Page 41 of K-9 Confidential

The ceiling shook above them, bringing Charlie’s attention up. “Granger, we’ve got to get out of here.” She didn’t hear a response, cutting her gaze to the unmoving man on the ground. Her heart shot into her throat. “Granger!”

Dragging herself upright, she let gravity lead her way to him and collapsed at his side. Blood spread over the same shoulder he’d taken a bullet in two months ago. She pressed her hand to the wound, watching as a pool of blood seeped out the back. It was a through and through. Easily treated as long as they got out of this mess.

“Why do people keep aiming for this shoulder?” His attempt to lighten the mood worked better than she wanted it to. “Hasn’t it been through enough?”

The shaft walls started to crumble around them. Zeus sneezed from the added dust in the air.

“Come on. You need to stand. We’ve got to go.” Taking his weight, Charlie angled her shoulder beneath his arm. His face had been battered. He seemed to be covered in blood no matter where she looked, but he was alive. They were both alive. For the time being. “Zeus, let’s go.”

The K9 obeyed, leaving Erin gasping for breath.

Her sister clawed for the weapon just out of reach. “I’m not finished, Charlie. You owe me. You owe me ten years of waiting!”

“No, Erin. I don’t. Because you’re still stuck in the past, and I was brave enough to go after my future.” Charlie turned to face her as the ceiling collapsed directly onto her sister. Dust billowed out from the hole in the ceiling and spread faster than she expected.

“Run!” Granger clutched onto her hand and pulled her through the opening. He kept her at his side as the walls seemed to disintegrate right in front of her eyes.

Her legs protested with each step, but they couldn’t slow down. They couldn’t stop. Zeus raced ahead of them like that reindeer she’d read about as a kid helping Santa through the fog on Christmas Eve.

Except part of the shaft had collapsed in front of them.

She could see the other side. Light permeated from the other end of the tunnel, but there was no way for them to get to it. Wood beams and an oversized mound of dirt had cut them off. “Start digging!”

Zeus took the order with enthusiasm and started using both paws to dig. Charlie bit back the pain of her branded shoulder and the relentless pain in her skull as she grabbed for handfuls of dirt from the top of the mound.

But the ceiling was still caving in. With every scoop they got out of the way, the earth seemed to want to fill the void, and they had to start again. Dirt kicked up into the air and drove down into her lungs. If tens of thousands of tons of earth didn’t crush them, they would die of suffocation. A rumble shifted the ground underneath her feet, and Charlie looked back to see the shaft collapsing in on itself.

“Granger.” His name left her mouth as nothing more than a whisper. They’d run out of time. No matter how many minutes they’d made up for these past three days, it was never going to be enough.

“Don’t give up.” Granger secured her in his arms as the wave of dirt and debris drew near. “I love you. I’m always going to love you.”

“I’ve loved you ever since that night you offered me a strawberry milkshake. You changed my life for the better, and I’ll never be able to thank you for that,” she said.

“Granger!” A voice cut through the low groan of the building coming down on top of them. A single hand drove through the mound of loose dirt. “Grab hold of the rope!”

Someone had offered them a lifeline.

“Go!” Granger maneuvered Charlie up the side of the mound, and she wrapped the rope around her wrist. “Pull!”

Charlie took a deep breath as though she were about to dive for the Olympics. Her arm stretched through to the other side as thousands of pounds of dirt threatened to crush her, but there was another force on the other end. One that wanted her to live.

She broke through the wall of debris to find Ivy Bardot on the other end. Untwisting the rope from around her wrist, she shoved it at Socorro’s founder. “We need to get them out of there!”

“Granger, rope!” Ivy speared the ratty fibers back through the wall of dirt as the ground shook beneath their feet.

“Pull!” Granger’s voice boomed through the space on the other side, and Charlie and Ivy worked together to get Zeus through the limited opening.

The bull terrier shook layers of dust from his coat and sneezed three times before circling around Charlie’s feet. Untying the knot on his collar, she drove the end of the rope back through the mound. “Granger!”

Only there was no response.

The rope remained slack, and the seconds slipped through her fingers as easily as the grains of sand through an hourglass. “Granger.”

She drove both hands into the mound, searching for a sign he’d survived the collapse.

And pulled a single hand free.

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