Mortal Pursuit

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.

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.”

Gasping, Trish hauled the board away from the frame. “Where’d you learn all that”

“I’m into anthropology. Digging. You know.”

Trish beamed the flash into the well. Twelve feet deep. Round walls, studded with rocks of all shapes and sizes set in troweled cement. A grate at the bottom, big enough to imply a negotiable sinkhole.

Maybe. Or maybe there was no sinkhole, no network of tunnels, no last chance.

Think positive, Trish.

Overhead, the sudden pounding of footsteps. The killers, approaching the cellar once more.

She waved Ally forward. “Down you go.”

The girl descended, finding ready handholds and footholds among the larger stones. Trish tucked the flashlight under her belt, the beam angled downward, and followed.

The handcuffs made it hard for her to maneuver. She lowered herself by slow degrees.

“Take off the drain cover,” she gasped to Ally, already at the bottom.

“It’s stuck.”

Trish glanced down at the grate, splashed by the flashlight’s beam. Iron bars crosshatched in a square frame. Rusty and old, like a relic from a shipwreck.

“It’s just heavy,” she told the girl. “Get some leverage.”

No further noise upstairs. The deadly silence of a snake poised to strike.

Cain reached up and wrenched the smoke detector out of the kitchen wall, snapping the wires. It dropped on the floor, a useless thing.

Tyler, Gage, and Lilith waited by the side exit. Cain ushered them out. Lilith was last to leave.

“Looks like you get to spread that little girl’s legs after all,” she said playfully.

“Do I”

“Yeah.” Giggle. “Spread ‘em all over the ceiling.”

She kissed him, a hot, probing kiss that shot a thrill of excitement through his groin, then hurried outside to take cover by the garage.

Alone in the hallway, Cain turned toward the cellar door.

The M-80’s fuse was too long. He took a moment to trim it to a blunt, lethal stub.

Robinson and the girl would barely have time to scream.

Trish dropped to the bottom of the well. Crouching beside Ally, she hooked her fingers around the drain cover’s iron grillwork.

Muscles popped in her back as she strained to lift the heavy grate. Irrelevantly she thought of blasting her lats on the rowing machine.

Ally pulled with her upper body, bending backward at the hips. Her face reddened, freckles standing out.

Together they dragged the grate clear of the opening. It clattered heavily on the well’s cement floor.

Through the aperture, some sort of cavern was visible. Chalky walls. Rough floor. White encrustations of stalagmites.

Overhead, in the dark-a squeal of hinges.

The cellar door was open.

Leaning through the doorway, Cain lit the fuse and pitched the bomb like a softball in a looping underhand throw.

He had a momentary impression of red spirals traced in the dark as the bomb flew over the banister into the center of the room.

Slam.

The door had closed.

An instant later-thump of impact, jingle of loose metal.

Keys, coins, something like that.

Whatever it was, it had landed near the well.

“Go!” Trish screamed.

Ally wriggled feet first into the hole.

Trish swung both legs over the side.

And the world exploded.