Mortal Pursuit

46

Flat on her belly, working by feel in the absolute dark, Trish wriggled along a narrow tubular crawlway.

Ally was somewhere ahead, but the glow of her flashlight had vanished when the girl disappeared around a bend. Hampered by the handcuffs, Trish was finding it difficult to keep up.

By slow degrees she advanced, head hunched tortoiselike between her shoulders to avoid limestone overhangs. The walls and ceiling were coffin-close. Despite what she’d told Ally, she felt stirrings of claustrophobia.

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 breathless 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.