Chapter 14
“Where are we?” Ana asked, sitting up
in the passenger seat. The sun was setting and they were on a long
stretch of tarmac. There weren’t any other cars
visible.
“Wildlife sanctuary. Local contact said
it was the fastest way to get to where we need to go that wouldn’t
break the suspension on the cars.”
“Ah, that would explain the lack of
lights or other cars.”
“Not tourist season right now
either.”
“What is?”
“December through February, mostly,”
Callahan answered from the backseat. “I looked it up.”
“Any other intel?” Ana looked at Gates,
noting the strain in his face. It showed in the fine lines around
his eyes, the tightness in his jaw. It wouldn’t be obvious to
anyone else.
Well, she
amended the thought, Dav would have
noticed.
“Not yet. We’re out of range of most of
the cell towers and Geddey is going to call on the satellite phone
if he can’t get us by cell.” Gates indicated the larger phone
plugged into the dash cigarette lighter. In this older model GMC
vehicle, it was a lighter rather than a port.
“Good. How far are we from the airstrip
we’re headed for?”
“Another fifty miles, maybe forty
minutes under these conditions.”
“You want me to drive so you can get
thirty minutes shuteye?” she asked, eyes straight ahead. She didn’t
want the others to think he was less than sharp, nor did she want
him to think she was questioning his readiness. She did know,
however, that she was fresher for the nap.
“Probably a good idea,” he admitted, to
her surprise, “but I won’t be able to sleep.”
“Hmm,” she agreed, knowing he was
right. She was surprised she’d been able to. “Holden, you have your
kit?”
“In the back. Ready to rock. If Mr.
Gianikopolis was at that airstrip, I can find traces of
him.”
“Did you have time to get the stuff
from Detective Baxter?” Gates asked.
“The sample?” Holden sat forward and
Ana could see the eagerness in his eyes. He was so new to Dav’s
team, he hadn’t developed the familiarity the others had. “Yes.
I’ll be able to identify Ms. McCray as well.”
“Good. Callahan? You have your
kit?”
“Got it. No matter where that plane’s
been, I’ll be able to trace its path, and any communications
they’ve made.”
“It’s just a matter of getting there,
then,” Ana said with a sigh. She watched the road before them,
wishing it would pass more quickly. There wasn’t much to see but
trees and jungle-y, vine-y thickets on either side of the road.
None of the trees were terribly tall. She was about to comment when
Holden beat her to it.
“Pretty low trees. I guess that’s the
hurricane’s work. They’ve not had a really bad one since Hazel, but
they’ve had enough tropical storms to knock down trees, keep things
on the regeneration curve.”
“Thanks, Willard Scott,” Callahan
muttered.
Holden gave her a questioning look.
“Who’s Willard Scott?”
Ana snickered. “Showing your age,
Callahan,” she teased.
Callahan looked mortified. “Am not.
When my great-gramma turned a hundred, he came to see her. I looked
him up on the Internet.”
“So, he’s a meteorologist?” Holden was
now delighted. “Cool. Why’d he come see your great-gramma?” His
puzzlement amused her, so Ana answered.
“It was his schtick,” she replied,
laughing. “He always did a thing on octogenarians. He’d have a
picture or a memento or something every day, wish two or three of
them happy birthday. Used to amaze me that there were so
many.”
“I always wondered about that too,”
Gates admitted. “We’re rising,” he added. “Altitude.”
“Time to check in.” She inserted an
earpiece into her ear, tuned a radio at her belt. “Advance team,
you’re on.”
A quiet voice replied. “Glad you’re in
range. No activity at the site. We came in from separate
directions, swept clockwise. Nothing moving. Thermal scan shows
nothing but some animals.”
“Gut feeling?” Ana asked.
“It’s clear. There’s a bolt on the
swing-bar gate. You’ll need cutters,” came a second quiet voice.
Both men on the advance team were undercover and in full stealth
mode. Going into this kind of situation, it was best to have
several days of advance scouting, Ana knew, but since they’d only
found out a location today, it was the best they could
do.
“Stay alert, Bromley-two out,” she
said. The sharp intake of breath over the earpiece and the flash of
a grin on Gates’s face amused her. He was inordinately pleased that
she’d taken his name.
Filling the rest of the team in on the
report ate up some of the time, but it still seemed interminable,
waiting for action, waiting to get there.
The landscape changed again as they
continued to climb. Belize was mostly flat and tropical with a
ridge of stony plateaus close to the border with Guatemala. All the
Mayan ruins were in the mountainous areas, as well as some of the
most popular tourist sites. Ana focused on the road in front of
them, and as they passed one of the infrequent markers, she
consulted the map she held.
“We’ve got a turn coming
up.”
It was like electricity. Everyone in
the vehicle came to attention, like hunting dogs on scent. From the
rustling she heard in her earpiece, she was sure it was the same in
the following vehicle.
Ana picked up the walkie-talkie. “Ears
in, everyone. And check.” Everyone checked their mics and earpieces
in record time.
The turn was plainly marked as private
property, and the road was well maintained, the gate recently
painted. Ana checked her weapon as they made the turn, heard more
than saw Holden do the same. The second vehicle would provide
covering fire if there was someone at the airstrip that the advance
team had missed.
She saw Gates’s snarky grin. “Private,
my ass. Callahan, you got cutters back there?”
“Ready as soon as you stop,
boss.”
“Go,” he said as the heavy car slowed,
its tires kicking up dust into the late-afternoon sunshine.
Callahan was out and at the bar, clipping the padlock with an
obvious effort before anyone could say another word. She swung the
gate open and motioned them through, putting a foot on the running
board and grabbing a handhold on the roof rack as the car rolled
past. Gates powered down the back window and Callahan passed the
bolt cutters in to Holden.
In the sideview mirror, Ana could see
that she, too, had her weapon at the ready.
“She climbing in?” Holden
asked.
“No,” Ana said. “She’s outrider. She’ll
drop before we stop, cover us.”
“Oh.” Holden swallowed nervously.
“Right.”
“You checked on that weapon?” Gates
said calmly.
“Yessir, but not in this kind of
situation.”
“Got it,” Gates said. “Hang back then,
make sure we’re clear before you get out. You’re too important to
the op to lose to a stray bullet.”
Ana saw Holden straighten, his protest
dying on his lips. Somehow, Gates had managed, with tone, body
language and a few simple words, to help a young guy feel like an
essential part of the team rather than someone who couldn’t handle
a weapon.
“We can’t afford to lose anyone,
everyone’s vital,” Ana added, sliding her hand across the seat to
squeeze Gates’s arm, trying to convey approval, respect and love in
one quick caress.
His brief smile said he understood what
she was saying with the contact. And that he appreciated
it.
Amazing how easy it was. With
Gates.
Without missing a beat, he reached down
and caught her hand in a fast grip and released it. “Look sharp,
people,” he said.
“Car two, hang back, let us go in first
so we don’t get boxed,” Ana instructed. “As soon as we’re out,
loose the hounds.”
“Let me guess,” Gates said, without
ever losing one iota of watchfulness, “you’ve always wanted to say
that.”
“Yeah—” she grinned. “Yeah, I have.” He
knew her so well.
The narrow drive widened out to a
cleared space where a small building sat. Beyond it was a
ramshackle hangar. Two planes sat inside in plain view, but other
than that there was no sign the small airport was in use. No
indication of life, no other vehicles other than the planes. The
runway, beyond the shack, was dark, its scant lighting visible only
as wires and metal rails, but not functioning. There wasn’t even a
wind sock.
“Callahan?”
“Nothing, boss,” she said.
Ana contacted the two first-in scouts.
“Brixton? Daniels?”
“Still quiet.”
“Dogs?”
“At the ready,” came the reply from
Franklin.
“Go,” Ana instructed. She saw the four
dogs streak across the clearing. The scent hounds stopped in front
of the building, bayed once and dropped their noses to the ground.
The outliers, the guards, flew into the hangar, but were back out
again in seconds, heading for the building. Another few minutes and
both of the big shepherds were in front of the building in the “all
clear” sit-stay they’d been taught. The two scent hounds were in
the hangar sounding off. Wherever the trail originated—probably one
of the planes—it ended at the building and started at the
hangar.
“They won’t mess up the plane, will
they?” Holden asked.
“No opposable thumbs,” Callahan said,
returning to the open window. Ana laughed and Holden looked
blank.
Gates pulled the vehicle into the
clearing, stopping close beside the hut.
“She’s being annoying.” Ana smirked.
“The doors are most likely shut. There are monkeys and other
curious wildlife here. You want the plane to stay clean, you shut
the doors. The dogs can’t get in.”
“Ah, got it,” Holden said, laughing.
“Opposable thumbs. Good one, Callahan.”
“Hostiles!” The shout rang in her
earpiece, and everyone dropped, Holden included. Ana noted that his
weapon was in his hand and it was steady.
Nothing and no one moved. Callahan was
on the roof with a scoped rifle within a second of the
shout.
“Get down,” Gates snapped. “He’s gone.
Guarantee it, now that he knows we spotted him. Daniels, clear
sight?”
“Clear sight, boss,” Daniels’s voice
was crisp on the connection, but she heard the adrenaline
excitement in his reply. “Scope showed heat signature and a weapon.
About four hundred yards up and to the left, down the runway. He
wasn’t there an hour ago, I’ll lay money on it. Ducked and covered,
though, at the shout.”
“We didn’t have the drop on him
anyway,” Gates said. “Let’s get our work done here and move out.
Full alert, people.”
Ana followed Brixton and Franklin into
the hangar. The four dogs, one Plott hound, one black and tan
coonhound, and two German shepherd dogs, swarmed their handler,
barking their mournful bark, and dancing between him and the plane.
Holden was right behind her, kit in hand. Two minutes later,
Callahan was there too.
“Check it out,” Ana snapped the
order.
“Right, I’ll follow Holden,” Callahan
replied. “He’s liftin’ prints, right?”
“Right.”
Holden dusted the rail on the plane’s
stairs and lifted five or six prints before going inside. Ana
followed. The Cessna was fitted out for cargo, with permanent bins
bolted to the floor.
“He was here,” she said, spotting a
mark on the wall.
Holden spun in place, his jaw dropping.
“What do you mean? How can you tell?” He was looking everywhere,
trying to see what she saw.
Ana pointed. “His mark. A series of
initials.” She could see them from where she stood, at the angle.
She didn’t want to move lest she lose sight of them, so she
directed Holden to them.
Holden hurried over to the wall of the
plane, crouched and stared. He looked at her, his face a study in
disbelief. “SSDM? That supposed to mean something?”
Callahan snickered. “Really? That’s the
code?”
Ana laughed too, but added, “It’s not
what you think.”
Holden looked at them, asked Callahan,
“What did you think it was?”
Callahan shot Ana a “can he be that
naive?” kind of look. “Same shit, different
millennium.”
“Close, but no cigar,” Ana said, using
her tone to remind Callahan that they were working to save Dav.
“The S’es are the last letter of his first and last name, and the D
and M are his mother’s first initial and the initial of her maiden
name. A lot less obvious than DG would be, and no one but us would
connect it with him.”
“Interesting.”
“I’ve got blood,” Holden said suddenly.
He jerked open his kit, swabbed something on the plane’s floor and
checked it with a small test strip on which he’d dabbed the
swab.
“Human.” He offered the test flat for
them to see the instant results. “But there isn’t much of it. Not
enough for a bullet wound or anything life
threatening.”
“Any other initials?” Ana asked, moving
toward them, looking along the same wall where Dav’s initials had
been scratched.
Holden whipped out a penlight, leaning
into the wall where the marks were scratched. “Got some,” he said
in eager triumph. “EY.”
“Is it scratched through?” Ana
demanded, leaning in as well, straining to see the marks. “Or
defaced in any way?”
“No.” Holden was looking at her as if
he’d done something wrong. “Should it be?”
“EY equals Carrie McCray,” Callahan
supplied, understanding dawning on her face even as the worry eased
off her features. “I’m guessing no scratch through means they were
both still alive when they landed.”
“Right,” Ana said, feeling the pressure
in her chest lighten, just a fraction.
They were in the right place. On the
right trail. And Dav and Carrie had been alive when they’d landed
here in this plane. Her mysterious informant had been on the mark,
and there were no blood pools or bodies on the property, or the
dogs would have alerted them. “You hearing this,
Gates?”
“Yeah,” he said, and his relief was
palpable. “We’re on the right lead.”
Holden didn’t wait for that; he busied
himself pulling prints and samples, scanning all the data into a
portable as he went. Dav could afford the latest and best
technology, and for once it was getting a workout. Holden moved
from place to place, efficiently dusting, swabbing and pulling
prints wherever he found them, following the beeping, morphing
trail all over the plane.
“Perimeter secure, boss,” she heard the
stations report in. She and Holden left Callahan pulling the comm
data and moved to the other plane.
“Uh, Mrs. Bromley?”
“Ana,” Ana corrected, noting that he’d
covered his mic. She did the same.
“Yes. Um, Ana, is Callahan always
this...” he hesitated.
“Temperamental?”
“I was gonna say hostile, but yeah, I
guess you could call it that.”
She smiled. “No. She’s feeling guilty
about Declan.”
Understanding and disappointment
flashed one right after the other over Holden’s boyish features.
“Got it. They together?”
“Not yet, maybe not at all. But she
thinks she’d have kept them both safe if she’d been on
duty.”
“Don’t we all,” he said, and dropped
his hand off the mic. They moved to the other plane, leaving
Callahan to do her work. Ana wondered how Damon, Queller, Thompson
and Georgiade were doing. They’d all been hurt badly enough that
they’d had to stay behind. She hoped they were on the mend. At last
word, Declan had still not come out of his coma.
She also wondered about Cal, Carrie’s
former gallery manager. When they left, he’d yet to be located. Bax
had given them a brief update on his search for Inez’s killer when
he called to say he hadn’t located the gallery’s former manager.
Most of his leads were turning out to be one dead end after
another.
“This plane is passenger,” Holden
noted, interrupting her thoughts. “Gonna be lots more prints on
this one.”
“I’ll leave you to it.”
Gates met her at the bottom of the
steps. “Passenger plane came in second. That means someone followed
after they took Dav and Carrie out of here in the cargo. Dav’s
using every trick he and I practiced, but Carrie is a wild card for
him. We ran a lot of simulations, but none of the sims included
another hostage, especially not a woman he cared about.” He grimly
looked around the small compound. She read frustration and
something else in his gaze. “This is off, somehow, including the
watcher. I’m still feeling like we’re playing more than one game
here and it’s really, really pissing me
off.”
Ana couldn’t have agreed more. “It’s
not standard mercenary practice to throw away a chance for ransom.
First, we haven’t heard anything else after the initial contact
with proof of life.” she said, holding up her index finger to
indicate that point. “Second, the ransom’s in the holding account,
but not collected. We know that if it’s Niko, he’s not the thinker
behind this op but he’d collect, I think, shift it and send us
looking somewhere for Dav.” She ticked off a third finger. “Third,
mercenaries don’t leave watchers at a place they’re not coming back
to.” She balled her fist. “Last but not least, our anonymous
tipster was a woman, and said she was unconnected to whatever’s
going on here.”
Ana glanced around and suppressed an
atavistic shudder. “You’re right, Gates. This is way
off.”
He was about to reply when his sat-comm
beeped. His shoulders straightened a bit as he read the incoming
message, but his frown deepened. “The ransom’s rolling from the
holding account to an account in the Caymans. We got info back on
the proof of life. Initial tests say it’s Dav’s and Carrie’s hair,
but the gold ring on the gold chain has more than Dav’s DNA on it.
They’re working on that. There’s a coat button too. Queller said he
recognized the button as Dav’s,” Gates said, then drew in a breath.
“The ring, if it’s what I think it is, was his mother’s. He never
takes it off the chain around his neck.”
Ana took that in, wondering about the
ring, and the fact Gates’s body language said there was one long
painful story behind it. “Why’d they wait three days, Gates?” She
frowned. The “off” vibe increased in her mind, and her frustration
rose. Real kidnappers got their demands in early, kept hope alive
to ensure cooperation and payment.
“More skewed activities. We’re getting
too many options and too many leads.” He shot her a sharp look.
“Too many leads. That means either too many hands in this, or a
deliberate distraction. Smart as they’ve been so far, it could be
either. Long-term planning is written all over this deal.” He said
it as a complaint, but there was a dark degree of admiration as
well. Whoever had designed this op and carried it out knew their
stuff.
Ana admired it too, in a way, but put
that out of her mind. They had immediate work. “No vehicle here.”
She pointed out the absence. “That means they’re probably still
in-country or leaving another way.” She glanced toward the runway.
“The watcher says they’re in-country and coming back
here.”
“Does it? I don’t know.” Gates rubbed
at his faintly bearded cheek. “None of this makes sense for
mercs.”
“Good point. So, if there’s a watcher
from some other source and they know it, they won’t be back. If
they think they’re safe, they may. We should set a watch of our
own.” She looked around to be sure Franklin couldn’t hear her. He
was sensitive about his dogs. “So, how come the dogs didn’t give us
an alert on the guy?”
“Downwind.” Gates paused, scanning the
lush green surrounding the small compound. “Whoever it is, they’re
good.”
“Interesting. And weird. Why would they
leave a watcher behind? They couldn’t know we were coming. Given
that, the watcher was here to see if they came back, or who else
might show,” Ana remarked. “If the watcher is working for the
opposition, whoever that is, with the mercs in the middle, we may
have just screwed everything.”
“I don’t think this can get much more
screwed up,” Gates replied, and Ana winced.
“Don’t say that. There’s always another
way to screw something up, especially this sort of
deal.”
“You going to tell me about that phone
call? Obviously it sent us on the right track and to the right
place.” Gates watched her closely, and she could tell he was
waiting—had been waiting for a while now—for an answer. She also
knew that what she was about to tell him was really going to sound
like she’d taken them on the wildest of goose chases. If it hadn’t
panned out...
But it had, so she told
him.
“The woman said she knew Dav, knew us.
She said she’d known about the deal last year and had been
involved, in a peripheral way.” When Gates started to speak, she
headed him off by continuing. “Hear me out, and remember, we got
here and it’s the right place.”
The mutinous look on his face shifted
to thoughtfulness as she went on. “She said that she’d gained word
of an active contract out on Dav, one that was turned down. There
were reasons why it was declined, she said, but that I didn’t need
to know them. What I did need to know was that Dav had been flown
to Belize, and he’d been dumped at a site in the mountains, near a
ruin. She said that she would send me a text, sometime today, with
the latitude and longitude.”
“That’s it? That’s all you had?” He
looked incredulous now, and shook his head. “So between that and
the plane sightings, you pinpointed the airstrip.”
“Yep,” she said, knowing how idiotic it
sounded.
“Holy hell,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“No wonder it feels like there are more irons in this fire than we
can account for.”
“There’s more,” she
admitted.
“Oh, crap. More? What?”
“Hines. He’s down here somewhere too.
Remember, McGuire was tracking him here. If he knows we’re here, or
has someone tracking our movements in and out of California, he may
be here, gunning for both of us as well. Given that, McGuire may be
down here too.”
“Jeez, just what we need. More
ex-Agency help and hindrance than we can shake a palm tree over.”
He slapped at his legs with the gloves he’d been wearing.
“Something’s biting me.”
“Me too,” she agreed, but she’d put on
bug spray, so it wasn’t too annoying yet. “I’ve got some spray in
the car. The locals said we’d need it. Some kind of local and very
bloodthirsty gnat.”
He sighed. “What now?”
“Gather data and wait for someone to
direct us, I think.” She hated every word she said, hated knowing
that they were completely dependent on an outside, unknown source
for intelligence and direction. Knowing too, that there was some
larger game to which they weren’t privy. It made her feel like a
chess piece and she hated that.
Frustrated, she turned from watching
the swaying trees to looking at the planes. She saw Callahan coming
out of the cargo plane. She looked pissed.
Fear and anger curled in Ana’s gut. She
could tell Callahan had found something that was going to twist
things up more than they already were.
“Looks like it’s getting weirder by the
minute,” she muttered to Gates, drawing his attention to Callahan,
whose angry strides brought her to them within
seconds.
“Crap,” Gates muttered.
Callahan strode up. Her headset was
off, her mic dangling. She covered it with one hand and motioned
them to do the same.
Holding up an electronic reader, she
said, “I think we got a mole.”
Carrie had no idea how much time had
passed when they awoke. “There is no way in hell I’m putting those
clothes back on until they’ve been rinsed out,” she declared,
looking beyond Dav to their scattered garments.
“You are right about that,” he
muttered, distaste written on his face. “I fear my trousers will
never be the same.”
“When we get out of here, I’m burning
all of it.”
“I will get you a match to light the
fire,” he offered, bending to gather up their clothes. “Until then,
I guess we will wash things, yes?”
“Yes. Better wet than filthy, I
think.”
“I think the pants will not stand the
water,” he said, holding up the beautifully tailored wool. “As
dirty as they are, they fit now. If they—” He stopped, obviously
searching for the word.
“Shrink?”
“Yes, thank you. If they shrink, even a
little, they will not fit me.”
“True. Mine might not either,” she
realized, plucking her underwear and his T-shirt from the pile.
“Let’s set those aside, and my sweater such as it is.” She held up
the torn garment, but smiled at it. He’d torn it when they made
love and that made it precious. She decided she wouldn’t burn that,
if they got out alive.
She saw his grimace and peered at him,
trying to make out, in the gloom, what was bothering
him.
“Your hand,” she said. “How bad is
it?”
He shrugged, but she didn’t let him get
away with it. “Give me the clothes,” she said, holding out her hand
for them, brooking no argument. “I’ll get them rinsed out, then
we’ll take a look at your hand.”
All the while she rinsed their things,
she worried. He’d favored the hand a lot, but then, when they’d
made love, he’d held her up, used it as if it were uninjured. Was
that why it was paining him now?
If his condition was really serious,
what should they do? What could they do?
All the unanswered questions plagued
her as she laid out underwear and shirts on the rock ledge to dry a
bit. The cave was moist near the waterfall, but really, only
there.
Shivering a bit, she knelt next to him.
He’d watched her, his hands in his lap, as she worked. Now, the
sight of him, nude, with five days’ growth of beard, stirred her
blood, but she pushed the desire back for the moment, focused on
his hand. He’d taken the rag off it so she could see
it.
“It isn’t good, Carrie-mou. There is
much bruising and blood under the skin.” He held the hand up and
she turned on the flashlight so she could examine it. In the harsh,
bright light, it looked nightmarish. Purple and angry red, it was
lumpy and had to be massively painful. She could see the torn skin
where the bone had protruded. It oozed blood, now that the
bandaging was off, and everything about the hand looked
wrong.
“It’s bad, Dav.”
“It is, yes,” he agreed. “But there is
nothing to be done right now. We should get dressed, even if we are
wet, and keep moving. If this goes from bad to worse”—he indicated
his hand—“I could get feverish and maybe delirious.”
“That would be worse,” she said,
recognizing the vast understatement the words implied.
“Yes. It could be fatal, in these
caves, and I will not allow my brother’s jealousy, these games”—he
spat the words in angry frustration—“this family idiocy to cost you
your life. What happens to me is not nearly as
important.”
She felt her own anger rise. How dare
he? “What makes you think you get to be all martyrlike and put me
up on a pedestal? I think you’re just as damn important as I am,
you idiot.”
“Not to me,” he snarled back. “Nothing
is more important than you.”
The words of caring, delivered in such
irritation, took a few minutes to register.
Dav had already said he cared about
her, but she’d heard that before. Her late husband had been quick
to say he loved her, always. He’d been especially free with tossing
the words around when he’d been successful wooing some intern or
another artist.
This irritable declaration that she was
important somehow meant more than any declaration of
love.
Rocking back on her heels, she stared
at him.
“What?” He scowled at her. “Why are you
looking at me like that?”
“You mean that, don’t you?” His
irritated statement was so absurd, she had to laugh.
“Of course. I do not say anything I
don’t mean. I don’t have to.” He smiled a bit. “Unless I’m
negotiating; then perhaps I will not be so truthful.”
“This isn’t a
negotiation.”
“No, Carrie-mou, it isn’t. It’s merely
the truth and I find it annoying that you don’t believe me. I have
been attracted to you for years. You are important to me.” He used
his uninjured hand to tuck her drying hair behind her ear. “Life is
too short to lie about that sort of thing. And our lives, right
now? They may be very short indeed, so why be false,
eh?”
She looked away from the intensity of
his gaze, his sincere smile.
He was right.
Something within her crumbled and fell
away, a barrier, a fearful wall that kept her trapped in the past,
so sure that anyone, everyone she trusted would betray her. Dav
hadn’t lied to her, he hadn’t said he loved her, just that she was
important to him, that he was attracted to her.
She let the smile blossom in the gloom,
but not where he could see. It was fairly obvious that they were
attracted to one another. God, she felt so good. Her body ached
from the unaccustomed exercise, both desperate and sexual, but
somehow, unaccountably, she felt ... good.
She caught his hand, pressed a kiss
into his palm. “You’re right.”
“Right? Yes.” He leaned in, caught her
face, kissed her softly. “And will you believe me, later, when I
tell you that you are important to me? When we are free? Or will
you doubt it all again?”
She had to laugh. He’d caught her
there. “I don’t know. I think,” she said, feeling her way,
exploring the new, free sensation in her chest, in her gut, “that I
can try to open my mind enough to consider it.”
His brilliant smile lit the darkness.
“Good. We will work from there. Now, let us pick another tunnel and
keep moving. Somewhere out there, Gates is looking for us.” His
smile faded. “And so is my brother.”
She nodded, and pulled on her
underthings. They were still wet, but as clammy as they felt, they
were at least moderately clean. The T-shirt he’d given her was
stained, but again, still cleaner than it had been, so she pulled
it over her head. She’d shaken out her sweater, doing her best to
get as much of the dirt and dust out of it as
possible.
Dav had done the same and they were
both trying to get the worst dirt off his pants and her
skirt.
“I think this is an impossible task,”
he said, giving it up and tugging the pants over his legs. “These
are just horrible, I must say,” he commented as he fastened the
hook and the belt. His look of fastidious distaste was amusing, but
since she was experiencing the same thing, she
empathized.
“Considering the conditions, I’m glad
it isn’t worse.” She repressed a shudder as she too put on her
skirt and slid her feet into her clammy, dirty shoes.
They gathered everything and rolled it
up into a more compact bundle. They’d finished the last of the
Nutella and crackers the previous night. All that was left was half
a canteen of water.
“Let’s fill up the other canteens,” he
said, reading her mind. “We don’t know when or if we’ll find water
again.”
“Okay, here—” She handed him the
canteens and he went to fill them. “Let’s finish this other one now
and fill it too.”
“Good, you go ahead.”
She uncapped it and drank it down, the
cool water soothing her throat. She was grateful for the surge of
energy it brought. Even without food, they could manage if there
was water. She worried about Dav though; his hand looked terrible.
At worst, if infection set in, he would get a fever, and if they
couldn’t get out, he could get gangrene and die from it. At best,
he might lose the finger even if they couldn’t get to medical help
quickly.
“So, shall we toss a euro, to pick a
tunnel?”
“You have one?”
“Yes, I do. And a drachma as
well.”
“Luck piece?”
“You could say that,” he said with a
smile, and held it out to her. It was shiny and well rubbed, but
obviously old.
She examined it, then handed it back,
but he declined. “You keep it. We’ll share the luck,
yes?”
Tucking it in her pocket, she nodded,
touched it. “Deal.”
They faced the walls together, looking
at the various tunnels. “Last time, the tall, accessible one was
the dead end,” she said. “The rounded, smaller one, led us
here.”
“Would they repeat or mix it
up?”
“My money’s on repeat,” she said. “What
do you think?”
“Since I feel better, and I’m
relatively clean, I will be willing to try that. If it comes to it,
and it’s another dead end, then I feel like we won’t fall
apart—well, I won’t fall apart,” he said, with a sheepish
smile.
“I’ll do my best not to,
too.”
“Then let us proceed,” he said.
“Flashlight on?”
She flicked the switch and followed him
into the tunnel. They proceeded fairly quickly, even though Dav had
to wrestle his way through narrow openings on several
occasions.
They had been traveling steadily to the
right, which surprised her since most of the tunnels so far had
been straight.
Dav abruptly stopped and she nearly ran
into him.
“What is it?” she asked, trying to see
around him. The light shone through, but she couldn’t see
anything.
“You will not believe it,” was all he
said before he disappeared.