Chapter 10 - Collapse in the Dark
The harsh crimson light of the flare bathed the rotting wooden room in blood-red hues. Silas froze, his eyes instantly tracking the hissing flame down to the fractured floorboards, where three sweating sticks of commercial dynamite lay exposed in the dust.
""You're insane,"" Silas whispered, stepping back toward the doorway, his rifle lowering as primal terror eclipsed his greed. ""You'll bring the whole mountain down on us.""
""You came looking for a payout,"" Jax said, his voice terrifyingly calm. He held the flare inches from the fraying fuse of the ancient explosives. ""This is all I have left.""
Outside, the two guards heard the panic in their boss's voice and surged toward the door, weapons raised. That split-second distraction was all Jax needed. He didn't light the dynamite—the old nitroglycerin was too volatile; a stray spark would vaporize them all instantly. Instead, Jax hurled the blazing flare directly into Silas’s face.
Silas screamed as the phosphorus fire scorched his flesh, stumbling backward out the door.
Jax dove through the rotting floorboards.
The timber snapped beneath his weight, and Jax plummeted ten feet into the black, suffocating void of the ventilation shaft just as gunfire ripped through the walls above. The roar of automatic rounds tore the shack to splinters. A stray bullet grazed the sweat-soaked dynamite crate.
The explosion was catastrophic.
A shockwave of compressed heat and shattered stone slammed into Jax’s back, hurling him violently down the sloping tunnel of the mine. The roar deafened him instantly. Tons of rock, timber, and dirt collapsed behind him, sealing the entrance in a choking cloud of pulverized dust and black smoke.
Silence fell like a lead weight.
Jax lay in the pitch black, gasping for air that tasted like sulfur and powdered stone. Every bone in his body screamed. He tried to move his left leg, and a sharp, blinding pain shot up his spine. Trapped. He reached into his leather vest, his shaking fingers finding the heavy metal lighter he always carried.
He flicked it. A tiny yellow flame danced in the dark.
The tunnel ahead was narrow, damp, and winding deep into the earth. But looking down at his palm, he saw the small, water-damaged photograph of Elena holding the infant Toby. The edges were burned, the image faded, but the baby's hopeful hazel eyes were untouched.
May you like
""Not today,"" Jax wheezed into the darkness. He forced himself onto his elbows and began to crawl through the subterranean labyrinth, dragging his broken leg behind him.
Above ground, five miles away, a battered pickup truck was roaring down the dirt trail toward the smoke, with a determined woman behind the wheel and an eight-year-old boy clutching a road map in the passenger seat.
