Mortal Pursuit

48

Finally Trish let go of Ally.

“We’d better get moving,” she said simply. “Somebody might’ve heard that shot.”

Ally gave back the gun, then retrieved the flashlight and beamed it into the drainage hole.

Trish invested a moment in mental preparation for the task to come. She was no rockhound. Her knowledge of chimneying up a shaft was limited basically to stuff she’d seen on TV.

Hollywood stunt people wore safety harnesses and worked over nets. No retakes for her. Get it wrong, and she would have a long fall with a hard finish. Even if she didn’t die, she would surely break a limb and be stranded in the cave.

Her heart pumped harder, a fresh spurt of adrenaline kicking in.

“No medals for quitters,” she murmured.

Ally glanced at her, worried by the delay. “What”

“Nothing.” She holstered her Glock, then cupped her hands and blew into them. “Okay. Here goes. Try to hold the flash steady.”

“It’s easier than holding that gun.”

Trish smiled at that. The smile remained fixed on her face, her lips skinned back from her teeth in intense concentration, as she set to work.

Standing on tiptoe, she raised her arms-pops of pain in her sore shoulders-and grasped hold of a stone protrusion at the mouth of the shaft. Her skinned palms shrieked at the contact, and her tender wrists added their objections as she eased herself inside the sinkhole.

Not difficult so far. Painful, yes, but she was growing accustomed to pain.

Jamming her back against one wall, she applied counterpressure with her hands and knees, then inched higher, scrabbling for wedgeholds in the tight space. The flashlight threw her elongated shadow along the tube as she chimneyed upward.

Now she was ten feet above the floor of the grotto. Crumbs of dislodged limestone skittered down the shaft.

She levered herself higher, her body folding and unfolding, her back sliding up the wall, then her legs duckwalking at a ninety-degree angle to keep up. Probably there was something comical about this performance, but she had no breath for laughter.

Fifteen feet now. Almost there. The flashlight’s beam more diffuse now, weaker with distance. Irregularities in the wall harder to see.

Work by feel, then. Come on.

She was doing it. She was nearly to the top.

Twenty feet. Her heart racketed against her ribs. Sweat glistened on her bare forearms, greasing the ugly steel bracelets decorating her wrists. She shook her head to clear stray droplets from her eyes.

With her back and her knees wedging her in place, she looked up. The grate was within reach. Skeletal silhouettes of branches and tattered shreds of leaves darkened the grillwork-storm debris too large or sticky to fall through the cracks.

Before lifting the grate, she would need to brace herself more securely. She wiped her wet palms on her shirt and flattened them against opposite walls.

Arms rigid with isometric tension, she eased onto a football-sized bulge of rock, straddling it like a stool. Then she released her hold on the walls, letting the rock take her full weight.

She breathed hard, refilling her starved lungs. There was a dangerous grayness at the edges of her vision. She’d thought she was in good shape, but she hadn’t been training for a triathlon.

Just get out of the cave, the well. The lake couldn’t be far. She touched her pants pocket, felt the reassuring shape of the key ring through the fabric.

Almost over. It was almost over. She had only to do these last few simple things.

Carefully she raised her arms over her head and pushed on the grate.

Heavy. Like the one in the cellar. But at least from below she had leverage.

She pressed harder.

Heard a low, sandy crackle.

The grate must be lifting free of caked sediment.

Funny, though. She hadn’t felt it move.

And the noise-odd-it almost seemed to be …

Beneath her.

The rock outcrop she was seated on.

Cracking at its base. Breaking away from the wall in a rush of limestone chips.

Terror stabbed her. Her hands clutched wildly at the grate.

The rock crumbled free, leaving her abruptly unsupported over a twenty-foot drop.

There was a sickening twist in the pit of her stomach, the sensation of a plummeting elevator, and she was falling—

The index and middle fingers of her right hand hooked one of the iron bars.

Suspended by two fingers, she dangled in the shaft.

“Trish!”

Ally’s shout echoed hauntingly. The flashlight wavered.

She couldn’t spare the strength to answer. With her left hand she groped upward. Higher. Reaching higher.

She curled a fist around another bar …

And the grate lurched sideways, releasing a cataract of pebbles and dust.

It was loose in its frame. Her shifting weight had tugged it partly free.

Fighting panic, she straightened her legs and probed the walls of the shaft with both feet, searching for a place to stand.

The grate moved again.

This time it jerked diagonally. The lower right corner popped out of the frame and dipped into the hole.

She screamed as the panel tilted on its side, iron rasping against stone, wet leaves and dead branches showering her in a gritty rain.

Then the grate stabilized, wedged vertically in the drain, her two hands fastened to its leading edge.

There was a stretch of time-a second or a minute-when she simply couldn’t move at all. Any further attempt to find a foothold might upset the grate’s precarious balance.

But she had to risk it. Her aching arms were losing their strength. Her fingers, newly slick with sweat, couldn’t maintain their grip much longer.

Again her shoes brushed the limestone walls, hunting for a crevice, a shelf, anything she could brace herself against.

Chips of limestone pattered on her face and hair. The grate groaned, settling slowly into the hole as the iron edges wore away the loose, flinty rock.

Little time now. A few more seconds, and the hole would be enlarged enough to let the grate slip through.

There. Her right foot touched a slender ridge.

She planted her shoe.

The grate dropped into the shaft.

Instinctively she let go. Rush of metal past her face. Falling forward, she pistoned her arms and slammed both palms against the opposite wall, wedging her upper body horizontally in the sinkhole.

Twenty feet below. Ally jumped clear as the grate impacted the cavern floor. The flashlight threw shapeless curlicues of glare along the shaft.

“Trish” Breathless terror spiked the cry. “You okay”

It was hard to answer. Her mouth wasn’t working right, and there was a choking tightness in her throat.

Finally she forced out words. “Just barely.” She tried for a note of humor. “Got the drain cover off at least.”

With her last reserves of energy she chimneyed up the remaining few feet of the shaft and struggled into the bottom of the well. She knelt, dripping beads of perspiration and trying to remember that ridiculous motto of hers, which suddenly had slipped her mind.

Still on her knees, she looked down at the pale blur of Ally’s face. “Your turn.”

“What do I do with the flash”

Good question. The girl’s dress had no pockets, no belt, nothing that could hold a flashlight.

“Just stand it on the floor. Aim it right up the shaft.”

Ally obeyed, then stood under the sinkhole, the flash setting her dress aglow like a footlight on a stage.

“Good. Now do what I did.”

“You’re kidding.”

Trish smiled. “Without the dramatics, I mean. When you get within reach, I’ll pull you up.”

Ally closed her hands around the same limestone overhang Trish had used when getting started. She struggled to boost herself into the shaft, not quite making it.

Briefly Trish feared the girl lacked the strength to execute a pull-up.

Then with a grunt of effort Ally managed the first stage of the ascent.

“You’re doing fine,” Trish said.

But there was a long way to go, and even now Cain might be planning his next move.