Glasswater Falls thundered behind us as we squeezed into the cave mouth. Three headlamps swung across wet limestone. Old Hennig's map promised a miner's vault down here, and there it was: a steel door, factory-gray, slick with damp. But the scratches around the lock looked fresh. Somebody had been here recently. "Guys," Priya whispered, "that's not rust."

I knelt and studied the scratches with my light. They weren't random. Someone had carved an arrow into the steel, pointing down and to the left, away from the vault door. Priya frowned. "A warning? Or a trail?" There was a second passage I hadn't noticed, half-hidden behind a curtain of dripping rock.

Priya tugged my sleeve. "Forget the arrow. Let's just open the vault." We turned back to the steel door and worked the latch. It swung open onto a room piled with crates—and a person sitting against the wall, asleep or hurt, a headlamp dark on their forehead.

I shook the figure's shoulder. The man jolted awake. "You're not them," he breathed in relief. "Three guys locked me in here. They took the gold and left me." We helped him up, gave him water, and walked him out into the daylight. The thieves were long gone—but we'd saved a life.