NOW
THEY CAMPED IN a cold, dry spot that reminded Martin of a small tomb.
“Sounds about right,” Ethan said. “Ain’t no way we’re all getting out of here alive.”
“Can’t you be more optimistic than that?” Cynthia said as Martin slipped off the backpack and dropped it onto the ground.
The cavern looked almost identical to so many others they had traveled through that day, with arched rock walls that looked like they might collapse at any moment and a hard, uneven floor. No stalactites or stalagmites, though. The ceiling was the smoothest of any they had seen so far.
Good thing, too, Martin thought. After seeing Paul’s legs get crushed, he was pretty sure nobody would feel safe sleeping underneath a stalactite.
“No point in being optimistic,” Ethan said. “It is what it is.”
Martin’s stomach growled, and he asked if anyone else was hungry.
“Sure am,” Cynthia said. She sat down on the ground and unzipped the backpack. Then she passed around the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Martin watched Ethan devour his sandwich in under a minute. He, however, preferred to take his time. He chewed slowly, savoring every bite. This was the first time they had eaten since the earthquake, and it would be the last time they ate until they got out. No sense in rushing the meal.
“How do you think Paul’s doing?” Cynthia asked.
Martin shrugged and swallowed his food. How could he possibly have any idea?
“Probably dead,” Ethan said. That was Ethan’s attitude toward everything. If it wasn’t dead, it was going to die, or it should be dead.
“Because everything dies,” he had repeatedly told Martin. “Some things just die sooner than other things.”
“Don’t say stuff like that.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
Cynthia shook her head. The scratches had stopped bleeding, but her face was matted with dried blood and dirt and looked ever more eerie with only her flashlight to light the room. She had placed it carefully on the ground so the light would shine up and out, illuminating the room like a dim fire. “No. I don’t believe you. I’m sure he’s fine.”
Paul wasn’t fine. He was sweating, drifting in and out of consciousness. There was nothing Gina could do about it except pray.
“It’s getting late,” she said. Paul had been unconscious for more than an hour, and she was talking just because there was no one else to talk. Hearing a voice, even her own, made her feel safer.
She looked at her watch for the third time in as many minutes. Eleven forty-seven p.m. They had been underground—in the muck and the blackness with God-knows-what watching from the shadows—for more than twelve hours.
Have they stopped to rest? she wondered. She hoped not. Her guess that Paul had forty-eight hours was now clearly unrealistic. Even more than she hoped that they hadn’t stopped to rest, she hoped that they had already found a way out. After all, it was possible, wasn’t it?
She leaned down to kiss Paul’s forehead and then, after settling his head back in her lap, she wrapped her arms over his chest. “I love you, and you love me, too. We’re going to be all right. I promise.”
“Don’t be such a dumbass,” Ethan said. “Paul’s buzzard food.”
Cynthia glared at him. With each passing moment, she had come to hate him a little more. “Listen, Gina said we had a couple of days. So just stop with your ‘all is lost’ attitude, okay? I don’t want to hear it. I don’t think Martin wants to hear it. Things are going to be hard enough without you constantly reminding us that we all have one foot in the grave.”
“Some more than others,” Ethan muttered.
Cynthia nearly screamed. Instead, she stood and walked to the other side of the cavern. There she took several deep breaths and drew her hands together in front of her chest, palm to palm.
She reminded Martin of a Japanese warrior, preparing to fight.
“What’d you have to do that for?” he said. “Look at her; she’s pissed.”
“What do you care?”
Martin knew what he meant. Ethan had made it clear. Cynthia didn’t love him. She had moved to L.A. to become a star. She was everything he wanted and wanted to be, as was she a reminder of his failures. Why should he care how she felt? But he did. Even though—
No. Don’t think about it right now.
Without a word, he walked over to Cynthia and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s a jerk sometimes.”
She dropped her hands to her sides and said, “Why is he like that?”
“I don’t know. Could be a lot of things.”
THEN
BYRON LANCASTER WAS Ethan’s father and one of the most respected men in Triton, Alabama. He owned a small bank that he had inherited from his father, and it was practically a town landmark. On more than one occasion, he had heard people reference the Lancaster Bank when giving out-of-towners directions.
Byron was an unusually skinny man, but not one who went to great lengths to maintain his weight. “It’s all in the genes,” he would joke when he was young. He also kept a carefully trimmed mustache that, like the rest of his hair, had prematurely grayed.
Every day, Monday through Friday, he wore a dark-blue suit and a black tie. It was the look of a professional, he thought. The look of a man you could trust with your money. When you were dealing with people’s money, trust was essential.
He also strived hard to be a perfect parent. He regularly checked Ethan’s homework and took him to the park to kick a soccer ball around. He kept baby photos on his desk and was frequently known to tell his staff stories that began with: “You’ll never believe what Ethan got into last night. . . .” Always with a smile.
Ethan’s mother, however, was not nearly as pleasant. When he was a baby, she would shout at him until he cried himself out and nurse him only when it was convenient for her. Whenever he awoke screaming in the middle of the night, she would put a pillow over her head and tell Byron to deal with it. Norma Lancaster was no one to be trifled with—it was best Ethan learn that at a young age.
“Has she always been like that?” asked a teller after Norma came in one afternoon, shouting at Byron for canceling her credit cards.
“Not always.”
She used to be kind and attentive. She used to care about her figure. And her hair, which then looked knotted and greasy most of the time, used to bounce.
But as the isolated years of a housewife took their toll, she exercised with increasing irregularity. She stopped changing from her nightgown unless she was going out and stopped wearing makeup altogether.
To fill the loneliness, she’d started shopping. Buying clothes and shoes she would never wear. Expensive hats with the tags still on them occupied one full shelf of her walk-in closet.
By the time Byron canceled her credit cards, she was spending more every week than he was making and plummeting them into so much debt that he was worried he might never get out.
He had hoped that when Ethan was born, the isolation Norma felt would subside. Maybe she would revert to the woman he had married.
But instead of a joy, she saw her new son as a burden—a project that consumed all her time and energy and offered nothing in return.
And the bitterness grew.
“Why not just divorce her?” asked the teller.
“That’s not an option,” Byron said. He believed that, when you married, you married for life. ’Til death do us part. That a spouse was expendable, that there was always a better wife—a better life—around the next corner was an idea that he considered modern and selfish.
“You play the hand you’re dealt, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
NOW
NOBODY SLEPT WELL. Especially Martin.
He tossed and turned on the cold rock. The air tasted stale. His windbreaker, which he was now using as a pillow, was uncomfortable.
Even worse was the sinking feeling that they might never get o
ut.
He imagined them climbing deeper and deeper until they were too weak to move. Then, slowly, whatever flashlight or headlamp was left would fade out, and, hundreds of years later, somebody would find their remains—broken, old bones with no story to tell.
THEN
ETHAN WAS TEN years old and barely home from school when he heard his mother shout, “Get up here now!”
She was standing at the top of the stairs, wearing baggy blue jeans and an old sweatshirt. The rings around her eyes seemed bigger than they had that morning; her hair greasier.
“Yes, Mama!” Ethan shouted, and quickly wiped his feet on the mat. He knew better than to step onto the foyer’s white tile with dirt on his shoes. Norma was already furious.
He ran through the house to the living room. Every corner was crowded with expensive, antique furniture that was carefully placed and carelessly dusted. He dropped his books in a chair and ran up the stairs to where his mom was waiting—arms crossed, her face screwed on ugly.
As soon as he was within reach, she grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “What’d you call me?”
“I’m sorry!”
“My name’s Norma. How many times have I told you that? It’s not ‘Mama.’”
“I didn’t mean to!”
“Don’t do it again!” She grabbed his ear and dragged him toward his bedroom, saying, “Now, come here.”
She threw his door open, shoved him inside. “Look at this mess!”
Ethan looked around. There were a few toys on the floor and his bed was unmade. Other than that, everything was in perfect order.
“This room is disgusting. I’d have better luck finding gold in a horse’s pile then finding anything in here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing and clean it up. I’m not going to live in this sort of filth.” She slammed the door shut behind her, leaving Ethan alone in his room.
NOW
MARTIN WOKE TO the soft beep of the alarm on his watch. He had barely slept for three hours. His muscles ached, his eyes burned. But they had agreed to make the nap short. With numerous tunnels behind them and numerous more ahead, they couldn’t afford to drift off for any length.
He rubbed his eyes and rolled over. In the dull yellow glow from the flashlight, he saw Ethan kneeling over Cynthia, watching her sleep. Ethan tilted his head one way and then the other, as if examining her from different angles. Martin pushed himself up with his hands. “What are you doing?”
Ethan glanced over his shoulder. “I’ll give you this, man, the bitch is pretty.”
“How long have you been watching her?”
He shrugged, but didn’t answer.
“Well, get away from her,” Martin said, standing up. But Ethan didn’t move.
Martin grabbed him by the arm and jerked him backward. Ethan fell, rolled, and hopped back to his feet. Several quick steps and he grabbed Martin by the shirt. “What’s your fucking problem?”
Martin looked around, away, anywhere but at Ethan’s face. “I don’t want you freaking her out, all right? Until we’re out of this cave, we’ve got to stick together. What do you think’s gonna happen if she sees you staring at her?”
At that moment, Cynthia woke up. “What’s going on?”
Ethan snarled at Martin and stepped away. “Nothing.”
THEN
THOUGH SHE NEVER raised a hand to him, the verbal abuse continued to escalate throughout Ethan’s teenage years. Norma told him he was too ugly to land a wife, too stupid to run his father’s bank.
By the time he was eighteen, he had taken all he could.
He cleared the dishes off the dining room table, full of rage and grinding his teeth. Norma had been criticizing his academic performance since they sat down for dinner and hadn’t stopped yet.
“I mean a ‘C’ in Algebra, what kind of crap is that? Do you think you’re going to a good school with those grades?”
Byron, still wearing his skinny black tie, wiped his lips and told his son not to worry about it. “I didn’t do well in Algebra, either.” It was the first time he had spoken since the meal began.
“Honey,” Norma said, taking Byron’s hands, “you were exceptional in all other areas. You can’t expect him to live up to your example.”
“He’s our son, Norma. He can do anything I can do.”
Norma jerked her hands away. “That’s what you want to believe? Because if that’s what you want to believe, you don’t know crap about Ethan. That fool’s about as useful as a one-legged mule.”
Ethan was standing by the kitchen door, dishes stacked in his hands, listening to his parents fight. He felt like a little boy. He wanted to defend himself, but he didn’t know where to begin. He hoped that Byron would tell Norma to close her skinny, shrunken lips.
Byron didn’t. Instead, he stared silently at the ugly, pale bitch while she goaded him toward a fight. “Come on,” she said. “You got somethin’ to say? Are you going to tell me I’m wrong?”
Then, something snapped inside Ethan’s head, and a voice—one that sounded as much like somebody else’s as it did his—growled from the back of his brain: Your father’s a coward. Look at him. What a pathetic waste—both of them. How long are you going to take this? Fight back! Do something. Do something now, or it’s never going to stop!
Ethan threw the dishes to the ground. Tiny bits of ceramic and glass flew everywhere when they shattered. He lunged at his mom, tackling her in her seat. The chair tumbled over, and they fell to the floor. He swore at her repeatedly, cursed her for the years of abuse.
It’s never going to stop!
Ethan punched her until she started spitting blood. “As useless as a one-legged mule, huh? Could a one-legged mule do this?” Then he hit her again.
Byron was too shocked to move at first. Too shocked even to speak. He just stared with his mouth open. Ethan thought he might have hesitated because he knew she deserved the beating.
It’s never going to stop!
Ethan grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked it out of her head. She screamed, and he said, “You like that, Ma?”
Fight back, or it’s never going to stop!
He grabbed a long, broken shard of glass and dragged it down her cheek. He was just about to cut her throat when Byron grabbed him and pulled him off her.
Ethan struggled until he had one arm free and then turned and punched his father across the jaw. “Let me do this!” he shouted as Byron fell to the ground. “She deserves it! After all these years, you know she deserves it! That bitch has made our lives hell. It’s time for payback.”
That’s right. Time for payback.
When Ethan turned around, he saw Norma backing toward the door. One hand was on her cheek, and blood was dripping between her fingers.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Norma grabbed a vase off a small table to her right and swung it at Ethan. He caught it without flinching.
As they stood there, both with a tight grip on the vase, she instinctively grabbed a lamp and cracked it across his skull.
He fell to the floor, hollering in pain. Then he rolled onto his back just as his father was reaching for him again.
All Byron wanted to do was restrain him. If he could keep his son under control for long enough, Ethan might calm down.
But Ethan kicked one foot into his father’s chest and chased his mom out the front door. She was halfway across the yard by the time he caught her.
From the front door, Byron saw Ethan tackle his mom, continue to hit her. She tried to fight back. He sprinted across the yard. “That’s enough, son! You need to stop!”
Ethan grabbed his father’s tie when he was close enough and said, “I’m just doing what you should have done years ago.”
Suddenly, sirens whined from somewhere in the neighborhood. Police sirens.
“Did you call the cops on me?” Ethan said, still holding his father’s tie just below the knot.
Byron shook his he
ad. “No, son. I swear. I would never—”
Ethan slammed his fist into his father’s stomach before he could finish. With Byron doubled over and Norma unconscious—her face so bloody she was almost unrecognizable—he stood up and shouted, “You’re supposed to be my father! You’re supposed to love me!”
The sirens got louder.
“I do love you,” his father wheezed.
“And this is how you show me?” Ethan glanced down the street just in time to see two police cars appear and turn toward the house. Without thinking, he started to run. Unfortunately, the quiet, brick houses were packed tightly together. With only rows of hedges between them, there was nowhere to hide.
He weaved between the sidewalk and the road until the officers caught up with him. One slammed on the brakes in front of him, the other behind, and he made a quick turn into somebody’s backyard.
But even running as fast as he could, he wasn’t running fast enough. An officer grabbed Ethan by the back of the shirt and slammed him to the ground.
NOW
THE FIRST IMPORTANT decision the three had to make came early the second day. Everyone was hungry. No one was talking. Martin could tell Ethan’s patience was running thin by the way his eyelid had started to twitch; it was subtle—so subtle Martin was certain that nobody would notice it unless they knew him well.
They had spent most of the morning descending, slowly and to the southwest. Compared to the day before, it was an easy climb. “Like a walk in the woods,” Cynthia said. There was no crawling or twisting through corkscrews, and the group had moved on a seemingly collective autopilot until the tunnel abruptly forked.
“Which way do you want to go?” Martin asked.
Cynthia used her flashlight to see as far as she could into each tunnel. Then she told Martin to turn around and pulled the compass out of the backpack he was carrying. She pointed it at the tunnel on their left. “That one goes more east.”
A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trust Page 48