by Jeanne Adams
Frozen along the wall, Dav held Carrie behind him, shielded by his body, protected by the stone at their back. They both jumped when Carlos’s weapon slipped between the bars with a rattle and clang, and hung tantalizingly within reach. Blood dripped from the barrel to the ground, a secondary stream darkening the floor below.
It seemed like hours they waited, pressed together, held up by the stone. After the first barrage of gunfire, silence had returned. Beyond, in the clearing, the birds eventually resumed calling, the screeching monkeys shrieked their insults back and forth once more. Everything returned to normal, except that now, the people who had locked them in, but brought them food, were all wounded or dead.
And there was no way to know if the shooters were friend or foe.
Chapter 9
“Quick, Carrie, up on my shoulders,” Dav said, realizing they needed to act. If the shooters had taken up sniper positions, they would wait for a while before coming down. If they came and were not friendly, he and Carrie needed to be ready. “See if you can pull yourself up using the gun strap. Maybe he has the keys. If you can get up there and unlock the grate, maybe we can get out.”
“I don’t think I’m strong enough to push him off the grate,” she protested, hurrying to get her shoes off and climb onto his shoulders as they had before. They were quicker this time, taking only two tries to get her steady.
Carrie could reach the gun, and he felt her weight shift and lift off his shoulders. Triumph warred with the knowledge that she probably couldn’t push the dead kidnapper off, not without more leverage than they had. He heard the jingle of keys or change, but dared not look up or alter his balance with just her toes resting on his shoulders.
“I can’t do it, Dav.” Her weight sagged onto him again and he felt his heart drop. How would they survive? “I can unfasten the gun, but I don’t know that it would do us any good.”
“Does he have anything on his belt? A sidearm or a rope or anything?”
“Rope would be good,” she grunted, pulling up again. “No. Nothing. Wait ... Oh my God, it’s a flashlight. I’m going to work it loose, but can you catch it if I lose my grip on it?”
“You’ll do fine.” Why would she lose her grip?
“Oh, a canteen too or a flask. If I can get it first, maybe the flashlight will be easier.” When that came down to him, dropping into his outstretched hand, he understood her concern. Blood covered its surface, making the smooth metal so slippery he nearly dropped it himself.
“Got it.”
“Going for the flashlight.”
He could tell she was tiring by the strain in her voice. Rifling through a dead man’s pockets, while standing on tiptoe to reach him, by holding on to the man’s dangling weapon wasn’t a task anyone should have to manage.
But she was doing it and he admired her more every minute for her courage. His heart clenched as she slipped and he reached higher to brace her.
“It’s stuck. I think ... shit!”
The exclamation warned him and he reached out just as a heavy-duty, black metal flashlight passed in front of him. He fumbled it, but managed to grab the bloody haft of the flashlight. He tried to stay steady for her, but it took them both a bit of weaving back and forth to reestablish their balance.
“Did you get it? Dav?”
He looked at it, black and blood-covered in the fast-fading light. Somehow he’d managed to keep the only source of light they might have for days from hitting the stone and shattering the bulb.
“Dav?”
“Yes, I got it. Come down, there’s nothing else you can do up there.”
“Okay.” Relief was evident in her voice and as she eased her full weight back onto him, he felt the quiver of fatigue in her legs. Between their bouts of lovemaking and this, they’d both had a full day’s workout.
The thought made him smile in spite of their dire predicament. He handed her down, then caught her in a bear hug. “Fabulous job, my flame. Fabulous job.” He kissed her hair, then bent to kiss her mouth. “You were magnificent.”
She shivered, a long, shuddering ripple of distaste. “If I never have to do that again, it will be a hundred years too soon.”
It took him a minute to unravel the metaphor. “I agree. Being below you, not knowing if I could catch you if you fell, or catch the light, was a bit nerve-wracking as well. It concerned me that the gun might go off,” he said, grinning now with relief that it hadn’t.
“I’m sure.” Heartfelt sympathy colored her words as she shuddered again. “I’m glad I didn’t think about the gun. I don’t know about you, but I don’t care if it takes all the antibacterial gel we’ve got left, I have to get the blood off my hands.”
“Yes. Absolutely. We’ll wipe it off with the wrapping from the food. We don’t need it anymore. Then use the gel, yes?”
“Okay. Let’s hurry.”
They moved back along the wall to where they had set up their makeshift bed. They used the flashlight sparingly, to make sure their hands were clean, to use the facilities, but both agreed they wouldn’t waste the battery.
“I can’t help thinking of that scene in Cast Away, you know the movie with Tom Hanks? He has a flashlight, but he falls asleep with it on?”
“Yes, I remember.” He also remembered the sense of despair that came through so poignantly in the movie, the loneliness and hopelessness. At least Hanks had been able to move about in the light and air. Dav had watched the movie only once and had never forgotten it.
Now, the gloom and the coppery smell of blood made him queasy and dizzy, a weakness he abhorred.
“Dav?” Carrie’s voice wavered in the dark. “I’m... I’m...”
“I know,” he reassured her, though he felt no security himself. “It’s not good.” He had to shift his thoughts, steer his mind away from the walls, which seemed to be closing in with the darkness and the despair of their predicament. “Tell me more about the walls, about the carvings.”
“The walls? Okay. Okay, I get that,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “We have to focus on something else. Something besides ... him.” She gulped a few times. “Can I sit with you, right next to you while we talk?”
“Of course, Carrie-mou, come,” he said, thankful that she too craved the warmth of contact. The dead man above them brought the coppery, fecal smell of death to their prison, tainting it even more. Dav did his best to ignore it, and the noises of the night animals that were coming to investigate the blood. He wouldn’t mention it to Carrie, but tomorrow, there would be vultures, or worse, to take their turn. It was a jungle and things, especially dead things, didn’t stay whole for long. It wouldn’t be pretty.
“These symbols, they represent the seasons, the rivers, the crops, even the cycles of the gods in this part of the world. Like the Greek gods, which you know, they had their lovers, their jealousies, their favorites. It’s a very different system, of course, and more masculine in its orientation, but very comparable mythology.”
“I see.” He didn’t really, but it kept her going, kept his mind off the dead and the dark.
“Well, they weren’t that similar, I guess,” she said, and shivered. It wasn’t cold in their cell, but the situation was worthy of shivers if anything was. “Anyway, they were a whole lot more bloodthirsty. You think the whole Spartan thing, and the perfection required of their athletes was severe? It wasn’t anything to the Toltec, Mayan and Olmec traditions. Their games?” she said rhetorically. “Bloody as hell. People, well, young men, died every time there was a game.”
“No bad game days, I guess,” Dav mused. “Or at least you only have one.”
“Right,” she half laughed. “So, these markings show the river in good order, the crops in the fields ready to be harvested, the people praying to the gods.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I don’t know, but I think it means that if this is a ritual site, it’s for plenty and prosperity. Or...” and now her voice held a desperate edge, “it could be a cell showin
g the occupant all they’ll be missing.”
“Nice thought. Let’s say it’s the first. What do you think the door means? Do you think it is a door?”
“Oh, yes. I just have no idea how to open it, or if it’s booby-trapped or anything.”
“Booby-trapped? Shades of Indiana Jones,” Dav quipped. “Blow holes and poisoned darts.”
“Yes. That sort of thing was used, you know. That’s where the writers for Indy got it, I guess. Even the exaggeration has a basis in fact.”
He chuckled. “I see. Eh-la. We’ll take as many precautions as possible, but we need to open it if we can. There’s really no option at this point, yes?”
“True,” she said ruefully. “It’s that or starve. Or wait for whoever shot those guys to come back.” She gestured toward the ceiling and shuddered. He felt it all along his body, and it reminded him of their passion, their desire for one another. There would be none of that tonight with death ever-present in their sight and in their senses.
“Tell me more about the Mayans,” Dav said, encouraging her to focus on him, not on the growling and scuffling sounds that had begun above them. He didn’t know what kind of wildlife might be around the clearing up above them, but scavengers had been attracted by the blood, and the smell of death. Even with the presence of man, this area was wild and the animals were efficient in the jungle.
Carrie began to talk about the Mayan civilization, distracting them both, but soon her voice drifted into silence and she fell into a doze in his arms, bundled in his jacket. For hours, Dav sat listening to the noises above them, watching as the body on the grate jerked when something tugged at it. He didn’t want to waste the flashlight’s batteries checking it out.
It was worse, though, sitting in the dark, listening to the rustle and shift of fabric. The renewed dripping of blood woke him much later, while it was still dark. From the dripping and from the wet tearing sounds, he knew that whatever had been after the body had managed to get through the clothes. It made him ill to think about it, so he did his best to shut out the sights and sounds, just as he’d done as a child. He had Carrie to think about now.
He was a grown man.
When she woke in the dark, she could feel Dav shivering next to her. “Dav?” she whispered, the darkness and his tense body making her want to cower in fear. Still, she reached out to him. “Dav?”
“It’s like before,” he said, and she could tell he was forcing the words out. When she touched his face, she felt the rock-hard tension in his jaw, his stiff posture making him unyielding under her seeking hands.
“Like before?” she coaxed.
“I told you, they locked me in. The bugs. The rats.”
Now she was the one shuddering at that thought, and at the thought that Dav was losing it. In the silence she heard it, the gnawing sound above them, the wet smacking, crunching sounds. The bugs. The rats.
No wonder he was reliving the past.
“Oh, God. Carrion feeders,” she managed. Her teeth were chattering now. “It’ll be worse if we turn on the light, won’t it?” she asked, knowing the answer.
With his face in her hands, she felt him nod. “Much worse. The sound is bad, but the sight would be worse, Carrie-mou.”
“Tell me, what does that mean? Mou?” It was a distraction, a lame one, but better than nothing. “You call me that. I like it.”
“It’s like ... ‘sweetheart.’ Or ‘d-d-darling,’” he stuttered, and she knew he was lost in the dark, back in his terrible childhood. What kind of father pitted his sons against one another? What kind of monster locked his child in the basement to toughen him up?
“So, if I call you Dav-mou, it’s like saying ‘darling Dav’?”
He laughed, the sound strained and with an edge of wildness to it, but it was a laugh. “It sounds odd with my name, but yes, it is.” He turned his face into her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm. “You are so special to me, Carrie-mou. You always have been.”
The words, the sentiment, sounded saner, more like the Dav she knew, so she tried to keep that line of conversation going.
“I feel the same way,” Carrie admitted, realizing it was true. She’d always compared other men to him, long before she’d lost Luke. There’d always been Dav. “You’ve been there for me, in so many ways.” She leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips, continuing to tease and taste to her heart’s content. It wasn’t sexual. It was quiet. Reassuring. Promising.
And the hum in her body and mind as his lips warmed and responded drowned out the disgusting noises above them.
He groaned out her name, banding her in his arms and rocking them both with fierce power. “It’s hard to be here, the memory rises to choke me here, memory I thought I had left behind.” He squeezed a bit more, then loosened his grip. “I’m glad you’re with me, even as I wish you could be a thousand miles away, safe in your beautiful home.”
“Better to wish us both away from here,” she offered, leaning on him, letting his solid warmth settle her nerves, help her forget the wildlife and their dire situation. “Your estate is exquisite, I hear.”
“You’ve never accepted my offers to visit,” he said, a pensive note in his voice, but he no longer sounded lost as he had before. “Why?”
Relief coursed through her as she heard more sanity in his words, more of who he was and less of his fears. “Oh, Dav, I knew that once I said yes to you, about anything, there would be no going back.”
To her surprise, he chuckled. “You would have had a choice, Carrie-mou. Always.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head so that he would feel her denial as well as hear it. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist being interested in you. I had to be sure I was...” She hesitated, then went silent. How did you express that kind of fear? Fear that you’d lose yourself, that you’d become so weak you’d just disappear in the shadow of a strong man?
“Sure you were what? Safe?” he questioned.
“No, I’ve always felt safe with you. It wasn’t that. I needed to be completely myself. Stable. Strong.” She sighed. “I had to know that I wasn’t weak or pliable, ineffectual.”
“Yourself ?” He sounded puzzled, and again, stronger now that he was discussing the world outside, the life they’d led. “Why wouldn’t you be yourself? You are a strong, capable woman, Carrie-mou.”
Her heart clenched at the endearment. How could she explain to this self-assured man that her weakness was her heart?
“Dav, I lost so much of myself with Luke. I just faded, like a painting that’s been hung in strong sunlight. The colors were still there, but so muted, so... so...”
“Pastel?” he offered.
“Exactly.”
“Ah, but Carrie-mou, you could never be pastel. Even with that shadow over you, with Luke and the problems, you still were vibrant, alive.”
Was that admiration in his voice? Approval?
Whatever it was, it was warm, and reassuring. “I didn’t feel that way, though. I couldn’t see myself that way. I was so lost. I kept finding myself at the Bay, by the bridge or down at Fisherman’s Wharf, looking out at the water, thinking, ‘Where is my color? Where is my strength?’”
He snugged her more tightly into his arms, a brief squeeze, then he relaxed his grip so that she could move, escape if she chose. “You have always seemed strong to me. A willow that bends in the wind, but comes back straight and as strong as ever when the wind dies.”
She let out a rough half laugh, half sob. “Oh God, Dav, if only I’d known that someone saw me that way. It would have helped.” Tears welled up. “I lost so much.”
“Tell me, Carrie,” he encouraged. “What made you feel so lost?”
“Everything. When Luke would cheat on me, it hurt,” she said. Saying it now, here in the dark with him, she could feel the pain, but it was distant, as if she could let it go. How odd. “Then, he would come back, be affectionate, loving.”
“He was so wrong, Carrie, so stupid,” Dav said, his hands sliding
up and down her back, a reassuring caress. “He should have been, what is the word? Horsewhipped.”
She smiled in the darkness. “A very old-fashioned punishment.”
“The worst betrayal,” he countered with strength, “requires a stern reprimand.”
“True.” She hesitated, knowing she should shut up now. The words wanted to slip around her good sense. She wanted him to know, she wanted all the horrible stuff out of her mind, spewed into this inky, terrible darkness to be swallowed up and sent away. Purged before she met her Maker, since that seemed fairly imminent. “I got pregnant.”
He went very still. His hands froze in their caresses, his restless fingers stilled. “Carrie? Little one, what happened?”
“I wasn’t very far along when Luke died. I never got to tell him,” she said, and the words ran together. She couldn’t get them out fast enough. “I fell. At the funeral home, I fell. Later that night, I had to go to the emergency room. I lost the baby the day after I buried Luke.”
She broke. Her voice, and her heart, and her reserve all broke, and she wept. She’d cried back then, in her mother’s arms, but this was like a catharsis, an emptying of her soul’s pain. All the while, she heard his whispered endearments, mostly in Greek, but some in English. His hands, never still now, reassured her on the physical level, holding her tightly, keeping her safe in the darkness as she cried out the last of the hurt from those long-ago days.
“Ah, darling,” he crooned, pressing kisses into her hair. “You’ll have another chance, my love, if you want it. You’ll see the sun again.”
They lay together for a long time, and she listened to the deep resonant sound of his heartbeat, the reassuring whoosh of his breathing. Oddly enough, despite their terrible situation, she felt at peace. “You’re the only person I’ve told besides my mother,” she finally admitted. “I felt so alone. So useless.”
“Ah, Carrie,” he whispered. “You are none of that.”