"Rush: - Chapter Seven, Part One
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Chapter One here.
Chapter Six here.
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Rush
Chapter Seven
Grace watched quietly from the loveseat as Dean prowled the empty museum, EMF meter in his hand and darkness in his eyes.
The detector was silent, needle not so much as quivering.
“Damn it!” he said, voice tight with angry frustration. “Grace, I know there are things in this town-I know it! I’ve seen ‘em, heard ‘em, felt ‘em-smelled ‘em, even-but I can’t get a bead on any of ‘em! Why is that?”
From the blank look on her face, the curator had nothing to offer, and Dean raised his arms from his sides with a wide shrug, shaking his head.
“I don’t get it,” he muttered to the air around him. “I just don't effin' get it.”
Grace stood, crossing to him almost gingerly and putting a tentative hand on his sleeve.
“Junjei? I'm guessing that you’re not really with the Weather Service, are you?”
It was obvious from her tone that she already knew the answer, but the attempt at humor surprised him a little, under the circumstances. Dean blinked, huffing a laugh before snapping off the EMF meter and stuffing it back into his pocket.
“You think maybe global warming has something to do with why spooks aren’t actin’ the way they should?” he joked back, then shrugged again, feeling lame. “I just know some things about some things, is all, but this? This doesn't make sense.”
His ringtone blared suddenly, the sound definitely out of place inside the quiet museum of century-old artifacts, and Dean quickly fished the cell from the depths of his jacket, glancing briefly at the display.
Not Sammy, and he was going to have to recharge soon...
“Steve! What’s up?”
“Sam went off with the state mine inspector,” Steve Hartson’s voice came through querulously.
“Yeah, he’s takin’ care of business. Nothing happened today, right?” Dean watched his words; although Grace had courteously moved away, back to the little counter area where she did her work, there was no way she couldn’t hear every word of the conversation.
“No, nothing really,” Steve answered, “but Sam said I shouldn’t go back down until I get clearance from the two of you.”
“Well, Sam knows what he’s talkin’ about, so you just stay up top, ‘less one of us is with you. He’s already taken steps to, uh, secure that first location.”
Tucking the phone in closer, Dean hobbled to the rear of the museum and began rifling through the stack of papers he’d abandoned on the roll-top desk.
“Listen,” he said, quickly scanning the item he'd been looking for, “there was an explosion way back, just a couple of years after the mine opened, and three miners got snuffed. Newspaper says the bodies were just left down in the auxiliary shaft.”
“No, no, that’s not true,” Steve told him matter-of-factly. “You’re talking about those three Chinese muckers, right? Guys who shoveled ore into the carts?”
“Uh, says here ‘celestials.’”
“Yeah, Chinese. Hey, they knew those guys were dead, and there was no way to get them out, besides, but nobody forgot about them. I remember my grandfather telling how they found what was left of them in the 1920s, sometime, when the shaft got reopened.”
“You sure?”
“Hell yes, I’m sure. They’re buried out in the new cemetery, now. Bones are all mixed up because they couldn’t tell who was who, and nobody knew their names, anyway, but there’s even a little marker. Something about ‘our deepest respects,’ I think.”
Dean chewed on his lip for a second, then nodded against the phone.
“Yeah, all right. Hey, Steve? Tell me somethin’-just how far down is the Forty-Eight?”
At the other end, Steve paused for just a moment, then said slowly, “How far down? The tunnel to reach it is forty-eight hundred feet long, Dean. That’s why it’s called that.”
“Oh. So, just about a mile, then. Huh.”
“Why?”
“Nothin’. Just curious, is all. And except for this sonofabitch that attacked you and my brother, there’s nothin’ else down there, right?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Nothin’ buried?”
“Just minerals. You know, granite and quartz and gold.”
“Yeah, okay then.” Dean raised a hand to the back of his neck, ruffling the hair at his nape thoughtfully. “All right, then. You just stay outta there until we tell you it’s okay, okay?”
There was no doubt that the mine-owner was relieved by the direction. “I can do that,” he said gratefully, and the call was over.
Dean put the cell away and sank tiredly into the roll-away chair, wincing as he massaged the area around his throbbing knee.
“Dean? Is everything all right?” Grace asked, her eyes worried as she came hesitantly toward him.
It was hard to dredge up the energy to respond, and Dean was pretty sure she wouldn’t buy his fake smile this time, anyway.
“Just wish I had some answers,” he told her quietly. “All I’ve got is more questions.”
-:- -:- -:-
After ice cream, Sam and Erica had climbed into the state-owned Yukon, heading out for Old Stagecoach Road and the string of small mines on Erica’s inspection list.
“They’re all abandoned,” she called now to Sam over the rush of air through the open windows. “Still, we have to check them out every year, make sure everything’s the way it should be.”
“What do you look for?” Sam shouted back.
“Any signs that someone’s working the dig,” she replied, rolling her window up halfway so they didn’t have to speak so loudly. “Safety issues. Current conditions and configurations. Re-vegetation. Basic stuff like that. There are a couple that are pretty close to Rattlesnake, so we can at least take care of those two before I head back to Sacramento.” She smiled at him across the wide front seat. “I’m glad you’re coming along, Sam.”
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The Collier Mine was little more than a coyote hole, a shallow excavation dug into the side of a small rise a quarter-mile or so off the road.
They had already chatted desultorily for hours, but now Sam steered the conversation toward business. His business.
“Hey, Erica, back to the North Cedar for a second-Steve said there were a couple dozen miners who died there over the years, but I thought hard-rock mines didn’t have cave-ins. What do you suppose happened to them?”
She barely gave it a moment’s thought, busy making notes about the Collier shaft. “You’re right that hard-rock cave-ins are rare below a hundred and fifty feet, but they do happen. Tons of rock moving out of there 24/7, there’s always the possibility of collapse, somewhere, or someone getting crushed. A pocket of gas explodes, or a charge goes off early; you could lose a number of people that way. Longer-term deaths from silicosis, maybe, but those probably aren’t the ones Steve’s told you about.”
“No, I was thinking more along the lines of sudden death.”
She handed him one end of a tape-measure, then stepped backward, reeling out the tape as she went.
“Wow, you really are in the security business, aren’t you?” she called. “I’ve been kind of wondering about the bruises, and that cut on your lip.”
Truth was, he’d forgotten all about them until she reminded him, and Sam found himself suddenly a little more self-conscious than he’d been in a while.
“Uh…no, these I got from…um. They’re just….” He heaved a quick sigh, shrugging. “Yeah, okay, you caught me. I got beat up on a job. Three guys, dark alley, brass knuckles; I got these, they’ll get seven to ten down at Folsom. I could tell you more, but then-you know.”
“Yeah, then you’d have to kill me,” Erica laughed, finishing the joke for him. “Fine, don’t tell me. Anyway, sudden deaths in a mine? You’re probably talking about normal things like heart attacks or aneurysms, plus the other stuff I mentioned. Other kinds of accidents? Pick-axe or hammer hits the wrong thing, or a guy gets his foot crushed by an ore-skip, dies of blood-loss or shock before they can get him out. Of course, there’s always murder. Steve doesn’t have records?”
“No, I don’t think so. But, wait-murder?”
“Thirty feet,” she commented, then made her way back to him, penciling the measurement into her logbook quickly. “Oh, you bet. Especially in the early days, when you’d get different kinds of crews down in a mine at the same time. Lots of racial tension, sometimes; like, between the Irish and the Chinese. Or, if somebody got caught high-grading-stealing ore-and didn’t want to get ratted out? Kill the witness before he could turn you in, right? Sawyer’s Jackass Mine’s next…it’s within walking distance, if you’re game.”
“Sure. You know, all this oversight by the state-would your office have records about the deaths at the North Cedar?”
“I don’t know, but I can check.”
They climbed a steep rise away from the Collier entrance, past manzanita and toyon bushes and scattered granite boulders, out from the shade of the pines into bright sunlight. The dead pine-straw underfoot reflected the heat, and Sam quickly doffed his long-sleeve shirt, tying the arms around his waist.
“Be careful-poison oak,” Erica warned, pointing, and he grinned a little. On a really bad day back when he’d been an annoying 15-year-old, Dean had steered him right into a patch of the stuff. Intentionally. Poison oak wasn’t particularly high on the Winchesters’ list of dangerous things, but the aftermath? Not pretty.
Sawyer’s Jackass Mine wasn’t much more than a hole in the ground with a few pollen-dusted boards across it and a small cairn of rocks to one side. It was out in the open, the sun blazing directly down on it, and Sam and Erica were both sweating when they reached it.
“We have to…watch out for…mines like these,” she panted, running a hand across her forehead to wipe it dry. “If they’re not covered…people fall right in. Just happened…to a guy not…ten miles from here. He was lucky…someone found him.”
Sam watched her pull out her logbook again and make a few notations-something about a six-month recheck of the boards covering the vertical shaft. A bead of perspiration trickled down the slope of her nose, and she batted at it in irritation, then turned the page and made more notes.
“You really like your job, don’t you?” he asked, smiling. “I can tell.”
The look she gave him was vaguely puzzled.
“Of course. Don’t you like yours?”
He started to laugh sardonically, but something made him stop. It was a complex question, and one he didn’t ask himself. Not anymore, not after he’d lost so much to the life he led-Jess, his dad, his future. Dean, almost, more times than Sam cared to think about. Never knew his mother, and was terrified that one day he would turn into the very kind of thing that had killed her. How could he possibly like a job like that?
But he and his brother did help people; he believed that for certain. Even in his darkest hours-and there were plenty of them-Sam had faith that what they were doing was for the greater good, whatever their personal motives, whatever their personal losses.
Plus, there was Dean. Always and interminably, there was major pain-in-the-ass Dean, whom Sam admired and loved more than life itself, and who amply returned the sentiment. Even if it was sometimes with a rabbit-punch to the jaw.
There’d been a number of sea-changes in the year and a half they had been back together, shocks and revelations that neither one of them fully understood, and there was no telling what the road might bring them next. Where it would take them. Still, they were together, and that went a long way toward making up for all the bad.
So how he could not like their job?
“Yeah,” Sam said, nodding at last, a half-smile still tugging at his mouth. “Yeah, my job is…just great. Wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
Erica stowed the logbook in her bag and wiped her hands on the seat of her khakis, her eye caught by something at the mine entrance.
“You know,” she said, moving toward it, “I’m still not really even sure what it is you-“
“Erica!”
There was no coiling, no tell-tale rattle as the snake struck without warning, lashing out with dripping fangs from behind the cairn of rocks.
In one second, Sam had flung Erica aside and drawn the gun from the small of his back, firing once, twice, three times until the diamondback was a headless, blasted mass of still-writhing flesh.
Sam huffed a deep breath, then turned to where Erica lay sprawled in the dry weeds.
“Hey!” He hurried to her side, helped her stand. “You okay?”
She laughed shakily. “Yeah-and that’s a part of the job I don’t like! Thank you!”
“Did it get you? Let me see.”
Erica had a firm grip on his arms, and he could feel her trembling. “My boot,” she said. “It’s okay; he didn’t get through. God, that was scary!”
She leaned against him as the adrenaline flushed from their bodies, and Sam put his arms loosely around her, holding her lightly to steady her.
Tentatively, Erica embraced him in return, her arms around his waist, tightening, and for a long moment they just stood there, Sam suddenly conscious that he still had the gun in his hand, more conscious of the way her body fit against his.
He shifted uncomfortably, finding other things to focus on-the bright blue flash of a Steller’s jay in the trees across the meadow, the snarl of a chainsaw away to the west, the hint of gunpowder hanging in the still, hot air-but ultimately there was only Erica.
He knew she could feel his reaction, but for now he really didn’t care. He inhaled deeply and pulled her to him, bending down to her, liking the way she felt in his arms, liking her smell, liking her taste. They kissed tenderly for a long moment, until finally Erica broke away, smiling, pink-cheeked and awkward.
“It’s about forty minutes to my place,” she said hesitantly. “There’s beef stew in the crock-pot. Would you like to come?”
Sam decided he would.
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Grace had taken Dean home for dinner, but they’d skipped ahead to dessert first.
Oh, she felt good, sliding under his hands. The silk of her clothing, of her hair, of her skin….
Part of him was thinking about the brace, and that was a good thing, because it gave Dean something to focus on besides just how much he wanted to fuck her. He couldn’t leave the brace locked straight, that was for damn sure, but how the hell was he going to manage-
Grace broke free for just a moment, running her hand down the side of his face, planting the other against his chest, her eyes just a little dazed.
“Dean, wait,” she murmured against his lips, breathing hard. “Please. Can we slow down just a little?”
Dean wasn’t sure she meant it, since she was the one who’d gotten things started. She was trembling, and he was willing to bet good money she was wet and ready for him. But a break would give him a little longer to work out the logistics. He disentangled one hand from her hair, drew the other one out from under her blouse and down her body, then surreptitiously loosened the bindings at his knee.
“Sure thing, sweetheart,” he replied gallantly. “I don’t want to rush you.”
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They were on the couch, Erica straddling his hips, their mouths feeding hungrily on one another. Distracted and impatient, she arched away, breaking their kiss just long enough to draw her shirt off over her head, one hand behind her to unhook her bra and wriggle out of it, the other already scrabbling at Sam’s t-shirt.
Sam gulped air, his heart pounding, blood rushing into all sorts of interesting places as he shucked off his shirt and pulled her to him, his hands in her hair, fingers biting into her arms, her breasts. He wanted her, wanted to take her hard and fast, lose himself inside her without thinking.
It felt right, to be here with her, to have her in his arms, to make love to her until they were both spent and gasping like beached dolphins. It was right, he thought-and thought again, suddenly pushing her away, turning his face to the ceiling, his breath shuddering out of him.
“Sam? Is something wrong? Your arm--”
He tried to laugh at how ridiculous it was, to be right here on the brink with this smart, pretty girl he liked, and yet…
Sam sucked in another breath, pulling it deep into his lungs, shaking his head and trying to understand exactly what it was he was feeling.
“No, Erica-no. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just-I was just thinking…”
And there it was.
There would come a time soon when he could let it all go, all the hopes and dreams he’d had with Jess, but right now he simply wasn’t ready. Not just yet.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said honestly, feeling the rush of blood into his cheeks this time. “I really am sorry. But this is moving a little fast.”
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“Well, now, Leland, lad!” The voice boomed from nowhere and everywhere, and for a moment, Steve Hartson could see his breath before him, even though he’d just turned out the light in the mine office, ready to call it a night. Then something was beside him, something glowing blue and menacing, its hands ice cold on his throat as the voice came again in whispered threat. “Hurryin’ away when I’ve just got here. Tell me, boyo-what’s the rush?”
Steve began to scream.
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When his cell phone rang nearly an hour later, Sam was almost at the Rattlesnake turnoff, the Impala taking the long rise into the foothills easily over a highway silvered with moonlight.
“Put it back in your pants and get up here, now,” his brother’s voice came through gruffly. “Meet me at the mine.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Somethin’ went after Steve, and the mine office burned down.”
Sam blinked in surprise. “I’ll be there in ten,” he said. “Is Steve okay?”
“Scared and shook up is all,” Dean replied. “There’s fire trucks all over the place, but they’re startin’ to clear ou-hey. You were already on your way? Dude, it’s barely time for supper. What happened with the inspector?”
Sam thumped a thumb against the steering wheel with a smile. “That’s none of your business,” he said, knowing the non-answer would never satisfy his brother.
In fact, he’d actually left things with Erica just fine; and he felt more fine than he had in a long while. There were just some things that Dean didn’t need to know.
“Dude.” Sam could hear the reproach in Dean’s voice. “If you were ever gonna get lucky….”
“I am lucky,” he interrupted without rancor, wondering briefly if there were any way Dean could ever understand. “I’ll see you in a few.”
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There was a single pumper-truck remaining in the mine’s yard, several volunteer fire-fighters still poking among the embers and sodden ashes of what was left of the office building, others busy stowing the hose and other gear.
Sam found his brother standing with Steve and a girl near the North Cedar headframe. The mine-owner was enveloped in an old woolen blanket, one hand wrapped tightly around a half-finished Styrofoam cup of what Sam assumed was coffee, or maybe whiskey.
The Chinese girl-the Chinese girl!-had changed out of the pink-and-black silk outfit he’d first seen her in, and was now wearing jeans, a tee, and a button-down shirt that was way too big on her.
Sam looked closer. It was hard to tell in the dark, with the light bar from the fire-truck still splashing red across the mine buildings and surrounding trees, but he thought the shirt was Dean’s.
“Hey,” he said as he joined them, checking in with his brother by a quick meeting of eyes. All right, then. Both Winchesters strong and standing. “Steve, you okay?”
Steve looked stunned, his mouth working once or twice soundlessly, and the girl put a comforting arm around him.
“He’s fine,” she said encouragingly. “Aren’t you, Steve?”
Sam glanced again at his brother, who nodded slightly.
“He’s doin’ just great,” Dean said. “Hey, Grace, this is my brother, Sam. Sam, this is Grace Chin.”
“Hey,” Sam greeted her with a dip of his head. “Grace, from the museum? The Markhams mentioned you. Said you know all there is to know about Rattlesnake’s past.”
“Hi, Sam,” she replied warmly. “I wish we’d been able to meet under happier circumstances.”
“Yeah, well, we can all have tea and crumpets together tomorrow and really get to know one another,” Dean said brusquely, “but for now, Grace needs to get home, and Sammy and I need to talk to Steve.”
Grace nodded, hugging Steve close for just a moment, then patting him gently on the shoulder. “Take care, Steve. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to call me.”
To Sam’s astonishment, when she moved to Dean’s side, she threaded her arm in his.
“See me to my car, Junjei?” she asked quietly.
Dean cleared his throat, shooting Sam a glance before accompanying her to a light-colored Toyota RAV 4 several yards away and opening the door for her.
“You go straight home,” Dean told her, his voice low. Sam heard anyhow, and quirked an eyebrow as they shared a quick kiss. Then Dean shut Grace inside the car, stepping back as she started the engine and drove carefully past the fire-truck and out of the mine yard.
Sam blinked.
Oh.
“What are you lookin’ at?” Dean growled, blustering just a little as he rejoined them, and Sam grinned.
Then frowned, because there was no way Dean could have-well, not in a brace, anyway, unless he-
Sam rolled his eyes. “Fuck, Dean. You didn’t!”
“No, Sam,” his brother barked back, not an ounce of denial in the response. “You didn’t. Probably the best chance you’ve had in God knows how long, and you couldn’t bring it home-“
“Guys?” Steve interjected quietly. “Something tried to kill me tonight. Could somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?”
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Chapter Seven, Part Two here.