Chapter 9 - The Ghost Town of Spanish Springs
The bed of the pickup truck slammed against Jax's ribs with every rut in the mountain trail. His wrists were secured behind him with heavy zip-ties, cutting off the circulation to his fingers until his hands went numb. Beside him, two heavily armed Vipers watched his every movement, their rifles resting across their knees.
Jax didn't care about the pain. His mind was miles back down the canal road. Before they dragged him up the bank, he had dropped the master key to his Harley into the dust—a key that carried a tiny hidden fob with the GPS coordinates of his true emergency stash. He prayed Sarah had the sense to find it.
An hour of rough climbing through the jagged pinyon pines brought them to the abandoned settlement of Spanish Springs. The town was nothing more than a cluster of weather-beaten wooden shacks, rotting timber frames, and the yawning, black mouth of an abandoned silver mine driven deep into the red mountain.
The truck ground to a halt in front of the collapsed ruins of the former assay office. Silas stepped down from the cab, lighting a cigar, while his men hauled Jax out of the truck bed and threw him into the gravel.
""Get up,"" Silas ordered, nudging Jax with the toe of his boot. ""Show me the floorboards.""
Jax pushed himself up onto his knees, his jaw tight. ""You have to cut my hands loose if you want me to pull the timbers.""
Silas nodded to one of his thugs, who sliced the plastic ties with a serrated blade. Blood rushed back into Jax's fingertips, stinging like fire. Jax rubbed his wrists, looking around the desolate ghost town. The sun was dipping below the sawtooth ridge, casting long, bleeding shadows across the canyon.
""Inside,"" Silas said, racking the bolt on his rifle. ""No tricks, Jax. You're five miles from the nearest pavement. Nobody is coming for you.""
Jax stepped through the splintered doorframe of the old office. The floor was covered in decades of rat droppings, broken glass, and rotted pine planks. Jax walked slowly toward the back corner, where the floor met the raw rock face of the mountain.
There was no eighty thousand dollars. There never had been.
Underneath the rotted floor was an old ventilation shaft that dropped straight down into the unmapped tunnels of the silver mine—and an old crate of commercial blasting dynamite Jax had stolen fifteen years ago during a quarry heist.
Jax knelt down, pretending to clear away the wood. His hand reached into the dark void beneath the boards, his fingers finding the cool, wax-paper cylinder of a stick of dynamite, dry and sweat-soaked from decades of heat.
""Well?"" Silas stood in the doorway, his silhouette blocking the fading light. ""Where is it?""
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Jax slowly pulled his hand out, holding an ancient, brass road flare in his palm. He struck the striker against the sulfur cap. A blinding, crimson flame hissed to life, illuminating the room in hellish red light.
""Right here, Silas,"" Jax said.
