its way through the cedar forest. Trees and wildlife would be annihilated in its path. White streaks cut through the dark walls where water had seeped in from above. I wondered how many years a trickle of groundwater had been finding its way deep below the earth’s surface.

  Did generations before me traverse these same dark corridors? Was the cave a sacred space, or simply a shelter from summer’s blazing heat in the high Oregon desert?

  I was only a few feet away from where the cave closed in tighter. This is it, Meg, I told myself. You’ve got this.

  As I started to crouch down I noticed something bulky blocking the tunnel. A wave of dizziness washed over me. In my preliminary research I’d read about cave-ins. They didn’t happen frequently. But once was all it took, and Kira had warned us repeatedly not to touch the ceiling. “These ancient rocks can cave in at the slightest touch.”

  I bent closer to get a better look at the rocks. To my horror I realized that those weren’t rocks blocking the tunnel. It was a body.

  * * *

  It all started a week ago when I got a text from Matt:

  Assignment idea—LAVA TUBES! Come hang in Bend with me.

  Matt was my longtime friend, and maybe more. We had been flirting for a while now and had even kissed a few times, but it wasn’t as if we were Facebook official or anything. Maybe it was me. I hadn’t wanted to take our friendship to the next level because I was worried about what would happen if things didn’t work out. I didn’t want to lose Matt as a friend. He had stuck with me through some tough times, like losing Pops—my dad—and struggling to find a job in Portland’s insanely competitive market. Things had shifted between us lately, and now I was starting to worry that if I didn’t take a chance on Matt I might lose him all together.

  He was considering taking a job with Blazen, a new green energy startup in Bend, Oregon, that manufactured solar panels and LED lighting among other state-of-the-art technology. Their slogan was Blazen into the future, and they had been giving Matt the hard sell for weeks. They needed a technical writer for all of their internal and external publications, and Matt was a perfect candidate for the position. Not only did he have the writing chops from his time at the O, Oregon’s largest Pulitzer Prize–winning newspaper, but he lived and breathed technology. I’d never seen Matt without his phone or iPad. His devices were like extra appendages.

  A year ago I would have said that Matt would never consider leaving the tech beat, but he had become frustrated with the O’s new requirements for their reporters. The newspaper business wasn’t what it used to be. Since Matt had been working the tech beat for the O, things had changed drastically. In an effort to stay afloat the newspaper had cut staff in half, outsourced printing, and reduced deliveries to only two weekdays and Sundays. The paper was as thin as a stick of Matt’s gum these days. Losing colleagues and friends had been rough on Matt, but to make matters worse his editor was pushing him to write clickbait headlines. Reporters’ salaries were based on how many clicks their online features received. Instead of writing in-depth pieces on the science behind the latest tech gadgets, Matt was forced to craft sensational headlines specifically designed to draw readers in. He hated it.

  “Megs,” he told me over pints of his homebrew last week, “you won’t believe what my editor wants me to do.”

  “What?”

  “I just finished a piece on drones and how the National Weather Service is using them to fly into tornadoes. The research is incredible and groundbreaking. Scientists have never been able to fly into storm cells that strong, but with drones there’s no risk to human life, so they’re able to collect vast new amounts of data.”

  “That sounds cool,” I told him as I sipped his frothy homebrew.

  “Right. It’s an awesome story, but my editor won’t run it with the headline I wrote.”

  “Why?”

  “My working headline for the feature was, ‘The Eye of the Storm—Drone Technology Takes Flight.’”

  “That sounds good.”

  “I thought so, but he said it’s not sexy enough.”

  “Are dron
es sexy?” I laughed.

  Matt shrugged and sighed. “I don’t know, but my headlines have to be. My editor wants to see as many click-throughs as possible. He wants me to title it something like, ‘New Drone Technology Will Shock You.’”

  “Maybe it will if it gets hit by lightning while it’s flying through the tornado,” I joked.

  He chuckled, but I could tell that he was bothered by the trend in headlines and media. Matt was a rare breed. Ethics mattered to him. It was one of the many things that I appreciated about him, and one of the many reasons that my stomach always felt slightly fluttery whenever he was around. That and his earnest blue eyes. I didn’t want him to be miserable working at the O, or to have to compromise his principles, but I didn’t want him to move to Bend either.

  Everything was changing. Jill Pettygrove, my bestie, had been offered a full scholarship to a prestigious art school in Italy. Matt was considering a move to Bend, and I was most likely soon to be out of a job. This wasn’t how I pictured my early twenties shaking out. I thought that the three of us would be working at our dream jobs and meeting for pints at one of Portland’s many pubs each night. By now I thought we might be buying our first houses or planning trips to Europe together, but it looked like we were headed in opposite directions.

  I was excited for Jill and I wanted Matt to be happy, but the thought of losing them both was almost more than I could bear.

  When Matt had sent me the text inviting me to Bend, it was what Gam would call a synchronistic opportunity. His text came right as I was due at our weekly pitch meeting at Northwest Extreme. I’d been so distracted by my personal life that I hadn’t come up with a story idea. I texted Matt,