The FBI Thrillers Collection Books 6-10 - Catherine Coulter [539]
She saw something, about two feet above the floor, where the light reflected differently. She crawled to the wall and studied the thin shadow she’d seen. There, that was it, a line of dust and dirt about a half an inch wide.
Ohmigod, it wasn’t just a line; it was shaped like an arch.
She felt her adrenaline spike. She looked more closely and saw that someone had gouged the arch deeply into the wall. She touched it with her fingertip, lightly pushed inward. Her finger sank easily through years of soft, thick dust, up to her first knuckle. She knew one thing for sure now. The accumulation of dust in that grooved arch was decades older than she was. She wondered how many more years would have to pass before the arch outline disappeared entirely. Who had cut this arch and why, for heaven’s sake? Or was it a cover of some kind?
Ruth lightly pushed against the limestone directly below the top of the arch. To her astonishment, it gave a little. She laid her palm flat against the wall and gave a sharp push. The stone fell back some more. Her heart kettledrummed in her chest. The stone was light enough that she could dig it out. She pulled the small pick from her belt and went at it; the limestone crumbled, and suddenly she was staring at a small round hole.
She leaned forward, but the hole was too small for her to see anything in the chamber beyond. And there was a chamber beyond, the chamber she was looking for. Grinning like a madwoman, Ruth continued to use the pick on the limestone below the line of the arch. The stone broke apart, collapsing inward into the next chamber. When she’d cleared it out, it was no bigger than a St. Bernard doggie door, but it was large enough to look into. Shoving dirt out of the way, she stuck her head through the opening. She saw nothing but a floor. Pulling her second flashlight out of her belt she beamed both it and her head lamp straight ahead, then slowly to the right, then back to the left. The light faded into endless black, without reflection.
She pulled back and sat on her heels. The men who’d hidden the gold had cut this slab of limestone out of another part of the cave and fitted it in this space, to better hide the low entrance to the treasure chamber. She was so excited her fingertips were dancing: She was nearly there. She stuck her arm through the opening, felt nothing but the smooth dirt floor, solid and dry, the chamber the map showed beyond the archway. Everything was as it should be. So the precious map hidden in the age-dampened cardboard box of nineteenth-century books she’d bought off that old man in Manassas wasn’t created two weeks ago in a back room in Newark and planted there. Let’s do it, Ruth. It was a tight squeeze, but once she got her shoulders 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