Another scream echoed off the tunnel, wrapping the pain it carried all around Ruth. Her instinct was to run to the source of the scream, but after the slice-and-dice fest behind them? They had to exercise caution. Paxton didn’t flinch beside her. He kept their forward movement slow and steady.
For all the rumors about the man, Ruth wasn’t finding them to bear out. According to the gossip mill, Paxton should be blubbering like a baby by now, abandoning her to her fate. Yet here he was, saving them from the razor wire and, now, taking point.
“How freaking long is this tunnel?” Paxton grumbled in front of her.
He knew the city better than she did, but Ruth would guess these tunnels sprawled outward under the city. At some point, though, they had to reach another junction. Where there would be more options. So they could find a way to reach whoever was being screaming and get the hell out of here.
That was the hope, anyway.
“Whoa,” Paxton said as he slipped and slammed up against the wall.
“Be careful,” Ruth said. “The concrete is slick.”
Her partner looked over his shoulder with a look as sullen as her fourteen-year-old son. “Thanks for the tip.”
Then, much like her son, Paxton didn’t heed the advice and skidded again, this time knocking his head on the wall. Before Ruth could comment, Paxton pointed down. Her flashlight illuminated small steel ball bearings scattered over the floor. They had been so worried about what was in front of them, they hadn’t looked down.
“Doesn’t that seem a little Wile E. Coyote?” Paxton asked.
“Yeah,” Ruth admitted. “It does.”
After such an elaborate setup as the razor wire, their attackers were now hoping to trip them? That seemed a little anticlimactic. Did the pageantry of it matter, though? They still needed to move ahead. Carefully, stepping between the ball bearings, they made their way forward. Each step they took became more and more difficult as the number of balls increased exponentially. Soon, the entire floor was covered by them.
“This is just annoying,” Paxton groused.
“Stop,” Ruth blurted, reaching out and grabbing her partner’s arm. He stiffened under her touch.
“What?”
She shone her light across the wall. Divots had been dug out of the concrete and small sensors had been placed in them. Ruth gave a tug on Paxton’s sleeve and they both backed away. Once far enough back, she pointed her flashlight up. Long swords, attached, horizontally, to the ceiling, glistened menacingly.
“Effing punks,” Paxton hissed.
“I think I know the trigger,” Ruth said, then waved her hand in front of a sensor. The closest sword arced down, slicing through the air. Which, of course, would have been slicing through them had they walked forward. There were at least twelve sensors, corresponding to an equal number of swords. Which wouldn’t be all that bad if it weren’t for the ball bearings. A little hard to avoid the sensors when you were tripping all over your own feet.
“The station is going to realize something is wrong soon,” Paxton said, echoing Ruth’s feelings.
Then that damn scream again. There was no waiting for a backup. They were the rescue team.
Paxton let out a loud breath. “All right. We brace against the wall as best we can to help keep our footing and try to make it through.”
Ruth nodded. There was no other choice.
* * *
Paxton hoped he sounded a hell of a lot more confident than he felt. Because he felt like he really should have updated his will that morning. His first step forward slipped, nearly taking his feet out from under him. Thank God the wall was there. The second sensor was about knee height. He could do this.
Pressing hard against the wall, he used his right foot to clear the ball bearings from the area, then planted his left foot on the ground. Holding his breath, he swung his other foot over the sensor’s sight line. He should have been safe, but an effing sword swung down, cutting his tie in half. That could have been something else if the blade had just been a few inches lower.
“Don’t move,” Ruth said, pulling an inhaler out of her pocket. She pumped it several times. The mist floated in front of them and illuminated a crisscross pattern.
Seriously, the morning was really, really annoying him.
For the first time, Ruth looked uncertain. That probably worried him more than his half-sized tie. The flashlight’s glow seemed to shrink in on them. They only had this tiny halo of light to sort all of this out. Which pissed him off even more. He should not have to be standing on ball bearings with swords over them trying to deduce how to survive the next few minutes.
“We are going to have to try and trigger them in a controlled manner,” Ruth stated, her voice shaking a bit.
Yeah, he figured she was going to say something like that. But which sensor went to which sword? Ruth seemed to come to the same conclusion.
“You stay back,” she said. “I’ll trigger the next.”
Paxton might not be a gentleman, but he wasn’t a coward. At least not a complete coward. “If we’re partners, we’re partners.” Ruth looked like she might argue, but Paxton overrode her. “Do you really think I’d be safer back here?”
The creeps must have a back-up plan for stragglers. One which Paxton really did not want to experience. Seeming to accept the situation, Ruth shone her light at each of the sensors in turn.
“It looks like some are angled.” She cocked her head, clearly trying to determine which sensor to hit first. Ruth lifted her hand, then glanced back at him. There was no point in delaying. Paxton nodded. She swept her palm in front of the sensor. The response was instantaneous. Another blade swept down. Luckily, it angled in the other direction, missing them completely. Maybe this was doable.
“My turn,” Paxton stated, trying to sound brave. Of course. He then slipped on a ball bearing, nearly crashing to the floor. Scrambling back to his feet, Paxton tried to shake it off. “I’m good.”
Ruth didn’t seem quite as certain, but he took a half-step forward, preparing to trigger the next sensor. They were two for two. So far, batting a thousand at staying alive. Pretty good odds. Or, looking at it another way, their luck was running out.
Unfortunately, Paxton was a glass-half-empty kind of guy.
Squinting his eyes, anticipating what it would feel like to be skewered by a blade, he reached out into the sensor’s line. A sword dropped. Paxton twisted around, narrowly missing its path. Ruth was safe against the wall. They had made it through another one.
Then a clunk indicated another sword had unlatched. There was no time to run or reposition as the blade came right at them. Paxton grabbed Ruth and dropped them both to the ground as he felt a gust of air past his cheek.
“Effing punks.”
* * *
Ruth concurred. And now they were in even worse shape than they had been before. Now that two swords, or more, were dropping, how could they stay out of the way of all of them? Oh, and their fall had taken them under several other sensors. They were going to have to crawl backward just to start all over again.
Putting her hand out, Ruth tried to push back, but she slipped on a ball bearing. Her body slid to the left. Trying to right herself, she pushed herself further under the sensors. This was not going well.
“Wait,” Paxton said. He put his hands in front of himself. She expected him to push backwards, but instead, he propelled himself forward. He stopped next to her. “Brilliant, right?”
“How? Now we’re both stuck,” Ruth answered.
“Stuck?” Paxton said as a grin tugged up. “We are on a roll, literally.”
He repeated the process, rolling himself forward another foot. Then another. The tiny clink of the steel rolling on the cement filled the tunnel. Paxton’s solution wasn’t elegant, or pretty, but it was getting the job done. Ruth mimicked his actions. Within moments they rolled clear of the sensors, and the swords.
Paxton lent a hand to help her up. “Of course, we are never going to me
ntion that in the report.”
“No,” Ruth said, dusting off small steel balls from her clothes. She didn’t bother asking why Paxton was now carrying one of the swords. There was going to be a lot left out of this report. “Definitely not.”
A pained scream beckoned from further down the tunnel.
“What’s next?” Paxton asked, although she didn’t think he expected an answer.
“Did you hear that?” Ruth asked as they progressed down the tunnel.
Paxton tilted his head. His eyes narrowed. “Moans?”
That was what Ruth had been afraid of. The confined space felt all the more confining as low, pained moans filled the air. What the hell had they walked into? Next time she would think twice before jumping down a manhole.
She swept her flashlight back and forth, trying to illuminate the way ahead. Haze billowed from the tunnel. Like visibility had been all that good before. Step by step, they inched forward. Ruth paused, shining her light down, then up. As they had learned, danger could come from anywhere.
They came to a “T” in the tunnel. Fog poured in from both directions.
“Well?” she asked Paxton.
“We are not splitting up.”
“I wouldn’t even suggest it,” Ruth answered.
“Good,” Paxton said, as he poked his head down the tunnel to the left, then to the right. “I think left.”
“Why?”
Paxton tossed a glance over his shoulder. “Doesn’t this seem all a little left-brained to you? Very methodical.”
“But creative,” Ruth stated. “And, therefore, right-brained as well.”
After a shrug, Paxton pulled a quarter out of his pocket. “Flip for it?”
Ruth did not like the idea of allowing a coin toss to decide her fate. Another scream sounded, anguished and loud. Definitely to the right. While it cemented their direction, Ruth wasn’t all that happy that her fate now rested in going in the direction of a scream.
But Paxton shook his head. “We head left.”
“But—”
“They are luring us,” Paxton said. “Baiting us. If that girl is alive, we serve her best by getting the hell out of here and assembling the largest group of backup ever heard of in law enforcement.”
“While that sounds tempting,” Ruth replied, frowning, knowing her answer wasn’t the one Paxton was looking for. “But if the person screaming is dead by the time we get back…”
* * *
Just like any woman he knew, Paxton already hated it when Ruth was right. Would he have traveled away from the scream if his new partner wasn’t with him? He’d never know, since he was not about to walk away as Ruth looked on. Paxton had disappointed a lot of people in a relatively short period of time. He wasn’t adding her to the list.
“Let’s get this over with,” Paxton said, knowing it would never become a Nike slogan.
Guns up, they turned the corner. Thankfully, the sickos didn’t make them wait very long. Not far down the passage, Paxton could make out objects hanging from the ceiling. What objects he couldn’t be quite sure. And, at this point, he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to make them out.
Bodies?
Bombs?
Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
The moans intensified, making Paxton feel more than a little claustrophobic. He could have sworn that the walls shrunk inward, pressing the ceiling down on them. His skin was slick with sweat. Not the kind you got from running a few blocks, but the cold, sick kind that coated his body with dread. He tried to wipe his palms off on his pants, but those too were saturated with sewer water.
This was not his idea of a good morning.
Yet they kept walking forward, the click of Ruth’s heels keeping beat with the groans as fog swirled at their feet.
“Are those…?”
Paxton took a step closer to the objects. “Counterweights?”
It didn’t make sense, though. Large sandbags hanging from pulleys were not exactly dread-inducing. Which made Paxton’s gut twist. Something so innocent looking could only spell trouble.
“But what are they countering?” Ruth asked as she flicked her light up and down the walls, ceiling and floor. The tethering ropes went off beyond view as the sandbags gently swayed back and forth.
“Good question.” It seemed more than a little silly to be scared of walking between a few sandbags, yet Paxton’s feet just wouldn’t move. He noticed that Ruth’s didn’t either. “Guess there’s a way to find out.”
Well, at least the sword he had acquired would come in handy. Reaching out, Paxton grabbed the nearest bag. Taking a deep breath, he stabbed the blade into the burlap. Squinting, he half expected the bag to explode in his hand, but instead, sand ran through his fingers. No razor blades or ball bearings or spiders. Just sand.
“You’re going to have to let it go at some point,” Ruth said, next to him.
Oh yeah. That.
As the sand ran out, he was keeping the tension on the rope. He liked his surprises one at a time. Paxton had to force his fingers to relax. Even then, he could feel the rough texture of the fabric scrape against his skin. The empty bag rose in the air, only stopping when it hit the pulley mechanism.
Nothing happened. Why wasn’t anything happening? Paxton would really like to get the “holy crap, we’re all going to die” moment out of the way. Guess he was going to get his wish— a faint thwik sounded from down the tunnel. Ruth raised her gun. Paxton didn’t bother switching from his sword to his gun. Neither had been very useful up to this point.
Ruth’s flashlight caught the glint of a metal arrowhead as it sped toward them. Not good. Paxton shoved Ruth to the side as the arrow cut along his back. He really needed to remember to wear his vest more frequently. Another arrow, this time at knee level, sailed through the air. They were able to jump before it struck, however there would be no crawling their way out of this one.
Another flash of silver. It was Ruth’s turn to grab Paxton by the arm and pull him out of way. She gave a cry as the arrow cut across her mid-section. It didn’t look deep, but still. This was stupid. They were never going to make it through. But that scream resonated in Paxton’s mind.
They had to get through.
“Get behind me,” Paxton said.
“No,” Ruth retorted, shaking her head.
He didn’t have time to tell her his whole plan. “You’ve got a kid, Ruth, just stay in my shadow.”
“And you’ve got a niece and nephew whose mom isn’t exactly…”
Wow, the rumor mill really did work quickly. No matter.
“I’m not sacrificing myself, damn it.” Before she could argue further, Paxton swiped at the sandbag nearest them. It hit the floor with a thud. “Pick it up.” Then that damned click. “Now!”
Paxton couldn’t wait to see if she’d complied. He had a distinctly more pressing concern. Like the arrow flying at them. Paxton didn’t back away or duck or jump. He jerked his sword back like a bat. Knocking that arrow out of the sky couldn’t be much harder than hitting a slider, right?
He was about to find out. Putting his weight onto his back leg, he prepped his swing. Ruth hit the ground as he turned the sword to its flat side and let it rip. The clang of metal hitting metal echoed off the walls, but the arrow was knocked down.
When another projectile didn’t come, Paxton cut down another sandbag. “Tie them together,” was all he could tell Ruth before another arrow was on its way. This one was fouled off, but hey, it didn’t draw blood. Slicing through a rope, he freed up another sandbag.
This arrow came from the other side. Fortunately, he was a switch–hitter. Tossing the sword from one hand to the other, Paxton knocked that arrow down as well. If only the scouts could see him now. All of that college ball actually came in handy. He’d partied way too much back then, first losing his scholarship, then his place on the team. Paxton had thought baseball would wait for him. The reality? The major leagues, the show, waited for no one. But here he was batting
for his life.
“What do I do with them?” Ruth asked.
Prepping for the next arrow, Paxton answered, “Tie them together into a shield. It’ll protect you as we walk this forward.”
“Wait,” Ruth urged. “I can make one for you.”
Paxton took a fleeting moment and looked to her, then to his girth. “Yeah, right.”
* * *
Ruth couldn’t argue. They’d have to cut down nearly all the sandbags to protect both of them. That didn’t mean she’d let Paxton sacrifice himself. Sure he was doing well, but no one, not ever as fine a player as he’d been, could knock all the arrows out of the air. And all it took was one to doom them both.
Lifting the heavy sandbag shield in front of her, she stepped out from Paxton’s shadow. “Follow me.”
Before he could argue, Ruth rushed forward, brushing against a sandbag. A click sounded. These things were on a hair trigger. She’d thought she was prepared for the impact. She was not. The arrow striking deep into the sandbag drove her back a step. Then another hit. This time she held her ground.
“Come on.”
The next arrow missed her. Paxton arced his sword and knocked it away before it hit, well, somewhere any man would not want an arrow to hit. Ruth plowed forward. A hail of arrows headed their way, but between the sandbags and the sword, they made it through.
Once past the counterweights, Ruth didn’t slow her speed. She found the row of rigged bows and slammed into the mechanism, knocking them over. No more arrows. Thank God.
“My, my,” a voice sounded from ahead of them. “I did not see that coming.”
Ruth tried to swing around to face her attacker, but took a blow to the head instead. Reeling, she reached for her gun, but the figure snatched her wrist, yanking her arm behind her. A gun’s barrel pressed to her temple.
Paxton rushed forward, sword raised, but the voice tsked, “I wouldn’t do that.” He indicated to the sword. “And unless you intend to knock bullets out of sky, I’d suggest you toss it over here.”
“You realize you’ve kidnapped two police officers,” Ruth said, trying to get control of the situation.
Got Thrills? A Boxed Set (A McCray Collection) Page 14
