Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Chapter 19

Now I was well and truly out of options. It was one thing to be in the house near where I was supposed to be, it was entirely another to be taken through a tunnel to a highway half a mile away on the other side of a forest.

Gareth took the gun back out and motioned with it for me to get up. I did, slowly. I walked over towards the hole in the floor, where the floorboards had been removed. There was a small metal ladder leading down past the crawl space and into the underground tunnel. I began to walk down. After all, I didn’t have any other choice.

Gareth followed after me, and I couldn’t help but notice that he left Boss at the house. It was just me and him now. And the gun, of course.

When Gareth had originally mentioned a tunnel, I had imagined a small hole that a person could kind of crawl through on their hands and knees, an iphone flashlight lighting the way as the drug runners dragged along bags of cocaine to the waiting mule and his truck.

I was dead wrong.

The tunnel was easily five and a half feet tall, I only just barely had to stoop to fit under it. A diesel-powered generator hummed at the bottom, linked to a series of cheap lightbulbs that ran along the length of the ground, as well as up to the light in the house. This was actually a lot bigger, and a lot more sophisticated than I had expected. Even the walls were relatively evenly dug out. I looked around, trying to find something, anything, that might help me escape.

After all, this was my last chance. The further I went into the tunnel with Gareth, the worse my chances of coming out alive.

“Walk,” he ordered, and I slowly started to make my way through the tunnel. There was nothing else, just the dirt and the lights. I walked away from the lights and made my way towards the wall. The dirt was crumbly and loose. At least that was something. Maybe I could grab a handful and throw it in his face. But I knew that would only stop him for a second, and he had a gun. Although at this point, trying something and risking getting shot was almost certainly a better option than not doing anything and definitely getting shot.

Suddenly, a memory from my childhood came flooding back to me. It was Christmas, and Charlotte was trying to set up a string of cheap Christmas lights to put on the tree. Charlotte being Charlotte, she sat on the floor meticulously untangling the Gordian knot of strings that somehow developed from a year in storage. I was on the couch reading a book, when suddenly Sophie came rushing in, excited about something, I couldn’t remember what anymore. She paid so little attention to what she was doing that she ran over one of the lights, and as soon as she smashed the bulb, the whole string went out. Charlotte cried for about two hours, it seemed like.

I looked at the cord connecting the bulbs together. It looked cheap, flimsy. It looked like the type that might go out completely if I smashed a bulb.

We were about fifty yards away from the house now. I was all too aware that I had a very limited amount of time to make my move before it was going to be too late.

I counted down from ten to prepare myself.

Ten, nine, eight.

Oh God, this was dangerous.

Seven, six, five.

What if it doesn’t work? No, I couldn’t think about that.

Four, three, two, one.

Now.

In one fluid move I stomped on one of the lightbulbs, at the same time as I grabbed a handful of dirt from the wall and threw it into Gareth’s face. I heard him cry out, but I’d shoved my way past him and was headed back towards the entrance.

A shot rang out suddenly, and adrenaline pumped through my body even faster than before. A couple seconds later, when there was still no pain, I figured the bullet must have missed.

I was running back as fast as I could in the dark, one hand against the side of the wall to guide me, the other in front of me so I didn’t run headlong into the ladder when I got to it. I was too scared to listen to see if Gareth was coming behind me, but I assumed he was.

When my hand finally hit the cold metal of the ladder, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Now all I had to deal with was a one hundred pound German Shepherd. Easy, right?

Scampering up the ladder as fast as I could, I grabbed it and tried to hoist it up after me, but as I was pulling it up I felt something else tugging it back down. Damn, it must have been Gareth. I knew that was a fight I couldn’t win, and besides, with Boss somewhere, I didn’t want to hang around. I dropped the ladder and began to run, hearing a low growl coming from somewhere behind me.

I ran towards the front door, hoping against all hope that I wasn’t going to run headlong into a wall I couldn’t see and knock myself out. It had only been about thirty feet away when I had come in. I could make thirty feet before Boss found me.

Of course, what would happen when I got outside was a whole different story, but there was no time to think about that now.

When I reached forward and felt the door handle, I was so happy I could almost cry. I burst out the front door, slammed the door behind me, to the sound of ferocious barking from an angry dog behind it. I ran to the gate and darted out into the street before I noticed the sight in front of me.

Running up the street towards me, their guns drawn, were Chief Gary and Taylor, Sophie’s boyfriend. Sophie was coming up behind him with Sprinkles, looking anxious.

“He’s in there, he has a gun,” I managed to gasp before I collapsed to the ground, wishing for the second time in just a few months that I found the time to go running, occasionally. Having the cardio skills of an elephant felt like hell when you had to run for your life.

The two cops made their way towards the door at the same time as I heard sirens in the distance.

“He called for backup, that’ll be them,” Sophie said, looking anxiously over at her boyfriend who was heading towards the house with Chief Gary.

“Come out with your hands up!” Chief Gary ordered as they approached the fence. Suddenly, the door opened and Boss came flying out, barking like crazy. He was stopped by the fence.

“He’s going to go through the tunnel to escape!” I said. Sophie looked at me with a mixture of confusion and fear.

“Chief Gary!” I shouted. “He has a tunnel! It goes to the highway, that’s where he’s going.”

I heard Chief Gary immediately get on his radio.

He and Taylor moved back towards Sophie, Sprinkles and I as I was bent over, hands on my knees, still panting like I’d finished a marathon.

“Support’s coming, Angela. Don’t worry,” Chief Gary told me. “You’re safe now.”

As soon as Chief Gary said those words it was like it triggered a delayed reaction in my body, which was catching up on everything I’d just gone through. Suddenly, I began to sob. I sat down on the ground, letting the tears fall, as Sprinkles came up to me and rested his head on my knee.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” he told me. I couldn’t reply, I just gave him a bit of a scratch behind the ears as tears fell down my face.

Sophie sat down next to me and wrapped an arm around me. “Let it out, Angela,” she told me. “Let it all out.”

I had come so close to dying. Like, really, really close. Gareth Sims had shot a gun at me with the intention of killing me. If it wasn’t for remembering that thing about the cheap lights all going out, I might be lying dead on the back of a truck right now.

I knew I had just gone through something similar a few months ago. Zoe Wright had almost killed me as well. But it’s just not something you ever get used to. At least, I wasn’t used to it.

And this time, Gareth had shot at me. He actually pulled the trigger and tried to fire a bullet to kill me. Even the thought of it made bile rise in my throat.

I don’t know how long I sat there crying for, but eventually Charlotte arrived and sat down next to me as well, and a while later a bunch of cops arrived, and an ambulance. Sophie waved them over, and a group of three EMTs came by, carrying a stretcher.

“Ma’am, we’re going to take you to the hospital now,” one of them, a woman not much older than me said, placing a hand on my shoulder. Her touch was soft, almost loving.

“I don’t need a stretcher,” I managed to get out.

“It’s the rules, ma’am,” the lady said. “We’re going to give you something to sleep for a while,” she told me. Realizing they wanted to sedate me, I just didn’t have the energy to fight it. Besides, it would probably be good for me. Mutely, I nodded, and they loaded me up onto the stretcher and into the ambulance, where an IV was instantly expertly inserted into my arm.

The last thing I remember was Sophie arguing with the EMTs to let Sprinkles ride along as well.

“He saved her life. He should get to come!”

“Sprinkles,” I managed to mutter, looking over at the dog’s happy face, just as everything went black.