The Getaway

by K. J. Emrick

  “Kevin!” I dropped to my knees, putting my hands to his chest, feeling for the wound, wanting to stop the bleeding and save his life with my bare hands. I found the hole in his shirt, right over his heart.

  Oh.

  “No, no, no,” Stevie was saying to me, pulling me away from Kevin by the collar of my shirt. “You’re coming with me. He won’t behave if you’re not there. You two are in love. I know how love works. Don’t you think I don’t know!”

  She was rambling, and I was trying to break her grip and keep my feet at the same time so I could get back to Kevin, and all I managed to do was help her drag me over to the mouth of the cave.

  “Love makes everything twist all around, it does,” Stevie kept saying. “Love this, love that. Mother loved James, and look what it did. She lied to me for years without even so much as a ‘so sorry.’ Bah. My father loves ya, Dell, and what did it get him? Hmm? You two’ve been arguing nonstop since ya got here. If this is love, then who needs it? Oh, but I need it. I do. I need a way to get at dear old Dad, is what I need. What d’ya think all that research over in Lakeshore was all about? Huh? The two of you? I needed to know what he cared about. So now I know. It’s you.”

  With a powerful shove she put me through the foliage cover and into the cave where another set of arms caught me.

  I looked up into a woman’s face. Hard to tell her age as her face was hardened by lines and creases from a lifetime of scowls. She was taller than me, and stockier to be sure, with her hair up in a scraggly ponytail to emphasize her heavy face. Her shirt and pants were both a size too small for her, leaving her midsection to press out in a bulge all around.

  She set me on my feet and made a show of brushing me off. Then she pinched the end of my sleeve and held it out straight from my shoulder. “Nope. Your clothes won’t fit, either. Hard to find stuff in my size. Had to steal these off a clothesline,” she said in a friendly, conversational sort of way, plucking at her own sleeves.

  “Enough, Drusilla,” Stevie snapped. “Don’t bother our guest with your nonsense.”

  The other woman—Drusilla—sniffed and turned up her nose. “I got a right to speak if I want. What’d I break myself outta prison for if you won’t even let me speak?”

  That hit me like a punch to the gut, leaving me speechless. Break out of prison? Drusilla was the escaped convict that the entire state of Tasmania was looking for! I thought back over what Kevin had told me about it, how she’d escaped from the Remand Center in Hobart, and how she’d been seen in Lauderdale. That was almost a straight line heading East. Go a little further, and you end up here. In Port Arthur.

  This day was getting worse with each passing second.

  Stevie rolled her eyes. “Fine. Dell, this is me sister, Drusilla. Drusilla, this is Dell.”

  “Your… sister?” With everything that had happened today I was almost past being surprised.

  “Yes, my sister,” Stevie sniffed. “That was the one detail I didn’t tell dear Daddy James about. He was having a hard enough time accepting me. Think he’d welcome a convict into the family? Besides. She’s a half-sister. Different father. Enough with the introductions, can we please get her inside now? I’ll bet she’s just dying to see James again.”

  “What’d you do to him?” I demanded, daring to ask a question I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer to.

  “Oh, he’s fine,” Stevie promised. “Think I’d hurt me own father? I just wanted to get him away from you before I brought him here to… talk, that’s all. He needed to hear what I had to say without you around. You know how hard it was to separate you two? Even then I had to get him away from Alistair over there. Well, he’s here now, and he’s fine.”

  “I just watched you kill a man,” I reminded her. “Forgive me if I’m being skeptical.”

  “Got a mouth on her,” Drusilla said in an unfriendly tone. “Don’t she?”

  “Whatever,” Stevie said. “Just take her inside, and then take care of the other one.”

  Other one? As Drusilla started marching me down a sloping tunnel carved into the rocks by years of rising and ebbing tidewater, I wondered if the other one they were talking about was Rory Hunter.

  Was she still alive? For that matter, was James?

  As we stepped past the motionless body of Alistair Grotton and entered the caverns, it didn’t seem likely.

  Electric lanterns with plastic handles had been set up at mostly regular intervals to mark our path. The light they cast was more blue than white but it let us see the way easy enough. Good thing, too, because Alistair had been telling the truth about the caves he used to explore as a child. There were side passages, and holes in the floor that cut deep into the rock. One misstep could snap an ankle or break a leg. One wrong turn could trap someone down here for a very, very long time in the dark.

  I was really wishing that I had my torch again.

  The curving rock walls were ribbed and irregular and arched up to a ceiling of smooth stone covered in hanging moss. It would have been beautiful, I think, if I wasn’t being held at gunpoint.

  A sudden turn to the right brought us into a chamber that was nearly egg-shaped, if the egg was laying on its side and was the size of a city bus. After directing me with a wave of her gun, Drusilla picked up the lantern from outside and brought it in with us to add to the glow of twenty or thirty other lanterns already set up in here.

  In the light I saw a body just inside the irregular entrance. It was crumpled up to the side with blood across its chest. Legs lay at awkward angles. The eyes were open, but they didn’t see anything.

  I caught my breath, but it wasn’t Rory Hunter. It wasn’t the sweet, pretty university student with the heart tattoo that I’d seen on the tour.

  No, this was Hudson Snow. His cross earring dangled along his neck, and there was no mistaking that face.

  Next to him was the long black duffle bag we’d seen him with at lunch that day. The zippered top was partly open and the off-colored light from the lanterns did funny things to the red paper of the twenty dollar bills peeking out.

  “Don’t mind him,” Drusilla said, then snorted as if she’d made the mostclever joke ever.

  My stomach turned. First Alistair, now Hudson Snow, both dead. “So,” I said. “This is the way you treat your friends, too?”

  From close behind me, Stevie answered. “Hudson was no friend of ours. He took our money to set up Drusilla’s escape, and took a little extra to help me ambush Alistair on the road when I was having so much trouble getting James alone. He did his job, sure enough, but then he had to go and kidnap her.”

  Stevie pointed to the opposite side of the chamber, and only then did I see the girl with the heart tattoo on her cheek sitting up against the slope of the wall, staring at us with panic in her eyes. Her feet and legs were bound with white cord, and her hands were tied behind her back, and there was a cloth wrapped tightly around her head and into her open mouth to serve as a gag. A livid bruise crawled over the right side of her face.

  “I don’t want to think about what that duffer would’ve done to her,” Stevie said, “if we hadn’t saved her in time.” She put her fists on her hips and glared down at Rory Hunter like somehow she was to blame for all of this.

  “Why don’t you just let her go?” I asked them. “She’s no threat to you. She doesn’t know you.”

  “Sure, sure. Later.” Stevie waved a hand through the air. “See, it turns out that Hudson likes to kidnap girls and do really bad things to them. Then he kills them. That woulda brought a lot of heat down on us and ruined my whole plan. Turns out there was another girl a few years back that he did like that. Can’t quite remember her name. Charlie something, I think.”

  “Charlotte,” I said. “Charlotte Tebo.”

  Stevie snapped her fingers. “That’s it! That was her name. So, we’re going to bring…” She obviously couldn’t remember Rory Hunter’s name, either. “This one. We’ll bring this one out to the country and drop her off all anonymous like and s
he’ll never mention us again. Will you?”

  At the snarl in Stevie’s voice, Rory scrambled backward as best she could and shook her head emphatically. The poor girl was scared to death.

  I wasn’t far behind her.

  “Anyway,” Stevie said. “My wonderful sister was supposed to take care of it already, but here we are. Ain’t that right, Drusilla?”

  The escaped convict scuffed her stolen sneakers against the rough stone floor and didn’t say a word. She might be bigger, and stronger and she might be the one who had spent time in prison, but it was obvious which of the sisters was in control here.

  “Dell?”

  My head whipped around. The sound had been so faint I wasn’t completely sure I’d heard my name at first, but then I was, and then I was sure who said it.

  James. At the far end of the chamber, where the light barely reached, he was sitting on—I kid you not—a wooden chair. His hands were tied to the armrests with the same kind of white cord that held Rory Hunter’s hands and feet together. I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear the pain in his voice. He was hurt.

  “Oh goodie,” Stevie said brightly, sounding for all the world like a little girl. “He’s awake. Come on. I want to show him that you’re here.”

  She poked me in the small of my back with her gun. As if I needed encouragement to go to him. I ran to kneel down at the chair, my fingers tugging at the ropes around his arms. They were tight. The knots wouldn’t budge.

  I looked up into his eyes. Stevie and Drusilla were both busy moving lanterns closer to us. By their light I saw the cuts across James’s left cheek, and the welt above his bloodshot eye. There was blood soaking through one of his knees.

  “Dell,” he said to me in a voice that was soft and full of emotion. “Run.”

  I started to tell him no, there was no way I was going to leave him here and I was sorry, so very sorry, and I would get him out of here if I had to chew through those ropes with my teeth.

  Before I had the chance to say any of it there was a gun pressed up against my temple. Stevie leaned in close. I could see her flashing that smile of hers up at James. “She isn’t going anywhere, Dad. You and me and Dell are going to be a family. For the next, oh, half hour or so anyways. See, I was going to bring you here later, Dell. After Dad had some time to think about the past and everything he and my dear Mom have done to me, that is.”

  Drusilla came and went, rearranging electric lanterns so we could all see each other better. The gun pressed into my skin. I looked up, moving my head as little as I could.

  Behind her, in the brighter light, I saw the ghost of Charlotte Tebo standing and glaring. Blood poured from her eyes and down her face like tears. She screamed silently in the light and if I hadn’t already been scared to death that Stevie would sneeze and accidentally blow my head off, the sight of this dead woman shrieking in soundless fury would have been enough to turn my blood to ice.

  She lifted her arm, pointing past me, past the room, to the sloping tunnel that would lead up and out of the cave system again.

  Charlotte wanted me to know something. In the hallway. Something…

  Drusilla picked up another lantern. Then she stopped and stared at the entryway to the chamber as if she could see where Charlotte’s ghost was pointing. “Stevie?”

  “Not now, Drusilla.” Stevie shoved the gun harder against my forehead and pushed me away from the chair. “Daddy’s gonna see everything he cares about go bye-bye, just like I did when my mother died.”

  I fell over onto one hand, grabbing the arm of the chair with my other. Stevie was going to kill me. That was her plan. First she would kill me, and then she was going to kill James. Now I understood it all. That whole thing with her mother unloading the secret of her father in a letter had apparently messed her up more than we could have ever known. Trauma like that can unhinge a person.

  Stevie was walking proof.

  “Uh,” Drusilla faltered. “Stevie?”

  “Not now!” she snapped back at her sister. “Dell, I want you to know this is nothing personal. I just need me dad here to know what it feels like.”

  “Please,” James said to her, fisting his hands uselessly. “I don’t even know you. Don’t do this to us.”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Stevie ranted. “You don’t know me. You weren’t there. Ever! Not for me birthdays, not when I broke a leg, not when Mom… died.”

  She pointed the gun from me to James when she said that, and I could see the pain in her eyes. Not that I was going to let her use that as an excuse for killing us.

  The ghost hovered over us, her hair billowing around her shoulders and her mouth stretched wide and silent, and her eyes dripping blood. She was a silent witness, but I sensed her presence just as surely as I felt the rocks jammed up against my backside.

  “You could help us,” I muttered to her.

  James jerked his head up, his eyebrows furrowed as he looked at me, wondering who I was speaking to.

  “Uh, Stevie,” Drusilla said again, “I think you should—”

  “I told you, not now!” Stevie took a step back toward her sister, bouncing the gun angrily against her thigh. “I swear, next time I’m going to leave ya to rot in whatever prison they… Hold on a tick. Why are my shoes wet?”

  I looked down at her feet. Sure enough, water had begun seeping across the floor of the egg-shaped cavern. Further up toward the mouth of the chamber, Rory Hunter was rolling herself up against the wall, her eyes wide as the water continued to flow in. She was in the deeper part of the chamber, where the bowl of the egg was lowest. The water was collecting there first.

  She looked at me, and I looked back at her, hopefully conveying a calm certainty that everything would be all right. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself, but I wanted her to know I was going to try everything I could to get us out of this alive.

  Well. Maybe not Stevie. Or Drusilla. They could stay here and rot for all I cared. But the rest of us were getting out alive, sure enough.

  “It’s the tide,” James explained, in answer to Stevie’s question. Somehow, he managed a laugh at that. “You put us in a sea cave, my darling daughter, and now high tide is coming in. We’re all gonna drown!”

  “Do not call me your daughter,” Stevie said in a cold, quiet voice.

  “Why not?” James croaked. “Isn’t that what you want?”

  “You don’t know me!” she yelled at him. Then she threw up her hands and began pacing, her shoes making a loud squish squish with every step. “You don’t get to call me your daughter. You ruined our lives! You should’ve been there for Mom and me. She wouldn’t have died if you’d been there!”

  Oh, snap. Stevie had gone fully around the bend. I wasn’t going to change her mind by talking to her. No one would. She believed what she wanted to, regardless of how much the logic train had jumped her tracks.

  The water continued to rise. Now it was soaking through the knees of my jeans. I looked around the room at all the lanterns. Electric lanterns. Man alive I hope those are waterproof.

  My wandering gaze found my new ghost friend again. This time, there was no blood on her face. There was only her pretty smile, and a reassuring nod. Something must have changed if Charlotte wasn’t upset anymore. Something like… what?

  Oh.

  With a smile, I got slowly up to my feet so I wouldn’t spook Stevie into accidentally shooting us all. I knew what had changed. I knew what Charlotte was pointing to out in the hallway.

  More than that, I think I knew how we were going to get out of this.

  “Stevie, you have to get us out of here,” I said to her, making my voice as frantic as I could. “The water will come in and drown us all! You know how fast the tide rises here!

  Actually it wasn’t very fast at all. Not usually. Of course, I’ve never been stuck in a sea cave when the water was pouring down to the lowest chamber while my boyfriend was tied to a chair either, so far be it from me to say whether our death would be quick o
r not.

  Stevie looked down at the rising water. It hadn’t gone up more than an inch since we’d all noticed it. “This?” she said, raising one dripping shoe. “Seriously? This has all the speed of a snail on sandpaper.”

  “No, she’s right,” James chimed in, backing my play. “We’ve got five minutes, tops. Please Stevie. Don’t let me drown!”

  Stevie beat her fist against her forehead while she took up pacing again. Then, she spun on Drusilla.

  “Go outside and see how fast the water’s coming in. I could leave these two here to drown—” Behind her, Rory Hunter shouted desperately through her gag. “Sorry. Leave the three of ya here, but I don’t care to drown myself. Go look. Well? Go on!”

  “But… I don’t want to drown either,” the big woman complained.

  “You’re a real duffer,” Stevie told her. “Ya know that, right? If you’re heading to the exit, the water won’t get ya because you’ll already be out! Now, go on!”

  “Oh, right.”

  Drusilla was more than happy to get out of here if it meant saving her own skin, once Stevie explained it to her. She went to the entryway, ignoring the cowering form of Rory Hunter sitting in water up to her waist, and then turned a sharp left up the sloping tunnels marked by the electric lanterns.

  Above me, Charlotte shimmered in the air, drawing my attention back to her. Her hands reached out. They reached down. They covered James’ wrists.

  As I watched, the ropes around his arms loosened. The knots slipped. James couldn’t possibly see the ghost, but he shivered when she touched him. He knew something was happening.

  Then he flexed his arms, and the ropes fell away.

  He looked at me, and I motioned toward Stevie with my eyes. She was right there. If she knew his arms were free then she’d most likely shoot us both on the spot and skip this whole injured daughter routine. He tilted his head ever so slightly to let me know he understood and then gripped the arms of the chair tight to maintain the illusion of him being captive.

  Charlotte smiled again, and then she disappeared.

  When I looked down, the water was up to my ankles.