And my scream overpowers the ghost wail that surrounds me.
"What is it? What is it WHAT IS IT?"
I can hear scuffling above and know Dad is about to come down. I don't want him to. What if we get stuck down here? What if we die?
What if we rot away like the body that's wedged into the rocks in the back of the cave?
My mouth opens and closes, opens and closes. I can't find my voice, can't find air. Then I realize the water is up to my knees. Touching the body. What if Dad gets stuck, what if the body comes loose and I'm trapped down here with a corpse bumping into me until I drown?
I find my voice. "Don't come down! Don't! Just – just wait!"
Dad goes silent. I hope he's listening. I don't have a lot of time. Every time water slips out of the cave, then pours back in through that crack, it's a bit higher. A bit louder. A bit more frightening.
I make my way to the body. Slogging through what I imagine to be not just water, not simple surf, but the outgoing traces of a murdered soul.
Maybe it's not murder. Maybe it's just some other idiot who came down here. Some fool like you who climbed down and got caught by the tide and drowned.
Then my light shines on the body's face.
No.
Murder.
3
I WORRY FOR A MOMENT that I've been inhaling human remains. Smelling the rot of a body long gone. But it must have been just fish, just old brine and decomposing crabs and other things that came here to die. Because this body is too new to be rotting. At least, too new to rot much.
I know this, because when I shine my light on the corpse's face, it is the face of a man I spoke to just a little while ago.
I breathe his name. It's a curse, a prayer, last words that should have been spoken but weren't.
"Voss."
Jedediah Voss was a big man before the shootout. But he was hit in the stomach, twice in the leg, once in the right arm. The stomach was the worst one – they took out a chunk of his intestine, his colon. Dad told me he just got out of the hospital a few days ago.
And here he is. Looking shrunken, barely a specter of himself. Curled in on his center like his wounds reappeared. Only it's not the wounds that did this to him. Easy enough to see that. Easy enough to see the way his neck is twisted around, the way his vertebrae poke at his skin.
His right eye stares at nothing. His left has a crab sitting on top of it. Picking at it. The crab doesn't flinch at the light. Too much interest in the feast.
I almost throw up. Manage not to, but I do turn away. All I can think of is that mad dash that started the night. Jack telling us we had only minutes to get to the scene of the gunfight or Voss would be killed.
I never liked Voss. He was gruff, bordered on mean. But he was part of that team. Part of the group of men who went through the Academy with Dad. Knight, Zevahk, Linde, Sarge.
Voss.
"He lied. Lied. Jack lied. He was never going to let Voss go no matter what we did." I barely realize I'm talking. The words come out on their own, like someone else is talking. I'm in a dream. None of this is real. None of it can be real.
But the water is up to my hips. It's real.
The crab on Voss's eye scuttles away as water splashes it. It won't take long for the salt to strip the man to bone. And with the surf pounding in through the small slit at the front of the cave, it's unlikely the corpse will go anywhere. This is a perfect place to stash a body.
My eye falls on something else. Something tethered to the side of the wall by a small length rope.
I grab the small package. Untie it from the wall with fumbling fingers.
On top is scribbled, "The truth will set you free." I grab the package. Before I can examine it further, something splashes behind me.
You wouldn't think I'd notice that. Just one more wet sound in the middle of a literal ocean of noise. But I do. I hear it clearly.
I shove the package in the waist of my pants and whip around. As I do I hear a deep chuckle.
"Fancy meeting you here."
At first I can't see anything behind the flashlight that blares into my eyes. Then it lowers a bit, and I see swim trunks, a muscled chest, an oxygen tank strapped to a back.
A face I recognize.
I don't know if this is Ray or Bob. And it doesn't matter. I didn't get a good feeling off either of the twins when I saw them in the Exxon station, I get an even less good feeling seeing one of them deep under the Ocean's Tomb, no one else for company but a package – probably drugs – and a dead man.
Ray/Bob has a knife strapped to his thigh.
"What have we here?" he says, looking past me at Voss.
"Like you don't know."
"And where are my lovely rocks?" he says. He tsks, then wags a finger. "Don't you know you mustn't touch other people's things?"
I stare at him, not sure what to say or what to do. Then I dart for the hole that leads away from this awful place, this tomb within a tomb.
The other man rushes me with murder in his eyes.
4
I SCREAM. BARELY REGISTERING that Dad screams at the same time, his terror washing over me, making my own fear even worse. Moving as fast as I can for the open throat that leads out of the belly of the Ocean's Tomb.
But the water is past my waist now. Climbing higher. Shoving me back as more comes into the cave, slams into me.
Then the water isn't the only thing slamming into me. Ray/Bob hits me as well. Pushes me back, back. My feet wheel over nothing as they briefly lose contact with the sand and rock I was standing on. I scream, but the scream cuts off as his hands wrap around my throat.
Now my fear redoubles. He's trying to kill me. His thumbs find the hollow of my throat. Press hard. Pain rocks me, almost drives me below the water.
I'm glad. If he knew what he was doing he would be choking me, not trying to suffocate me. Choking me would involve pinching my carotid arteries, the flow of blood to my brain. If that happened I'd have only a few seconds, maybe ten, before unconsciousness claimed me. This way, with him just cutting off my air flow, I still have a few moments longer. Maybe as long as thirty seconds. Choking, gagging, awful seconds. But it's time.
Ray/Bob is bigger than me. Heavier. Stronger. He has all the advantages.
But eyes are eyes. Doesn't matter if you weigh ninety pounds or three hundred. Some things are soft and hurt when they get attacked, no matter how big or small you are.
My right hand turns to a claw, four fingers clasped together on one side, a crooked thumb on the other. I clap it against his left temple, my thumb finding his eye and pressing. His eyelid closes automatically, but the thin wall of skin isn't much protection. Not against this.
I press. Hard as I can. Dad has drilled this move into me. "Don't do it. Don't ever do it," he said when he first taught me. "Unless you have to do it. Then do it like you mean it."
I do it like I mean it. Do I ever.
Now I'm not the only one screaming. And Ray/Bob's screams are louder, more panicked than mine. Pain rides along the walls and ceiling of the cave. Bounces on the top of the frothing surf that still pounds into the space around us. Suddenly his weight is off me.
I think for a beautiful instant that I have the upper hand. That the lessening of weight means he's giving up and letting me go.
Then I realize I'm nearly floating. The water is up to my chest. Ray/Bob's weight coming away is just a sign that I'm going to drown if I stay down here much longer.
His hands dropped away for a second when I gouged his eye. Now they're back, harder than ever. I feel like some kind of machine is digging into my throat. The darkness of the cave is thickening into a deeper darkness that gathers at the corners of my vision and begins to crawl in black ink streaks across my eyes.
I'm going to die here. Down in the dark, to lay forever with another dead man as my only company.
My hands scrape and scratch against Ray/Bob's hands, but he's too strong. I reach for his other eye with my left hand, but he's r
eady this time, and pulls his head away. I can't kick or punch him effectively, either, not with all the water sucking all the force out of my movements.
He pulls me closer. "Kill you!" he screams. Something splashes my face – spit or blood or just splashing water, I'm not sure. "I'll kill you, bitch!"
Closer, so he's almost hugging me. Like he wants to feel the moment I lose consciousness, the very instant the life leaves my body.
Closer. Closer.
I let him. One last chance.
Blackness everywhere. Death coming in the dark of the cave, the thick night of a forever sleep.
I grab the knife off his sheath.
He realizes it's happening, tries to pull away. The hold on my throat releases, and now bright white flashes replace the heavy darkness of only a moment below. I'm still blind, but it's a gorgeous blindness. The surreal visionless vision of life flooding back into my lungs.
I stab with the knife. Just moving on instinct. Not thinking. If I think about it, I might not do it.
The knife hits something. Something hard and soft at the same time. Thick, slow, heavy.
Ray/Bob screams.
I keep pushing.
Screaming.
Hard soft push... push... push....
Screaming.
The knife jerks out of my hand. Still embedded in flesh.
The screaming silences.
The water is up to my neck.
I'm alone.
5
I'VE STAYED TOO LONG. Only inches between the incoming surf and the top of the cave. I'm more swimming than walking. Pulling myself back to the hole that leads out of what has become a very literal tomb. But I lost my light in the fight, as did Ray/Bob. There is only darkness around me. I don't know where I am, or where my exit – my escape – is.
The water won't let me go. It's pushing in more than flowing out. The surge slams me back, my hand goes behind me.
The hand that flies behind me falls into something soft. I gag back a scream. I thought Voss's body would be rigid. Maybe rigor hasn't had a chance to set in.
Then those thoughts are slammed out of my head by an influx of water that goes over my mouth. Seawater pounds into my nose, my throat. I inhale. Choke. Gasp. Inhale more seawater. Try to push forward and can't.
Can't...
Can't.
I jam my face against the top of the cave. One more breath.
Then I'm under. Just me and water and a pair of dead men in the dark.
6
IT'S ALMOST PEACEFUL. A part of me wants to just give up. Stay here. Let the water – the darkness – take me and own me.
No. Dad. What would he do without me?
A foolish thought. A ridiculous thought. But it gets me moving.
Only problem: I have no idea where I am. No idea where my exit is.
I start to panic. The slit the water is pouring through is now a high-pressure jet. It would cut me in half before I got within ten feet, let alone permitting me to leave. And I still don't know where I am in relation to the hole I came in through.
I think for a moment about finding Ray/Bob and stripping his scuba equipment off him. Using it to wait out the tide. Only problems are I have no idea where he is in here. And even if I found him, I've never used scuba gear and I'd probably drown – even assuming there was enough air in the tank to do what I wanted to in the first place.
I start to claw at the water. My lungs are burning. My body starting to panic of its own accord.
I'm going to die here.
I force my hands to slow. Force my body to stop. Reach. Turn a circle.
I bump a familiar shape. Something scuttles under my hand and I wonder if that crab has come back for seconds. Because I've got both hands on Voss now. One on his shirt, one on the rocky outcroppings of his broken neck bones.
I don't even shudder. It's the best feeling ever. Because it tells me where I am.
My hands go up. Touching the ceiling. I use it as an anchor, my feet leaving the ground completely. Pulling hand over hand, trying to –
(ignore the feel of my lungs the pound in my head the need to breathe need to BREATHE)
– control the urge to panic, to flail my way instead of feeling my way forward.
The waves still shove me back. I try to time my pulls with the outflows, holding fast when I feel the waves pounding in. The sound of surf is all I can hear. Then another sound intrudes.
A moan.
I think for a moment it must be me. But that's impossible: I'm still under water.
It's the Ocean's Tomb. I'm close enough to the chimney that leads to freedom that I'm hearing its whistle. I follow the sound now. And suddenly one of my reaching hands plunges up.
I've found the shaft. Found my exit.
And, I realize, found more water. There's no air here, just more surf, shoving its way ever higher in the empty column. It never sprays out of this hole in a jet – the hole is too wide to create that kind of pressure – but it looks like it fills it up well enough. Maybe even reaches all the way to the top and spills over the sides.
I pull myself up.
Not going to make it.
And it's true. My body's need for air is about to override my ability to keep my mouth shut. I'm going to open wide and inhale in a few seconds, and it won't matter whether I'm surrounded by oxygen or H2O. I'll suck water, then I'll convulse, then I'll die.
I wonder if that'll make Jack happy or sad. I won't learn his lesson.
Or maybe I will. Maybe death is the lesson he intends.
I keep pulling up. My body in the chimney of rock. I'm going to open my mouth.
The water sucks down below me. Pulls at me in the shaft, and I hope that the level might lower enough for me to break the surface and breathe.
No such luck.
I open my mouth.
I inhale.
7
IT'S NOT AS BAD AS I thought it would be.
It's far worse.
The water goes down like acid, then rushes back out as I cough, gag. More water streams into my mouth. I can't help it. My hands claw upward, all semblance of control absolutely gone.
This is the worst terror I have ever known. I feel heavy, like my terror is weighing me down, dragging me under the water.
Then the sea – which surged down a moment ago – blasts upward. And I go with it. My body slams around like a pinball, banking off one wall of the shaft and then another. My hands, still clutching and grabbing up like they hope to hook the sky itself, manage to grab a small outcropping. I haul myself up, still gagging and throwing up, as the water shoves me violently from behind.
And suddenly my head is above water.
I still can't breathe for a moment. Still can't inhale, like my body has forgotten how to do that in the moments that breathing was denied it.
Then, suddenly, all I can do is breathe. Just clinging to the side of the shaft, pressing my sandy, salty cheek against the wet rock and sucking in so much air I feel like I might pop.
I hear screams. Dad. Shouting, shrieking. Terror clear in his voice. My name sounding over and through the darkness of the shaft.
I can't answer. I can climb, or I can speak. But I can't do both. It's not cruelty, I just don't have the strength.
And them I'm out.
I collapse in Dad's arms.
I feel like I've just been born. Or perhaps like I've just died. Maybe the two are more the same than we know. Not two sides of the same coin, but more like dawn and dusk – they look so much the same you almost can't tell which is which unless you know which way the sun is moving. Time tells the secret, but the look is much the same. Both have their roots in pain, in blood, in fear.
I look up at the moon. The thing that pulled the water close, that called it to kill me.
I wonder if I'll ever look at the moon the same again. Or the beach.
Probably not.
Dad's sobbing. "I thought I lost you. I can't lose you, baby. Not like Mom. Can't lose you like Beck. Not li
ke Beck."
He goes on, crying. Then he's done. And now it's my turn to cry. I tell him what happened in the cave, long sentences cut in small pieces by shuddering cries that seem to pull my soul apart. When I get to Voss he pulls me tight. When I tell about Ray/Bob and having to gouge his eye then kill him, he doesn't move at all. Just whispers, "Oh, my baby," and stays absolutely still.
Then I'm done. All is quiet. Even the tomb stops its mournful shrieking cry for a time.
We stay like that. I don't know how long. I don't care. For that one long slice of my life all that matters is my dad, holding me. Cradling me. Knowing that he'll always be there for me just like I'll always be there for him.
Family.
Even though I've seen awful things tonight – Knight's dead body, Liam pushing a gun into his chest and pulling the trigger, Voss's corpse with its one-eyed stare, killing a man – all that suddenly matters less than this moment. Like as long as Dad holds me, nothing can touch us. We'll beat whatever this is, as long as we're together.
Something's digging into my back.
I twist. Pull it out.
The package.
"The truth will set you free," I murmur.
Dad looks at it. He laughs. But the laugh is without humor. And when he helps me stand and takes the package, there is something terrible in his eyes.
I see, for the first time, the man who can pull a gun if need be. A man who can hurt others.
A man who can kill.
8
"DAD," I SAY. AND WHEN I'm not sure he even hears the word, I repeat it. "Dad? You okay?"
I wish I could take back the words as soon as I say them. If stupidity could kill, I would have just leveled the city. Of course he's not okay. Neither of us is okay. We've been beaten up, knocked down, run around, nearly drowned.
I killed a man.
(killed a man killed a man killed a man
just like the men in the alley just like whoever we're hunting just like the ones who
The Ridealong Page 10