Checkmate

by Steven James

  Five feet

  Steady—wait, wait, wait.

  + + +

  He arrived at her side and grabbed her armpit to lift her to her feet.

  + + +

  Corrine sprang at him, swinging the rock as hard as she could against the side of his head.

  With incredibly quick reflexes he threw a hand up to block her arm and it took some of the force, but she still connected, and the impact of the blow sent him reeling sideways into the tunnel’s wall.

  On her feet now, she went at him again, but this time he whipped out his hand, lightning fast, and snagged her arm.

  + + +

  The bard wrenched her arm behind her, pried the rock loose, and tossed it away from them.

  “That was good, Corrine, using the resources you had available to you. You don’t give up easily. I like that.”

  He slammed her head against the tunnel’s rock wall to take some of the fight out of her. He did it again and she became limp and unsteady in his arms.

  One more time.

  Then, as she wilted, he entwined his hand in her hair and began to drag her toward the shaft.

  + + +

  Corrine’s thoughts became lost within themselves, as if they were curling down, trying to find their footing in a sloping, unsteady world.

  Where was she?

  The basement?

  No.

  Yes—

  The tunnel. You’re in a tunnel. In the mine.

  He was dragging her by the hair, and it hurt so much.

  So much!

  She tried to wriggle free but couldn’t, tried digging her nails into his hand to make him let go, but it did no good.

  She cried out in pain.

  Then she heard her name, but it didn’t come from the man beside her. It was from someone in the shaft: “Corrine? Are you in there?”

  “Help!” she screamed.

  + + +

  The bard stopped.

  He hefted Corrine to her feet, slipped behind her, and pressed the blade against her throat, then turned toward the shaft.

  + + +

  There’d been nothing in that other tunnel, so I’d returned to the shaft to descend farther.

  I heard more cries for help.

  It was a woman—I could tell that for sure now.

  SIG in one hand, rope in the other, I descended, and the tunnel that the cries were coming from was only a few meters below me.

  She’s there. She’s close.

  “Don’t hurt her, Kurt,” I called.

  I lowered myself until I was hanging in front of the tunnel, my weapon aimed into it. I locked off the rope to hold my position and directed the light from the headlamp in front of me.

  Corrine Davis stood maybe eight or nine meters away, a man behind her. He wore a headlamp and at first I couldn’t make out his face. He was holding the blade of a straight razor against her throat, just like Kurt Mason had done with that helicopter pilot Cliff Freeman in the mine west of Denver.

  “Drop the blade.” I sighted down the barrel at him. “Do it now.”

  45

  “Patrick?” There was surprise in his voice. “Nice work, my friend. I didn’t expect to see you so soon. This is so close to what happened in Colorado, don’t you think? You with your gun, me with my blade?”

  The voice matched Mason’s, and when I directed my light at his face I could see for certain that he had altered his appearance and it matched Everhart’s DMV photo.

  Surgery.

  Yes, that explains the bruises and swelling.

  Corrine squinted and averted her eyes from my light.

  I aimed my gun at Kurt’s head, but since he was standing behind her not much of it was visible. Additionally, since I was still attached to the rope, I was rotating slightly and there was no way I was going to be able to make this shot. Even if I’d been standing still, at this distance I didn’t trust myself to not hit Corrine.

  It was just like Colorado.

  The past.

  The present.

  Becoming one.

  Mason said, “Drop your gun down the shaft, Pat.”

  “SWAT is on its way, Kurt. There’s no way you’re getting out of here. Let her go.”

  “It’ll take them time to get down here. And there are more ways out of this mine than you know about. Now drop the gun.”

  Stall. You need to stall.

  “I’m not going to do that. Set down the razor blade.”

  He won’t kill her. She’s the only bargaining chip he has.

  I aimed.

  No, I didn’t have the shot. There was no way. But even if I couldn’t shoot him, I could stall, I could—

  Kurt went on, his voice steady, calculating. “This reminds me of what happened with Freeman—his wrist, remember?”

  Oh no.

  “Kurt, don’t—”

  Remaining behind her and holding her tightly, he whisked the blade down and swept it swiftly and deeply across her right wrist.

  A thin spurt of blood shot out, even as he raised the blade and pressed it against her throat again.

  She cried out and used her left hand to stop the bleeding.

  No!

  “There,” he said, “now there’s a true sense of unity between the two stories. And it brings some urgency to our little face-off here. Drop the gun, Pat. We need to get her to the surface or she’ll bleed to death. Do it.”

  Thoughts wrestled inside me.

  Save her!

  “Okay.” I redirected my SIG so it was no longer aimed at him. “Just let me help her.”

  “Get rid of the gun.”

  I let go of my weapon and it disappeared beneath me into the darkness, bouncing off one support beam after another as it fell. Time stretched out long and thin before it finally hit the floor of the shaft.

  “Please,” Corrine begged me. Her hand was covered with the blood that was flowing profusely from her wrist.

  “Keep pressure on there,” Kurt told her. “It’s really important for you to control that bleeding.”

  He motioned toward me. “Pull up the hem of your pants legs, one at a time. Show me that you’re not carrying in an ankle holster.”

  Sometimes I have a backup weapon. Today I did not. I showed him. “Kurt, there’s—”

  “Everything out of your pockets. Keys. Phone. Lock pick set. Your Maglite. You still carry that automatic knife with you? All of it. Down the shaft. Everything.”

  Think, Pat!

  I couldn’t come up with any other way to hurry things up other than going along with him, so I emptied my pockets.

  “Now, I need you to come into this tunnel and take off your harness.”

  You have to help her anyway. If he lets his guard down, you can go at him. Take him down.

  Pushing off the far wall of the shaft with my free hand, I swung into the tunnel and grabbed one of the support beams, but when I pulled myself over so I could stand on the edge of the tunnel, some of the dirt crumbled away and I momentarily lost my footing.

  I tried again, and this time I made sure the ground was sturdy under my feet. Then, passing a little slack through the rappel device, I pulled myself into the tunnel, loosened the rope, eased another step into the tunnel, and unclipped the carabiner.

  He was edging slowly toward me, keeping Corrine in front of him, the straight razor’s blade still at her throat. “How did you find me?”

  Blood dripped off her wrist and dribbled onto the ground beside her feet as she shuffled forward.

  “There isn’t time for this, Kurt. We need to get her to the surface.”

  “You stall, she dies. Now tell me, how did you find me? What was it? What gave me away?”

  “The museum. The timing. You had to get out of there with the arrows.
How? You had them hidden along the edge of the hand truck you were pushing. You brought too many crates of soda in. And you carted it all back out. It’s how you hid the arrows from the cameras.”

  “That’s not enough. It can’t be.”

  “And Isabelle Brittain’s phone call to Corrine on Monday night. It helped us with the timing. We caught video of your van entering her neighborhood forty minutes before she arrived home. Then you left the next morning.”

  “Timing and location.”

  “Timing and location. And you knew about the painting of the skull. I’m waiting to confirm it, but the timing works—you saw the painting before the staff rotated the display. Now let her go. This has nothing to do with Corrine. This is between you and me. Let her alone. You’re armed, I’m not. I’ll fight you.”

  “That’s not going to happen. There’s a much bigger story in play than what’s unfolding here with the three of us.”

  “What story is that?”

  He didn’t respond.

  You don’t have any ascenders or Prusiks. You can’t follow him up the rope.

  I thought about the shaft, the beams in it. They were old, yes, but they looked sturdy. They were placed at relatively uniform intervals.

  You can do it.

  Maybe.

  Yes, you can.

  “How did you know about the exterior cameras at the NCAVC?” I asked him. “Jerome?”

  He shook his head. “It’s never that easy, Pat.”

  “But you’re the one who blew the lawnmower?”

  “Yes. I was going to share this with you later, but let’s just go for it: Now seven gods use thirty-eight.” Before I could even respond, he said, “That’s all I’m giving you. Now, we need to switch places. Take off that harness. Leave it on the ground.”

  Loosening the harness, I stepped out of the leg loops and tossed it to the floor of the tunnel. Questions raced through my mind: Seven gods use thirty-eight? Who’s he talking about? What does that even mean?

  The obvious would be a .38 caliber handgun. The seven gods could be referring to something from history, a myth, other victims, the deeper story he was—

  “Come toward me slowly,” he said. He was about five meters away.

  I started toward him.

  “Slowly.”

  I slowed down, but only slightly. I needed to get that ascender from him and haul Corrine up that rope.

  Two meters away.

  “Alright,” Mason said. “Stop.”

  There wasn’t much room in the tunnel.

  “Who are the seven gods, Kurt?”

  “It’s not what you think. Hands to the side.”

  “Help me.” Corrine looked faint. It was the blood loss. We didn’t have much time.

  “I will,” I told her as I held out my hands and faced Mason. All the while I was calculating, watching, trying to figure out a way to overpower him without letting him cut her again.

  His riddle about the seven gods wouldn’t leave me alone.

  Did Jerome tell him the camera locations? The timing doesn’t fit. It’s—

  He held the blade tightly against Corrine’s throat as he edged toward me, his back to the tunnel wall. I flattened my back against the other side to give them room to pass.

  “If you make a move,” he said, “she dies. You need to know that. You might get to me, but not before I slit her throat.”

  “I understand.”

  When I looked into Corrine’s eyes, I saw desperation.

  Truth or hope?

  Give her hope.

  “It’s going to be alright,” I told her as convincingly as I could. “I promise you. Just keep your hand on that cut. Slow down the bleeding.”

  Still controlling her, Mason passed me, then backed up slowly toward the shaft until he was standing about a meter from the drop-off with Corrine in front of him.

  Rush him. Maybe if you can get to her, you can push him off the—

  “Back up, Patrick. I don’t want you playing the hero here.”

  I eased away from them until he told me to stop, about ten meters away.

  Mason grabbed the rope, pulled up a few arm lengths of slack, then looped it into a clove hitch, which he slipped over Corrine’s head and snugged up around her neck.

  “No, Kurt,” I said.

  She cried out and tried to pull away, but he drew her firmly toward him.

  I started for them, but he yanked her backward until her feet were right on the loose soil on the edge of the drop-off. “Stay there, Pat. I need to clip in. Not another step or I push her into the shaft.”

  I froze, tried to evaluate what to do.

  There was nothing stopping him from killing her. What did he have to lose? If I caught him he was going back to prison for life.

  He slid her forward slightly so she wouldn’t fall while he attached his ascending device to the rope above her.

  Corrine’s eyes were wide with terror.

  “Look at me,” I said to her. “Right here. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to help you, alright?”

  She stared in my direction. “He’ll come.” Her voice was soft but also firm.

  “Who?”

  “My brother.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” Mason said. He clipped in, attached his ascender to the rope along with a Prusik for his foot, then faced me.

  “Untie her, Kurt,” I told him. “There’s no reason to hurt her.”

  “There never is.”

  He tugged lightly on the rope he’d looped around her neck, forcing her back toward the edge of the shaft. With his other hand he pulled out a phone and snapped a picture of her, then pocketed the cell again. “You do remember in Colorado when you got there just in time to save Freeman?”

  “I’m telling you, Kurt, don’t do this.”

  “This time, though, you were just a little too late.”

  He yanked the rope backward, pulling Corrine over the edge, and as he swung out to ascend the rope, she disappeared into the shaft with a final scream that was cut off abruptly when the slack in the rope played out and the knot jerked tightly around her neck.

  46

  I bolted forward, but by the time I got there, Mason was already out of reach above me, smoothly, efficiently ascending the rope.

  I looked down and saw Corrine’s body convulsing where she hung a few meters below me.

  It’s too late.

  No! You can save her!

  Leaning forward, I tried to get ahold of the rope to pull her up, but it was just out of reach. I held on to a beam with my left hand and reached out to grab it with my right.

  The shaft around me washed in light as Mason tipped his headlamp down toward us. I glanced up just in time to see him flick out his blade.

  “Make sure you have good footing, Pat.”

  “Kurt, don’t—”

  He slit the rope beneath him just as I snagged it with my right hand. Corrine’s body weight yanked it through my fingers. Despite the friction burns it was causing, I tried to hold on, but I couldn’t.

  As she disappeared into the darkness beneath me I saw her flail her arms.

  She’s not dead.

  You might have saved her.

  She fell for what seemed like an eternity, and the sound of impact when she hit the bottom of the shaft was harsh and terrible and sickening.

  I directed my headlamp up toward Mason. “You’re mine.”

  “The future ends tomorrow, Pat. And you can tell Agent Hawkins I said so.”

  He began to ascend.

  No, I didn’t have a rope, but the beams that crisscrossed the shaft were spaced just far enough apart.

  I grabbed the one closest to me and began to climb.

  47

  Pull-ups.

  It was
just like doing pull-ups

  One beam after the next.

  In the light of the headlamp I could see Mason maybe five or six meters above me.

  You can catch him. You can do this.

  But he obviously knew what he was doing and had a rhythm going—one hand, then the other, gripping the ascending device that locked off the rope to hold him in place, sliding up the loop of rope for his foot. Then he would stand, slide up the ascender, and start over again.

  I climbed faster, trying to gain on him until I came to an impasse: The beam above me was missing. Either it’d fallen long ago or had never been placed there when this shaft was built.

  The next one was out of reach. I would need to jump, but if I missed it I was going to fall, and there wasn’t anything besides the beam I was standing on to stop me.

  I told myself I wouldn’t miss.

  Taking a deep breath, I crouched, gauged the distance, and leapt.

  But I didn’t make it high enough.

  I barely snagged the edge of the beam, but it was damp and slippery and my hands slid off. I plunged backward, smacking into the beam I’d leapt off from, hitting it hard on my right side. The impact flipped me around upside down.

  Throwing my arms out, I managed to grab hold of it just before I would have rolled off for good, but the momentum carried my legs around and my ankle banged into the side of the shaft, jarring me so much that I nearly lost my grip.

  My side raged with pain but I did my best to ignore it.

  Using a narrow ledge in the rock wall for a foothold, I scrambled onto the beam and quickly assessed myself. My side was wrenched pretty badly. Where the stitches had been, the cuts were bleeding heavily, but when I passed my hand over my rib cage it didn’t feel like I’d broken any ribs.

  My ankle was bruised, but I could deal with it. My right hand was on fire from the rope burns, but that was manageable.

  I directed my light up the shaft.

  Mason had paused and was staring down at me. “Are you alright, Pat?”

  I said nothing, just dried off my hands on my jeans and got ready to go after him.

  “Good. I’m glad,” he said. “I don’t want you to miss the climax tomorrow night.” Then he turned and began to ascend again.

  Don’t slip this time, Pat.