“Yeah.”
The handle of the gun was slippery in her hands, from rain and nervous sweat. Russ thudded through the doorway and sideways, the rubber crutch-tips squeaking in protest, and she braced the gun and stepped forward, sweeping it in front of her, lurched to the side, and slammed against the wall, jarring loose a powdery shower of dried birdshit on both of them.
“I bet you watched Starsky and Hutch when you were a kid.” His voice was dry. “C’mon, there’s no one in here.”
They crossed the warped, bulging floor to the next doorway. Russ peered around its edge. “End of the line,” he said. He held his right hand out. Clare gave him the gun. Russ crutched through first, Clare tight behind him. Where the other rooms had soared high into the musty darkness, this ceiling was barely high enough for Russ to pass without ducking. Open-case stairs pierced the low ceiling on the left-and right-hand walls. Below each stairway, trap doorways yawned, revealing two other stairs, leading to the cellar. From the amount of mouse droppings and dirt encrusting the doors, Clare suspected they had lain open a long time.
“Police,” Russ said, in a voice that cracked with authority. “Put your hands up in the air and walk out into the open.”
Silence.
“He has to be here, right?” Clare whispered. The glass was broken out of the windows tucked near the stairs, but the narrow wooden crossbars, the lights, were intact. The wall opposite them was solid, featureless.
“No other way out.” He pointed toward the room overhead. “A couple of vents under the eaves up there. Too small for a human. Cellar down there’s beneath the stone foundations.”
“What are we going to do?” She looked at Russ’s cast.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to go dashing up after him.” He glanced at the dark rectangle swallowing the cellar stairs. “Or down.”
There was a splash. Clare swiveled toward the right-hand stairs. “What was that?”
“Sounded like something in the cellar.” He crutched closer, until he stood next to the long side of the open trap door, like a graveside mourner. “It’s well below the waterline. Probably pretty wet down there.”
Another noise. Sloshing. Movement.
“You there in the cellar,” Russ shouted. “Come to the foot of the stairs with your hands up. There’s no way out.” His voice warmed a shade. “I can promise you it’s a hell of a lot warmer and drier at the station than it is here.”
Clare went around him and squatted at the head of the stairs. She could see them descending straight down into the gloom of the cellar. Like the other stairs in the building, these were open case, simple boards nailed to risers, no railing. “You can tell they constructed this before OSHA was around,” she said. In the single patch of gray light that made it to the bottom, she could see a flash of black water and the skeletal remains of a barrel. “Do you want me to go down? There’s no way you can maneuver those stairs.”
He stared at her. “You’re kidding, right?” He shook his head. “You’ve read too damn many Nancy Drew mysteries. No, you don’t get to go down into the creepy cellar where the bad guy lurks. Alone, unarmed, and without a light. Don’t be an idiot.”
More splashing. Rhythmic. Not like someone walking through water. The sound of something slapping against the water. Dropping into it.
“This is the nonidiot way to get the bad guy.” Russ kept his voice casual, but he moved closer to the edge of the opening, his crutch tips bracing against the hinges of the trapdoor. He watched the darkness below as he spoke. “I’m going to stand in the door to this room with my gun out and ready. You’re going to go back to the car, call the station, and have them send a couple units out here. Then you’ll stay in the car until they arrive.” She opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “It’s not just to keep you safe. If anything happens to me, or if the suspect gets past me, you’ll be able to see where he goes and call for help.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. “I forgot all about it.” She grinned up at him. “I’ve still got your phone on the line. I’ll be using up my minutes-”
The sound was like the ceiling falling in, rumble, pound, bash, and she swung her head and saw the man, already halfway across the room, hat tumbled off in the rush, hard-soled shoes slicing the floor, and Russ twisting around, tangled in his crutches, raising his gun, and she was rising from her crouch shouting, “No!” and the man leaped, he bounded, his arms crossed before him, smashing into Russ, the crutches clattering away and Russ was falling into the tomb-shaped opening, and she dove forward without thinking, to block his fall, to catch him, her fingers closing on his arm and she was yanked off balance and it was too late. Let. Go, her brain said, but in the time it took to flash the message to her hand she had smashed shoulder and hip against the stairs and hit the floor with the force of a car wreck, icy cold water parting beneath the slap of her body, then clapping over her, soaking her to the bone in an instant. The blow knocked the breath out of her, and she inhaled too quickly, panicking, swallowing more of the scummy water, choking and sputtering. She jerked upright, hacked, and gasped. Above her, the rectangle of gray narrowed. She looked up. The trapdoor was ready to drop, propped up by the man’s stiff and trembling arm. It was too dim to make out his expression. Only the pale whiteness of his face.
“No!” she cried. “Don’t!”
“I’m sorry,” Allan Rouse said. Then he dropped the door.
Chapter 37
NOW
The darkness clapped shut over them like the lid on a coffin. There was a thunk as the bolt slid home, locking them in. The raw horror-story sound of it pulled an involuntary whimper out of her throat. Then Rouse’s footsteps crossed the floor overhead.
The other stairway. She exploded out of the water, seeing, now, with precious seconds wasted gaping at the dark, the pale rectangle that was the other overhead door. She ran for the other stairs as if running in a nightmare, legs dragging through shin-deep water, damp cobwebs curling across her face, barely outlined brick support columns looming in her way. She was halfway to the stairs, splashing and gasping, when she heard the complaint of rust-eaten hinges.
“Dr. Rouse!” she screamed. “Don’t do this! Don’t leave us down here!”
“I’ll send someone,” he said, his voice hollow. “When it’s safe.”
“For God’s sake!” The door kachunked closed, and the pressure wave flattened the air around her, thinning her voice, pushing it into the far, unseen corners of the cellar.
For the love of God, Montresor!
She shivered violently, hot and cold all at the same time.
“Clare?” Russ’s voice, rough and waterlogged, brought her back to herself. He coughed and retched, and stirred in the water.
She slogged toward the sound. “Keep talking,” she said. “I can’t see anything.”
“Are you all right?” His words induced another round of coughing.
“I think so.” She slammed into a brick column and reeled backward. “Or I will be if I don’t knock myself out,” she wheezed. She slowed down and let her outstretched hands take the lead. “You sound terrible. How’s your leg?”
“I just swallowed some water when I fell.” He coughed. “So much for avoiding showers to keep my cast dry.”
Her hand touched his hair. She knelt in the water beside him, wincing at its bite, and touched his face, his chest, his arms. He was soaking. “You’re okay? What else did you hit?”
He was touching her, as well, the pat-pat-patting of fingers asking, Are you here? Are you whole? He folded one of his hands over hers. His fingers were cold. “I twisted when I fell. I knocked my arm pretty good, but at least I didn’t break my head open. How about you?”
She rotated her arm, and a steady throb in her shoulder sizzled into a cramp of pain. She sucked in her breath. “I think I banged up my shoulder a little. Everything else is working fine.” She stood up, holding on to his hand. “Let’s get out of this water.” She found his other hand, clasp
ed it, and hauled. He was taller than she, and heavier, and she had to lean backward to get the leverage. When he was upright, she wrapped her arm around his waist, he slung his arm over her shoulder, and they hobbled toward the stairs.
She could hear him every time he had to step on his broken leg. He breathed in through his nose, hard, and held it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This hurts, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll be fine.” He clipped his words.
The back of her outstretched hand banged against wood. “Ouch,” she said. “Okay, let’s get on the stairs.”
She waited until Russ had sat on one of the steps and pulled himself up out of the water. Then she crept up the stairs, bent over, one hand touching the edge of the wooden planks so she wouldn’t fall off, the other held over her head. Her fingers hit something solid. The trapdoor. “I’m going to try to open it,” she said. For a second, she thought of the stuff she had seen on it, the mouse pellets and the dirt and God knew what else. It’ll shower off. She braced her shoulders and upper back against the door and pushed. Nothing.
She went up another step so that she was folded tight beneath the door, and pushed again. This time she felt something giving way, the ripping sound of wood splitting. Her feet slid inward. She heard a crack.
“Holy crow!” She scrambled to a lower rung just in time to avoid breaking through the step. She reached down. She had splintered it into two pieces.
“What happened?” Russ said.
“I’ve discovered the stairs are weaker than the door.” She made her way hand and foot back down the steps. He took up most of one rung, so she sat above him. “I suppose I should try the other one.”
“Bolted shut?”
“Yeah.”
“Then the other one probably is as well. Give it a rest before you try it.” They sat for a moment. “Was that who I thought it was?” he asked.
“Allan Rouse.” She was seized with another spasm of shivering. “Showing some flexibility on that ‘First, do no harm’ thing. At least he promised to send help back for us.”
“Oh yeah?”
“She could tell from his voice that he was shivering, too. “He didn’t provide a timeline for our rescue, by any chance?”
“No.”
“ ’Cause whether it’s before or after we die of hypothermia will make a difference.”
She hunched over, trying to find some core of warmth in her sopping clothes. “Yeah.”
“What do you have on under that coat?”
She rasped a laugh. “Are we back to that again?”
His voice was patient. “Just answer the question.”
“One of my clerical blouses.”
“Take off your coat and move down here next to me. Keep hold of it.” She could hear the zipper on his jacket, and the plank creaking and bumping as he repositioned himself. She struggled out of her clinging coat before carefully feeling her way to the next lower rung, touching wood and then a damp jeans-covered thigh.
“Excuse me,” she said. She swept her hand back and forth and realized he had straddled the step, jamming his good leg between this rung and the next, resting his cast on the step below them.
“Sit with your back toward me.” He had taken his arms out of his parka, leaving it hanging from his shoulders. She did as directed, drawing her knees up, draping her coat over them like the proverbial wet blanket. He wrapped his arms around her. “Better?”
“A little, yeah.”
“It won’t keep us in the long run. It’d take our clothes three days to dry out in this humidity, and the temperature can’t be much above forty degrees. But I’ve always found it’s easier to think when you’re warm.”
“This isn’t exactly warm.”
“Give it some time.”
She let her head tip back. He rested his cheek against her hair. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he sighed. “I should have made you stay in the car,” he said.
“Darn right, you should have.”
He laughed, and she joined him, laughing helplessly and shivering and clutching at her coat so it didn’t fall.
Eventually, they fell silent. Where their bodies met, wet shirts crumpling between them, she began to feel warm. Even the damp underside of her coat didn’t seem as frigid as it had a few minutes ago. “I think we’re throwing off heat,” she said.
“It wouldn’t surprise me.” His voice was dry.
She opened her mouth to make a joke and was amazed to hear herself say, “I’ve thought about this.” He was quiet. The darkness, the anonymity of it let her go on. “About you holding me, I mean. Not about being stuck in a wet, freezing cellar. In fact, when I imagine it, it’s usually in a much warmer place. With fewer clothes on. And, of course, none of those inconvenient moral issues hanging over us. So it’s pretty much a fantasy. Free-floating. Please stop me before I make more of an ass of myself than I already have.” Her cheeks were so hot she could have steamed her coat dry with them. “Sorry. I tend to babble when I’m nervous.”
He tightened his arms around her. “I know,” he said, his voice low in her ear. Then she felt his lips on her cheek, and she turned her head, and his mouth slid over hers and they were kissing. It was sweet, so sweet, and as his mouth moved over hers she felt a string she hadn’t known was tied tug free inside her chest, and everything that made her who she was fell open to him. She made a noise, encouragement, maybe, or applause, and he slanted against her harder, his hands tangling in her hair. His mouth, his hands, the moan trapped in his throat made her mindless. She licked, kissed, stroked, clutched, utterly lost in him until a twist of her hips sent her coat slithering down across her knees, heading for the water below. She yanked free of him and grabbed it before it fell.
They both froze. The cold, damp air chilled her blouse, raising gooseflesh all along her arms. She could hear him, rasping for breath.
“I’m-,” he started to say, and she cut him off.
“Don’t say you’re sorry.”
“God, no.” In the pause, she could hear him trying to catch his breath. “Are you?”
She ought to be. She knew that. “No,” she said.
Another sharp breath. She thought she could feel him, leaning toward her. Then he said, “This isn’t the time. Or the place.” His voice was thick and harsh.
There isn’t any time or place, she wanted to cry, but she kept it to herself. Instead she said, “Hold my coat. I’m going to try the other door.” A jolly wade through icy shin-deep water should cool her ardor. She thrust the coat at him and went down the stairs by hand and foot. They weren’t as far above the water as she had thought, and when she stepped off the stairs into the icy murk she knew why.
“The water’s rising.” She tried to keep her voice calm. “It’s up past my knees now.”
He swore. “The river,” he said. “It’s rising.”
“What?”
“Every year, we get some flooding with the snowmelt. Add in a few hard rains, and presto. Flash flood. Goddamnit.”
His muffled swearing followed her as she sloshed across the floor, hands outstretched. She cast about for the other stairs, and had a moment of disoriented panic before whacking into a semisubmerged step. She crawled out of the water to the top and pushed against the trapdoor. She shoved and rattled it for form’s sake, but she knew she wasn’t going anywhere.
“Any luck?” he called. His voice spread through the darkness, lapped against the outermost walls. She realized the cellar was bigger than she had thought, probably encompassing the entire footprint of the building.
“It’s not budging.” She gritted her teeth and descended into the water again. “Any idea how deep it’s likely to get?”
“Deep. The Millers Kill has been known to rise ten feet above normal, and we’re well below water level right now. There must be a weak spot in the foundation.”
“It’d have to be more than a weak spot. It’s got to be coming in by the gallon to rise this quickly.” She waved her hands in front of
her and struck a brick column. She paused. “I don’t hear any water rushing.”
“Probably a chunk missing near the cellar floor. Could be this place is partially underwater most of the year, except maybe midsummer when the river is at its lowest. The good news is, the ceiling is definitely above water level, even when the river’s high, like it is today.” His voice was much closer. She sloshed forward, gritting her teeth against the cold slicing into her legs.
“And the bad news?”
“It’s not much higher. If the water rises to level with the Millers Kill, we’ll be sitting in it up to our necks.”
In water a few degrees above freezing. He didn’t have to spell it out for her. As the heat leached from their limbs, they would go numb. Then, as their bodies started to shut down, they would get sleepy. Finally, when their core temperatures cooled to seventy degrees, they would die. She had seen a special on the Discovery Channel that had said fishermen in the North Atlantic could survive ten minutes in the water without survival gear. She and Russ wouldn’t last much longer.
She collided with the stairs. “I think there may be a way out,” Russ said as she hauled herself, dripping, up the steps. “I think there may be a bulkhead here somewhere.”
“You mean a door in the cellar? With steps coming down from the street?” She sat on the rung below him.
“C’mere,” he said, wrapping his hands around her arms and lifting her into the cradle of his legs. He drew her close and tossed her coat over her. “There’s nothing on the street side. But I’m pretty sure I remember seeing one facing the river. I used to fish all along the kill back when I was a kid. It was a long time ago, but it’ll still be here. Somewhere.”
“But if it’s facing the river, wouldn’t it be underwater, too?”
“Maybe. But even so, we’d be out of here. At the worst, we’d be carried down-river some until we could swim for the shore.”
Out Of The Deep I Cry Page 35