Free Strong and Stubborn by Kelly Eileen Hake

when you let her go to the mines?
Cora bit her tongue hard to hold it back. Blaming Braden for not being able to stop Lacey was like blaming a farmer for not stopping a tornado as it ripped through his cornfields—ineffective at best and downright dangerous at worst.
    â€œWe don’t know.” The words tasted every bit as bitter as those she’d just swallowed. Her best friend was either dead or trapped in a collapsed mine—just like Braden had been a few months before.
    â€œDon’t tell me what you don’t know.” Oddly enough, his snarling comforted Cora. So long as Braden kept on snapping and shouting at her, things seemed almost normal. “Tell me what you
do
know!”
    â€œI know you need to stop cursing, shouting, sulking, and demanding, Braden Lyman.” Cora matched his glower. “If you’re going to help Lacey, I need you calm enough to think properly.”
    â€œIs she in the mines?” Fear made his pupils so large his eyes looked black. His hand groped for hers for the first time in months. “Tell me my sister isn’t in the mines, Cora. Tell me she’s okay.”
    â€œI—” Cora gave a hard swallow, but the tears won this time. She gulped out the words anyway. “I can’t tell you that. No one’s seen Lacey or Dunstan since they left for the mines, and we all know that means she’s in some kind of trouble.” Otherwise Lacey would be rushing like a whirlwind trying to make sure everyone was all right.
    Braden closed his eyes, so still it looked as though he wasn’t even breathing. When he opened them, Cora could see he’d banked his fear with determination. “Do we know which entrance they used?”
    â€œEastern.” Cora pushed pencil and paper into his hands, giving him not only a purpose but something tangible to hold on to while he faced his own memories of the mine collapse. “I assume they thought they might find more evidence on the side not facing town.”
    â€œThat’s the side where I—” His throat worked for a moment before he changed the wording and finished, “—they pulled me out of.”
    â€œI know.” Cora tapped the paper to keep his attention away from whatever horrors lurked in his memory. “Can you draw the tunnels? Do you remember at all which ones were cleared after the collapse and which were left alone? Once we get past the blockage at the entrance, we’ll probably need to go farther inside to find them.”
    â€œGod help me.” Braden’s eyes shut, and Cora knew he wasn’t swearing this time but genuinely asking for help. “I don’t know which branches they would have cleared out before they reached me. I know what they absolutely would have needed to clear to get there, but the rest … I just don’t know.” His knuckles went white. “If I could be there—I could tell you. I’d know just by looking.”
    â€œYour memory can go where you can’t,” Cora urged. “Braden, you can still be our guide. Think. When they emptied the tunnels needed to reach you, they shored up the supports, didn’t they? So the strongest places are the only ones Lacey and Dunstan found access to—and the only places we should look. You can help us find them!”
    Cora held her breath as Braden’s pencil crawled across the page, first hesitantly then with more confidence. A web of lines spidered away from a single entry point. When Braden’s hand stopped moving, Cora leaned close to peer at his makeshift map.
    Her heart sank at the number of tunnels winding away from the entrance, deep into the mountain.
It’s more of a maze than a mine
.
    â€œImpossible.” Braden’s mutter echoed her fears, making Cora raise her eyes to meet his. But he wasn’t looking at her. He tapped the pencil against the page before crossing through lines with dark Xs. “Lacey and Dunstan