Sherrie was strategically keeping her eye on Maria while trying to find something else in her backpack. If Maria had been closer to her, this would have been a great time to disarm her.
“Darrin was stupid. He met me here, champagne in hand, to toast his idea to re-excavate the cave and get the rest of the treasure my great-grandparents hadn’t been able to retrieve before the cave-in decades ago.” With disgust in her voice, Sherrie continued, “As if I’d be excited about risking the chance of anyone finding out about the treasure or Freddie. The mayor couldn’t leave well-enough alone.” Sherrie slipped whatever she’d been searching for in her backpack into her pocket.
“Why did you leave his body here? That was pretty stupid of you.” Maria was trying to antagonize her. It might cause enough of a distraction for her to get close to Sherrie to try and get her gun.
“You think I’m an idiot?” Sherrie’s tone was higher.
A-ha, Maria had found a sensitive topic.
“I didn’t plan on killing him.” Sherrie’s face was alive with rage. “I wasn’t even sure what he was up to. But when he refused to change his mind about opening up the cave, I knew I had to do something. Unfortunately, you guys found the body before I was able to dispose of it.”
“Couldn’t control yourself, huh?” And then, in a mocking voice Maria added “You just had to shoot him in the bravest way you knew how. Right in the back.”
“Shut up,” Sherrie hissed. “Leave your flashlights on the ground. We’ll use only my lantern. Walk in front of me.”
“Where are we going?” asked Rod.
“Deeper inside the cave. Maria, you’re first in line, then Rod. Now go.”
Maria made her way into the recently discovered passageway that led to the enormous cavern with the Aztec statue. With the only source of light being ten feet behind her, it was difficult for Maria to walk without tripping. Behind her, Rod stumbled often; his arms tied behind his back made it twice as hard for him to balance.
Maria needed to keep Sherrie talking. It would keep her thoughts cluttered and off-balanced. “Are you really going to let Whitney take the fall for you? She doesn’t deserve it.”
The lantern Sherrie held swung back and forth, making the light move from left to right. “I didn’t deserve it either. I didn’t live separated from society, from friends, from everyone to keep the treasure safe so Darrin Hayward could spend the money on absolutely nothing of worth. And then for him to risk exposure by reopening the cave?” A haughty laugh. “No, what’s been done is done. Whitney will survive on her own. I did for years.”
The large cavern was up ahead. Maria continued to pick her way around the rocks as Sherrie told her to speed up.
In her mind, Maria went over different scenarios, devising the very best way to get out of this mess. The lantern was the key. If Sherrie couldn’t see them, she wouldn’t be able to shoot them. At least not with any accuracy.
Just as the tunnel they were in opened up into the chamber, Maria faked a stumble. At the same time, she slipped her digital watch off her wrist and dropped it to the floor. No one seemed to notice. Its glow would show her which tunnel was the way out, even in the pitch dark.
The beams from Sherrie’s lantern cast strange shadows on the enormous stone Aztec figure in the middle of the cavern. The journalist gasped. “My great-grandparents told me about this.”
Maria slowed down, hoping to take advantage of Sherrie’s sentimental memories, but Sherrie pushed her forward.
“Don’t stop moving,” she said. “We need to find a side tunnel for you two love birds. Go.”
The trio moved forward in a single file line. The lantern’s light was swallowed up quickly in the huge chamber. Maria tripped and stubbed her foot. “Oww.”
“Are you okay?” whispered Rod.
“Shut up,” ordered Sherrie.
“I need more light,” Maria said. “I can’t tell where I’m going.” The stillness of the cave was getting to her. It was as if they had entered a black hole.
“Take the next tunnel,” Sherrie said flippantly. “It should work as well as any other.”
Maria turned to the right, into one of the larger passageways that broke off from the cave’s main chamber. The air smelled stale. No one had been in there in years. As they walked further into the tunnel, Maria tried to think of another question to ask Sherrie, but none came. Maria’s thoughts were sluggish, like an oversized semi-truck going up a steep hill. It took more and more energy to keep moving.
Not more than a few seconds later, a dull throb started in Maria’s head. It quickly changed into a stabbing pain. She pressed her eyes closed and then opened them again. Strange. She hadn’t realized even darkness could look blurry.
They were thirty feet into the passageway when Sherrie said to stop. “Rod, sit over there. Maria, I want you ten feet this direction.” As if Sherrie were directing a performance of Hamlet, she positioned Rod and Maria in the exact spots she wanted them for their murder suicide. As she gave orders, she rubbed the sides of her temples and made soft grunting noises.
“Sherrie,” said Rod, “don’t do. . .” He didn’t finish his sentence.
Maria wished she could sit down for just a minute, too. Not only did the inside of her head bang, but she felt like she was going to throw up, as if her stomach was full of curdled milk left out of the fridge too long. She needed to rest her head on something. Even for just a minute.
Glancing at Rod, she saw his eyelids were now closed. Was he really going to fall asleep with everything that was going on? Maria almost felt jealous. She’d love to take a nap, too.
A warning bell rang in her head. Something was wrong. She shouldn’t want to take a nap right before someone was about to kill her. As Sherrie positioned Rod, she slurred her words. “You need to move backkk.”
The woman was acting like she was buzzed on alcohol. What was happening?
The answer came to Maria’s mind, like a word written on a blackboard in the front of the classroom at school: Carbon dioxide poisoning.
The three of them must have disturbed a pocket of CO2 that had settled in this part of the cave. The symptoms had come on fast. If she didn’t do something quickly, they’d all be in trouble.
“Rod,” Maria called loudly.
He opened his eyes, confused. Sherrie was unsteady on her feet, keeping herself upright by holding onto the cave wall.
“The lantern!” The light that Sherrie had been controlling hung precariously from her hand, only a foot from Rod’s face. At first, he didn’t seem to register Maria’s words. Sherrie didn’t seem to either. But then Maria mimicked lifting up her hand and hitting the lantern away.
Sherrie understood. But her reaction was too slow. Rod beat her to the punch. As Sherrie wailed, “Noooo,” Rod smacked the lantern out of her hand. It crashed to the floor and everything grew black.
They were in the heart of hell itself.
There was no difference between when Maria opened her eyes or kept them closed. In fact, keeping them closed seemed better because bright flashes of sickness burst before her when her eyelids were down. She had to get Rod out of here.
Maria floundered to where he’d been sitting on the ground. Her leg found him first, accidentally kicking him in the side. Without saying a word, Maria grabbed underneath Rod’s armpit and pulled. He got the message and stood up slowly.
Maria tugged at his arm, trying to force him to follow her. One step then another. The CO2 poison felt like it was paralyzing them. They both moved in slow motion. Still, they were making progress away from Sherrie.
“Noo,” said Sherrie, her voice faltering.
If Maria thought it had been hard to make her way inside the cave before, now it was impossible. Her feet, unable to find purchase, twisted and tripped. But she kept herself standing. They had to get out of there before Sherrie came to her senses.
The darkness was thick around them. It clung to everything. The harder Maria tried to see in front of her, the more diffic
ult it became. She blindly edged her way out of the tunnel, lurching about like a drunken man.
An invisible cave wall connected with her face, scraping her cheek. Rod hit the wall as well and wheezed in pain. With his arms still tied behind his back, he had no hands to break the collision.
“What’s wrong with me?” he mumbled.
“Shh.”
They couldn’t give their position away. Not when they had made some strides distancing themselves from Sherrie.
Correcting their direction, Maria kept a tight grip on Rod’s arm. The poison seemed to have affected him more—probably because he’d sat on the ground where it was most concentrated. Using the wall as a guide, she scrambled forward. At least she hoped it was forward. Up, down, front, back—all seemed to lose meaning in the palatable blackness.
The wall ended. They had reached the end of the tunnel and must be entering the large chamber.
“How are we going to find our way out?” whispered Rod. “It’s so dark.”
Maria’s head still swam from the CO2, but she was steadier on her feet. She leaned right next to Rod and spoke softly into his ear. She didn’t want Sherrie to hear. She didn’t even know if Sherrie had been able to get out of the tunnel in her state of confusion. “Look for my digital watch on the ground. It’s right in front of the passageway we need to take to get out of here.”
A gun fired, answering Maria’s question as to whether Sherrie was out of the tunnel. The noise exploded in Maria’s eardrums as the echo of the shot ricocheted around the cavern. Dirt and chunks of small rock fell from above, dislodged by either the noise or a bullet hitting it.
Finding Maria’s wrist watch was not a problem. The LCD screen of the watch shone like the North Star on a clear night. What was hard to determine was just how far away it really was. The eternal darkness distorted perspective. Distances seemed fluid. So did direction. North, south, east, west were no longer set in stone. It was as if they were playing musical chairs.
There was a rumble in the cave and then more gunfire. Behind her, Rod sucked in air and fell to the ground.
Had he been hit? Or had he just tripped?
“I’m going to kill you,” Sherrie screamed. “Both of you.”
“Rod? Rod?” Maria tried to whisper, but she needed to know if he was okay.
He groaned.
“Are you hit?” Maria voice was getting higher in pitch. The situation wasn’t good. Maria was strong, but was she strong enough to carry a grown man out of the cave?
A third shot rang out. Maria’s ears ached. Sherrie was unzipping her pack. What was she getting out?
“Rod, are you okay?”
“I’m hit.” His words were soft. Was it from the wound or the CO2?
Maria’s plan for escape wasn’t working.
Sherrie fumbled with something. Maria dropped back and to the side. Away from Rod. She had to have the element of surprise.
Like a bolt of lightning, a beam of light burst from a flashlight in Sherrie’s hand. It landed directly on Rod. Starting from the top of his shoulder downward, the left sleeve of his shirt was covered in blood. His glazed eyes wandered about, as if he wasn’t sure what he was doing there.
Maria had backed up enough that she was still shrouded in the darkness. Even better, she wasn’t more than seven feet behind Sherrie. Taking orders from that woman was over. Maria leaped onto Sherrie, who was taken by surprise.
The blow knocked Sherrie off her feet, and she smacked into the ground with Maria on top. Both the gun and flashlight flew from her hands, each landing with a thud in different directions. The flashlight landed in an upright position, its beam shooting straight into the air.
Maria reared back and struck Sherrie directly in the face. Sherrie hollered and bucked Maria off her. Surprised at the woman’s strength, Maria rolled over and jumped onto her feet, her hands in fighting position.
Sherrie too was up, her arms positioned in front of her, ready for action.
It was just Maria’s luck. The journalist knew how to manage a gun and fist fight.
Sherrie spun. Her leg jutted out and sank deep into Maria’s gut. She gasped, the air knocked out of her.
“Maaaria . . .” Rod gargled the word.
Hearing Rod’s pitiful attempt to say her name filled Maria with anger. She was not messing around anymore. Sherrie was going down.
Maria blocked Sherrie’s second kick with her hand and returned it with her own downward roundhouse. Sherrie doubled over. Maria swept the other woman’s feet, and Sherrie was on the ground. Her head knocked against a rock, and she cried out in pain. A gash above her eye spurted blood. She rolled onto her stomach and tried to push herself up. Maria put her foot on top of the backpack Sherrie wore and pushed the woman’s body back down onto the ground. Sherrie gasped for air. Maria kicked her in the head one more time, and Sherrie was silent.
Maria scanned the ground for the gun. With the lighting as poor as it was, the chance of finding it was minimal. More important was getting Rod fresh air.
She ran to him, calling his name, “Rod? Can you hear me, Rod?”
He lifted his head up and then it sank it back down. He moaned and curled himself into a ball. The horrible fetal position. The one people naturally made as their body entered death.
“You’re not going to die on me, Rod Thorton,” Maria yelled.
As she got closer to him, she saw the bullet wound in his shoulder would make dragging him out by his armpits excruciating. Pulling his ankles wouldn’t work either. He’d end up with brain damage from the rocks on the ground.
Maria propped Rod into a sitting position and leaned him against the cave wall. He tried to speak, but nothing coherent came out. Crouching in front of him, Maria placed his right arm, the one connected to his uninjured shoulder, over her own. Pulling his arm close to her chest, she leaned forward and to the left. She steadied her feet and from a squat, lifted him off the ground, using the wall behind Rod to give her support. Her thighs felt as if they might rip apart. He almost slipped off, forcing Maria to grab his other arm, which hung limp.
Rod screamed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I have to get you out of here.” He groaned in pain as she crossed both of his arms in front of her and grasped his wrists. Despite the shaking in her legs, Maria found strength. As she stood, she pushed her backside into Rod and bent forward slightly. All the time Maria repeated to herself that she could do this. She could carry, or more like drag him, the hundred yards to the exit. She had no other choice.
Rod was slipping in and out of consciousness. His loss of blood did nothing to help his carbon dioxide poisoning. He would have one massive headache tomorrow morning. The image of Rod waking up in the morning, with his tousled hair and five o’clock shadow, pushed Maria on.
The trick was leaning forward enough to distribute the weight across her back to give her legs a break, but not leaning too far that she couldn’t pick her feet up over the rocky, uneven ground. She took a few steps toward her digital watch that still shone in the chamber. Maria readjusted his body and moved forward again. Rod’s shins and feet scraped the rocks on the ground. Without meaning to, Maria began to count each labored breath he took.
One. Two. Three. There was a long pause and then it came. Four.
“Don’t take another step.”
Maria turned around so quickly, she wrenched Rod’s injured shoulder. He howled.
Sherrie was on her feet. Her face was covered in blood. Her backpack sat open on the ground. She held a miniature football in her hand.
Maria took a double take at what Sherrie was holding. Nausea filled her once she realized what Sherrie really had. It wasn’t a smallish football.
It was a grenade.
A legitimate military grenade.
Maria had been right. Sherrie’s family was the stockpiling type—with a storage of guns, gasoline, and, apparently, grenades.
“If you move, I’ll detonate this.”
Maria believed her.
“Come back over here.”
“No,” Maria said without hesitation.
“I’m not bluffing. I’ll explode all of us to kingdom come.” Sherrie was unsteady on her feet, but strong enough to keep herself upright.
They were at an impasse. Sherrie was more willing to give her life up than Maria was. But that was only because Rod’s life depended on Maria. To get him out of the cave meant she had to stay alive.
“Come with me, outside,” said Maria. “You need air. So does Rod. Let me get him out of the cave and then you can do what you want to me. Okay?”
“No.” Sherrie shook her head.
The woman was not a negotiator.
“I promise you,” said Sherrie, “I’ll pull this pin, and we’ll all be gone if you don’t put him down and walk toward me.”
At that instant, the room grew brighter. It was a kind of light Maria had seen before.
Sherrie’s eyes widened. “What is it?” Her gaze rested on something behind Maria.
Turning her head, Maria saw Acalan walking toward them. His body glimmered like a phosphorescent light, illuminating the cave. He looked regal with the feathers poking from his elaborate headdress and spear in hand.
“D-d-do you see that?” Sherrie backed up a few steps. “What is it?”
Getting close to Maria, Acalan nodded his chin, as if to say hello, but he kept on walking. Sherrie was his target.
“Who are you?” shouted Sherrie. “Is this some kind of trick?”
The Aztec lifted his face to the ceiling, opened his mouth widely and shrieked. The next instant he was at Sherrie’s side. She screamed. Maria braced herself for the explosion, but there was none. Acalan held Sherrie’s hands apart. He’d prevented her from pulling the grenade pin.
It was Maria’s chance to escape. Without another glance in Sherrie’s direction, Maria half waddled, half walked toward the passage that led to the outside, dragging Rod behind her.
Behind them, Sherrie fought the Aztec ghost, calling him every horrible name Maria had ever heard.
Rod’s breathing was even more sporadic. Maria had no time to lose.
Paranormal Mystery Boxset Books 1-3: Legends of Treasure Page 26