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mean, that I’m from the past.”
    His eyes were bleak. “No, I don’t.”
    “Then take me back to the cave,” Angel said.
    He shook his head. “That wouldn’t solve anything. The tunnel’s gone. If—and it’s a big if—you did come from the past, there’s no going back.”
    “There must be another way, another tunnel. I have to get back where I came from,” Angel said, her voice strained with the effort to remain calm. “There’s someone—”
    “You said you don’t have any family,” Dallas interrupted.
    “It’s not—You don’t understand.”
    “Then explain it to me.”
    Angel took one look at the implacable man sitting across from her and realized he wasn’t going anywhere until she talked. “All I can say is that I have business, unfinished personal business, that needs tending to in San Antonio. In the past.”
    Dallas wondered whether her personal business involved another man. He felt a stab of jealousy at the thought. “Anything you can share?”
    “Believe me, I’d tell you everything if I thought it would make a difference,” she said. “But there’s nothing you can do to help—except get me back to the past.”
    Dallas scratched the dark beard on his jaw. He really ought to shave. With that thought came the memory of why he hadn’t shaved, why he had been in the cave in the first place. He realized that somehow his guilt over Cale’s death had eased. Angel had done that for him in the darkness of the cave. So maybe he owed her the chance to prove to him that she was from the past, and perhaps to help her find her way back to wherever she came from.
    “All right,” he said. “We’ll go back to the cave. We’ll look for another exit. But if we don’t find it—”
    “We’ll find it,” Angel said. “We have to.”
    “And if we don’t?”
    The air in Angel’s lungs hissed out, but she managed a tremulous smile. “Then I guess you’re stuck with me.”
    Dallas liked that idea too much to spend time contemplating it.
    They didn’t say anything more, just finished the food on their plates. Angel offered to wash the dishes before they left for the cave, but Dallas grinned and opened a door under the sink. “Automatic dishwasher. All you have to do is stack the dishes inside and the machine does the rest.”
    “Now that’s something almost worth staying in the future to have,” Angel said. “ Almost ,” she repeated, when it looked like Dallas was going to suggest she do just that.
    The drive back to the cave was no less harrowing in Angel’s eyes. She couldn’t get used to the speed of Dallas’s truck. Somehow everything in the future seemed geared to happen in a hurry. It was like landing on a bucking bronc. She wanted off. She wanted things to slow down, so she could breathe easily again.
    “I lost most of my gear in the cave-in, so all I’ve got is a couple of flashlights,” Dallas said. “We’ll stay together. At least you won’t have to worry about the dark. There’s only one other tunnel I haven’t followed, and that’s because it starts wet and stays that way.”
    “Wet?”
    “An underground river runs through the tunnel. It’s shallow—what I’ve seen of it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t get deeper. Or end up going underground.”
    Dallas didn’t believe they would come out of the cave in another century, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He carried all the usual cavers’ supplies—and brought along his gun. He carried the same .45 Colt revolver his father and his father’s father had carried, rather than the automatic weapon the department issued.
    “Expecting trouble?” Angel asked as he slipped the gun into a holster at his side.
    “Never hurts to be prepared,” he said.
    The way back through the cave didn’t seem to take nearly so long with flashlights. Dallas took Angel directly to the spot where the cave had come crashing down behind them.
    “There’s no going back that way,” he confirmed. “But over there—” he