Finders Keepers (28 page)

           
She wedged herself into the narrow space and began inching toward his voice.
 
“I’m not marked so maybe you should just let me go.
 
You don’t have to worry about me taking over the world…
er
…underground,” she said.

           
“You don’t know.
 
They don’t even know.
 
Everyone has forgotten except old
Neddie
.
 
They shouldn’t have closed the school.
 
Jalx’s
daughter will never be queen—she cannot.
 
The goblin king always marries the princess.
 
The human princess bears the mark.”
 
He chuckled and the sound was a cross between squeaky rubber and grating metal.
 
Her shoulders bunched up and she ground her teeth at the sound.
 

           
“Ellie?”

           
"Gibbs!"
 

Instead of a response she heard scrapes and rocks falling and then a full on scuffle reverberated down the crack.
 
Ignoring the objections from her shoulder blades, ribs, and hips, she shoved herself further into the crack.
 
He was probably fighting both Sarah and
Xaneth
, but if she didn’t get through, he’d never be able to reach her.
 
He was too tall and broad.
 
Her stomach tingled and her cheeks burned from the sudden warmth.
 
She wanted to be wrapped up in those strong arms more than anything.
 
She pushed her body against the rock even harder.
 

She was using all her energy to concentrate on the sounds of the fight that she didn’t recognize the pain that shot through the side of her stomach for what it was until a bony arm latched onto her wrist.
 

“Couldn’t take the chance of you escaping again.”

Ellie staggered the last few steps as he dragged her into the opening by her arm.
 
Her free hand grasped her right side, just under her ribs, where her fingers confirmed what her mind had already guessed.
 
The hilt of
Xaneth’s
crooked dagger was lodged there.
 
She let her fingers drop, now wet with warm, sticky blood.
 
Her knees buckled.
 
She lurched forward but couldn’t catch herself.
 
Xaneth
still clung to her arm.
 
Pain exploded through her knees when she hit the floor.
 
Xaneth’s
fish breath was hot on her face but the only sound Ellie could hear was the blood that rushed in her ears.
 
Reaching out, she placed her palm on the ground to steady herself.
 
Loose gravel and rocks dug into her hand.
 
Blindly, she felt the ground until her fingers closed around something—a baseball sized rock.
 
Xaneth’s
hand touched the knife hilt and his fingers closed around it.
 
Pain rolled over her like an ocean wave and she gagged on vomit.
 
Before she completely slumped, he caught her, placing his face near hers.
 
She picked up her arm and bashed the rock into his skull.

***

           
The silence scared her more than the blood she knew was pooling on the ground around her.
 
Silence meant Gibbs was gone, or dead.
 
Even with her teeth clenched, the reach for the phone inside her shirt caused a moan that would have made the undead flinch.
 
She felt for the numbers with her fingers and dialed Taylor’s number again.
 
For several seconds, there was nothing.
 
And then, she heard a muffled fire alarm.
 
Ellie pulled herself onto her side and inched, dragging herself on one elbow toward the sound.
 
When it went to voicemail, she stopped in order to dial the number again.
 
The ringtone of Taylor’s cell started up, just a tad more distinct this time, and Ellie crawled closer.
 
Her progress was painstakingly slow.
 
One more stop.
 
Another couple tries trying to dial the correct number with shaking fingers.
 
Inch by inch, like the mountain climber who’d been stuck in the crack and crawled down the mountain with broken legs.
 

           
Her fingertips brushed leather.
 
She moved her hands over his body until she found his chest, then neck, and face.
 
His body was lifeless.
 
Even poking, then shaking did nothing to stir him.
 
Ellie ran her fingers through his hair, touched his face, and finally laid her cheek down on his chest.
 
Romeo and Juliet
was not romantic.
 
It was stupid and pointless…
and it’s not how we were supposed to turn out
.
 
Turning her head, she buried her face into his shirt.

           
911 was significantly easier to dial than Taylor’s number even with half-frozen fingers.
 
She laid her head back down on Gibb’s chest with the phone wedged between him and her ear.

“I wish I’d let the bird go as soon as his wing healed, then none of this would have happened.
 
I wish you’d never kissed me.
 
I wish…”

           
“And I wish my parents never died and that I’d never been abandoned to my grandfather.”

           
Ellie gasped.

           
In the inky darkness, it was only a disembodied voice.
 
But it was Sarah’s voice, and she was close.
 
Ellie dug her fingers into Gibbs’ shirt.
 
Maybe she’d always been close.
 

“Listen to me carefully, Ellie.
 
There is an entrance through the Johnson Mausoleum in the cemetery.
 
It leads to this tunnel.
 
Tell the police that the crypt marked Gallagher is the way in.”

“Why should I trust you?”
 
Ellie’s voice echoed through the tunnel.
 
Only the sound of her shallow breaths and the ring of the phone answered her.
 
Sarah was gone.
  

           
“911.
 
What is your emergency?”

           
Ellie could have laughed or cried, but instead she just breathed.
 
The dispatcher repeated herself three times before Ellie finally found her voice again.
 
Words tumbled out--words she didn’t recognize because her tongue worked separate from her mind.
 
Her location, her injuries, a plea to notify her parents were all explained.
 
The dispatcher continued to talk to her and assure her help was on the way, but Ellie stopped listening.
 

16

If one
 
more person came in to check her blood pressure, she was sure she’d scream.
 
Except that the effort of trying to raise eyelids that felt glued shut was even too much for her.
 
She screamed loud and long in her head.
 

The ache was everywhere, even in the slightest wiggle of her toes.
 
Ellie slowly blinked her eyes, adjusting to the fluorescent light that was on next to her bed.
 
A large, rough hand squeezed hers.
 
The effort it took to turn her head made her groan.
 

“Hi, sweetheart.
 
How are you feeling?”

Her dad’s shirt was rumpled and his hair stuck up in all different directions in the back.
 
How long had she been here? “Dad, where’s Gibbs?”
 

He shook his head as if he didn’t understand.
 
Ellie tried again.
 
“Where is he?
 
Did he make it out?”

Now she understood the head shake for what it was.
 
His words were gentle, but his hands were fisted making his knuckles ghostly white.
 
“It was just you, baby.
 
They searched, but there was no one else down there.”

Ellie shut her eyes.
 
When she spoke again, her throat was so choked with tears, she only managed to whisper.
 
“What about Taylor?”

“She’s all right.
 
She was at our house spending the night, remember?
 
She was here when you first came out of surgery a couple of hours ago.”
 

Someone knocked on the door.
 
It was just a courtesy knock because the door pushed open almost automatically.
 
The young urgent care doctor who’d sewed up her hand strode in the room with a big smile on his face.
 
To her dad, he said, “She’s looking really great.
 
You’ve got a fighter on your hands, for sure.
 
I have some questions I have to ask for the police record and I am going to need you to step outside for just a moment.”

Her father’s face hardened while simultaneously draining of all color.
 
Ellie patted her dad’s hand.
 
“It’s fine, Dad.”
 
She lifted a weak hand and waved him off.
 

Once they were alone Dr. Cooper pulled one of the vacated chairs up closer to the bed.
 
He looked at his clipboard and clicked his pen several times.
 
“My first day as a first year medical resident, a trauma victim was wheeled into the ER.
 
It was a skinny kid with a knife wound.
 
We saved his life, fixed him up, and pulled out of his abdomen the tip of the knife.
 
They said it was the act of a crazed meth addict.
 
New doctors don’t know how to detach themselves from their patients.
 
When he disappeared from the hospital, I was a bit of a mess.
 
Fast forward nearly five years later when they wheel you in.
 
Not only do you have a nearly identical entry wound, but the blade which we pulled out of your stomach was missing its tip.
 
Of course it means nothing to the police, but I nearly had a mild PTSD attack.”
 
He looked up at her with clear, blue eyes.
 
“Are you following me?”

Ellie stared at him.
 

“His name was Gibbs and you happened to mention Gibbs two, three, oh maybe a hundred times when they first wheeled you in.
 
I just wanted to know if he’s all right.
 
I haven’t really stopped worrying about him these past five years.”

           
When she still didn’t respond, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his card.
 
“I know you don’t want to trust me, but I assure you, I’m not as dumb as I look.
 
I do seem to recall there being some sort of need to stitch up a hand without parental knowledge or consent.”

           
Her lips parted.

           
“Exactly.
 
Also, blame it on my isolated childhood,
Tolkein
, or whatever, but I know that the owner of that knife is not a meth addict.”
 
His chair scraped across the floor as he simultaneously pushed it back and stood up.
 
“I’m just saying, if you two ever get in a scrape you can’t explain to anyone else, you can call me.”

           
He walked to the door.
 

Wait
.
 

But her lips didn’t let her form the words.
 
They were pinched shut.
 
A few steps out the door and he assured her father, and now her mother too, everything was fine with his perfect hair and flashy smile.
 
Her mother nodded, sniffing, and then hurried into the room and over to the bed.
 
Ellie couldn’t help an eye roll.

“The answer is no, Mother, in case you were worried.”
 
To her dad she said, “It was stupid.
 
Someone at school told us there was an abandoned mine shaft under the cemetery.
 
I must have fallen.”

Her mother’s lower lip quivered and she turned back to her husband and buried her face into his shoulder.
 
It was muffled but she could hear her mother saying something about therapy for the rest of Ellie’s known life and how could they not know what a bad influence…”

“Gibbs?
 
It wasn’t his fault.”

That made her mother cry harder.
 
Her father’s face seemed to turn to stone in front of her.
 
All but his eyes.
 
His eyes glittered with unrestrained rage.
 
“He took you down there, and after, he just left you.”
   

“You can’t think he did it on purpose.
 
He couldn’t know…”
 
She couldn’t finish.
 
That’s exactly what they thought.
 
Gibbs almost killed her.

Arguing with her parents just increased her mother’s high-pitched snuffles which Ellie was sure only a dog could really appreciate, so she stopped trying and feigned fatigue.
 
Her parents let the subject drop.
 
Under the pretense of wanting to check in with Taylor, she borrowed her dad’s cell phone.
 
Even after several not so subtle hints about wanting privacy, her parents refused to budge from the two guest chairs next to her bed.
 
She switched tactics and asked if they’d get her a chocolate milkshake.
 
That couldn’t be easy to procure.
 
After patting her mother’s shoulder for the umpteenth time, her dad volunteered to get Ellie anything she wanted.
 
So then she added French fries and cheesecake to the list.
 
Even better.

Once her dad was out of the room, she dialed, pausing just for a moment to bask in the relief that working fingers produced.
 
As the phone rang, she said out of the side of her mouth.
 
“Mom, can you ask the nurse for another pillow?”
 

“Hello?”

“Hey, Taylor, it’s me.”

“Ellie!
 
What happened?
 
I didn’t know what to tell your parents and…”

She cut Taylor off.
 
“So it looks like I’ll be stuck in the hospital for a few days.
 
Not that I wanted to go to the Harvest Dance, but you know.”
 
She pretended Taylor had actually replied.
 
“Uh huh.
 
Are you still wearing the turquoise dress you picked up in Chicago?
 
Yes, you know you look drop-dead gorgeous in it.”

When it became apparent to Ellie’s mom that Ellie was going to have a completely inane teenage conversation sans anything referencing Gibbs or her trauma, her mom motioned to her that she would go get the pillow from the nurse.
 
Ellie smiled and mouthed thank you and then jumped right back into her one-sided discussion about Claire Jones’ $400 outfit which Claire had been bragging about for three weeks.
 
When the door to her room clicked shut, she sighed.

“Are they gone?” Taylor asked.

That was just one of the perks of having a best friend.
 
Ellie covered the speaker with her hand.
 
“For a minute.
 
They’re blaming Gibbs for everything.
 
They said no one else was down there when they found me.
 
They think he just left me down there to die.
 
Have you heard from anyone?”

Taylor’s voice was hushed now too.
 
“No.
 
I was locked up in that house for hours and then out of nowhere Sky showed up with a couple of others and broke me out.
 
He said something had happened but he was going to take care of it.
 
I didn’t know you were in trouble until your dad told me you were in surgery.”
 
She took a few deep breaths as if trying to calm imminent hysteria, then said, “I’m just glad it’s over.
 
And what did you mean about Claire Jones?
 
Did she really pay that much for her dress?
 
It’s not like it’s prom or even the winter formal.”

Footsteps padded toward her door.
 
“Taylor, Gibbs didn’t leave me.
 
He was hurt.
 
I have to go back.
 
This isn’t over, yet.”

There was a long pause with nothing but blank air between them.
 
The door opened and her mother came in carrying a stiff, white pillow.
 
Still, Taylor said nothing.
 
The silence gnawed a hole in Ellie’s already frayed nerves.

Finally, Taylor said, “How do we bust you out?”

Ellie inhaled and then let her breath out all at once.
 
“Don’t worry, I’ve got help.
 
Just bring me my Calculus book with you when you come by, k?
 
All right, see you in a bit.”
 

She smiled at her mom and then started punching numbers again.
 
“I’m just going to text a couple of kids to make sure I’ve got all my homework assignments, just in case I’m not back at school on Monday.”
 
Her mother bobbed her curly, brown head approvingly and then fussed over a new arrangement for the pillows.
 
After her mom sat down again and started flipping through a
Better Homes and Garden
magazine, Ellie slipped the business card out from under her thigh.
 
She repeated the number in her head a couple times and then surreptitiously slid the card under her leg again.
 

Gibbs hurt.
 
Need help.
 
Full disclosure if you keep your lid shut.
 
DNR
.

She punched in the number and pressed send.
  

Taylor showed up first.
 
Her long blonde curls were pulled up into a tight ponytail and she wore black skinny jeans and last year’s softball hoodie.
 
Even if her parents weren’t the suspicious type, this ensemble should have set off a hundred red flags.
 
Ellie sneaked a glance at her parents to gauge their reaction.
 
They exchanged the pleasant preliminaries required of them and then went back to discussing plans for their bathroom remodel.
 
For once she was very thankful her mother was completely oblivious to the teenage social scene.