by Brian Harper
Cain opened every kitchen cabinet, looked on all sides of the central island.
Nothing.
He moved into the laundry area, thinking vaguely of the washing machine and dryer, each perhaps roomy enough for a crouching person.
Then he saw the cellar door.
Of course.
Trish swept the cellar with her flashlight’s beam. “Is there a phone down here”
“No.” Ally’s brown eyes, huge with fear, glinted in the dimness. “My folks just use this place for storage. Old Ashcroft heirlooms.”
Trish went on exploring with her flash. The wavering funnel of light played over antique chairs wrapped in cellophane, oil portraits elaborately framed, handcrafted dressers glazed with dust. Amid the furniture and art objects stood stacks of cardboard cartons and wooden crates, meticulously labeled and tagged.
The clutter offered no shortage of hiding places, but concealment would buy them only an extra minute or two. What they needed was a means of escape.
“How about a circuit breaker box” She was thinking aloud, her voice thin and strained. “We can trip the breakers, get away in the dark before they know what’s happened.”
Ally shook her head. “Breaker box is in the garage. Anyway, there’s a backup generator. For earthquakes.”
Trish kept looking. The beam of light prowled the floor. It came to rest on a wooden panel mounted in a square cement frame, near the center of the room.
“What’s that” Pointing with the flash.
“Cover for a well.” Ally spoke in a robot’s voice. “They built this house on the foundation of the original Ashcroft place. Well was dry, so they put a lid on it.”
“We could hide in there, under the cover …”
“The bad guys would find us.”
Trish silently conceded the point. Of course they would.
She was getting desperate, that was all. She was losing it.
“Give up, Trish.” Ally’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “There’s no hope.”
She looked at the girl. Brambles gleamed in her unkempt hair. The white dress was a muddy rag. Her bare feet looked very small against the floor’s gray expanse.
Trish thought of toe tags. She pushed the image away.
“There’s always hope,” she said. “Always.”
Nice thought. Inspirational. Mrs. Wilkes, her long-ago Girl Scout leader, would have approved.
But the truth was, they were finished.
She must have been crazy to come back to this house, crazy to go up against Cain and his personal death squad. Even Pete Wald wouldn’t have risked it, and he was a veteran cop with twenty years of field experience, while she … well, she was a rank amateur.
You blew it, Trish, said a small, scared voice in her mind. You screwed up after all.
Upstairs Cain’s heavy footsteps rumbled closer, the footsteps of a fairy-tale giant combing his castle for intruders.
Directly outside the cellar he stopped.
The sharp intake of breath was Ally’s.
Trish set down the flashlight, then aimed the Glock at the head of the staircase.
Shivering with tension, blinking sweat out of her eyes, she prepared to make a last stand.
38
Tyler followed Cain’s gaze and focused on the closed door. “Cellar,” he said, remembering the blueprints he’d studied.
Cain nodded. “This is the only access. They’re trapped.”
“Yeah. But Robinson’s in a good defensive position. She can take out anybody who goes down the stairs.”
“Unless we take her out first.” Cain glanced at Tyler and lifted an eyebrow. “There’s a way.”
“How”
“Stay here.” He brushed past Tyler. “I need my duffel. Stashed it in the den.”
“Hey, what’s the plan, boss”
At the kitchen doorway Cain glanced back. A smile split his face like a second scar.
“Souvenir from Yuma,” he said, and he was gone.
“Why don’t they come down” Ally breathed, chewing her bruised lip, oblivious of pain.
Trish couldn’t figure it out either. She tried to see the situation from Cain’s point of view-the closed door, the cellar stairs …
It was like a drill she’d run at the academy. To barge into the cellar was to risk being cut down in an ambush.
“They’re scared I’ll get the drop on them.” She tested the laser sight, beaming a red dot on the door. “I’ve got a tactical advantage.”
“You mean you can hold them off”
She wanted to say yes, but the truth was less comforting. “Doesn’t look like they’re going to try a frontal assault.”
“What else can they do”
One set of footsteps departed. Cain pounded through the kitchen, into the living room.
Trish listened to him go. “They’ll think of something,” she said softly, somehow certain they already had.
Tyler loitered in the laundry area, staying shy of the door. Most likely it had a hollow core. Robinson could punch a bullet through it if she had a mind to.
Not a good idea to get killed now. For one thing, he didn’t want to miss what was coming up.
Smiling, he remembered Yuma. It was the first time he had ever worked with Cain.
The two had met in the state prison at Lompoc, where Tyler was doing time for his role in an auto chop shop. Cain had been in for knocking over a gas station on Interstate 10, ordinarily a simple enough job, except that a state trooper had happened along at the worst possible moment.
Cain got out first. After finishing his own sentence, Tyler tracked him down in Indio. He was living in a squalid trailer, off by itself at the edge of town, amid the sun-scarred flats and humming power lines.
Lilith was there too. Though only fifteen, she’d been Cain’s girl even before his year-long stint in prison; he liked to start them young. Having seen Cain naked in the shower, Tyler sometimes wondered how the petite, slim-waisted waif could handle him.
But of course Lilith liked pain.
Cain offered Tyler work, which Tyler readily accepted. And that was how they ended up in Yuma, Arizona, long past midnight, peering through a steel chain fence at Southern Pacific Railroad’s east freight yard.
A single guard desultorily performed his rounds. Cain waited for him to go inside the office and warm his hands over the radiator-it was February, cold in the desert night-then snipped through the chain link with bolt cutters, gouging a man-sized hole in the fence.
Dressed in black, Cain and Tyler and two others entered the yard and pried open the back of a freight car. After that, it was only a matter of unloading carton after carton, spiriting the boxes through the fence into a trailer hooked to Cain’s van.
They had taken only as much as the trailer could hold, a mere fraction of the freight car’s contents. Still, the haul had been considerable.
Marlboros. Panasonic VCRs. Nike running shoes.
And the prize catch-a crate marked DANGER: EXPLOSIVES and containing a gross of dynamite sticks.
In the underground economy there was always a seller’s market for dynamite. Cain fenced it all.
Or nearly all. He had a habit of holding on to things that could prove useful.
Four of the sticks had been added to his collection.
His souvenir from Yuma.
Tyler wondered if either Trish or Ally had a birthday coming up. He hoped so.
Not that they would be getting any cake tonight-but Cain sure was going to light them one hell of a candle.
39
Had to be a way out of this. Had to be.
She could find it, she was sure she could, if she was able to fight off fear, fight off fatigue, and think.
Think.
Trish remembered the portable radio and switched it on, hoping to eavesdrop on her enemies’ chatter and learn their intentions.
Channel three was silent. She scanned the other channels. Dead air.
They weren’t using the radios, we
ren’t giving her any help.
She kept the transceiver on its scanning mode and picked up the flashlight, angling the beam at the ceiling.
No ventilation ducts. No removable panels over a handy crawl space. Just bare fluorescent tubes, dark now, mounted on a sheet of poured concrete, as flat and smooth as a marble headstone.
The flash searched the floor. Concrete also, utterly featureless, unmarred even by cracks.
She was a hunted rabbit. Cornered, crouching, the dogs closing in.
“Was Cain right”
The question startled her. She glanced at Ally. “What”
“He said you came back to save me. Did you Is that why you’re here”
“I … it’s complicated.”
“You should’ve stayed away.” Weary desolation leeched the energy from Ally’s voice. She sagged against an antique bureau. “Shouldn’t have given up your life for me.”
“Don’t talk that way,” Trish whispered, part of her ashamed for having had the same unworthy thought.
If she’d stayed at the lake … if she hadn’t decided to be a hero …
“It’s true, though.” Ally spoke softly, the words almost inaudible. “You didn’t have to do it, but you did. You’re brave. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
“I’m not brave, Ally.” She tried to smile, couldn’t. “I’m so scared I can hardly stand up.”
“But you’re here.”
Trish meditated on that. Fear wasn’t cowardice, was it A coward would have heeded those plaintive, reasonable voices in her head that had warned her to stay where she was safe.
In her whole life, twenty-four years, she had never been put in a position where bravery could be tested-until tonight.
She supposed she had passed that test.
Rabbit or not, she felt a faint uplift of pride at the thought.
Then the house shivered with someone’s rapid, ponderous tread.
Cain-returning to the kitchen.
The duffel bag thumped on the counter under the white fluorescent glare. As Tyler watched, Cain rummaged inside and produced the four dynamite sticks, as well as an M-80 firecracker that would serve as a blasting cap.
“Gonna use all four” Tyler asked, worried by the prospect.
“Got to.” Cain pulled out a roll of duct tape and began taping the M-80 to one of the sticks, working deftly even with gloved hands. “These charges were manufactured for coal mining. Ammonium nitrate, relatively weak concentration. Made that way to prevent cave-ins.”
“Still looks like a pretty damn big party popper to me.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
Tyler hoped so. He stared at the dynamite, incongruous amid the stained birch cabinets and waxed tiles, the family snapshots, the copy of TV Guide tented on the countertop.
Tentatively he touched one of the sticks, two feet long, four inches in diameter, paper-sealed.
Death in a brown wrapper.
He looked up at Cain, still winding tape around the detonator. In the glareless light Tyler could see the sweat gathered on the big man’s face like a misting of dew, the strain tugging at the muscles of his face.
Hard night, too many unexpected complications, and there was a lot more riding on this job than a few cartons of VCRs and cigarettes.
Now all of it was at risk-because of one rookie cop who wouldn’t stay dead.
Under the sleeves of Cain’s nylon jacket, the massive muscles of his arms were sketchily defined, arms that could bench-press two hundred and fifty pounds, twice Trish Robinson’s weight. Cain could snap that woman’s neck like a damn dog biscuit.
It was crazy that she should pose any kind of threat to a man like him. Unnatural, bizarre-a field mouse challenging a hawk.
Well, Tyler mused, the mouse would be the hawk’s dinner soon. The natural order of things would be restored.
“Get Gage and Lilith in here.” Cain bundled the four sticks and started lashing them together with more tape. “And have Lilith grab the fire extinguisher in the foyer closet. There must be one in the kitchen too. Find it.”
Tyler obeyed, first issuing the instructions over his ProCom, then searching the kitchen. By the time he found the dry-chemical extinguisher in the pantry, Gage and Lilith had entered the room.
Lilith pouted when she saw the bomb. “You said we’d get to play with the girl,” she muttered sullenly.
“I’ll find us another sweet young thing.” Cain smiled. “One who’s even younger.”
Her eyes brightened. “Honest” she lisped.
Cain pecked her cheek. “Honest.”
“Boss.” That was Gage, staring mesmerized at the dynamite. “You, uh, you sure this is a good idea”
His gloved fingers twitched, and Tyler worried briefly that the kid would accidentally yank the Glock’s trigger and shoot off his own foot.
Cain grunted. “Why wouldn’t it be”
“What if it sets off the fire alarm”
“Any smoke detectors in the cellar will be vaporized before they can send a signal.”
“Smoke could get up here, though.”
“We’ll disable the detector in the kitchen.”
“There’ve gotta be other ones all over the house.”
“That’s why Tyler and Lilith are toting those extinguishers.” Cain clapped Gage on the back. “Quit worrying.”
Gage nodded without reply. Tyler remembered what Blair had told him. The younger Sharkey was a virgin at killing.
Well, the first time could be tough. Tyler remembered the scrawny sleepy-eyed clerk in the convenience store in Kingman-the shattering blast of the shotgun, the spray of brains, and how the space behind the cash register was abruptly empty, no person there.
His sleep had been restless for a few nights afterwards. But he’d gotten over it. Gage would too.
He shifted his attention to the bomb on the counter. The bundled dynamite was now wrapped in a plastic trash bag filled with cutlery. Cain had emptied the knife racks.
Fragmentation grenade. Nasty.
Tyler thought about what a bomb like that would do: the deafening concussive blast, and with it the shower of broken knives-red-hot spears of metal, mangled and twisted and razor-edged, impaling anything and anyone within range.
He shook his head slowly, emitting a low whistle. “Our lady friends won’t be getting any older.”
“You got that right.” Cain finished taping the plastic bag in place, then hefted the bomb, loose knives clinking. “The two Mouseketeers are about to go for an E-ticket ride.”
40
Not much longer. An attack was imminent.
Trish had heard a drawling voice on the radio summon Lilith and Gage into the kitchen. They would never leave their posts unless Cain was sure he had his quarries cornered-and was preparing to make his move.
And still there was no way out.
Probing with the flashlight, she’d checked every wall, every corner, every inch of the ceiling and floor, and found no openings. The cellar was a cage of concrete, impregnable as a pharaoh’s tomb.
There was no clock in the room, but she could hear a clock ticking anyway, her life winding down to that ultimate moment when reality would be erased in a shock of pain.
Funny to breathe and know your breath soon would be stopped. Funny to hear your heart and know its beats were numbered.
This line of thought wasn’t helping. She needed to focus on strategy, on ways and means, on what to do.
But there was nothing to do. Nothing.
No medals for quitters.
Shut up.
She was trying to think clearly, logically, but bursts of adrenalized panic kept breaking up her concentration like static interference chopping a radio signal.
Must be some tactic she could try, must be.
Had Marta been this scared
Come on, think.
The coroner said Marta was alive and probably conscious right up to the end.
Couldn’t let Ally die. Think.<
br />
Alive during penile penetration, alive when the jump rope tightened around her neck …
Trish shut her eyes, trying to push away the distracting memories, but it did no good. In the sudden darkness behind her closed eyelids, she was back at the farmhouse, on the verge of the weedy field, with the tumbledown porch to her left and, on her right, the dry well where she and Marta had cast pennies and made wishes..
The well.
She opened her eyes. Beamed the flash into the middle of the room, spotlighting the well cover in its wooden frame.
“Any other wells around here” she asked, holding her voice steady.
Ally shrugged. “One, yeah.”
“Where”
“Northwest.”
“Outside the property”
“In the woods, uh-huh. Who cares”
“We do.” Trish holstered the Glock to free her hands. “Because we’re getting out that way.”
Ally raised her head. “Getting out”
“Help me get the cover off.”
They tugged at the large square panel, Ally squatting by Trish’s side, the flashlight resting on the floor between them, washing their faces with an eerie upward shine.
“What do you mean, getting out” Ally whispered. Something more than tears glittered in her eyes, something like hope.
Trish spoke through clenched teeth as she struggled with the board. “There was this abandoned farm in the town where I grew up. I used to go there with … with a friend.”
“So”
“Behind the house was a dry well like this one. We climbed down in it once. Looked through the drainage grate.” Exertion squeezed drops of sweat from her forehead. “There was a cave.”
“Ground water.” Ally understood. She scrabbled at the panel with the frenzied desperation of someone buried alive struggling to dig free. “It hollows out passageways. And since there’s another cave near this one-“
“Passages might … connect.” The board groaned, sliding free.
“You’re right, there could be a whole cave system.” Ally coughed as unsettled dust flew up from the dislodged panel. “The bedrock here is limestone, great for caves. Limestone’s mostly calcium carbonate, which dissolves real easily in carbonic acid-that’s just water mixed with carbon dioxide gas. The karst process, they call it.”
