Kiss of the Sun (18 page)

Martha ducked her head and stepped into the closet-sized entrance chamber. She was able to stand, semi-crouched, without her head touching the stone ceiling. The floor was littered with beer cans, broken glass, and large flat stones. The chamber narrowed immediately, turning into a twisting keyhole-shaped passage.

There was only one way to go, so she stooped to enter the passage and followed its undulating course through the hillside. The curved walls were ribbed like washboards and the thin layer of mud on the floor was disturbed by numerous footprints of those who had gone before. And one of those sets of prints, she now felt certain, was Jarrell's.

She had gone about a hundred yards when the passage began to narrow even further, becoming nothing more than a vertical slit that curved away into darkness. She called out to Jarrell, and her voice again sounded eerie to her own ears, echoing faintly in the darkness ahead. She turned sideways, held her flashlight pointed into the fissure, and worked her body forward. Her ankles twisted on the stones along the floor, and she could hear dripping water as she slithered between the damp limestone surfaces. She shined the light up and could no longer see any sign of a ceiling within reach of the beam. She took another step, and the rocky flooring dropped steeply downward. She braced her forearms against the walls on either side and took a tentative step into space. Nothing but air.

She tried to shine the light down into the gap below, but the passage was too tight for her to squat down into a posture that might afford a clearer view. Still, she could hear the dripping water ahead, echoing in a space that sounded larger and more open.

She shimmied out over the opening, one foot perched on a rock, the other feeling around in space, her elbows braced between the walls. Then the slab she stood on tilted. She began to slide.

She clawed at the stone face in the dark but could find no purchase as she stumbled downward over a slick, steeply raked incline. Her butt slammed painfully onto another surface. She heard a clatter below, then was enveloped in darkness. She had dropped the flashlight.

She sat there, afraid to move farther, submerged in absolute blackness. Apparently the flashlight had gone out, wherever it had landed, and she had no notion of how far it had fallen. She sat up on the muddy stone and groped around in the darkness on the chance that it might have landed nearby, but her hands found only a smooth, damp stone surface and the steep slope of rock behind her. She reached above her head and found no ceiling. She gradually stood, sticking her hands out in all directions. Open space.

She took a step forward and paused, realizing that the ledge could drop off again at any moment. She stepped back and found the cold rock wall again with her hands. She began to tremble violently. Panic was nipping at her skin, waiting for an opening, ready to move in and take full possession.

She sat down, pulled her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them. Her own two legs, the only familiar tactile landmarks in this void. She closed her eyes, as if that could somehow dispel the absolute dark. Behind her eyelids, pale, amoeba-like shapes floated. Precursors to an incipient phantasmagoria.

Don't panic. Think. You can't see, but what do your other senses tell you?

It felt like a large room. Nearby, there was a periodic, regular drip of water.
Drip…drip…drip.
Like a faucet with a slow leak. What else? The scent of mud and stone. Earthy, cool air. And, now that she was sitting perfectly still, she could sense something else out there in the darkness. Some irregularity in the cool air—a presence.

“Jarrell?” she said softly, her voice sepulchral in the void.

After another moment, she heard a sliding movement, a slight thump, and a light came on some twenty yards away. It was not a beam, but a pervasive glow that spread in all directions.

“Jarrell?”

He took a step forward. He had a bandana around his head, knotted in the back, and a small backpack, which was sliding from his shoulder even as he took another step toward her. His eyes gleamed with wonder in the darkness, blinking.

The chamber they stood in was as large as a gymnasium and littered with furniture-sized slabs of rock, some piled in jumbles like the debris from a collapsed building. Martha took a step forward, but Jarrell held up the palm of his hand. “Wait there,” he said, and threaded his way among the boulders, climbing up and over the last to reach the clear spot where she stood. He dropped his backpack to the ground, held the battery-powered Coleman lantern up, and tilted his head slightly. “Martha…how did you—”

She went straight toward him across the smooth rock face and took hold of him, wrapped her arms around his warm body, every particle of her being vibrating with gratitude. “Jarrell…oh God, Jarrell, you have to turn back…you have to…”

“Shh, it's all right now, Martha. It's okay.”

“Thank God you're all right. Thank God I found you.”

She pulled back and met his eyes for a moment, then brought her face closer, placed her lips over his. In the subterranean darkness, she kissed him deeply, tasting him, feeling the damp warmth of his body next to hers. She closed her eyes and could smell the ocean and the island, could see rivers and sunlight. Green, shimmering corridors of life.

After a minute he pulled his head back to look at her. “Jesus, it's good to see you. But how did you get here? I thought you were in the hospital. I thought—”

“I was.”

“You got out?”

“I had to, Jarrell. I had to warn you.”

“Warn me?”

The vision popped into her head—a sudden montage of images.
The mansion. The ravine. The figure lying there, among the leaves. No, no, no.
She embraced him again.

“Jarrell…”

“It's okay now. You're all right now. Let's go over here and sit down, and you tell me what's going on.”

He guided her over to a flat rock and they sat. He placed the Coleman lantern on a rock across from them. “I knew they'd put you in a psychiatric hospital, but I thought—”

“I escaped.”

“How?”

“After Slinky came to see me. I stole a car—”

“You stole a car?”

Martha put her arms around him. “I had to, Jarrell. I just had to find you. I had to warn you.”

“Warn me of what?”

She turned toward him and held both his hands. “Jarrell—the visions I saw. The figure in the ditch. The mansion. I thought those were visions of the past, but while I was in the hospital, I realized they weren't about the past. They are about the future. If you go to Erringer's mansion, something terrible is going to happen. I can feel it.”

Sitting there on the rock, Jarrell gazed at her. “Let's back up for a minute. You said that Slinky came by?”

Martha reached into her pocket and pulled out the USB drive. She held it in the palm of her hand so carefully that it might have been a robin's egg. “Yes. He finally broke into the website. He gave me this.”

Jarrell took the drive from her palm and turned it slowly. “So Slinky finally found a way through. He's like a dog with a bone. What's on here?”

“I'm not sure. It's data about people. People in the network that Somis told us about. And there are videos on here, too. He pulled them from the database.”

“What kind of videos?”

Martha swallowed. “I didn't look at them, I was afraid to look. Slinky said they show people being killed. I think some of them are the UNICON murders.”

Jarrell turned and sat silently, forearms resting on his legs, staring at the floor of the cave. Martha waited, the cavern as silent as an empty cathedral save for the slow, steady drip of water from a stalactite. “This all started when we went to Conrad Erringer's fundraiser,” he said at last. “It's been him all along, hasn't it? He's the one who's been pulling the strings.”

Martha nodded. “I think so.”

“He's the only person who ever really helped me after my parents were gone. Why did he help me in the first place? Why did he give me that fellowship? What was it all about?”

“I don't know. I just know you have to stay away from that mansion. Do you believe me?”

Jarrell nodded. “Yes. I do.” He picked up his backpack from the cave floor, opened it, and pulled out a clear plastic pouch.

“What's that?” Martha asked.

“It's a dry bag,” Jarrell said, opening a plastic zipper along the top. Through the clear side of the bag, Martha could see a couple of green boxes labeled
WATERPROOF MATCHES.
“I'm going to put the drive in here to keep it dry. Is this the only copy Slinky had?”

“No, he said he made a backup copy. But it's encrypted.”

Jarrell zipped the dry bag and stuffed it into his jeans pocket. “All right. Let's just get the hell out of here and give this data to the authorities. After that—” He stopped mid-sentence, held his hand up, cocked his head. Then he flipped the switch on the lantern and they were plunged into darkness.

“Jarrell—”

“Shh,” he said. Martha sat still, listening. Then she heard it, too. A sound like bricks shifting slightly in the dark. The cave was again silent for a moment. Then another sound—a squelch. A suctioning of mud. Footsteps.

She turned in the direction of the sound and saw a pale flare of light play across the stone archway behind them. “Who do you think—” Martha whispered.

“Shh,” Jarrell said. She heard him rustle in the backpack and click. A penlight came on, shooting a bright beam toward a passage across from them. “C'mon,” Jarrell said. “We need to hide.”

He led her slowly around a corner, and she felt along the stone with her hands as they went under a low shelter created by a massive slab of rock leaning against smaller boulders. They crawled in deeper until they reached the back wall of the grotto. Then Jarrell turned off the penlight and they squatted in complete darkness.

Martha heard men talking. She could distinguish at least three individual voices. Then came the sweep of flashlight beams. One of the men stepped into the room where they had just been. Martha could see nothing of the man, just the bright disk of his bulky lantern and the swing of the intense white beam. He scanned the walls and adjoining passages with it, and the beam at one point passed the spot where they were crouched, though it did not pause there.

He came closer to them, and another figure entered the chamber behind him, with a similar juglike lantern. “Anything here?” the second man asked. His beam fell across the side of the first man, and Martha had to stifle a gasp. She saw his face, as pale as a mushroom in a cellar. She recognized the tall frame and complexion of the man she'd seen at the top of the stairway of the hotel, the one who later followed her into the cemetery. They were so close she could make out the pale pink of his irises. He wore a shoulder holster, from which protruded the butt of a gun.

Their flashlights swept the chamber, played along the ledge of the grotto where Martha and Jarrell were hiding, then across a stalactite beyond that hung from the ceiling.

“See anything?”

“No,” the man with the marble face replied. His voice was airy and rough. “The whole Falcons starting lineup could hide in this place and you wouldn't spot a single one of them.”

The second man shone his beam along the mud floor. “Footprints.”

“They go every which way.”

“Could be from the spelunkers that come in here.”

“Well, they're in here somewhere. The security camera caught them at the entrance.”

“Anything down there?” It was a third voice, out of sight. Martha detected a trace of an accent.

“Stay up top, Meacham. It's the only way to the main entrance. We'll keep on going this way.”

“I'll go back to the gate,” said the man with the accent. There came the sound of more muddy footsteps, a bit of scrambling, then the room was silent again save for the steady drip of the water.

Martha took hold of Jarrell's upper arm. “What should we do?” she whispered.

Jarrell turned on the penlight, unfolded his cave map on the rock surface where they sat, and studied it, cupping his hand around the lens to minimize the leakage of light. The printed map was a line drawing, a sprawl of amorphous lobes and tendrils.

“There's more than one exit,” he said, pointing to a serpentine side path. “It looks tight, but we should be able to get out this way if we follow the stream.”

They went around a corner in the dark and Jarrell turned on his lantern and located a low, round opening near the base of one wall. “We'll have to crawl for a bit. It gets smaller, and then larger again, okay?” He looked at her, and she nodded. She was willing to do anything, go anywhere, to deliver him from the fate foretold in her vision.

Jarrell took off his backpack and led the way, pushing it along the cave floor in front of them. They went for several yards crawling on hands and knees, single file. As they progressed, the ceiling got lower and lower, until they were belly-crawling. It was a situation that might have produced absolute terror in Martha had it not been for Jarrell's presence there with her, even in this wormhole deep under the earth.

Just when it seemed the tunnel would get too narrow to continue, it began to widen again, and Martha could sense open space ahead. Jarrell pulled himself out ahead of her, then turned and held out his hand to help her stand up.

Jarrell pointed his light up and around the room. It was similar to the other open chamber, but on a smaller scale, like an elongated igloo, with low tunnels leading out from either end. Running the length of the passage was a still, quiet stream, the water in it so clear that it might have been invisible were it not for the reflection of Jarrell's penlight on the surface. Martha could see the cave floor, littered with rocks, through the glassy water.

“Where do we go from here?” Martha asked.