Secrets to the Grave

46

The scream that tore up out of Gina was primal. The rat was unimpressed. It moved toward her, fearless, nose twitching, eyes beady and intent.

“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!”

With her right hand, Gina groped for something, anything, grabbing hold of a milk carton. She flung it at the rat, missing it, but getting her point across.

The rat scurried away and disappeared down into the layers of garbage.

Who knew how many years people had been throwing trash down this hole? Who knew what was living in it? Bugs. Worms. Mice. Rats. In Southern California, where there were rats and mice, there were snakes—rattlesnakes.

The idea that snakes might be slithering beneath her body nearly made her vomit again. Her fear was like a fist in her throat. What was she going to do?

With every shallow breath pain burned through her shoulder where she had been shot. Every time she tried to move she could feel her right foot and the lower part of her ankle pull away from the end of her shinbone. The pain was excruciating.

Panic overwhelmed her for a few moments, but quickly wore her out. She lay still on the stinking garbage, trying to think.

She had never been a brave person. She had never had a sense of adventure. She had never had the nerve to live life on the edge of disaster. Marissa had been the owner of those qualities, but Marissa was dead. Marissa couldn’t coax her through this, goad her into action, dare her to go beyond her limits. Yet that was what she needed if she wanted to have any hope of living through this.

The first thing she needed to do was sit up so she could better view her surroundings.

On the count of three ...

With her right hand behind her head, she blew out a breath and tried a sit-up.

It felt like someone was trying to ram a hot iron rod through her left shoulder. Gina cried out, fell back the few inches she had managed to raise her shoulders. This was what she got for ignoring her gym membership.

Do it again. On the count of three ...

Like a weightlifter straining to push the barbell over his head, she shouted as she fought for it. Her head was pounding with the physical struggle, her blood pressure spiking.

Fight for it! Fight for it!

The voice urging her on was Marissa’s.

Gina screamed out. Colors exploded behind her eyelids, squeezed shut against the strain. And then she was sitting up—dizzy, sweating, nauseous, weak, but she was sitting. She pulled up her good left leg, wrapped her good arm around it and pressed her cheek against her knee. She was shaking from the effort.

Damn you, Marissa. This is all your fault.

You went along with it, G.

No one was supposed to get hurt.

It didn’t matter now.

Gina took another look around her prison. She had never been in a well before. She was a city girl. She wouldn’t have even known what a well was if not for television and the movies.

There were serious cracks in the walls, and places where the concrete had fallen away completely. To her right was a series of iron rungs leading up to the top. It would have been an easy way out if she had two arms and two legs. To climb that high in the state she was in ... How could she? She had almost passed out just trying to sit up.

For now, all she wanted to do was get her back against the wall behind her so she could rest. This would involve pushing off with her good leg and scooting backward on her butt. An easy mission on the face of it, but the reality was she was on a heap of garbage, not a solid floor. Could she get enough leverage to push? And when she pushed she would then drag the right leg with its hideously broken ankle, and the pain would be blinding.

Stop whining, Gina. Just do it.

Shut up, Marissa.

She couldn’t have said how long it took her to work up the strength and the nerve to try. She looked around for something to help her effort, something to use like a crutch or a lever.

Discarded lumber was strewn amid the garbage, odd scrap pieces from someone’s home project. Within reach were several short stubs, butt ends of two-by-fours. Not helpful. To her left and away from her was a longer piece—narrower, thinner, but about three feet long.

She couldn’t reach it with her right hand. She might have reached it with her left, but her left arm hung limp. Gina flexed the fingers of her left hand, but she couldn’t lift the arm.

Slowly she stretched her leg back down and tried to get the toe of her shoe under the piece of wood and move it closer, but managed only to push it farther out of reach.

Exhausted, she brought her knee back up and rested her head.

She had no idea how long she had been in this hole. She hadn’t worn a watch. It might have been hours. It might have been days. She hadn’t eaten since hearing the news of Marissa’s murder. She hadn’t been able to keep anything down. She hadn’t had anything to drink since just after the detectives had left her house—after the older one had put that photograph in her hand.

The smell of the place kept her stomach turning over and over, but thirst was parching her throat. She looked at the garbage around her. Beer cans. Lots of them—most of them crushed. Soda cans. Empty liquor bottles. She was in the dumping ground of a party spot. Teenagers probably came out on the fire road for a secluded place to drink and smoke dope and do whatever teenagers did now.

Gina remembered a place like that when she and Marissa had been in school—a place out in the hills above Malibu. Her memory drifted back to an illegal campfire, cheap beer, and Boone’s Farm wine; “Smoke on the Water” and “Horse With No Name.”

They had thrown all their garbage into a cave. It had never occurred to her to imagine there might be somebody trapped in that cave, dying while they partied.

She picked up a half-crushed Pepsi can. The opening was crawling with ants. She shook the can and listened to maybe half an inch of liquid slosh in the bottom. Dreading the idea, she tried to scrape the ants away then closed her eyes and held her nose and raised the can to her lips.

It tasted terrible, but wet. She took one sip, then a second, then spat it out when a cigarette butt slipped between her lips and touched her tongue.

Gina let herself cry for few minutes. She was so tired. She hurt so bad. She knew no one would come here looking for her.

As her gaze settled on what looked like a pile of bloody clothing across from her, she had no way of knowing that above this hellhole and a hundred yards away stood Vince Leone.