A Kiss in the Dark by Karen Foley Page A

that curved his lips, before he gave her a tolerant look. “Okay,” she admitted ruefully, “so I was wrong. You don’t have to look at me like that.”
    Cole grinned. “Sorry. You’re not entirely wrong. Most of the mining is done belowground, so you don’t see it. But sometimes it’s a battle to keep the rivers and streams clean of the runoff.”
    “You must know a lot about mining, having grown up here. I mean, even your name says it all.”
    Cole smiled as he negotiated a sharp turn on the steep road. “Yep. My old man was a coal miner. When he was young, he was injured in a mining accident and my mother was the nurse who cared for him in the hospital. They got married and I was born. They named me Cole for obvious reasons.”
    Lacey gave him a wan smile. His father had been a miner . Now Cole also worked in the mines. “What a romantic story.”
    He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t call their life romantic, but my mom never complained. Mining is in our blood.”
    “Were you a coal miner before you got laid off?”
    “I got my degree in mining engineering, but I only worked in the coal mines for about six months, right after I graduated. I left mining about five years ago and went to work for the State of Virginia as a structural engineer.”
    “Until you got laid off,” Lacey clarified.
    “Right.”
    “Do you think you’ll stay here? Or will you try to get back to Virginia?”
    He was silent for a long moment, as if struggling with a response. “This is just temporary,” he finally said. “My goal is to return to Virginia as soon as I can.”
    The news should have made her feel relieved, but all she could think was that he would spend time in the coal mines. It didn’t matter if he was an engineer; he could still die in those tunnels.
    “Well, I hope that works out for you,” Lacey said, meaning it sincerely. She fixed her attention on the passing landscape, telling herself that as an engineer, he would naturally take precautions and pay close attention to the conditions inside the mines. Nothing would happen to him, and she wouldn’t let her imagination conjure up any horrific images of all the things that could go wrong. She refused to let her fears control her life, the way her mother’s fears controlled hers.
    They turned down a dirt road near a sign that read Rod and Gun Club. Lacey gave Cole a questioning look. “Where are we going?”
    “This is where the rescue team meets, since the sheriff’s office isn’t much more than a broom closet in the town hall.” His gave her a reassuring smile. “I’ll get you settled with the team, and then come back when you’re finished.”
    “You don’t need to do that,” she said quickly. “I’ll ask Sheriff Hathaway to give me a ride back when we’re through.”
    They hadn’t talked about where she would stay after today, but when she’d tried to carry her suitcase out of Cole’s house that morning, he’d set it firmly back inside, telling her they would figure it out later.
    “Here we are,” he said, ignoring her comment.
    They pulled alongside several other pickup trucks beside a low, sprawling structure. It looked to Lacey to be a recreation center of sorts, with picnic tables and barbecue grills scattered beneath tall trees. Beyond the picnic area, she could make out a shooting range. But it wasn’t this that caused her words to fade.
    The entire area was swarming with men. There were about fifteen of them, and at first glance, they looked remarkably similar, each of them wearing blue jeans, black baseball caps, and bright orange T-shirts with the words Black Mountain Search and Rescue emblazoned across the back. For a moment, Lacey wondered if they’d stumbled across some crime scene investigation in progress. There was an assortment of electronic equipment, ropes and climbing gear strewn across the grass, and the men were painstakingly examining and packing each piece.
    “They must have just returned from a call,” Cole