Amethyst Moon by Julia Brandywine Page B

few primitive roads.  At the end of them, a black hole marked the entrance to Mine Twelve.  When she panned the area with her device, it lit bright green when she pointed it toward the yawning maw of the abandoned mine. 

Chapter Two
 
 
                  Damn, she’d have to go in.  Mines gave her the creeps, since she’d gotten trapped in one on a mission with her parents when she was five years old.  Her parents, paleo-geologists, had been killed in the cave that had trapped her.  Spot had found her, causing a life-long bond with only occasional ripples.
                  She picked her way over the rutted path that had once served as a mine road, heading toward the big black hole.  Darting into the shaft quickly before she could chicken out, she was grateful for the luminescent glow of the antechamber walls. Refracted sunlight in the entryway made the gloom tolerable, giving her the moment she needed to tamp down her incipient panic attack.  Closing her eyes, she concentrated on pulling in deep cleansing breaths.  She could do this, she told herself.  She was a lieutenant with the firm, after all.  She had to do this. 
                  Serenity restored, she opened her eyes and took a good look around.  Sturdy mine walls stood firm in the sun, glimmering with ribbons of common blue quartz.  Pretty, she thought with a smile.  Nothing looked in danger of caving in, considering that it was a gem mine, not a shale one like the one that had left her an orphan. 
                  Toward the back of the large antechamber were three bore trails.  She walked forward, stopping at the head of three passages, wondering which way to go. Holding the recorder before her, she waved the device first to the right, then the middle, and then finally to the narrow shaft on the left.  The screen flashed green.               
                  Nuts! Fox would have to be in the most claustrophobic-looking one.
                  Stepping off, one foot in front of the other, she carefully made her way down the trail.  After venturing a ways down the narrow corridor, away from the light, she turned on the aura enhancement light on her shades.  It cast eerie shadows on the wall.  Her heart raced.  A cool sweat broke out on her body that had nothing to do with the cave’s dampness. 
                  Damn it all, why did this have to be a cave assignment? And something smelled funny, aside from the usual cave’s mustiness.  Was it merino, a popular illegal drug with the dregs of society?  Laurent wasn’t reckless enough to smoke that, was he? She remembered him as a staunch anti-drug man—at least that part of him fit with the company line.
                  Sniffing the air again, she decided it wasn’t merino.  The scent stronger, more acrid than the weed.  A glance at the recorder told her she was closing in on Fox.  She listened hard, detecting a faint sound—a kind of a hiss.  What was it? 
                  She picked up her pace and spied Fox off to the side of a cavern, hunkered down behind a rocky outcropping.  Was he actually poaching gems? she wondered, but realized it couldn’t be.  The mine was inactive, played out. 
                  Then another explanation for his hiding occurred to her.  Maybe he was hiding from her.  How immature!  She tromped over to him, ready to ask what kind of game he was playing.  “All right, Fox, the jig is up!” she shouted.
                  He startled, his gaze snapping up to her.  “Get down,” he ordered in a harsh whisper, reaching up to jerk her down on top of him.  Their bodies made jarring contact as he collapsed beneath her weight with a groan.
                  Sprawled on top of his big muscular body, she burned from the intimacy, her face heating up.  Shocked, she started into his intense green eyes.  His