False Horizon - Alex Archer [36]
“You find anything?” Tuk asked.
“Not a damned thing.”
Tuk looked back at the cave wall. He’d worked his way around to the left and was now about ten feet from where he’d started. He ran his hands from the floor to the ceiling and back again. But he found nothing of interest. And there seemed absolutely no way for someone to have passed through the wall to whatever lay beyond.
Annja had also moved farther from her starting point, and she was roughly in line with Tuk as they worked their way toward the front of the cave.
Tuk could still hear the storm raging outside. He wondered how much snow would fall and a brief worry gripped him. “I hope all that snow doesn’t bury us in here.”
Annja stopped working again. “You mean by covering the entrance?”
“Yes. If enough of it falls, we could get sealed up in here. It would become our tomb.”
“Now you’re making me worried. Please stop.”
“Sorry.”
Tuk went back to examining the wall. Where could Mike have wandered off to?
He had a sudden alarming thought. What if Mike hadn’t wandered off at all?
What if someone or something had grabbed Mike?
Tuk glanced at Annja. She didn’t seem to be in the mood for theorizing anymore. She intently scanned the rock in front of her and kept pressing her hands into every crevice, searching for something that would give them some sort of clue as to Mike’s whereabouts.
Tuk wasn’t sure what to think anymore.
He felt a breeze on the back of his neck and shivered. Even though they were working fifty feet from the front of the cave, the wind could reach inside and touch them. It was a reminder of how utterly harsh and merciless nature could be. Tuk shook his head and gave a silent prayer of thanks for finding the cave.
He wondered what would make the Americans come over to Nepal, so intent on finding a place such as Shangri-La. Why would they leave the comfort of their lives in order to look for something that might not even exist in the first place? What was the point?
Were they that unhappy in their lives that they craved something exciting and mysterious like this? Tuk sniffed and remembered that his own life until recently had been pretty unhappy, as well.
Better not to make judgments on people who sought excitement, he thought. Just let them do what they feel they need to do in order to be happy.
He thought about his own life and the retirement he was looking forward to getting under way. With the promise of the man’s money, Tuk would be able to relax and enjoy his own life.
He wondered what that would be like. He’d spent so many years scraping a living together, hoarding his money and never living beyond his means.
But what was happiness to him, anyway? Tuk frowned. He wasn’t even sure he would recognize it if it happened upon him.
And that felt pretty sad, he decided.
If we get out of here, he thought, I’m going to change that. I’m going to make sure I appreciate everything and go after what I want.
“How are you doing?” Annja asked.
Tuk realized several minutes had passed without either of them saying anything to the other. He cleared his throat. “Pretty much the same as you, Annja. Nothing.”
Annja stopped working and turned around. “What are we missing here?”
“What do you mean? We’re trying to do everything we can to find Mike and make sure he’s safe.”
Annja pointed at the wall. “We’re missing it, I just know it. I can feel it. There’s something here and we aren’t seeing it. We could keep doing this all night and all day forever and we’d never find it, simply because we’re not looking at it the right way.”
Tuk frowned. “I’m not sure how else I can look at this. I’m trying to see it from every possible angle. It’s not helping.”
Annja nodded. “And yet…” Her voice trailed off and she suddenly frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
“Do you smell that?”
Tuk started to speak but stopped. He caught a whiff of something on the breeze that seemed to circulate through the small cave.
Perfume? How could that be?
He shook his head and looked at Annja. The flashlight battery seemed to be waning