by Linda Ladd
Claire ignored the pain and ran to the vent. She whispered for Rico but he still hadn’t come back. She tried to remove the grate but it was locked down, and she couldn’t find the latch and it hurt her hand too much to try to pull it loose. Cursing, she moved over to the door and listened. Still no sounds outside; no movement, either, not that she could detect. The guys were still on their break, probably waiting for Max to call and tell them he was finished molesting her. God, these people were savages. She turned the key in the lock and eased the door open a mere crack.
Outside, the hall was still deserted, thank God, but she was pretty sure that wouldn’t last long. They’d be back, and soon. That’s when she remembered the grenade vest. It still sat where Max had placed it, right beside the door. She closed the door and knelt down beside it. It had lots of red and blue and white and yellow wires intersecting and attached to the grenades. But Max had told her that it wasn’t activated, which meant that it wouldn’t blow up if she removed the grenades. Or would it? Oh, God, she had to try.
Examining the grenades closely, she realized they were attached to the vest with straps that could be unbuckled. All the wires were threaded through the pins. He had said he would activate it after he put it on her. Didn’t he? Wasn’t that what he said? Oh, God, what was she gonna do? She looked at it some more, and then she took Max’s dagger, held her breath, and sliced through one of the wires. Nothing happened.
So relieved that she almost fainted, she slid the wire out and unstrapped the grenade and got it in her good hand. She picked up the vest and put it on top of Max’s bloody corpse, and then took the grenade out into the deserted hall and shut the door. She stood and listened again, knowing what she had to do. She opened the door again, and pulled the pin on the grenade. She tossed it inside the room, aiming it so that it would roll up and stop against the dead man. Then she shut the door and took off running down the long stone hallway, cradling her injured hand up against her breast so blood wouldn’t seep through the already red-soaked handkerchief.
The bomb blast was quick and thunderous. It shook the floor beneath her feet as all the grenades were ignited. It went off about the time she reached the turn in the corridor that led to the staircase. Sucking in air, she stopped there and leaned against the wall. She could hear her heart pounding inside her ears. Both from fear and the surge of adrenaline now blasting through her. She was out; she was free. Max was dead. And maybe they’d think the body was hers and wouldn’t come looking for her. She was beginning to feel very weak now, her knees shaky from blood loss, her stomach rolling with queasiness, and then she almost did pass out. She bent over and held her knees, took a few giant breaths of oxygen, drew it down deep into her lungs, and then she heard men yelling from the hall, down toward where the stairs were.
Claire took off back the way she’d come, frantic to find a place to hide. She jumped over the door that had been blown outward, reached the far end of the hall in seconds, turned down a different hallway, and quickly realized that it dead-ended at a gray stone wall at the back of the house. Desperate now to find a safe place, Claire turned to run the other direction. That’s when she saw the little boy again. Rico was standing right there in front of her, not two yards away. Where had he come from?
He looked frightened, but he motioned her to follow him, and then darted into the open door right beside him. Claire ran into the room after him and found a large furnished bedroom like the one in which she’d been imprisoned, but this one had Star Wars posters tacked up on the walls, lots of little action figures of Han Solo and Princess Leia and Chewbacca, and other kinds of toys sitting around. This must have been Rico’s room before Marcel Soquet had invaded his home and murdered anybody who got in his way. Rico had already disappeared through another door, and she sprinted after him into the closet, just in time to see him wriggle on his belly through another ornate brass grate that was standing wide open.
Claire wasted no time and dove in after him, headfirst, still holding the knife, scrambling frantically to turn around in the cramped space and pull the grate shut behind her. She found the latch, secured it, and inched backward into the darkness of the cool stone air vent that seemed to be about three feet square. She held her aching hand against her stomach, but kept the knife out and ready in her left hand, trying to control her thundering fear and racing heart. The boy was still on the move; she could just barely hear him, but he was crawling down through the dark tunnel somewhere behind her. She waited a few more seconds, expecting Soquet’s men to burst into the closet and jerk open the grate, but it didn’t happen. So she turned around and crawled as fast and as quietly as she could on her good hand and her knees, down the short passage to where Rico had disappeared into a deeper kind of darkness.
A couple of seconds later, she stopped at the other end. In the very dim light, she could see Rico’s legs where he was standing up just outside the opening. She crawled out, too, and found herself in a different passageway, one that was also about three feet wide but tall enough for her to stand up. The tunnel stretched out on both sides of them, long and dark and cold under her bare feet, but all along its length thin bars of light filtered in from rooms on the other side of the wall and looked like a long row of tall skinny sconces.
The minute she was out and up on her feet, Rico ran to her and grabbed her tightly around her knees. He was still breathing hard and trembling all over. Claire was, too, but she went down onto her knees in front of him and gathered the frightened child up close against her. She hugged him close and whispered into his ear, “Ssh, ssh, baby, you’re okay now. They didn’t see us. They aren’t coming after us. Okay? We got away, but we’ve gotta be quiet or they’ll hear us.”
Rico tightened his arms around her neck, kept them there in a stranglehold, utterly terrified. Claire could feel his heart thundering. It was shaking his entire body. He started whispering to her. “I hate them, I hate them. They hurt me. They hurt my mama and daddy.” Then he started sobbing into her neck, but so softly she could barely hear him, almost without any sound whatsoever, as if he had learned to suffer in silence inside those dark and cold and lonely tunnels.
“C’mon now, don’t cry, Rico. We got away from them, didn’t we? And I’ve got a phone, baby. I’ve got a phone now, but I’ve gotta find a place where I can get a signal. Is there somewhere that I can do that, Rico? Is there somewhere inside these tunnels that is open to the sky, somewhere where they won’t see us, where we’ll be safe? Think, Rico, this is so important. I know men who’ll come help us, but I don’t think they can find us. They’ve got to find us so they can help us escape. Okay? You understand?”
Rico nodded but didn’t let go of her neck. Claire pushed him back away from her a bit, until she could look into his face. “Do these tunnels run all through this place?”
Rico nodded, but he was looking at her, his expression horrified. He pointed to Claire’s face, and she realized he was looking at the blood covering her face and hair. “It’s okay, Rico. It’s not my blood. I’m okay, I promise. Rico, listen to me. Can we get to Black out through here?”
The boy nodded again.
Claire’s heartbeat went wild with renewed hope. “Okay, okay. Now. Does Jaxy know about these tunnels? Do they know that you hide down here? Can they get inside and find us?”
He shook his head. “They chase me sometimes. But I get here before they can catch me.” His big brown eyes searched her face. “One time they caught me in the kitchen. But I was real, real hungry that time.”
Claire’s heart clenched up tight, reacting to what this poor child had been through. “Rico, listen to me. Can you take me to where they’re keeping Black? Without us being seen?”
Rico nodded.
“Oh, thank you, Rico, thank you.” She hugged him close. “Rico, you’re an angel. You’re gonna save our lives.”
At that, Rico grinned, but just a little bit.
“What is this place? Is it a dungeon? Something like that?”
“Daddy sa
id this part was built by the Romans—you know, for their water to go through so it could get dumped down in the sea. They were real smart about building, Daddy said so. They made cisterns, too, to collect freshwater when it rains real hard.”
“How far is Black from here, Rico? Can we get to his room without anybody seeing us?”
He nodded again. “I’ve been watching him.” He paused and looked down at the floor. “They do real mean things to him, even meaner than what they do to me. But he acts kinda brave and stuff. I almost got him out one time, but they caught him before he could get inside the grate with me. He wasn’t as fast as you are.”
Claire shut her eyes and hugged him close. “He’s in big trouble, Rico, and we gotta get him out. You’ll help me, won’t you?” She held him back again and gazed hopefully into his face. “You’ll help me save his life, right? Like you saved mine?”
“He’s over in the part of the tower that hangs out over the edge of the cliffs. Up above where you were but more out over the water. The Roman troughs run under that room, too. Mama stores stuff down there. Maybe you could use some of her Band-Aids on your hand. Did you know it’s bleeding real bad?”
Claire hugged the boy again. But they didn’t have much time. Soquet’s men had probably already found Max’s body or what was left of it. Maybe there wasn’t anything left of it. Maybe if they were lucky, they’d think it was Claire’s remains. “C’mon, let’s go find a place for me to use this phone, and then we’ll go get Black. Then we’ll get you out of this awful place. Okay? But we gotta hurry. We don’t have time to wait.”
The child nodded eagerly, and then he put his hand in her good one and smiled up at her. Claire squeezed his fingers, and he started off quickly down the narrow passage that led off to their right at a slight downward cant. After about five minutes of walking and holding her injured hand up against her stomach, Rico leaned down into the darkness and picked up something. He held it out to her. “I stole your gun back from them last night. That’s where I went. I’m real good at stealing stuff. I’ll steal some more things, if you tell me what you want me to get.”
For the first second or two, Claire couldn’t even believe her ears. Then she grabbed the Glock 19 nine millimeter and checked the magazine in the dusky light. It was still fully loaded with parabellums. “Oh, my God, Rico, how did you get this? Where did you find it?”
“I sneak down into Jaxy’s room sometimes, you know, after she goes to sleep. That man you like, the one named Black? He hit her real hard, right in the face, too, and now she’s stayin’ in bed. I heard Max sayin’ that she might have a concussion. She took some pills and stuff to make it stop hurtin’, and she didn’t even hear me come out through the grate. So I just looked and looked and then I found your gun. She had it in one of her drawers. I was real quiet and stuff. It was locked up, but I found the key inside her jewelry box.” He started nodding his head. “I heard them saying stuff about taking your guns away from you, and I knew you’d need it to kill them with, and stuff.”
“Oh, my God, Rico. I can’t believe you got my gun back.”
Rico grinned up at her and seemed very pleased. “That Black man, he hit her so hard that her nose bled and bled and is probably broken real bad, too, and she couldn’t hardly even breathe good anymore. I saw it all through the grate. I was glad he hit her hard like that. I hate her. She’s real, real mean.” He reached up with both his hands and cradled Claire’s face. He looked as if he wanted to comfort her. He was nodding his head now. “I guess you know that she’s done some real bad things to him. But he got to hit her back that time. He got her good. I was happy he did. But I’m sorry he got in big trouble after that. They punished him bad. Max did. I know you like him a lot, if you’re gonna go get him out, and stuff like that. But he was nice to me, too, when they made me go out in the road and make him stop. He was sorry he almost hit me but he finally got stopped before he ran over me.”
That was the most Claire had ever heard the child say at one time, but he was free now. That made a difference. Claire stared down at his dirty face in the gloom of the tunnel and felt like weeping for the poor little kid who had suffered so much at the hands of monsters. But she didn’t. And she wouldn’t. Not until she got all three of them safely out of this stinking hell on earth. Black didn’t have much time left, not after Soquet realized that it was his son who had been blown apart with one of his own homemade grenade vests. But now she had a knife and a gun, and she planned to use them to kill anybody and everybody who got in her way. “Okay, we gotta hurry, Rico. We gotta get him down here with us before they find a way inside these tunnels. This is our only chance. Okay?”
Rico immediately headed off down the dim passageway, and Claire followed right on his heels. She now had the Glock in her left hand, her own personal, fully loaded weapon, and she was going to use it. They deserved to die, after what they’d done. All of a sudden, Claire felt a helluva lot more confident. Now they had a real chance. She’d kill every single one of them if she had to. She wanted to kill them. Just shoot them down, one at a time, plug them right between the eyes. She was filled with a kind of bloodlust that she’d never felt before and it was alarming in its ferocity. They had brought her here. They had made her want to murder, and she was going to do it.
All the way down through the dark passage, feeling her way along the rough, cold, damp, clammy stone walls, Claire peered out the cracks into deserted rooms, through the hidden peepholes and low air passages leading down to the brass grates. They passed one chamber after another, and it was incredible how intricate it was. The Roman system of underground troughs and cisterns and ducts was massive and interconnected with lots of natural grottoes on either side, some filled with seawater from the crashing waves and others with rainwater seeping through cracks in the ancient walls.
As they moved along, she began to believe that the fortress really was as ancient as Rico had told her. It was a bizarre feeling, moving around behind thick walls and underneath massive stone tunnels and up narrow stone steps. So far, she hadn’t seen a single soul in any of the rooms, not anywhere, but it appeared to be a huge place, vast and expansive and rising up like a stone Goliath at the edge of the sea.
After a time, she had no idea where she was or where she was headed. But she did trust the kid. Rico knew the way all right, and he was moving easily and confidently and quickly ahead of her. Every so often, he would turn and look back, make sure she was still there. A couple of times, he had run back and hugged her around her legs as if afraid she wasn’t real or might disappear. It was very dark in some of the passages, and the stone was so thick that all outside noises were muffled. But that was good. That meant any sounds of their progress would be hard to hear, too.
As they proceeded down on steeply slanted paths, Claire was amazed by Rico’s courage. He had to be deeply traumatized, mentally messed up by all that he had seen and all that had been done to him. Good God, he’d seen his parents murdered. And he’d been alone with these devils for a lot longer than she had. But now he was hopeful, wanting her to save him, leading her to Black. If any of them got out alive, it would be because of him. She just hoped that Soquet’s men didn’t discover the entrance into the tunnels. Claire followed him for what seemed like an hour, her weapon still tight and ready inside her good hand, her wounded hand absolutely killing her, her ears perked and straining for any sign of a trap or cry of discovery.
“Rico, you okay?” she whispered into the gloom. “How much farther is it? We’ve come a long way.”
“There’s a place open to the sea. So you can use the phone. It’s close to that man named Black, too.”
“This tunnel leads outside? Can we get Black out that way?”
Now Claire could barely see the child because the light was so low, but he stopped and nodded his head. “They guard it but I get out that way sometimes.”
At that, Claire felt even better about their chances. “Okay, let’s go faster. They’ve probably found Max by now so they�
��ll be looking for me.”
“Okay.”
“Rico, do you know where they keep their weapons?”
“They took all my daddy’s hunting rifles and locked them up in some cabinets in Max’s bedroom, but I know where they keep the key.”
“How many men are here?”
He shrugged. “Lots of ’em. I don’t know for sure. Two of them stay together when they are guarding somebody.”
“How far are we from the passage that leads outside?” Claire was getting impatient. She had Max’s phone out now and ready, and was punching in the numbers, trying to pick up any kind of signal. Finally, the light on the screen did come on and sent out a vague glow in the dim tunnel. She put in Novak’s number and nothing happened.
“Still not working. Let’s keep going.”
Minutes later, they came out into a large cavern in the cliff where a sunken cistern chiseled into the stone floor was full of freshwater. The pool took up most of the chamber. On the far side was an opening that revealed the sky outside. Sun was pouring in across the cistern, and Claire hurried around the edge of the pool and stopped a few feet from the edge of the cliff. She was standing high over the surging waves, maybe as much as a forty-or fifty-feet drop. She stepped closer and saw that the waves were rolling in and disappearing underneath where they stood. She could hear them somewhere down under there, crashing violently against the hidden base of the cliff. The wind was strong and hot against her face, and it whipped her blood-stiff hair around and stung her nostrils with the smell of salt water and clean sea air. She breathed it in, happy to see the sun and sky again after feeling her way through the dark, cold tunnels for what seemed like an eternity.
Wasting no more time, she checked the phone again. It worked now, so she pulled up their GPS coordinates, frowned at the sight of them, because they seemed off from what she remembered of Black’s GPS signal, but she didn’t have time to worry about that. She had to get to Black. She punched in Novak’s number and listened to it ring.