by Anna Furtado
No response.
The sound of dirt crunching underfoot told her Notch was on the move. She sprang back behind her cover. When the noise stopped, she dared another look. She still saw no one. The silhouetted outline she saw earlier disappeared from sight.
Her brain urged, push forward get closer. How else would she know if Leah was all right? Oh God, let her be okay. But she must be. He must be talking to her.
She didn’t want to think what Notch might have done to Leah. Instead, she focused on the short distance she’d have to navigate in order to reach the end of the tunnel and enter the room where Notch—and most likely, Leah—were.
As she lifted a foot to step into the dimly lit area, she heard it and froze. The muffled sound clearly conveyed annoyance, anger. There were no words, only an indistinct noise mimicking the cadence of speech. Leah—and even without recognizable words—she sounded pissed.
Relief washed over Tucker. At least she was alive. Hope and joy danced together in Tucker’s chest. She took in a deep breath and stepped into the tunnel. Fortunately, Notch chose that moment to start ranting again. He remained out of sight. His voice masked any sound her footfalls might make as she advanced, hugging the wall.
“I should have known. You’re all stupid cunts. You’re all useless. What good is it to have come this far and not have her be able to figure out where we are? She’s supposed to come. It’s an important part of my plan.” He paused, then, started in again. “If she doesn’t show up soon, you will have outlived your usefulness, you know that? You’ll be nothing but a millstone around my neck. I’ll have to do something to remedy that situation.”
When he stopped talking, Tucker stopped. Leah grunted again, her defiance and disgust apparent.
He resumed his rant, and Tucker stepped forward with more urgency now. He repeated his threat about having no reason to keep her alive if Tucker ended up too dumb to find them.
She arrived at the entrance to the cavern. Outcroppings jutted out on either side of the small opening. She stayed behind the one on her side, unseen, still with a clear view of the pickax.
She licked her lips. She needed that pickax. But without knowing where Notch stood and Leah’s location, it was too dangerous. Fear and frustration overtook her, the hope and joy she felt earlier replaced by the awful, sinking feeling.
Should she wait? No telling when Notch would do something rash. The burning anger erupted within her. Unable to contain it, she pushed off, burst through the opening and lunged for the ax. She whirled around, letting the weight of it carry her until she came face to face with Demetrius Notch.
As she reeled on him, poised to strike, he looked stunned. He recovered quickly, pushed away from the crate he leaned on, and stood his ground.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “It looks like she has some measure of intelligence after all.”
Tucker wanted to slash the arrogant expression from his face. When he grimaced at her, she supposed he meant it to be a smile, but it didn’t work, and it made him look even more like Nigel Dunbar.
The anger flared within her even stronger. As the fire in her chest burst into a blaze, he registered her fury and stepped backward, bumping into the crate. She realized he held no weapon. As he sidestepped the obstacle behind him, she recognized his attempt to slither toward the cave opening, to give himself an escape route.
“You son-of-a-bitch,” she growled. “What gives you the right to kidnap people and drag them into a place like this?” Her anger roiled in her chest.
“You know nothing you stupid girl,” he spat. “I am merely trying to scare some sense into your perverted girlfriend, here. She needs to be taught a lesson.” His eyes glowed in the lamp-light from a battery operated lantern on one of the crates.
“I think you’d better be careful who you call perverted, asshole. If anyone is depraved around here, it’s you.”
A smile broke across his face, but the look in his eyes didn’t change. “I saw you, you know.”
His remark filled her with confusion. “What? What are you talking about?”
“In her backyard the other night.” He pointed toward Leah, bound and gagged, leaning against a large wooden box.
“I looked in the window.” His face oozed smugness. “I saw you cuddled up in bed like two little lovebirds.” His look darkened. “You disgust me.”
A shock wave rolled through her. Notch saw them? The bastard. They weren’t even doing anything sexual. In a moment of offering comfort and consolation, of trying to calm Leah’s anxiety, this prick jumped to conclusions as he watched through the window? Who was he calling disgusting, perverted?
Revulsion filled her. It didn’t matter what she felt for Leah. It didn’t matter if she fantasized about making love to her. This bastard peered through the window at them while they held each other. He violated their privacy, sullied an intimate moment. Wave after wave of anger and loathing crashed through her. Her body coiled tightly and she squeezed the handle of the ax until her knuckles whitened, while a thought, a possibility loomed in her mind.
“Did you do something to me to make me think I’m crazy?” She needed to know. She wanted to hear it from his mouth. “Did you give me some kind of drug and mess with my mind?”
He sneered. “You foolish girl. You can’t do anything right. All you were required to do was to forget.” He rasped out the last word.
That word. The voice. It was him. His voice kept repeating the word she found impossible to switch off. He whispered it in her ear, in her mind. He was responsible for it. Her anger flared again. “What did you do to me?” she screamed.
He looked startled but recovered quickly.
“You needed to be stopped. You kept on and on about opening the mine. I couldn’t allow it. I needed the mine to stay closed. So, you see, I didn’t have any choice. I knew I possessed the power to influence you. I gave instructions for you to be shot.” He sounded proud.
Taken aback, she questioned, did he shoot her? No, she knew that wasn’t right.
“I think I’d know if I’d been shot. A bullet wound is kind of obvious.”
Looking down his nose at her, he said, “Not a bullet, stupid girl, a dart. Tranquilized. You were tranquilized. Then you were brought to my office and I gave you a suggestion about forgetting everything about the mine. Forget opening it. Forget using it. Forget all about me and forget what happened to you. But you don’t listen very well. You aren’t a good subject. If you’d cooperated, none of this would be happening. Well, some of it may have happened anyway.” He glanced over her shoulder. She knew his gaze fixed on Leah. She understood his implication.
“Did you kill the Hammersmith girl?”
He met her gaze again. “An unfortunate accident. If she did as I instructed her that night, it would never have happened. She made me lose my temper. I can’t abide a loss of control. She needed to be put in her place. I never intended her to hit her head on the corner of that cabinet. It proved how unintelligent the girl was.”
“So you did something to her, pushed her or something, she fell and hit her head and you think she’s the stupid one?”
She found it laughable how twisted this guy’s reasoning was—laughable, yes, but in more of an absurd way, rather than funny. No, it wasn’t funny at all. Notch was a very dangerous man.
“And what did you intend to do with us?” she asked.
“Oh, you’re easy. I need to put you out of your misery. My problem with the mine opening goes away, my problem with your perversion goes away, and all my problems go away. All I needed to do was grab your little friend here and I knew you’d come running to try to save her. For a minute there, I thought you wouldn’t show up, thought you wouldn’t be able to figure it out.” He sneered at her, saying, “I’m so very glad you finally did.”
He intended to kill her. She didn’t find it surprising.
“And Leah?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know his answer. “What are your plans for her?”
“Oh, I hav
e grand plans for her. She might be a little brighter than the Hammersmith girl. I might be able to work with her. A little tranquillization, a little power of suggestion. I might be able to bend her to my will.”
Something snapped inside Tucker. Anger bubbled from the cracks inside her psyche. Who did this bastard think he was? Drugging, kidnapping, murdering, entrapping people? Her chest rose and fell as the pressure grew. He wasn’t going to kill anyone else. He wasn’t going to do anything to Leah. She refused to allow him to go near her, let alone touch her.
She took a step forward, he stepped back. His look changed from defiant arrogance to one of uncertainty, fear. Her rage shook him. She realized it now. He looked pathetic, impotent. He didn’t wield any power. She was the one with it all. She took another step. He matched hers by moving back. If he thought he might escape, he’d better think again. She wasn’t about to let him disappear out of this room, down the tunnel back to the entrance. She wouldn’t let him run.
He pulled up to his full height, evidently trying to appear in command. He stiffened and stood in rigid defiance. “You can’t hurt me. You’re an irresponsible woman. Women are weak. Weak and rather moody, I might add.” He gestured toward her, indicating her current state.
Fury raged in her. She raised the pickax. He looked surprised she would even be able to lift it. Or perhaps he didn’t imagine she would continue to threaten him.
“You son of a bitch!” she growled and swung, letting the weight carry her, but he flinched, jerking his head as she thrust the heavy ax toward him. Instead of hitting him with the point, she made contact with the side of the ax head, hitting Notch in the temple. He crumpled to the floor in front of her.
She missed her mark. She meant to drive the rusty point though his head, but the weight of the heavy implement made it unwieldy, difficult to control. When he hit the ground, he curled up on his side in a ball. An image of a roly-poly bug appeared in her mind. She shook it off.
As she stood over him and raised the ax to strike another blow, he flinched and rolled tighter. The shot of adrenalin she experienced ebbed. The implement felt too heavy in her arms.
When she tried to strike at him again, she felt drained, weak. She brought the ax down and it flew out of her hands and hit the wall behind Notch. The rocky surface took the full force of the ringing blow. The shock wave reverberated around her as the ax bounced off the wall. The adrenalin coursing through her veins receded more. It would be useless to try to retrieve the tool. She knew she’d never be able to lift it again. Her arms dangled beside her like dead weights. She felt fragile, spent.
She stared at Notch’s form, curled up on his side on the floor, and watched little mounds of dirt form tiny cones in a line along his exposed side. Steady streams of dust fell in thin, threadlike lines to build up the delicate structures. She followed the threads upward and squinted against flakes of fine rock dust trickling down from above in slow motion. Something was wrong.
She heard a crackling sound, then a sharp snap. She blinked against the dust coming from overhead. The rock didn’t have any reinforcement here. She looked back down at Notch. He either passed out or she’d killed him. She didn’t care which, as long as he no longer posed a threat, but now, she realized something else, something foreboding loomed above her.
Another crack resounded in the chamber, louder this time. She stepped back. They were in danger. The rock overhead wasn’t going to hold. Maybe the blow to the wall compromised the cavern ceiling.
Notched moaned. Not dead. It didn’t matter. Her immediate concern was to get Leah out of there.
Larger, fist-sized rocks fell over Notch, first one or two, then more tumbled over him, bouncing off his torso. He didn’t stir.
She faced Leah, who sat ten feet from them, her eyes as big as dinner plates, blue pools in the middle of a churning white sea.
Tucker jumped out of the way as a rock the size of a softball fell from the ceiling and almost grazed her shoulder. She ran to Leah and fumbled with the rope around her ankles, finally working the knot out and unwinding the bindings immobilizing her legs. On the other side of the room, chunks of rock continued to fall every few seconds.
“We’ve got to get out of here, the rock is giving way. Can you stand?”
Leah nodded. Tucker helped her up and untied her hands.
Free from the ropes, Leah reached up and plucked at the wide duct tape across her mouth. When she loosened enough to get a good grip on it, she pulled, fast and hard. Tucker heard the tearing sound and winced.
“Ow, godammit!” Leah cried.
Her hand flew to her red, raw lips.
Rock pieces fell like rain above Notch now. He remained still.
As Tucker reached to guide Leah toward the cavern opening, she looked up to see a large forked crack zig-zag across the ceiling, dividing the room in two. Rock dust spewed from the cracks in streams like a roaring waterfall. The ceiling rumbled.
At the same time Tucker pointed toward the doorway, they heard a loud boom and a portion of the ceiling over Notch came down in several pieces, smaller debris followed.
Tucker tackled Leah like a linebacker and pushed her to the floor away from the compromised area. Rocks pelted them for what felt like an eternity as Tucker sheltered Leah. When the rocks stopped falling, Tucker pushed against a layer of debris to free herself. Pebbles tumbled from her back. She hoisted herself up to a kneeling position beside Leah. She felt wetness trickling down her temple. When she reached up to wipe the perspiration away, she came away with blood on her fingers. She wiped it off on the leg of her jeans.
“Are you okay, Leah?”
Tucker saw tiny crow’s feet at the edges of Leah’s tightly closed eyes. She thought the lines charming and pushed down a desire to kiss them.
“I’m fine,” Leah said through swollen lips. She opened one eye. “That’s not exactly the circumstance under which I envisioned having you on top of me, Tucker Stevens.” Leah laughed.
Nervous laughter, Tucker recognized, but it thrilled her anyway. Butterflies tickled her stomach with their fluttering wings. The sensation dropped lower. She swam in a tropical blue sea, Leah’s sea. Her swollen lips gave her a pouty, sexy appearance.
No, they didn’t have time for this. They needed to get out. If Notch wasn’t dead, they would need to get out in a hurry.
Tucker pulled herself up. Dust and debris fell from her head and shoulders. She brushed off what she could reach and held out her hand toward Leah, all business now. “Let’s go.”
Leah looked at her, growing concern on her face. “You’re hurt. You’ve got blood—“
“It’s nothing, just a scratch. We need to get out of here.”
As Leah sat up and reached for the hand Tucker offered, she looked over Tucker’s shoulder. Her eyes widened and “uh-oh” slipped from her lips.
Tucker followed her glance, fear rising in her, worried Notch might have freed himself. Instead, she saw something more ominous. A pile of huge boulders interspersed with smaller rock shards covered the entrance, blocking their means of escape.
Chapter Fifteen
TUCKER LOOKED BACK at Leah. “That’s not good.”
Leah shook her head and grasped Tucker’s hand to stand. “Ow.”
Tucker let go after she raised Leah up only a few inches, and she plopped back into a sitting position.
“What’s wrong? Your hand?”
“My wrist.” She made a fist and released it, grimacing. “I must have bruised it. I don’t think it’s serious.” She looked toward the pile of rubble blocking their escape. “That’s what I call serious.”
Tucker eyed the rock pile. Beside the now blocked entrance, Notch lay buried in debris, except for an exposed hand and forearm. The weight of the rocks flattened him out onto his stomach. He didn’t move. She surmised he no longer posed a threat.
She checked her emotions, wondering if she would feel bad. Nothing. She felt nothing for a mad man killed by an accident of falling rock. Some kind of poetic
justice, she surmised. If it didn’t happen, he would have killed her, and done something unthinkable to Leah.
She dismissed him from her mind. More pressing matters worried her. She looked toward the obstructed opening. They wouldn’t be getting out anytime soon.
“I don’t know if I can budge this stuff. Some of it’s pretty big.” She surveyed the rock ceiling overhead. When a large chunk fell, it left the rock above them with an uneven scar, the ceiling now higher than a few minutes prior. When she pushed Leah out of the way of the falling debris, they ended up inches outside the boundary where the rock had given way. Otherwise, they too might have succumbed to the same fate as Notch.
She listened for cracking sounds. Silence. The rock above them appeared to be stable for now, but she knew they shouldn’t count on it staying that way.
She pulled the pickax from a pile of debris, and using the ax head as a lever, she pulled at a few medium sized boulders. They rolled down the pile. She found the larger stones impossible to budge.
“What do we do now?” Leah asked.
She thought for a minute. Circling slowly, surveying the cavity they were in. Her voice echoed off the ceiling as she spoke. “I think I told you as a kid, I always heard talk of a secret entrance to this place. We used to come up here all the time, sneaking around, hoping to discover the rumored hidden way in. Old timers acted like they were sure it existed, but no one ever divulged the location. If there is one, maybe we can find it and use it to escape.”
She motioned toward a narrow opening in the wall opposite the blocked exit. It looked barely big enough for a person to squeeze through. “It’ll be dangerous. It looks like it might be an exploratory tunnel. I’m pretty certain it won’t be reinforced but it beats staying in here with him.”
She pointed toward the pile of rocks covering Notch. The only evidence of his presence was his bloody hand protruding from the lower portion of his coat sleeve sticking out from the rubble.
“If we stay here, we’re likely not going to find it very pleasant when he starts to decompose, anyway. It’s hard to tell from here if that opening even goes anywhere, but there’s only one way to find out. I’ll go check it out—give you a chance to catch your breath.”