by Toby Neal
Ohale and Lieutenant Wong agreed. The Guardsmen formed up, spreading out to back up and cover Renfield.
Raveaux squatted in the lee of a boulder, feeling apprehensive and useless. He wasn’t adding anything to this operation—what was he doing here, when Sophie was still missing? This situation could take hours to investigate and resolve . . . but maybe she was with them. A hostage.
If so, why hadn’t they shown themselves?
He had to calm down, allow things to unfold, stay calm, look for a chance to help.
Renfield walked steadily forward toward the kipuka’s jagged profile of trees, holding the white flag aloft and waving it gently back and forth. He stopped a hundred yards or so from the raised area, and applied his bullhorn to his mouth. “This is the National Guard. We are on a rescue mission, looking for survivors fleeing or trapped by the recent eruption. If you’re hiding on the kipuka, surrender any weapons and come out; you will not be harmed.”
The response was immediate; a gunshot that threw up chips of rock near Renfield, and made all of them jump. The negotiator ducked instinctively, but straightened back up, holding the flag aloft. “Don’t shoot. We’re here to help. I’m going to leave a walkie here, with the flag, and you can come pick it up so we can talk. You will not be harmed.”
Renfield set the walkie down on the rock and turned his back to the kipuka, walking unhurriedly back to the chopper. Raveaux felt a vicarious itching between his own shoulder blades; that had to be one of the hardest things in the world to do.
A moment later, movement on the kipuka. A man in a red ballcap hurried out onto the lava and took the walkie and the white flag, running back to duck behind a large boulder. “Doesn’t look like anyone we need to worry about,” Wong said. “Just a meth head punk.”
“That’s not the reputation Finn O’Brien has,” Ohale cautioned. “He has a long record in Ireland, and it includes things like terrorism and murder for hire. He got to Hawaii on a stolen visa and passport, and has been cooking meth and living off the grid for years now—and people keep disappearing around him.”
“Where does kidnapping a young girl come into that profile?” Raveaux asked.
Ohale didn’t have time to answer that, because the walkie crackled in Renfield’s hand. “Hey there, gentlemen.” An Irish brogue. “We require assistance in getting away from the lava. We’re folks living off the grid, and we came as far as we could on our own. Why all the guns and hostility?” He sounded so genuine that Raveaux’s brows rose.
Renfield looked at the Lieutenant. Wong looked at Ohale. Ohale looked at Raveaux. Raveaux shook his head. “We need to know if they have Sophie and Jake,” he whispered.
“Well, of course we’re happy to help. As to the weapons, you took a pot shot at us first, if you recall. Never know what kind of people you might run into out here,” Renfield sounded friendly, too. “Hey, we’re looking for a missing couple who were supposed to be hiking out in your area. Names are Jake and Sophie. Have you seen them?”
A short pause. “Never heard of them.”
Raveaux’s chest tightened and his eyes narrowed as they met Ohale’s gaze. The older Hawaiian man looked equally pissed. As they’d suspected, the gang had left Jake and Sophie to die in the pit.
“Wrap it up,” Ohale told Renfield. “We have no more time to waste on these lowlifes.”
Chapter Sixteen
Raveaux
Raveaux hung back with the chief as the Guardsmen moved forward to take the meth gang into custody under the protection of the white flag. Negotiations had not taken long, once the team had ascertained that Sophie and Jake were not with the group.
Raveaux stared down at his phone in frustration. “I need to report in to our head of operations and there’s no signal out here.”
“No problem.” Ohale took a heavy-duty satellite phone off his belt and unlocked it for Raveaux. “Give him a call from here.”
Raveaux had to look up Bix’s private number on his own phone, and enter it manually. A few minutes later the president of operations for Security Solutions picked up. After Raveaux identified himself, Bix said, “About time you checked in.”
“We’ve been a little busy, and there’s no signal out here on the lava,” Raveaux said. “We’re in the middle of a natural disaster, if you’ve been watching the news. And we’ve hit a dead end—I hope not a literal one—in finding Jake and Sophie.”
“Report,” Bix barked.
Raveaux filled Bix in on their progress so far. “The meth crew says they pitched Jake and Sophie into the garbage hole for safekeeping, and abandoned them there when they fled before the oncoming lava reached them.”
Bix swore. “Good thing we have an ace in the hole. Get yourself back to Hilo airport ASAP. You’re to rendezvous with an associate who is flying in from Thailand to head up the search. He’s got a lot of pull in the company, and he’ll be coming in on the Security Solutions jet and taking out a chartered chopper to look for them. I’ve made all the arrangements.”
This made no sense. “Our operatives were thrown into a lava tube at a remote kipuka that’s now cut off from access by an active flow,” Raveaux said. “I know where they went in, and it’s going to take rappelling and spelunking gear to find them in that hole in the ground. How will some corporate type from overseas be able to do anything more than we’ve been able to?” He pushed a hand into his hair in agitation and gave it a tug. “I don’t know if they could have survived the earthquakes and the escalating amount of lava that’s moving.” Raveaux’s heart was hammering inside his chest as he stared at the group of meth cookers. The group’s leader, a man that looked like a stereotype outlaw biker, stared back at him with cold blue eyes. Lia Ayabe, the supposed kidnap victim, clung to the brute until she was pried off and cuffed with the rest of them.
Could his beloved Lucie have grown up to break his heart the way this girl was breaking her father’s?
No. Never would have happened. He wouldn’t have let it.
Except he’d let her die, instead . . .
“Don’t ask questions. Simply do what our associate tells you to. He has tech that can track them that we weren’t aware of,” Bix said.
“Who is this man? How does he have so much influence in the company?” Operating on not enough intel could be dangerous.
“You can call him Connor, but his name is not important. What he’s able to do to find them, is what’s relevant here.”
Likely this mysterious Connor had planted some sort of tracking device on one of them.
There was nothing to do but agree. “Copy that.” Raveaux ended the call with a punch of his finger, and bit back his frustration at the wasted time and effort of the current search and rescue operation. At least they had Lia Ayabe in custody, and her father would pay the tab for all of this.
The chopper was heavily loaded, once the perps were secured on board. Comms buzzed with talk as the lieutenant arranged for transport to the jail for their captives, but all of them in the craft fell silent as they flew over a churning river of lava below them.
“Holy shit,” the lieutenant said, his voice low with awe.
The liquid rock was moving faster than any of the videos Raveaux had seen of Kilauea’s normal eruptions, faster than anything they’d seen thus far. The glowing stone flowed in chunky, red, cresting waves that lifted, formed, collapsed and dissolved, smoking as they melted back into the current of magma. Along the edges of the fast-moving river, fantastical, lacy black formations piled up, only to be pulled back into the stream and disappear.
The color was so intense that it hurt Raveaux’s eyes to look at directly, even through his tinted visor.
“How could they survive that?” Ohale said what Raveaux was thinking. His question seemed to echo inside Raveaux’s helmet. Raveaux closed his eyes, and did the only thing he knew to do: he prayed for Sophie and Jake.
He didn’t believe in God anymore, but still he prayed. Maybe God still believed in them.
Chapter Seven
teen
Jake
Exhaustion caught up with Jake and Sophie after their bath and lovemaking; they’d both been so tired they’d barely been able to keep their eyes open enough to rinse their filthy clothing in the hot spring. Putting the wet garments back on after getting cleaned up had seemed too hideous to contemplate. That left them naked, which wasn’t a problem once Sophie discovered a depression in the stone next to the pool that was naturally heated.
“Burying himself in sand and pebbles was how the boy I rescued kept warm while he slept,” Sophie told Jake. “We can do the same.” They lay in the depression and scooped pebbles and coarse sand from the bottom of the hot spring, using it to cover their bodies as they rested.
They’d decided to put out the torches to save oil while they slept; but the lighter lay right at the edge of their wallow. Jake practiced finding it with his eyes closed several times, before they took the step of dousing the light.
Sophie fell asleep in his arms immediately once they were semi-buried in the warm pebbles, but Jake couldn’t seem to.
He kept opening his eyes, which was a mistake. The blackness was absolute and indistinguishable, whether those orbs were open or shut. As he’d experienced before, it was disorienting. He had no sense of direction. His ears seemed to buzz with interior noise, seeking to fill the void of sight, and the edges of his body felt like mere suggestions. He might not actually be present in this particular time and space, but floating in some black amniotic universe of pre-existence.
“These thoughts sound like philosophy,” Jake muttered, to hear the sound of his own voice. “Or like something out of the Lord of the Rings.” He shut his eyes. He had to tune into his other senses, ground himself in this particular moment, tether himself to now.
Sophie was in his arms: warm, present, real, breathing softly as she slept. Everything was okay right now, even if his empty belly growled and gnawed at his backbone and the bruises of his beating sent up an ugly chorus. The hunger pangs would subside and come back eventually, but hunger wasn’t pain. Wasn’t any kind of real distress he hadn’t been through before. The beating had been bad, but he’d known that kind of pain plenty, and he was healing already.
Nothing kept him down for long, not even being buried alive. He was master of his body, and its discomfort didn’t bother him.
Jake stroked gently down Sophie’s side, from her shoulder to her thigh. She was wedged against him in the hollow, with pebbles and sand surrounding them in an oddly cozy subterranean blanket.
Warm skin. Soft hollows. Firm muscle. Strong bones. The weight of her head, pillowed on his bicep.
Jake slid his hand down to rest lightly on Sophie’s belly. Her soft, quiet breathing lifted and lowered his hand.
Actually, everything was wonderful right now.
Sophie had once needed absolute darkness to sleep at all—a relic of her time living under the cruel hand of Assan Ang, her sadistic ex-husband. She was comfortable in the dark. And if she wasn’t afraid of their current situation, if she trusted Jake with her body and her life enough to let go and sleep, then he could relax too. Sophie was wise enough, smart enough, strong enough, and loving enough for both of them.
Gradually Jake’s breathing synced with hers. He floated away into a deep, fathomless rest.
The ground vibrated.
The blackness whined and creaked.
Jake pulled Sophie beneath him to protect her, curling his body instinctively over and around hers. Small stones struck him, falling from above.
Then the darkness heaved, bucking and groaning and shrieking, the sound of a volcano in labor.
Sophie and Jake both cried out, but their voices were lost in the chaos of sound around them. Hot water splashed over their vulnerable nakedness, burning their skin. Jagged bits of falling rock peppered Jake like shrapnel.
Sophie fought to be free from his tight hold, and they thrashed combatively in their shallow trough.
Consciousness seemed hard to hold onto for Jake.
Was this a nightmare? He couldn’t let go of Sophie, wouldn’t let her out from under him—protecting her was the only idea he could hold onto, even as he heard the rumble of stone grinding against stone and felt a gush of piping-hot water engulfing their resting place.
Earthquake. Lava tube. Geothermal water filling their cozy trench.
Finally, cognition caught up with disembodied black experience.
He was smothering Sophie.
Jake let go of her at last. Sophie kicked him in the thighs, in the stomach, but thankfully not in the balls, as she thrashed her way out of his arms and up onto the bank of the wallow.
The earth’s heaving settled into trembling.
The wails settled into moans.
Falling stone debris turned to a pattering of particles like sharp rain.
Sophie was gone from his touch range, somewhere off to the left, coughing hard.
Jake grasped blindly for the lighter, reaching out to the memorized spot where it had been.
Nothing. Gone.
The quake must have dislodged it.
Panic instantly tightened Jake’s chest and throat. But panic was the enemy. Fear led to death.
He was trained for extreme situations like this.
Jake forced himself to keep his breathing even, to think clearly, to continue to use his hands to search the stone surface of the ledge. He was in control of his mind, body, will, and emotions. He would do whatever was needed to survive and achieve the mission.
But the lighter was definitely AWOL. “Sonofabitch.”
Their cozy sleeping spot was now full of water too hot to tolerate as the quake completely subsided. Jake crawled carefully out of the dip, brushing off pebbles, but continued to pat around the edge of the depression for the lighter. “You okay, babe?”
“Fine, my cootie.” Sophie’s voice was a little hoarse. “Once you stopped crushing me. I located the torch. I hope you have the lighter.”
“The earthquake seems to have moved it, but I’m sure I’ll find it in a minute.” A quick mental picture of the lighter fallen into the water and ruined—no. Success came from fixing the mind on a desired scenario and not allowing doubt to creep in.
Jake slowed his breathing and his frantic movements. Ignore pain from falling debris and yesterday’s bruises—nothing is terminal or worth attention. Focus on the task at hand—find the lighter. He drew himself up into a squat, breathing through his nose, keeping his eyes closed, moving his hands to search out from the edge of the trough in a grid pattern.
Remember the structure of the edge . . . there had been a crack in the rock near the lighter.
Perhaps it had slid into the crevice, and that’s why he couldn’t feel it.
Jake oriented himself by locating the edge of the wallow and placing his hands carefully there. He felt, hand over hand, over to the crevice, searching slowly along the seam of rock with the tips of his fingers. He felt a smooth obstruction—the lighter! He used his pinkie fingertip to pry it out of the notch.
“Got it!” His triumphant cry sounded like a cannon in the thick darkness.
Sophie snorted. “Finally.”
Jake heard the rustle of her movements, felt her hand on his knee. He flicked the lighter. It took a couple of tries, but the flame finally caught.
That narrow lick of fire was so bright he was blinded at first, and before his eyes had time to adjust, Sophie had thrust the torch into the flame. The oil flared high with a whoosh.
Chapter Eighteen
Sophie
Sophie blinked, holding steady as she grasped the torch, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the brilliant light after the complete darkness they’d been immersed in for so many hours. Her gaze focused on Jake’s face.
His hair was sprinkled with volcanic dust from the recent earthquake. His eyes were tightly shut, his jaw square and clenched, his mouth tight with repressed pain.
She scanned his body for injuries.
He’d climbed out of the trough
of water that had been such a warm spot in which to sleep, but now blood ran down his shoulders, back, and side from the pelting he’d taken with sharp pebbles as they fell from the ceiling of the lava tube. Larger chunks littered the area around them. He’d been damn lucky, and so had she, though his protective embrace had been claustrophobic at the time. “You’re hurt, my kun dii.”
“Cootie. I still like it.” His eyes opened. He squinted against the light, and shrugged. “Surface damage.”
“I should check you over.”
“No time, and no way to patch me up, anyway. We need to get moving and figure a way out of here. Who knows if the lava is going to decide to roll down this tube all over again.”
“That’s a possibility. More likely, a part of the tube might collapse and we could be trapped in here, separated from rescue attempts without a way to communicate,” Sophie said.
“Always so cheerful, babe.” Jake splashed water over himself to rinse off the oozing blood from his cuts.
Sophie touched the clothing they had rinsed out and laid on the rocks before dousing the torches to rest. The garments were still damp, but a good deal of the moisture had evaporated. As Sophie touched the rocks the fabric rested on, she discovered why.
“Jake. Feel these rocks.”
He was kneeling in the trough, rinsing off his bruises and scrapes in the warm water, a distracting sight—he looked like a gladiator in a ritual bath. She must be addled by oxytocin; everything he did, everything he was, looked beautiful to her.
He extended a hand to touch the stone wall nearby. “Holy shit! That’s hot!”
“Seldom is shit holy, even when extruded by the Dalai Lama.” Sophie made an attempt at humor.
