Heartbreaker

by Karen Robards

  “We’ve got to risk the lighter,” Jess said.

  Lynn’s throat clenched with fear. But if she could not see the glow from the bad guys’ light, perhaps they would not be able to see the glow from hers—unless they had extinguished their light and were moving in the dark, and were much closer at hand than any of them supposed.

  Unlikely, Lynn decided. Pulling the lighter out of her pocket, she did a quick flick. The Bic sprang to life.

  They were in another chamber, a little larger than the first. The roof was about twenty feet high. A single timber toward the rear supported it. Two others had fallen down at one end, so that they slanted from ceiling to floor. Great piles of rock and other debris almost reached the roof in places. Detritus from years of natural wear and tear, perhaps? Or debris left behind by long-ago miners?

  Water rushed across the sloping floor to disappear beneath a pile of rubble that filled most of one corner. More water fell in a steady drip, drip, drip from the roof.

  The chamber had no exit.

  Lynn’s eyes grew wide and her breath stopped as that single most crucial fact registered. Glancing at Jess and Rory, she realized that they were just coming to the same conclusion themselves.

  “We’re trapped!” Rory breathed. Her eyes were dark with fear. Lynn’s heart contracted in response.

  “There’s got to be a way out. Listen, can’t you hear the baby crying? Theresa got out of here. So can we,” Lynn said with determination.

  “Your mom’s right.” Jess took the lighter from Lynn and held it high, scanning the chiseled stone walls, the rubble-strewn floor, the dripping ceiling.

  Lynn put her arms around Rory. The teen clung to her, her head dropping onto her mother’s shoulder. My baby, Lynn thought fiercely, and vowed that whatever it took, Rory would live.

  “There it is,” Jess said with satisfaction. Lynn looked where he indicated and saw a hole about the size of a car tire in one wall near the ceiling. A pyramid of loose rock served as a kind of natural staircase to the hole.

  A glance around the chamber confirmed that it was the only means of egress.

  If there had ever been another entrance—and there must have been once—it was now blocked by debris.

  “Up you go. Hurry.”

  Jess let the flame shine for a moment longer as the three of them crossed to the pile of stones they would have to climb to reach the hole. Then he doused the light. Lynn scrambled up the rock with Rory behind her.

  The only sound besides the distant rush of water and their own labored breathing was the clatter of dislodged pebbles, which echoed as they hit. Behind them, the entrance to the passage they had exited remained blessedly dark. Ahead of them, the baby did not cry.

  A hideous thought occurred to Lynn: Was it possible that only one or two of the killers were behind them? Could the others be ahead, waiting, with Theresa as their prisoner?

  After crying from the moment they had entered the mine, the baby was now silent. Why?

  Lynn’s throat grew dry as she considered the myriad possibilities.

  All of which she kept to herself for the moment, so as not to scare Rory. They had no choice but to go forward. What awaited them in that direction was pure speculation; what was behind them was not in doubt.

  Lynn reached what felt like a firm rock shelf and pulled herself up on it. She could hear Rory’s scrambling movements, then feel the brush of her body as her daughter joined her. Jess, behind them, clambered up on the shelf as well.

  A quick flick of the Bic revealed that they were crowded on what seemed to be a natural rock ledge about four feet below the roof. The ledge, in the far corner of the chamber, was approximately seven feet long by three and a half feet wide. It provided access to the hole, which opened off its left end.

  “Go,” Jess said, dousing the light. Not that anyone needed any urging. It would just be a matter of a few minutes, Lynn knew, until their pursuers appeared.

  Rory was closest to the hole. She entered first.

  “This is really small,” Rory whispered, pulling back to shed her jacket. Lynn took it and laid it aside as Rory wriggled into the hole once more.

  “I’m going to have to crawl through on my stomach,” Rory reported back.

  “Be careful, baby.”

  As her daughter slithered away, Lynn closed her eyes and said a quick, fervent prayer, the first she’d had time for since rolling out of the Jeep.

  “Please let this be the way out,” she prayed. “Please help us. Please save us. Rory, and me, and Jess.”

  Funny how natural it now seemed to include Jess.

  Suddenly the baby started to wail again. Though the sound was just audible, it was clear that it came from somewhere beyond the hole. Relief made Lynn weak.

  The baby was crying. Lynn considered the angry wail an answer to her prayer and felt heartened to know that the Big Guy was on the job, if maybe a little late.

  Divine intervention might turn out to be the only thing that kept them alive.

  Lynn kept a hand first on Rory’s leg and then on her foot to monitor her progress. As Rory pulled away from her touch a light, faint but unmistakable, showed in the opening of the passage they had so recently vacated.

  “They’re coming,” Jess whispered. “We’re out of time. Get in there.”

  Galvanized by that yellowish glow, Lynn scrunched down and slid into the passage after Rory. Circumference-wise, it was more akin to a large prairie-dog tunnel than a passage intended for human use, and the fit was tight. The goose-down jacket! That was at least part of the problem. Just as Rory had, she would have to take it off.

  Rory was wearing a shirt under her jacket. Because the soaked turtleneck had never dried and had been left behind with the kayak, Lynn had nothing beneath but her bra.

  “What are you doing?” Jess whispered as she squirmed back out onto the ledge. A glance confirmed that the yellowish glow in the passage had not gone away.

  “Stripping,” she whispered back without taking time to explain. Thrusting the jacket into his arms, Lynn once again tackled the hole.

  To progress she had to lie on her stomach and pull herself forward with her elbows. The rock was cold, and it scraped her bare skin everywhere it touched. She scarcely had room to lift her head. The tunnel was so small, in fact, that it scratched her shoulders and back as well as her stomach as she wormed herself along.

  After no more than a minute or so of this, Lynn found herself doing battle with an almost overwhelming attack of claustrophobia.

  Only the sound of the baby crying gave her the courage to wriggle on.

  The passage seemed to grow narrower. Lynn was about ten feet in now, fighting for every inch, reminding herself equally to breathe and not to panic.

  She had never liked enclosed spaces.

  To get past a rocky projection she had to scrunch her shoulders as small as they would go. Pushing with her poor abused toes, pulling with her once well-tended nails, she managed to inch through.

  Until her hips caught.

  Lynn twisted, and wriggled, and pushed, and pulled. She squirmed. She fought.

  Nothing worked. She didn’t fit!

  She was stuck.

  30

  “MOVE IT!” Jess’s voice was muffled as he flicked on the lighter briefly to check on her progress, but the urgency of the message was clear. Lynn knew he must be still on the ledge waiting for her to clear out of his way. But she couldn’t move, at least not forward. Try as she would, her hips were not going to make it past that projection.

  Not without major liposuction, anyway, which at the moment was not an option.

  Rory was two sizes smaller in the hips. From the look of her, so was Theresa.

  Death by pear shape!

  “I can’t!” Lynn whispered back frantically.

  “What? Why not?” Jess demanded. From the sound of his voice, his head was inside the hole.

  “Mom! Mom, come on! There’s a way out—a way to the outside! Theresa’s here; she’s go
ing to show us! But she’s scared. She’s afraid to wait! Hurry!” Rory’s voice, floating to Lynn from the other end of the tunnel, at once filled her with relief—there were no bad guys waiting to grab them as they exited—and thrust like a stake through her heart.

  Lynn wasn’t going to be able to make it out. Rory would have to go on alone.

  At least, Lynn thought, the most crucial part of her prayer had been answered.

  If only one of them could survive she would rather by far that it be Rory. If she survived and Rory did not, the pain would be never-ending. Lynn didn’t think she could endure it.

  Such was a mother’s love.

  “Rory, baby, listen!” Lynn’s voice was suffused with intensity because she knew time was running out. “I can’t get through this way—Jess and I are too big. We’re going to have to find another way out. But you go on! Do you hear me? You go on!”

  “Come on, Mom!” Rory either didn’t hear or didn’t comprehend what she was saying.

  “You’re going to have to go on without me, Rory! I can’t fit through this tunnel! It’s too narrow! You go on!”

  “Mom …” The sudden fear in Rory’s voice told Lynn that this time her words had been understood. “Mom, what do you mean you can’t fit through? You have to!”

  “Baby, I can’t!”

  “Damn it, Lynn! Move it!” Jess’s exhortation was savage. It barely distracted Lynn. If she and Jess were done for, so be it. Rory had to save herself.

  “Mom, Theresa’s leaving! Hurry! Please, hurry!”

  “Rory Elizabeth, you go with Theresa. Do you hear me? You go with Theresa!”

  “I’m not going without you!”

  “You go!” Lynn took a deep, steadying breath and lied as she had never lied in her life. It would be too hard on Rory to leave her mother to a near-certain death. She had to give Rory hope to cling to, at least. “Jess and I are going to have to find another way around. We’ll be fine. You go with Theresa! Go for help!”

  “Mommy, she’s leaving!”

  “Go, Rory! Go on! The best thing you can do for me is go for help!”

  “I don’t want to leave you!”

  “Go on! I mean it! Go on!” Lynn made her voice sound as harsh and authoritative as she could. To speak to her daughter in that tone when she might never get a chance to talk to her again was one of the hardest things she had ever done. Inside, her heart was breaking. Rory …

  “Mommy …” Rory was crying, Lynn could tell from her voice. Lynn felt hot moisture well into her own eyes. Her throat ached with the force of unshed tears. Rory …

  Images of her daughter as a smiling infant, a roly-poly toddler, a ponytailed six-year-old, flashed unbidden through her mind. Oh, Rory …

  “Go with Theresa!”

  “I’m going. I’ll bring help if I can.” Rory gave a great gulping sob, which Lynn had to fight not to answer in kind. “I love you, Mommy!”

  “I love you too, Rory Elizabeth,” Lynn said fiercely. “Now, get! Hear me? Go!”

  “I’m going. I love you!” Rory’s sobbing faded, as if she were obediently moving away. Then, fainter still: “Theresa, wait!”

  “Oh, Rory,” Lynn whispered aloud, and closed her eyes. Her heart seemed to swell with pain.

  Would she ever see her daughter again?

  Please, God. Please.

  “What the hell are you doing? They’re almost here!” Jess sounded both angry and frantic. She felt his hand prod her ankle as if to speed her along. If he was able to reach her he must have head and shoulders in the passage.

  Lynn wiped the tears from her eyes with both hands. Go with God, she said inwardly to her daughter, then forced herself to concentrate on the second-most pressing matter at hand: saving her own life.

  “Back out of the way!” She kicked at Jess in case her order needed translating.

  “What?”

  “Back up!” She kicked again. Seconds later the change in the quality of the air reaching her feet told her that Jess had obediently pulled out.

  Now all she had to do was get out herself.

  Pushing with her palms and pulling with her knees, Lynn found that she could move in reverse, and much faster than she had crawled forward.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jess growled as she emerged feetfirst. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  “I couldn’t get through,” she said, maneuvering carefully so she wouldn’t fall off the ledge. On her hands and knees she glanced up at him and took a deep, steadying breath. Whatever happened, Rory was now in God’s hands and she had to focus all her energies on herself. “I don’t fit.”

  “You don’t fit?” The exclamation was explosive. A glance showed Lynn that the light from the passage was much brighter now. Their pursuers had almost reached the chamber.

  The glow allowed her to see Jess—and Jess to see her. He was looking her over in patent disbelief.

  “You won’t fit either,” she said, giving his body a quick once-over in turn. His hips were slim for a man of his size, but they were wider than hers. As for his shoulders—forget it. “The passage is too narrow. We’ve got to hide.”

  “There’s no damn place to hide,” Jess said. “Rory?”

  “She made it through. She said there was a way to the outside. Theresa was there with her and was going to show her.” Lynn kept her voice steady. If pain showed in her eyes Jess knew better than to acknowledge it.

  “She should be all right then.” He was bracing, not sympathetic, for which Lynn was thankful. “One good thing about it: If you can’t fit through that tunnel you can bet your sweet life that none of these guys will be able to. They won’t be able to follow her.”

  When we’re dead, he meant. The sentiment was unspoken, but Lynn heard it loud and clear. Their gazes met.

  So be it, she thought. Her life for Rory’s. It was a trade she was willing to make.

  A man’s silhouette darkened the entrance to the passage. Lynn glanced down and saw that he was carrying a flaming torch.

  Despite all her avowals her mouth went dry with terror. This was it then.

  A sneaking question entered her mind: Did it hurt to die?

  Three men followed the torchbearer. One was Santa Claus.

  All four—Lynn counted them—were armed with rifles. At least all of them were here. That meant Rory had a real shot at escape.

  Once they stepped out of the passage, though, the light from the torch would illuminate the entire chamber. There was no chance that she and Jess could escape detection.

  Their present position was horribly, hideously exposed. All the men had to do was look up. Which, sooner or later, they would.

  For a brief, desperate instant Lynn thought about squirming back into the passage. At least in there she would be out of sight.

  But they would find her. There was no possibility that they would not. That passage provided the only other egress.

  At the thought of being trapped and then shot in that coffinlike space, Lynn felt a cold chill run down her spine. She would rather by far meet her end in the open, where at least she could put up a fight.

  “Get down!” Jess lay prone. Lynn quickly dropped down beside him. The hard warmth of his body pressed close against hers. Absurdly, given the circumstances, she took comfort from it.

  The torchbearer stepped into the chamber. The flame seemed to grow. Warm orange rays stretched into every nook and cranny.

  “There’s no way out,” one of the men said in surprise as the other three entered.

  “There has to be a way out,” Santa Claus replied, frowning heavily as his gaze probed the corners. “You saw the footprints. They came this way. They can’t just have vanished. Ergo, there has to be a way out.”

  “What difference does it make if we lose them anyway? What harm can they do? There’s so little time left! Can’t we spend it some other way?” The speaker was a thin, balding man with stooped shoulders and rimless spectacles. He looked like Lynn’s idea of Bob Cratchit
in A Christmas Carol.

  “You sound like you’re beginning to have doubts, Louis,” Santa Claus said. Suddenly all eyes—including Lynn’s and Jess’s—were on Louis. “Are you questioning the words of the Lamb?”

  “No! No!” Louis sounded afraid. “Of course not! It’s just … I never bargained on having to kill people.”

  “Everything we do is at Yahweh’s direction! Even this! It is for the greater good. We are only performing the mission we were put here on earth to carry out. We act not out of hatred, but out of love.”

  “Love heals!” The other two spoke in unison and exchanged knowing nods.

  “We don’t know what the Judas may have told them,” the torchbearer said reasonably. “Like the others, they could well be his agents. They might try to interfere.”

  “I know, I know, but even if Michael told them everything there’s nothing they can do now to stop it. It’s too late. I—”

  “You’re an old woman, Louis, and you always have been,” the torchbearer said impatiently. “Can we get on with this, please? If possible I’d like to be at the compound with the Lamb when the time comes.”

  “So would we all,” Santa Claus said, and Louis’s qualms appeared to be dismissed.

  For a moment there Lynn had almost begun to hope again. Though of course there had never been any real chance that they would just turn around and go away.

  “Look for an exit. There has to be one,” Santa Claus said.

  The torch was raised high. The four men began a visual probe of every nook and cranny, starting at the entrance to the passage and turning slowly toward the far wall.

  It was just a matter of seconds now, Lynn knew. Hugging the surface of the ledge, making herself as small and flat as possible while continuing to watch the quartet’s every move, Lynn experienced a whole gamut of emotions, from helpless terror to rage to despair.

  Rory! Her thoughts flew to her daughter. Please, God, keep her safe.

  Beside her, Jess seemed to vibrate with as much tension as a just-plucked guitar string.

  I don’t want to die! Lynn screamed inwardly. Then, don’t let it hurt.

  “There they are!” The torchbearer saw them, pointed. The other three swung around to look.