by KD Robichaux
I glance behind me, seeing he’s plopped down on the ground facing the opposite direction. He brings the small bag of chips up to his mouth and leans his head back, and I smile. I’m glad I had something to offer him after everything he’s done for me while we’ve been trapped down here.
Walking a couple more yards away, I stop and pull out the pack of wet wipes I always carry in my purse, and then set my bag on the ground. I move down the tunnel just a little ways more, not wanting to get anything on my Kate Spade, turn to make sure Dean is still in his same spot, and then wiggle my jeans down.
Hm... I’ve never not peed in a toilet before. How the hell am I supposed to take care of business without taking my jeans all the way off? But that’s way too much damn work, stupid skinny jeans. What to do, what to do…? Then it hits me. I back up against the wall and slide down it, acting like I’m sitting in a chair. I shuffle my feet out in front of me more so I don’t get my pants wet, and as I feel the burn in my legs from holding the position, I pray they don’t give out while I relieve myself.
For once, disaster doesn’t strike, and I clean myself up, pull up my jeans, and carry the wet wipes to my purse. I stuff them back into the packaging, and seal it closed. I’ll have to remember to throw the pack away once we get out of here. With a smile on my face and a skip in my step, I hurry back to Dean, feeling much better with an empty bladder. When he stands, he leans down to peck me on the lips before heading in the direction from which I just came. “My turn,” he calls over his shoulder.
My smile dies. “Wait!” I yell.
He turns, a look of concern on his face. “What? What’s wrong?” He rushes back to me.
“I-uh…” Oh, God. I’m such a goob. Could I be any more awkward?
“What, love?” he prompts.
“I… I don’t want you to see,” I say quietly.
His brow furrows. “See what?”
My hands flop against my thighs. “Ugh! I don’t want you to see my puddle!” I confess, exasperated at myself.
His lips pull in, making a straight line out of his mouth, and I can see a vein in his neck pop out. He’s trying so hard not to laugh at me. But then he fails. Miserably. He laughs from deep in his belly, going so far as to reach out and hold on to my shoulder as he bends over and tries to catch his breath. “Oh, my God. You’re so fucking adorable.” He wipes the corner of his eye, as if he’d laughed so hard tears had formed, and I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face. “I’m sure it’s soaked in by now. And now I really gotta go.” He gives me a quick kiss then turns and hurries away.
I CAN’T WIPE the stupid grin off my face. The woman is a conundrum. For someone who was so quick to bite my head off and rip me a new one, she’s got an undeniable sweetness to her. Where most women I’ve come in contact with for the past several years try to impress me with their sex appeal and overbearing confidence, Emmy’s brand of sweet is a breath of fresh air. So intelligent, so clever, yet oh so innocent when it comes to dealing with a man.
Yet I love it when her temper flares and her feistiness comes out to play, so when I get a distance away, even though I really don’t see it, I call back to her, “Oh, my God! That’s the biggest puddle of piss I’ve ever seen! How much tequila did you drink?”
And just like I was hoping, her mortified groan and response of, “Oh, my God! Stop! It is not!” comes hurtling up the tunnel to me. I burst out laughing, and hear her snap, “I hate you a little bit right now.” I finish my business, zip up my jeans, and make my way back to her, a wicked smile on my face. When I’m within arm’s reach, I receive a swat to my chest, followed by the sight of Emmy shaking out her hand with a pained look on her face. “Ouch. Dick.”
I lean down and steal a kiss before she tries to hit me again, apparently not learning her lesson the first time. I learned early on in my career that in order to do all the adventurous things in my show, everything from rock climbing to hiking for miles upon miles, that I needed to stay in really good shape. Glancing down at my watch, 4:32 a.m., I see it’s the normal time I’m usually up and starting my morning run. Then after cardio, I’d spend the next hour weight training, a different muscle group each day. Today would have been leg day. I never skip leg day. I always find it hilarious when guys come into the gym, and they work out their upper body so hard, with huge, bulging biceps, pecs that could crush walnuts, and traps and lats so big it makes you wonder if they can even reach their back if they have an itch… and then you look down and they have these skinny little bird legs. Watson and I call them Johnnys, as in Johnny Bravo.
When Mrs. Potts passed away a few years ago, I adopted Watson much like he did me all those years ago. Without the love of his life to spend his days with there in that giant home, I took him on the road with me. The man was already in great shape from having a very active lifestyle, first as a miner, and then as the groundskeeper of the boys’ home, so it was no surprise when we discovered he could kick ass at the gym. His body is just as fit as mine.
His official title is Personal Assistant, one I gave him so he’d accept the salary I deposit into his bank account, but really, I just love having him with me everywhere I go. Especially since he’s getting up there in years. The old man’s seventieth birthday is next month, and it calms my soul to know I am spending every moment I can with him, taking him on escapades and letting him see everything he could possibly want to. We checked off everything on his bucket list the first year he spent traveling with me, and I forced him to make a new one, after I taught him how to Google search on his new iPad. He’s more than just a father figure. He’s my guardian angel, right here on Earth. And I can’t wait for him to meet Emmy.
Thinking of Watson meeting Emmy, I’m sure he’ll be up in a couple hours at our hotel. He’ll start looking for me, and then call Mr. Hosea, who will probably already realize I never came out of the catacombs, and they’ll eventually get us out of here. In a way, that makes me kind of sad. I like being trapped down here, alone with Emmy. It’s like we’re in our own little world, on this adventure together, where nothing and no one else exists.
“So, a lock,” Emmy says, bringing me out of my thoughts. “Can you tell by looking at it if the key is one that fits into a door, or maybe a padlock? It would be nice to have some sort of clue as to what we should be looking for.”
I take the key out of her hand to take a closer look, but come up blank. “No, not really. I would assume, just because of its larger size, that it would be to a door, since nowadays padlock keys tend to be smaller than those that unlock doors. But I’ve come across keys this large that went to giant antique padlocks, like when I went to Arkansas and explored—”
“Fort Smith Prison. Yeah,” she finishes my sentence, nodding her head as she looks at the cast iron key in my hand, and a smile spreads across my face. When I don’t say anything else, she glances up at me, seeing my grin and my eyes staring down at her. Her head jerks back a little, her face twisting up. “What? Do I have something—?” Her hand flies to her nose, pinching it shut, and I laugh.
“No, love. You don’t have a bat in the cave. You watch my show.” I smirk.
She furrows her brows. “I told you I watch your sh—”
“Negative, Ghost Rider. You named me off the places you and I had run into each other. You never said anything about being one of my viewers,” I chide, and I can feel the mischief taking over my features.
Her face turns a delightful shade of rose, and her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. Finally, the dam breaks. “Ugh, you brat! Yes! I watch your damn show. I’ve seen every episode at least ten times. And with every viewing, I watched with equal parts of awe and hatred. Erin and I even made a drinking game out of it.”
My face immediately falls, and before I can catch my tone, I growl, “Who the hell is Aaron?” that unfamiliar feeling of jealousy filling my chest with fire once again.
She arches her brow at me, blinks, and then understanding comes over her face. It’s her turn to smi
rk. “Erin. My roommate and best friend.” When she sees that explanation isn’t good enough, she adds, “My soul sister.”
My tense body instantly relaxes, leaving me feeling a little embarrassed, so I clear my throat and pretend it never happened. “So what’s the drinking game?”
“Huh? Oh! Well, let’s see.” She starts ticking off on her fingers the things that would require you to take a shot. “Any time the title No Trespassing is said. Which is before and after each commercial break. We always make fun of the way you look into the camera like Zoolander and say, ‘We’ll be back with more No Trespassing, after this word from our sponsors,’ and then ‘Welcome back to No Trespassing.’” She cackles, shaking her head. “What really sucks is watching it on Netflix, when there are no commercials, so you have to take shots back-to-back.”
I want to be offended, but her beautiful face doing an impression of Blue Steel while she was mimicking me makes me laugh. “What else?”
“Every time they bleep out a curse word. That’s probably the most brutal rule. Especially when you combine it with ‘Take a shot when Dean nearly falls or otherwise hurts himself.’ You really should be more careful,” she playfully scolds, then adds, “Potty mouth.”
I grin and take a step closer, bringing her body flush against my front. “You love my filthy mouth,” I murmur, wrapping my arms around the small of her back. I want to puff out my chest a bit when I hear and see her actually gulp, her breath catching. I love how she unconsciously responds to me. But suddenly, her face turns beet red and her eyes widen, and I feel her legs jerk against the front of mine. She tries to pull away, but I tighten my grip. “What, love? What’s wrong?”
She presses her hands against my chest and tries to shove me off, but still, I don’t let go. “Dean, get off,” she gripes, struggling against me.
“Not until you tell me what’s the matter,” I grit out.
Her body goes limp against me as she gives up her fight. She buries her face in my chest and lets out a big, dramatic sigh. “I g- a we-y,” she mumbles into my shirt.
“What? I couldn’t make out what you said,” I tell her, trying to pull her head back a little, but she holds on tight.
This time, she yells it, “I got a wetty!” and I nearly choke on my spit as I suck in air.
“A… a wetty?” My voice comes out almost squeaky as I try to hold in my laughter.
She pulls her face back to glower at me. “Ugh! Dean! Guys get woodies, girls get wetties! God, you suck so bad!” And she plants her face back where it was, right in the center of my chest.
For her sake, I manage to swallow the howls of laughter I want to let loose, and rub my hand up and down her back soothingly. It allows me time for the actual meaning of her words to sink in past their humor, and I groan.
I made her wet.
Right now, she’s wet. For me.
My dick hardens behind my zipper. Again.
“Can we continue on our exploration now, before I die of embarrassment?” she grumbles, tilting her head to the side so I can hear her.
I kiss the top of her hair, breathing in her scent, before giving her a playful smack on her ass and stepping back, where I adjust myself. Again. But before she can comment, I tell her, “Let’s do it,” then bend down to pick up the bags, throwing them over my shoulder.
She clears her throat. “At least we’re looking for something big enough to fit this key, right? I mean, that should be easier to spot than these tiny clues we’ve been finding. My phone’s nearly dead, so not much more flashlight time left,” she rambles, clearly trying to get her mind off her ‘wetty’ and my ‘woody’.
“You would think. Unless the door or lock or whatever is hidden behind something, like the cubbyhole we found the key in,” I say. “I have an idea though.” She looks up at me, her face questioning. “I’m actually kind of curious to see what’s at the end of this thing. How about we head straight for the back, take a look around, and then backtrack?”
She shrugs. “Sounds good to me.”
With that settled, I reach out and lace my fingers through hers, tugging her closer to my side. I catch a glimpse of the small smile she tries to hide, turning her face away from me, and we start our trek.
We walk for a while, the distance going by a lot faster since we aren’t scouring the walls with a fine-tooth comb, and soon, the tunnel spills out into a room much like the one in the very front, wide and open, with a much higher ceiling.
Except this one’s walls are filled.
Filled with row after row of bones.
“OH, MY GOD,” I breathe, pulling my hand out of Dean’s and making my way to the very center of the huge chamber. I spin slowly, taking in the haunting beauty of the sight before me. Bones the color of clouds passing over a full moon line the walls, floor-to-ceiling. Stacked in patterns, creating works of art out of the people’s remains.
“Hmm…,” I hear Dean say behind me, and I turn to see him bending over and looking closely at the wall of bones. He turns to smile at me. “All tibias and femurs. That’s why it’s so beautifully symmetrical.”
I glance upward at the ceiling, the light fixtures still hiding flawlessly, but the way it’s casting shadows above the bones, you can tell the actual walls of the chamber are much farther back than the one created by the remains. “Just like in Paris. The tibias, femurs, and skulls are used to make the barriers that hold the rest of the skeletal parts behind them,” I note, something I’m sure he already knows. I turn to watch him walk across the room to where there’s a large stone placard. It looks as big as a gravestone, which I guess technically it would be.
“Ah, here we go. ‘St. Charles Cemetery, 1782,’” he reads. “These are the original occupants of the cemetery that filled up, and they got the idea to dig the catacombs.”
“But there’s gotta be way more deceased here than just one cemetery’s worth,” I point out, looking around for another gravestone. “Look how many skulls. There has to be thousands of skeletons in this chamber.”
“There,” Dean calls, and when I look back at him, he’s pointing across the room. This stone is much smaller, and when I take a glance around, I see there are a few more this size around the perimeter. They’re hard to see in the dim lighting, because they’re the exact color of the bones framing them.
“‘Yellow Fever Epidemic, 1853,’” I recite.
From his position in front of another sign, he calls, “‘Yellow Fever Epidemic, 1878.’”
“‘Cholera Epidemic, 1832.’” God, I wish I had my camera right now. I would love to be documenting all the formations and placards. I’d use my phone, but with its low battery, I want to save it in case we need the light.
“Hmm... I’m not really sure about this one. ‘Carville, 1850-1900,’” he reads, and it’s thrilling when it dawns on me I know something else he doesn’t know.
“Carville is where there was a hospital designated to the study of leprosy, and also the Louisiana Leper Home,” I explain, and he nods, a proud look on his face that warms me to my core.
We spend a few minutes walking around the perimeter, pointing out different designs made out of the bones, or a skull with interesting features, and when we’ve taken it all in, we look at each other with mirrored faces full of wonder. Our souls are happy, and it makes me smile that even after years of doing this on his show, Dean still seems so thrilled by our exploration.
“But… I don’t see a door or any sort of lo—”
“Holy shit,” I interrupt, my mouth falling open at something my eye just happened to catch at the exact moment Dean sounded like he was about to lose hope of finding anything in here, which would force us to backtrack. I point up at the ceiling, and Dean comes to stand beside me, looking in the direction of my finger.
“What is it? I don’t see anything,” he says, and I glance up at him to see him squinting.
When I look back up, what I saw is gone. Surely… I shake my head, trying to clear my vision. When I check again, I see just a s
liver of the image. Ah, good. I knew I wasn’t seeing things. I try Dean’s idea and squint, but it doesn’t become any clearer until I slightly adjust my feet, spreading them farther apart and making me a tiny bit lower. “There!” I grab his arm and tug, trying to pull him down to where he’s at my eye level. “Now look at the ceiling, just a little ways behind the wall of bones. When the light hits it just right…”
“1618,” he breathes next to my face, and I grin, excited that he can see it too. “You know what that means, right?”
My brow furrows. “They’ve written it to look like another year marker, but I’m more than a little certain it’s another clue on our Golden Ratio scavenger hunt,” I tell him, the ‘duh’ clear in my voice.
I feel him turn toward me, so I face him, seeing his gorgeous eyes dancing with mirth. “Yeah, love. And it means you’re going bone climbing, and not the kind you’ll be doing later, if I have anything to do with it.”
I WATCH, ENJOYING the flush that covers Emmy’s face, and even more so the giggle that bubbles up and pours out of her at my lame come-on.
Shaking her head, she swats my chest, gentler this time, so she doesn’t hurt her hand. She places her fists on her hips, checking over the wall of bones directly in front of us. After a moment, she turns to me. “How the hell am I going to get up there? The bones have to be fragile, being at least a century old. I mean, it’s one thing to destroy part of the catacombs themselves. That can possibly be fixable. Right? Yeah. But the bones… Like, once they’re damaged, there’s no fixing that.”
“Then here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to lift you up there, and you just take a peek to see if there’s even anything behind the wall of bones. Let’s start there, and then figure out what to do next when the time comes,” I tell her, soothing her nerves.