by Brian Harper
A shiver racked her. The caverns were chilled by the perpetual absence of sunlight and damp with percolating ground water, dripping like a thousand leaky faucets, coating walls and floors with filth.
She crawled onward, indifferent to the complaints of her palms and elbows, buffed raw by abrasive rock.
Never had she endured such sheer physical discomfort for so long. The most grueling drill at the academy, the most pitiless hike, the worst camping trip of her life had been exercises in shameless self-indulgence compared with tonight’s ordeal.
She rounded another turn in the passageway, and the glare of the flash swam into view again.
“It’s opening up.” Ally’s voice, high and shaky, echoed down the tube. “I see light.”
The other well. Had to be.
And if starlight was visible, the well head must be uncovered.
Trish crawled faster.
Ahead, Ally scrambled into a grotto, then stood, beaming the flash upward. “We found it!”
“Thank God,” Trish gasped.
With a last effort she emerged from the crawlway and staggered erect, coughing on stone dust. Her sore ankle throbbed, and her shirt and pants, encrusted with muck, clung skin-tight to her body.
“Guess we won’t need this anymore.” Ally gave back the compass. “It was a life saver, though.”
Trish pocketed it. “You can thank your folks for packing supplies on their boat.”
“My mom never goes out on the lake. It’s my dad I’ve got to thank.”
Her dad-the man who’d signed a death warrant on his wife and daughter.
Soon Ally would learn exactly how much she had to thank her father for. Trish felt a cold queasiness at the thought.
She turned away, studying the gallery in the flashlight’s ambient glow. The walls were hung with limestone curtains, the floor scattered with elfin bones. Over the years birds and small animals must have fallen down the well and died, their skeletal remains later washed by rainwater through holes in the drainage cover into the cave.
A miniature skull caught her attention. Rabbit Could be.
Maybe a hunted rabbit-like her.
She raised her head, peering upward at a long and treacherous sinkhole. Set in the far end of the vertical shaft, at what must be the bottom of the well, was an iron grate, a twin of the one in the cellar.
Reaching that grate posed a considerably greater challenge than climbing down the well in the cellar. There she had used the fieldstones studding the shaft as handholds and footholds. Here she would have to chimney her way up, advancing in fits and starts like an inchworm as she groped for any available crevice.
The task would be difficult under any circumstances-impossible when handcuffed.
“Think we can make it” Ally whispered anxiously, following Trish’s gaze.
Trish nodded. She knew what had to be done. “Set down the flash.”
Ally propped it in a corner, the beam casting a faint flush of color, soft as candlelight, over the cryptlike chamber.
“Okay.” Trish took a nervous breath and unholstered the Glock. “Now … now help me get these cuffs off.”
Ally was mystified. “I haven’t got a key.”
“Yes, you do.” Her face was expressionless as she handed over the gun. “This is the key.”
Ally stared at the pistol, sleek and black and lethal, and she understood. A blink of her eyes, a sudden trembling of her shoulders.
“No …” More moan than word.
“I need my hands free in order to get out.” Extending her arms, Trish braced both palms against a rock outcrop in the cave wall. “Put the muzzle close to the chain.”
“If I miss …”
“You won’t.”
“Oh, God. Oh, my God.”
Hesitantly Ally aimed the Glock at the handcuff chain, pointing the muzzle away from Trish.
“Now touch the trigger.” The girl’s finger curled around it in a reluctant embrace. “Perfect. You’re a natural.”
“I’m scared to death.”
You and me both, Trish thought.
Letting off a round at such close range risked unpredictable, perhaps lethal consequences. The bullet could be deflected in any direction, or could burst into fragments like a miniature grenade.
“It’s no big deal.” Trish did her best to sound confidently casual. “Just squeeze the trigger-gently, and not too fast.”
“Don’t know if I can.”
“You’ve got to. Or we’ll be stuck down here.”
“I know, but … I can’t. I really can’t …”
Ally was starting to shake. That was bad. If her aim was thrown off, Trish could lose a hand.
“Come on, partner.” Trish held her voice steady. “I’m counting on you.”
Ally turned her head, brown eyes shining, wide and surprised. “You called me partner.”
“That’s what you are.”
“Wonder Woman’s partner.” The words were spoken lightly, but she couldn’t hide the tremor of pride in her voice.
“Wonder Woman didn’t need a partner,” Trish said. “I do. And you’re it. So let’s go.”
Ally nodded, new firmness in the set of her mouth. “Okay. On three.”
Trish waited, praying for this to work. If the gun jumped … if the bullet ricocheted …
Slowly Ally drew back the trigger, counting under her breath.
“One …”
Trish tensed, holding herself rigid.
“Two …”
The gun went off, the report thunderous in the confined space, and Trish screamed.
Pain lanced her wrists. Doubled over, she sucked air through gritted teeth. Stars flashed across her field of vision as she stared at her hands, looking for a red spurt of blood.
Somewhere close to her ear Ally was babbling in terror. “I’m sorry, it was too soon, I wasn’t ready-oh, Christ, did I shoot you Talk to me!”
God, it hurt. It hurt.
Trembling all over, Trish fought off the pain and assessed the damage.
Blood No. Fingers None missing. Handcuffs
The chain was still intact.
“Damn,” she breathed.
One of the welded links had been badly nicked, forming a jagged crack, but the link had not failed completely. Her hands remained manacled.
Over the ringing in her head, Trish heard herself say, “We’ve got to try again.”
“Again” Ally was aghast.
“Got to.”
“If it didn’t work the first time-“
“Second time’s the charm. Come on.”
Trish planted her hands on the wall once more. Her wrists, though sore, were unbroken. Already the pain was receding as her ligaments recovered from the sharp, convulsive twist.
Though she’d come through the first attempt without serious injury, she knew she was pressing her luck to risk another try.
Ally’s hands hardly trembled as she held the muzzle an inch from the weakened chain.
“Go for it,” Trish said.
Ally nodded. No hesitation now, only a quick count-“One, two, three”-and a flex of her trigger finger.
Trish averted her face as dust flew up from the cavern floor in time with the deafening discharge.
The pain was bad, maybe worse than before, but at least she was ready for it. A long moment passed as she stood bent at the waist, eyes shut, enduring the sizzle of agony in her wrists, gathering the courage to look.
Then she let her gaze travel to her hands, to the steel cuffs, to the two small links joining the swivel eyelets …
The weakened link had given way.
The chain had been severed.
She was free.
Blinking back tears, she raised her shaking hands. Experimentally she rotated and flexed her wrists.
No broken bones, thank God. She could climb the shaft. She could go on.
“I’m okay,” she gasped. “I’m okay.”
“You sure” Ally’s question quavered, a breat
hless tremolo.
Trish nodded. Purple bruises were forming around the handcuff rings still fastened to her wrists, and blood leaked from her left forearm where a bullet fragment or a sliver of the fractured chain had bitten, but it was just a scratch.
“I’m okay,” she said again. “You did great … partner.”
Ally hugged her. Trish clung to the girl with a mother’s fierceness.
It was not Marta she held, but it could have been.
47
“They got away.”
The echo of Cain’s shout rang like an anvil on the cellar walls.
Lilith’s fire extinguisher dropped from her hands. Gage made a soft, plaintive noise like the moan of a frightened child.
Cain barely noticed their reactions. His full attention was focused on the well. Rage simmered in him.
This operation had been planned for weeks. For months. Every smallest detail had been accounted for. Nothing had been left to chance. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, his passport to a better life, to a future not spent in a desert trailer or a prison cell.
And now it was jeopardized, all of it, by a rookie cop and a high school girl who didn’t have the good sense to lie down and die.
“You never know.” Tyler tried for a note of optimism. “They might’ve bought it anyhow. Shock wave could’ve triggered a cave-in.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s possible.”
“No, it’s not. And you know it. Those two whores are alive. God damn it, they’re alive!”
The anger boiled over. Cain spun and seized the nearest fragment of debris, a charred and twisted thing that might have been the leg of a table.
With a bellow of fury he heaved it into the shadows, then stood panting as he struggled to get hold of his emotions.
Screaming was bad. He remembered how Gage had screamed at the hostages, inadvertently confessing his immaturity and lack of discipline.
A leader had to remain poised, assured, unflappable-even now, when every thread of his careful planning threatened to unravel, when five million dollars was dissolving like smoke before his eyes.
“You should have iced that blue-eyed bitch in the living room when you had the chance,” Lilith said petulantly.
Cain nearly shot back an ugly answer, but no.
Discipline. Self-control.
“Damn straight,” he replied after a brief inner struggle. “I had her three feet away, dead in my sights, and I didn’t pull the trigger. Didn’t want to agitate the prisoners. I fucked up.”
His gaze traveled the room, meeting each face in turn. Tyler, Gage, Lilith-all with their masks off now, all watching him, surprised and impressed by his admission of failure.
“I fucked up,” he repeated for emphasis. “My fault. I underestimated her. I thought she was just a scared kid. A Mouseketeer.”
Tyler set down his fire extinguisher. “So what do we do Abort”
“Too late to abort. The Kent girl saw my face-and yours,” he added, his glance including both Tyler and Lilith. “And her and the cop heard our names over the radio. Robinson even heard me talking to Charles Kent. She knows everything.” He scanned the room and watched comprehension register on the row of faces. “We couldn’t quit now if we wanted to.”
“Okay.” Tyler sounded unsettled. “We go after them. Search the caves. Split up-“
Cain cut him off. “Impractical. A cave system is a maze.”
“Maybe they’ll get lost in it,” Gage said. “Just, you know, wander around till they drop.”
“Nice thought.” Cain smiled. “But Robinson seems to have a knack for survival. She’ll find an exit. Maybe already has.”
“Once they’re out,” Lilith asked, “where will they go”
Cain nodded. That was the right question.
Where would they go
48
Finally Trish let go of Ally.
“We’d better get moving,” she said simply. “Somebody might’ve heard that shot.”
Ally gave back the gun, then retrieved the flashlight and beamed it into the drainage hole.
Trish invested a moment in mental preparation for the task to come. She was no rockhound. Her knowledge of chimneying up a shaft was limited basically to stuff she’d seen on TV.
Hollywood stunt people wore safety harnesses and worked over nets. No retakes for her. Get it wrong, and she would have a long fall with a hard finish. Even if she didn’t die, she would surely break a limb and be stranded in the cave.
Her heart pumped harder, a fresh spurt of adrenaline kicking in.
“No medals for quitters,” she murmured.
Ally glanced at her, worried by the delay. “What”
“Nothing.” She holstered her Glock, then cupped her hands and blew into them. “Okay. Here goes. Try to hold the flash steady.”
“It’s easier than holding that gun.”
Trish smiled at that. The smile remained fixed on her face, her lips skinned back from her teeth in intense concentration, as she set to work.
Standing on tiptoe, she raised her arms-pops of pain in her sore shoulders-and grasped hold of a stone protrusion at the mouth of the shaft. Her skinned palms shrieked at the contact, and her tender wrists added their objections as she eased herself inside the sinkhole.
Not difficult so far. Painful, yes, but she was growing accustomed to pain.
Jamming her back against one wall, she applied counterpressure with her hands and knees, then inched higher, scrabbling for wedgeholds in the tight space. The flashlight threw her elongated shadow along the tube as she chimneyed upward.
Now she was ten feet above the floor of the grotto. Crumbs of dislodged limestone skittered down the shaft.
She levered herself higher, her body folding and unfolding, her back sliding up the wall, then her legs duckwalking at a ninety-degree angle to keep up. Probably there was something comical about this performance, but she had no breath for laughter.
Fifteen feet now. Almost there. The flashlight’s beam more diffuse now, weaker with distance. Irregularities in the wall harder to see.
Work by feel, then. Come on.
She was doing it. She was nearly to the top.
Twenty feet. Her heart racketed against her ribs. Sweat glistened on her bare forearms, greasing the ugly steel bracelets decorating her wrists. She shook her head to clear stray droplets from her eyes.
With her back and her knees wedging her in place, she looked up. The grate was within reach. Skeletal silhouettes of branches and tattered shreds of leaves darkened the grillwork-storm debris too large or sticky to fall through the cracks.
Before lifting the grate, she would need to brace herself more securely. She wiped her wet palms on her shirt and flattened them against opposite walls.
Arms rigid with isometric tension, she eased onto a football-sized bulge of rock, straddling it like a stool. Then she released her hold on the walls, letting the rock take her full weight.
She breathed hard, refilling her starved lungs. There was a dangerous grayness at the edges of her vision. She’d thought she was in good shape, but she hadn’t been training for a triathlon.
Just get out of the cave, the well. The lake couldn’t be far. She touched her pants pocket, felt the reassuring shape of the key ring through the fabric.
Almost over. It was almost over. She had only to do these last few simple things.
Carefully she raised her arms over her head and pushed on the grate.
Heavy. Like the one in the cellar. But at least from below she had leverage.
She pressed harder.
Heard a low, sandy crackle.
The grate must be lifting free of caked sediment.
Funny, though. She hadn’t felt it move.
And the noise-odd-it almost seemed to be …
Beneath her.
The rock outcrop she was seated on.
Cracking at its base. Breaking away from the wall in a rush of limestone chips.
Terror stabbed her
. Her hands clutched wildly at the grate.
The rock crumbled free, leaving her abruptly unsupported over a twenty-foot drop.
There was a sickening twist in the pit of her stomach, the sensation of a plummeting elevator, and she was falling—
The index and middle fingers of her right hand hooked one of the iron bars.
Suspended by two fingers, she dangled in the shaft.
“Trish!”
Ally’s shout echoed hauntingly. The flashlight wavered.
She couldn’t spare the strength to answer. With her left hand she groped upward. Higher. Reaching higher.
She curled a fist around another bar …
And the grate lurched sideways, releasing a cataract of pebbles and dust.
It was loose in its frame. Her shifting weight had tugged it partly free.
Fighting panic, she straightened her legs and probed the walls of the shaft with both feet, searching for a place to stand.
The grate moved again.
This time it jerked diagonally. The lower right corner popped out of the frame and dipped into the hole.
She screamed as the panel tilted on its side, iron rasping against stone, wet leaves and dead branches showering her in a gritty rain.
Then the grate stabilized, wedged vertically in the drain, her two hands fastened to its leading edge.
There was a stretch of time-a second or a minute-when she simply couldn’t move at all. Any further attempt to find a foothold might upset the grate’s precarious balance.
But she had to risk it. Her aching arms were losing their strength. Her fingers, newly slick with sweat, couldn’t maintain their grip much longer.
Again her shoes brushed the limestone walls, hunting for a crevice, a shelf, anything she could brace herself against.
Chips of limestone pattered on her face and hair. The grate groaned, settling slowly into the hole as the iron edges wore away the loose, flinty rock.
Little time now. A few more seconds, and the hole would be enlarged enough to let the grate slip through.
There. Her right foot touched a slender ridge.
She planted her shoe.
The grate dropped into the shaft.
