Armando cursed again. “I told you you should have sent him away a long time ago! He’s just a talkative old fool. But you were sentimental, you had to keep him around. We wouldn’t have had to rush things if he hadn’t told Trish everything.”
Even seen in silhouette Trish could distinguish the slight drawing back that marked Edith’s shock at Armando’s outburst. Trish knew it was her last chance to work on Edith’s sympathy.
“Think about all this!” Trish cried. “If Armando wants the coffee plantation so desperately that he’s willing to kill me for it, don’t you think that someday he may decide you are in the way too? Do you want a man who loves you only if you own a cafetal … a man who won’t marry you if you don’t stand to inherit it free and clear? And what happens if that inheritance takes too long? What comes next? Killing your father?”
Edith caught her breath so sharply that even Trish could hear it. With sudden intuition Trish knew this was not a totally new thought to Edith, that the very same suspicion had occurred to her in spite of her love for Armando. The gun wavered and sagged.
But then Armando walked over and put his arm around Edith’s shoulders and Trish knew she had lost. She didn’t need to see his triumphant smile to know it was there. Edith had momentarily wavered, but her passion for Armando was stronger than anything else.
“I do not care to listen to your lies,” she said firmly. Her head turned to look up at Armando. “I love Armando. He loves me.”
“Edith, I don’t want any part of the cafetal. I don’t want anything!” Trish cried desperately. “Tear up the will. Why didn’t you tear it up to begin with?”
“Because it is only a copy, not the original,” Armando said. His voice sounded incongruously kind, as if he were explaining something to a simpleminded child. “It would do no good to tear up a copy.”
“But I know where the original must be!” Trish said with sudden inspiration. “A lawyer in San Jose’ has it. His name is Hans Schwarz.”
Edith had turned to look at Trish and now she glanced up at Armando again. Trish could tell she was wavering a little.
“There’s no need to kill me,” Trish said wildly. “Just get the will, tear it—”
“No!” Armando interjected harshly. “This is the way it must be done.”
His arm dropped from Edith’s shoulders and he strode over to where he had been working. Edith took an oddly imploring step toward Trish.
“I’m sorry,” she almost whispered. “I really am.”
Those were the last words Trish heard before the tunnel exploded in front of her in a blinding, deafening blast. The last thing she saw were the figures of Edith and Armando silhouetted against the circle of light and freedom. And then an avalanche of exploding rock blotted out everything.
Chapter Eleven
The image burned in Trish’s mind, a stark etching of black and white—the silhouetted figures, the blazing circle of light that was the tunnel entrance, the rain of rock caught motionless in space. She blinked, but the scene didn’t change, the rock didn’t fall, the figures with outflung arms didn’t move.
Trish became vaguely conscious that something was pressing against her back, that her head hurt. There was a peculiar taste in her mouth and a choking, dusty smell in the air. She reached up, trembling, to touch her lips. They were wet and she knew the strange taste in her mouth was blood. But when she tried to look at her hand, all she could see was that black-and-white scene, and when she tried to look around, it was everywhere, on all sides of her, burned into her mind and senses.
Unsteadily she struggled to her feet, blinking, trying to erase the image that wouldn’t go away. Something clattered to the ground as she stood up. The flashlight. She groped for it and fumbled for the switch.
The beam lit up the tunnel and the silhouetted figures in her mind vanished, only to be replaced by a nightmare scene of reality and destruction. Huge chunks of shattered lava filled the tunnel. A fine dust hung in the air and Trish coughed, her nose and throat thick with it.
It took a moment before full comprehension hit her, and then she reeled under the impact of it. She was sealed inside the lava tubes, trapped behind an avalanche of rock under the mountain with no way of escape. No escape!
No, that couldn’t be! Frantically she clambered over the jumbled rock, clawing and fighting, searching for some opening. She flung smaller rocks aside, sent a larger one crashing headlong to the tunnel floor. She had to get out… had to! She couldn’t breathe. The claustrophobic terror tightened around her, suffocating her. In a wild frenzy she pushed rocks aside that under normal circumstances she could never have moved.
Then she heard an ominous growl, and felt a shudder beneath her feet. The rock she had been trying to shove moved of its own accord and some sixth sense sent Trish scrambling to safety only moments before the jumble shifted and moved, spilling more rock into the tunnel. More chunks broke loose from the ceiling and crashed to the floor. Trish fled in wild retreat down one of the smaller tubes.
She ran until she was exhausted, her throat, chest, and sides aching. Finally she slumped to the rough floor of the tunnel, too stunned with shock and terror even to cry. She was trapped. Trapped. No way in or out. No one knew she was here, no one except Edith and Armando and they thought… hoped… she was already dead.
Why wasn’t she? The force of the explosion Armando had set off had thrown her against the wall of the tunnel but she had evidently been far enough away so that the death-rain of broken rock had missed her.
A drop of blood splashed from her cheek to her hand. Vaguely she realized that she had somehow grabbed the flashlight before the grinding rock destroyed it. Now its beam of light seemed all that held back some evil force that was all around her, pressing in and down on her. Carefully clenching the flashlight between her knees, she searched her pockets for something to stop the steady drip of blood from the gash on her cheek. There was a lump on her head too, she noted almost impersonally. It was tender but not bleeding.
She sat there, pressing a handkerchief against the gash, her stunned mind beginning to come to life as she thought how easily Edith and Armando had tricked her, how naively gullible and cooperative she had been. It had been a busy night for them, she reflected bitterly: writing the note; planning the phony little scene to announce Robert Hepler’s disappearance; getting the explosives and gun packed and ready in the pickup. And then Trish herself had conveniently suggested the very place they had already planned as her death site. They must have decided they had no time to waste now that Trish knew Edith’s father was also her real father. They had to work fast before she also found out about the will, or before she went to Marc and he realized the danger she was in, even if she was too stupid to realize it herself. Stupid, she berated herself wildly. Suspecting first Edith’s father, then Marc… never having so much as a doubt or suspicion of Armando or Edith.
Oh, yes, she could figure it all out now, see people for what they really were. But it was too late to matter now, far, far too late. Too late to tell Marc she was wrong, too late to tell him she loved him. The image of his lean, aristocratic face seemed to mock her for her errors.
Why think about all that now? she thought despairingly. It did no good to figure out how she had been deceived. Then another shuddering thought hit her: the realization that she had nothing else to do but think, reflect, and regret. Nothing else to do for the rest of her life!
She struggled to her feet again before that thought could deaden her mind and body, and send her into catatonic numbness. She had to keep moving, searching for a way out. There might be something—an animal’s burrow, a water-eroded hole… something!
She stumbled on, not knowing which way she was going, wandering from tunnel to tunnel, finding side tunnels and dead ends and strange cavernlike enlargements where the ceiling expanded to shadowy heights above her head. Once she stopped short, hope surging wildly. There was a footprint! Someone had been here. There was another way out!
She rushed
forward, her heart pounding with hope, only to stop short again in sickening despair.
The footprint was her own, left there on her search for Robert Hepler, a search that seemed to have taken place eons ago, her footprint like some fossil relic of the past.
She wandered again, her mind wandering too, wondering how Edith felt now that she had won, now that the cafetal and Armando were safely, securely hers. No wonder Edith had been so afraid Trish might leave when the first attempts on her life failed, why she had pleaded with Trish to stay. Trish had compassionately attributed this to some fear of rejection on Edith’s part, some fear that Trish would abandon her as their mother had once abandoned her. But Edith was afraid only that Trish would escape before they accomplished their goal—killing her! And Armando had so earnestly pleaded that Trish must stay and help him protect Edith from Marc.
How could she have been so wrong, so foolishly wrong, and with such deadly consequences!
Had Edith ever openly admitted to herself that Armando’s love and their marriage were based solely on her position as heir to the cafetal, the cafetal that Armando coveted far more desperately than Marc ever had? If Edith had not admitted the truth to herself, her actions, at least, were based on the subconscious knowledge of what she must do to hold Armando. And perhaps, Trish reflected, Edith did admit the truth to herself. Perhaps her passion for Armando was so great that she simply did not care if having the coffee plantation was necessary to hold him. Whatever the reasons, her passion obviously so obsessed her that she would kill to have him.
Were Edith and Armando even now telling people that Trish had decided to leave? Were they perhaps making a phony trip to San Jose to pretend to take her to the airport? What would Marc think?
Trish stumbled over something and the flashlight hit the lava wall. The light flickered and for one heart-stopping moment she was in total blackness. Then her frantic shaking and pounding on the flashlight did something and the light came back on.
She slumped against the wall, weak with relief. More than ever, the light was all she had, almost a live thing, protecting her with its magical sphere of illumination. Without it… She shivered.
With fresh terror a new realization struck her. Soon the flashlight would go out. Inevitably the batteries would weaken and die. Already she thought she could detect a dimness in the glow, a drawing in of that circle of protection.
She must conserve the light, she thought frantically. Carefully she sat cross-legged on the cold rock and wedged her back into a protective niche in the wall. With trembling hands she switched off the light.
There was darkness—total, hideous darkness beyond anything she had ever known. And silence, a silence she dared not break even with her breathing. Because if she breathed, she might miss some sound, some small hint of something unknown relentlessly hunting her out of the depths of the earth.
She couldn’t stand it. Frantically she fumbled with the flashlight switch, and sucked in a breath of air when the reassuring glow lit the walls around her. Unsteadily she stumbled to her feet. She couldn’t just sit here, waiting for the terrifying moment when the light flickered and died. She had to keep searching.
She wandered again and found herself back at the starting point, her path blocked by the avalanche of rock. She turned away from the scene of destruction and wandered into another of the smaller tubes. She thought of that very first drive to the coffee plantation with Edith and Armando, the way he had scowled when Edith mentioned this place. Had he even then had it in mind if his other accidental plans failed?
Armando, the consummate actor. He was wasting his talents on the cafetal, Trish thought with a certain wry bitterness. He belonged on the stage. She remembered his convincing surprise at the fire, his self-righteous indignation over the incident with the horse, his earnest explanation of Marc’s guilt. The car wreck evidently had been a real accident, but even there Armando had managed to turn the situation to his advantage, to use it to reinforce his accusations against Marc. How cleverly he had turned everything around so it looked as if Marc were guilty!
Marc. She thought of his name, his image, the memory of his kisses, the feel of his lean, hard body, and her heart filled with bitter anguish. In those last few moments Armando had said Marc loved her. Was that just another of Armando’s lies, his deceptions? But by then there was no more need for deceit. Was it possible Marc did love her?
The possibility that once would have filled her with joy was only an aching pain now, an agony of remorse and regret, of knowing her love for him could never be fulfilled. If only…
Her foot hit something and she sprawled to her knees, the flashlight flying out of her grasp. The beam arced crazily down the length of the lava tube and then snubbed out as the flashlight hit the wall and clattered to the ground. Frantically Trish fumbled for it in the darkness, but all her groping hands found were loose chunks of rocks and the rough, empty floor of the tube.
The darkness made her feel dizzy and disoriented, and she had the wild, hysterical feeling that she was crawling on the ceiling, that she was on the edge of falling into some bottomless pit. She searched her pockets frantically for matches, fighting down hysteria, found an old book of them and struck one into a timid flame.
It lasted barely seconds before flickering out, but that was long enough for Trish to spot the flashlight. She felt her way to it in the darkness, only to know final despair and hopelessness when no amount of shaking or pounding would make it work. It was dead. Her moment of terror was here.
She fought the rising hysteria, and fumbled with the matches again. This time she cupped her hand around the little flame, protecting it.
But why, she wondered suddenly, did it need protecting? There was no breeze in here, no fresh air, no opening. And yet when she tentatively removed her cupped hand, the flame distinctly fluttered, as if moved by some slight air current.
Excitedly Trish crept forward in the direction from which the moving air seemed to be coming and struck another match. Yes, there was fresh, moving air here! The flashlight was dead and useless now and she left it behind, using both hands to feel her way along the black tunnel, fighting the apprehensive fear of what her hands might touch in the darkness.
She stopped several times to light matches. Her hands trembled when she realized there was only one match left. One match. Determinedly she saved it, the knowledge that it was there, that she could light it, somehow giving her the strength to keep going.
But she was sure the air current felt distinctly stronger now. The air even seemed to smell fresher, more life-giving. She moved faster, her fingers now moving with eagerness rather than apprehension over the rough walls, her heart pounding with hope.
The tunnel was getting lighter now. Or was it only her imagination, hope playing tricks on her? No, no, it was getting lighter. She looked down at her hands and she could see the outline of her fingers. Air… light… escape!
She rushed forward, not bothering to feel her way now. She could see the vague shape of the tunnel, though there was no welcome circle of light and freedom at the end, only the vague diffusion of light. Then she rounded a bend and there it was—sunlight!
Sunlight and air and a patch of blue sky overhead. Trish walked dreamlike to where she could stand in the irregular patch of sunlight. She lifted her face to it and closed her eyes and let it warm her body and mind. Sunlight! The tight feeling of claustrophobia loosened, the heavy weight of the mountain lifted. She took a deep, satisfying breath, her mind reacting only to the sensations around her, thinking no farther than this glorious moment of release from the dark terror of the tunnel.
But her feeling of freedom was cruelly short-lived.
At first she thought she must be mistaken. Freedom couldn’t be so close and yet so totally unreachable.
The area in which she stood appeared to be a huge bubble of hardened lava. The thin shell overhead had broken through, leaving a large, jagged opening at the top. But the opening was a good twelve or fifteen feet over Tr
ish’s head.
She made a rapid tour of the cavernlike area, looking for someplace where she could climb up and reach the opening. The walls were rough and provided hand-and footholds but the curve of the overhead bubble prevented her from working her way out to the opening. Twice she climbed as high as she could go, only to have to work her way back to the cavern floor again.
Finally, warm with exertion, she stood with hands on hips and stared up at the jagged opening in frustration. She saw blue sky, even a bird soaring freely overhead, but she was caught here inside the earth, trapped.
The crumbled rock that had fallen from the broken ceiling caught her eye and with a frenzy of energy she started piling the rocks directly below the opening. She worked steadily, even going back into the tunnel to carry chunks of rock to the opening, shoving and turning those that were too heavy to carry. Her fingernails broke and her hands bled, but she worked doggedly, piling the rocks into a steep mound. But when she climbed up to stand on the pile, it was only a pitiful monument to futility. There was still a hopeless expanse of space between her upreaching hands and the opening to freedom. She stood on tiptoe, stretching for every inch, lifting her arms until they ached, but she might as well have been reaching for the moon.
It couldn’t be, she thought, dazed. Freedom couldn’t be so tantalizingly close and yet unreachable. But it was.
Finally she had to face what she had so desperately tried to disprove. There was no escape. The opening was there, seductively close, and yet as unreachable as the stars.
The full hopelessness of her situation struck her with dizzying impact. She stumbled down from the pathetic mound of rocks and slumped weakly against the rough wall of the cavern. She was doomed to wait here for a slow death, caught like some trapped animal without food or water. Her wounded hands stung and her head throbbed, but she was conscious only of the final, numbing hopelessness of finding an unattainable freedom, of knowing she had reached a dead end.
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