The Getaway

by K. J. Emrick

  The moments passed while Stevie continued to pace. There were a few steps when her back was to me, and to James, and maybe if we both took her together…

  “That’s enough,” she said, whipping around and pointing the gun in our direction again. “I can’t wait for my sister to get back. I need to do this now.”

  “No, Stevie,” I tried, my mind whirling for any reason why she should wait. I knew if she waited, then we would be fine. We just needed a little more time. Something would happen, if we just had a little more time. “Just wait, okay? Let’s talk about this.”

  “Too late for that, Dell,” she told me. “Oh, we’re several years past that point. Mom lied to me all my life. What you and Dad over there have shoulda been what my parents had. It isn’t fair. You get love and I get… what? A letter telling me I wasn’t important enough to know my own father?”

  The gun loomed closer.

  “But for what it’s worth,” she said, levelling her aim at my heart, “it really did mean a lot to me when you said I was a perfectly nice girl.”

  “Let me tell you a story!” James said in a rush. “About your mother, I mean. Let me tell ya ‘bout her. That’s what a father should do for his daughter.”

  The gun wavered as the water crawled up my pants. Stevie sloshed through it and leaned in to look into her father’s eyes. “There’s no way you knew Mom like I did.”

  “Yes, I did.” He flicked his eyes over Stevie’s shoulder, and past me. “There’s a lot of water coming in. The tide’ll drown us in here if we don’t get out. Let me tell ya the story outside, Stevie. Your mom. She had the most amazing way with animals. Every dog was like her personal friend. Every time we went for a walk she’d find some turtle or bird or something to throw bits of food to.”

  His eyes flicked past us.

  As I listened to him spin this tale about him and his lost Spectra, I told myself not to be jealous. This woman had been out of his life for years, and he was only stalling for time like we needed. Thing was, I didn’t feel jealous. I wasn’t sure what I felt.

  “I remember,” he said, shifting in his seat while keeping his hands perfectly still. “There was this one dog that she had. Ugly thing. I hated it, and she could tell.”

  His eyes went flick, again.

  “She made up an excuse to leave the thing with me for two days, thinking that would bring us together.”

  Flick.

  “When she came back, I had her precious mutt boarded out to a kennel.” He laughed with sad humor. “Nearly finished our relationship right then and there.”

  Flick.

  I saw when Stevie’s eyes went wide. She’d been wrapped up in James’s story just like I’d been, but now she noticed that James was very intent on something going on at the other end of the chamber. The water might be nearly up to our knees, and she might be holding a gun on us both, but it had just dawned on her that whatever was happening back there was important enough to snag his attention away from all of that.

  Whirling around, making little waves in the rising tide waters, Stevie pointed her gun at the man creeping stealthily across the space between the entryway and where she stood.

  Kevin. My Kevin, risen from the very stoop of Death’s door, just like I knew he would.

  I’d been watching him from the corner of my eye, trying not to let on to Stevie that her minutes were numbered. This was what we needed to stall for. Outside, on the beach, he’d played dead when Drusilla shot him and made an Oscar-winning moment out of it. The shot had caught against the bulletproof vest he’d been wearing under his uniform shirt. I’d felt it when I knelt to check on him. I knew he was alive, and it’s been all I could do not to mention Kevin, or think about him, since then.

  You may have noticed I wasn’t numbering him among the count of dead bodies Stevie and Drusilla have been racking up. This is why. My boy. Love this kid.

  Now he was caught in the sights of Stevie’s gun. His hands were empty. He’d lost his gun on the beach, maybe, or else he’d wanted to take Stevie alive, I don’t know which. I did know what was going to happen in the next second if I didn’t do something.

  James and I reacted together, as it turned out. With one mind, one purpose, we both launched ourselves at Stevie. James bounded up from his chair, taking his daughter low around the waist, while I toppled into her from the side. She went down and went down hard, face first in the water. I felt her head hit the floor underneath, and when she sat up again there was blood matting the hair at the back of her scalp. She knelt there, stunned, and it was James who came up with her gun in his hand.

  “Your mother and I loved each other,” he said to Stevie. “End of story.”

  I don’t know if she understood him or not. She looked too dazed for me to tell.

  “Good on ya,” Kevin said, to both me and James. “Just about time my Mom saved me for a change.”

  “Hey now,” I said, suddenly unable to keep from smiling with the danger mostly past. “I’ve saved you plenty of times.”

  “You two should congratulate each other later,” James told us. He was holding his side, leaning mostly on one leg as he passed the gun to Kevin and I suddenly understood that he was in a lot more pain that he was letting on. “I really wasn’t joking when I said the tide rises quick here. Take this, will you Kevin? Figure a gun’s in better hands with you than me.”

  “Thanks. Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” I said after Kevin had tucked the gun into the back of his pants. “What about Rory Hunter?”

  “I already brought her out of the caves,” he told me. I looked around and realized that she was gone. “That’s what James was watching me do while he was spinning his story. When we got out I gave her my torch and showed her the way to get up the cliff. Hopefully, she’s halfway to help by now.”

  “What about Drusilla?”

  “Dru… oh. The other kidnapper?” He smiled that roguish smile that reminded me so much of his father. “Didn’t really have time to get her name while I was knocking her unconscious. I left her handcuffed on the beach. We’ll need to get to her before the tide drowns her. So… no rush, I expect.”

  “Let’s go,” James insisted, grinding his teeth. “I don’t want to swim out of here holding my breath! Help me with Stevie.”

  “You’re in no condition,” I told him, motioning to the way he was limping and favoring his one side. “Let me and Kevin.”

  My son nodded, and we both reached to take one of the woman’s arms.

  She watched us coming closer. She wiped blood out of her eyes, and blinked at us, and then the most intense look of panic I’d ever seen settled into the lines of her face. “No!” she screamed. “Nooooooooooooooo!”

  With surprising agility, she dodged me and Kevin both, splashing and thrashing around our grasp to run out of the chamber, and disappear.

  “Don’t worry,” Kevin sighed. “I’ve called the Feds to let them know where we are. They’ll be here soon. In the meantime, it’ll be a cinch to follow your daughter, James. We know where she’s going.”

  “She’s no daughter of mine,” he insisted, his voice raw and harsh.

  “Right,” Kevin said, not arguing the point. “Well. Easy to get us out of here, too, as long as we’ve got these lanterns…”

  Behind us, several of the lanterns that Drusilla and Stevie had brought over to James’s chair flickered, one after the other, and went out. Apparently, they were not waterproof after all.

  “You just had to say something,” I scolded my son. “Didn’t you?”

  The light in the tunnel outside grew dimmer as we watched. The lanterns were dying out there as well. The water continued to rise around us.

  We didn’t have much time.

  “I can’t believe you’re wearing a bulletproof vest, mate.”

  “Of course I am,” Kevin answered James. He led us, gun at the ready, and we followed close behind. “I’ve learned the hard way that people tend to shoot at me when Mom’s investigating a mystery. I cam
e prepared.”

  “Very funny,” I told him. I wasn’t in the mood to be funny. I was stretching my eyes and ears, looking for Stevie.

  “Too right,” Kevin said, accepting my droll comment as a compliment. “After Drusilla shot me, the fall knocked the wind out of me for a bit, is all. Came in soon as I could.”

  James slapped Kevin on the back as we made our way up the tunnels. The light was eerie now, with some of the lanterns gone dark, and the few that were left all shimmering ghostly blue and distorted under the water. Entire stretches of tunnel were dark, and we moved slowly through those. I didn’t have my torch. Kevin had given his away. We were walking blind, literally, and now the water was up to our waists.

  “This is taking too long,” James said after the next turn. We had to slow down to a near crawl, feeling our way along the wall, because all of the lanterns had gone out here. All of them. It was black as pitch. “We need to move faster.”

  “We go any faster,” Kevin said, “and we’ll be tripping all over ourselves. Good way to break a bone.”

  As if that was a cue I heard James splashing as he tripped. “Careful. Careful! There’s a hole here in the wall. Another tunnel. Kevin, are ya sure we’re going the right way?”

  “Yeah… no,” Kevin admitted. “There oughta be a turn up here. I think. We’ll get back into the light after that.”

  “If all the lanterns aren’t out already,” James grumbled.

  “Shh,” Kevin said abruptly.

  We all stopped, there in the dark, to listen.

  I waited until the water was up above my belly button before I cleared my throat. “I don’t hear anything—”

  A scream was my only warning. Hands reached up from the rising tide and took hold of me, wrapping around my waist and pulling me off my feet. I splashed down hard and sucked up a mouthful of water.

  Stevie.

  I pushed at her and tried not to gag as I kicked at the rock floor only to get dragged under again. She was a force of nature, clawing and punching and rolling with me as I tried in vain to escape. At one point we were sliding down the floor like a waterslide at an amusement park. I remembered the route to the chamber where she had tied James to that chair. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t the way we came in.

  That side tunnel James had almost tumbled down, my mind reasoned. Stevie’s attack had swept us down that way. In the dark, Kevin and James might not even know where to look for us.

  I was on my own, and I was drowning.

  In the next moment my head was above the water again. I tried for a breath but Stevie’s hands were around my throat. My lungs were burning. My head was pounding and my heart felt like it was going to smash its way out of my chest. Stars were exploding in front of my eyes from the lack of oxygen and if I didn’t get air soon, I was done for.

  Desperately, I brought my knee up and connected with something important on Stevie’s body. She let out an amazingly satisfying shriek and let go of me. I gulped air, one breath after another, each one a little less painful than the last, sputtering and coughing out water with each exhale.

  Then Stevie was on me again.

  I couldn’t see her but I felt every punch and every scratch. The water kept her off balance and kept her from putting any real force behind anything but I couldn’t get away. I couldn’t even see which way this passage went. I called out to Kevin and James but whether or not they heard me was anyone’s guess.

  Stevie’s curled fist connected hard with the side of my head and I stumbled. The cavern wall caught me, digging into my palms. Instinctively I turned back around with my arms up to protect me from Stevie’s next attack.

  Suddenly there was light in the passageway. Light I hadn’t seen before. It rose up from out of the water, behind Stevie, pale and faint. Just as abruptly as it had appeared, it took on the form of a woman with long blonde hair and a pretty face.

  Charlotte Tebo.

  Stevie slogged through the water, groping blindly for me. She couldn’t see the figure standing behind her.

  Another light appeared, becoming a man in his later years, stooped with age and wearing a brown prisoner’s outfit. Two more men in similar clothes appeared with him, and then a woman.

  There were others. Men and women, and children of various ages all with sunken eyes and various injuries, some of which must have been life threatening. There were people carrying musket ball rifles who stood ramrod straight. These would be the guards from the Port Arthur prison. Just like the prisoners, they would have died more than a century and a half ago.

  These were the ghosts of Port Arthur.

  I’d been wrong about this place. It was haunted. In spades, this place was haunted.

  Then others joined them. Young men and women, mostly, dressed in modern clothes and sporting bullet holes. There had been lots of people who died at Port Arthur, I reminded myself, some of them very recently, and very violently. No wonder they hadn’t moved on yet.

  In every face was a story. Almost, I could hear them telling me what sort of lives they led, or what their dreams had been, or why they had died. They weren’t looking at me, though.

  They were circling Stevie.

  She saw them, finally, when there were too many of them all around her to do anything other than scream. She swung at the closest of the ghosts, and her fists floated through them like smoke. She tried to push past them and they shoved her back. They crowded into her, and Stevie tripped over her own feet in her panic and slipped under the water.

  When she came up again, dozens of ghostly hands reached out to take hold of her.

  “No!” she said in a shaky, stressed voice. “You can’t do this to me! You’re not real. None of you are real! Go away. You hear me? Go away!”

  This time the ghosts pulled her under, and didn’t let go.

  They all followed after her, one at a time, until there was just one ghost standing there to shed her ephemeral light on the rising waters. Charlotte Tebo gave me an actual smile, full of gratitude and warmth. She waved with just the tips of her fingers before disappearing into the darkness for good.

  “Kept my promise,” I whispered to her departing spirit. I looked down at where Stevie had been pulled under. It was dark in the passageway again and I couldn’t see anything more than faint afterimages of the ghosts. They had come when I needed them, and saved my life.

  A hand around my wrist startled me. “Shh,” I heard Kevin say. “It’s me. Just hold on tight to my hand. James and me know which route to take… you okay?”

  I nodded, but then realized he couldn’t see it even in the light of the electric lantern that he had picked up from one of the hallways. “I’m fine, Kevin. We need to get out of here.”

  “Where’s Stevie?”

  “She… slipped. She never had a chance.”

  Close enough to the truth to keep him from thinking I was crazy. Besides. A cave that’s slowly filling up with the tide is not the place to have any sort of conversation that begins with the words, I can see ghosts.

  An explosive splash of water nearby was followed by the gagging and sputtering sounds of Stevie, back from her watery prison. She was babbling incessantly and it was easy enough for Kevin and me to find her, while James peppered her with questions that got no answers at all. Stevie sounded like she had lost what was left of her mind.

  At least the ghosts had let her live.

  Don’t let it happen again, Charlotte had told me.

  No more death. There had been enough of that here.

  Chapter 10

  Of all the hospitals I have ever visited in Tasmania, I truly believe that the hospital in Hobart is the nicest of them.

  ‘Course, I haven’t had to be in too many hospitals, and I’m just a visitor this time, so I may not be the authoritative voice on the subject. It’s James who has to lay on that bed with his head raised up and his pillows stacked behind him, typing away on his laptop as he prepares his story for print. He’s stuck here, at least for tonight. His ribs have been w
rapped and his bruises tended to, but the doctor is worried about internal bleeding and a host of other things that I barely understood so, for tonight, he’s the guest of the Royal Hobart Hospital.

  Visiting hours are almost up now, and it seems like me and him have only just scratched the surface of what needs to be said between us.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him, sitting in the chair next to his bed and deciding I better dive head first into our issues before they became too big to tackle. “I really am.”

  “You kidding?” The sound of him writing up his article on his trusty laptop, balanced across the white sheets covering his legs, is a continuous clackity-clack, tappity-tap as his thoughts are translated easily into moving imagery. Wish I could write like him. The nurses have had fits about him working from bed but he’s ignored them all, same as he’s ignored my veiled comments about how he should be resting. Clackity-clack, tappity-tap. “I get to report on me own kidnapping, and the inside story of an unsolved murder, not to mention the detail of a lunatic daughter I never knew I had? Her and Drusilla’s trial will be a whole separate article to boot. This one here will hit the national papers by tomorrow morning. Then it’ll go global for sure. No way could I get this kind of scoop sticking around Lakeshore.”

  His words didn’t exactly sting so much as they surprised me. Sure, he’d talked about leaving before, and made it very clear that he was only staying in Lakeshore because that’s where I was, but this time… He’d basically just flat out said that there was nothing for him in Lakeshore. Nothing big enough to hold his attention.

  Did that include me?

  “No, James,” I said, trying to put a handle on my tangled thoughts. “I meant, I’m sorry for the way I acted.”

  On the keyboard, his fingers hesitated before going back to their quick pace. Tap-tap-tappity-tap, tappity-tap, tap-tap.

  “Strewth, Dell, it’s fine.”

  His tone was careful, and almost rehearsed. Like he’d been expecting my apology, and like he’d already run through every possible conversation with it in his head, and come up with a script to use for this exact moment. “James, I’m serious. I treated you horribly. All the emotions I was feeling over my husband’s murder kind of funneled out of me all at once, I think. I didn’t mean to make you a target.”