Polished (5 page)

He stared at that belt and barely blinked. “I don’t think it’s rising anymore.”

“Thank fucking God. Turn the light off and save the battery. We’ll check it again in a few.” Jack paused. “We could yell, but I don’t think anyone would hear us down here.”

“There’s no way.” Spencer couldn’t help but laugh a little. “We’d look like a couple of assholes. But fuck it, right? It’s worth a shot.”

“As long as we both look like assholes.”

Together they called out into the blackness again and again until it was just too ridiculous to continue.

Spencer pulled his arms around himself. They were so far underground the air temperature hadn’t any relation to the summer heat that baked the city above. “Let’s face it. We have no idea how long we’ll be down here.”

“Shouldn’t take them that long to realize we’re missing,” Jack said.

Spencer wasn’t so sure about that. “I heard Shirley say she was leaving early to take her granddaughter out to dinner, and the crew—”

“Right. I sent the crew home until we assessed how to play the blast plan. Didn’t want them hanging around on the clock with nothing to do.”

Spencer let out a long sigh. “So…this could be a while.”

Jack grunted. “Fuck.”

Spencer nodded. “Exactly.”

Chapter Four

The omelet was coming along nicely, setting just right in the gourmet pan Rory and Spencer had picked up in Bed Bath & Beyond when they moved in together, though the rather dull cheddar and eggs could have used some smoked chipotle peppers. She knew a place in Spanish Harlem that sold the best chipotles around and decided she just had to see if her instincts were right, intending to try her improved recipe tomorrow morning. Spencer could stop on his way home from the city. She called him again, but it went right to voice mail.

Maybe he was in a meeting with that consultant guy he kept complaining about. He must have had a good reason to shut his phone off. She left a message about the peppers and hung up. Then she felt instantly guilty. Spencer had been working all day. She should be planning to satisfy his cravings. She called back and told him to forget the peppers and just bring himself home. She promised to be up waiting.

* * *

The still and dank surroundings haunted Spencer like a malicious ghost. He just wanted Jack to keep talking and help make each minute seem less like an hour. In the silence, their voices echoed through the rapidly cooling air.

Spencer’s throat felt thick, as if his fear were a physical thing, lodged right at his windpipe. He cleared his throat and steadied his breathing. “This tunnel is graded. We’re on higher ground at this end. As long as they closed the water supply line, we should be OK.” Some reason resided within that line of thinking. Still, their entire world consisted of four grimy cement walls, about ten thousand gallons of water, and less available air than Spencer was happy with. How long would they have to wait? How long was too long? A shiver racked him and he steeled himself against his fears, stubbornly trying to shift his thoughts. “Feel free to change the subject, though.”

Jack’s voice rasped from out of the dark. “What do you want to talk about?”

Spencer sighed. “Fuck, man, I don’t know…anything.”

Jack didn’t answer at first. The pause dragged out somewhere past desperation. Then finally his low, gravelly voice bounced off the walls of their watery cell. “What’s your girlfriend’s name?”

This was a subject he could talk about. Besides, something about being up shit’s creek with a guy made you feel like sharing. “Her name is Rory.”

“How long?”

“Three years. Living together for two. She’s the most amazing woman, just the right amount of everything, you know?”

“I don’t, actually. I haven’t been that lucky yet…to meet someone so special, that is.” Jack sighed.

Spencer envisioned Jack’s expression in the dark, drawn away to someplace distant and uninviting. He’d seen it on his face before, noticed it the moment Jack disconnected from the worrisome phone call he’d received that morning. No anger, just the flat press of disappointment tightening his features.

“I’m gonna propose. Soon, I think.”

“You think?” Jack said. “I’m not saying I know what I’m talking about, but, dude, what are you waiting for?”

“I just want things to be right. No unfinished business.”

“Of course. It’s a big step.” Jack paused. “You seem like the kind of guy to be cautious.”

Spencer took a moment to assess what he might mean. “What gives you that impression?” He’d always considered himself diligent and focused. But cautious? He dangled from rocks two hundred feet in the air on a regular basis. How cautious was that?

“You like to make sure you have things covered. Am I right?” Jack paused for a word of affirmation.

“Yeah, you could say that, I guess.”

“I’m pretty good at reading people.” Jack groaned and Spencer heard his boot scrape as he tried to shift.

“You should keep still.”

“Now you tell me.” Jack laughed with sarcasm through a pained grunt. “Some fucking day this turned out to be.”

“It could have been worse,” Spencer said. A rush of cold rode through him with the knowledge of how close they’d come to drowning. The sudden need to reach out to Jack settled into the moment like a spider dropping in on a picnic. It startled him, but not because the sensation didn’t belong; it startled him because it felt so natural. “How’s your shoulder?”

“Fucking on fire. Your ankle?”

“I’m trying not to think about it.” Despite the pain and the fear, Spencer found himself smiling. Jack wasn’t so bad; not nearly the lily-ass prick he’d taken him for just that morning. He’d focus on keeping him talking. They could concentrate on good things and keep the fear from overwhelming them. “Hey, why don’t you tell me about the last good meal you had.”

“Depends on what you call good,” Jack replied.

“I’m talking about the kind of meal that you remember for days afterward.”

“For me, it can’t just be about the food. You’ve got to have the right company, you know? Good conversation, laughter. I can have my choice of delicious food any night of the week. Good company is a lot harder to come by.”

Spencer thought about that answer. Hell, he’d only been trying to lighten the mood with the question, but Jack spoke the raw truth. Almost anything was better with the right company to enjoy it with. He knew that all too well. “My lady is probably home whipping up something awesome as we speak.” Spencer turned in Jack’s direction as if he could see him in the dark. “You should come on up north and have dinner with us sometime.”

“Listen, dude, we get out of here in one piece and I’ll look forward to having a good laugh about it over your girlfriend’s amazing food.”

There was that impulse again—to reach out to him, comfort him, feel this man’s hard form under his hand. They’d get through this. They had to. Spencer resisted the urge to touch Jack, but he felt a clumsy hand in the dark brush against his knee. Goose bumps flared in mocking disobedience across his skin, marching up his torso.

Jack swore softly under his breath. “Sorry, man. I just needed to shift a little.”

“It’s all right.” The lump returned to Spencer’s throat. Maybe he could clear it away with a swift change of subject.

“Do you get out of the city much?”

“Not as much as I’d like. My father never fails to call me in on some emergency clusterfuck right when I have plans to get out to the Hamptons.” He laughed suddenly, an acerbic chuckle that didn’t really sound very jovial at all. “One time, I was at the fucking gate in Newark, ready to take off for Bermuda and he actually told me I had to cancel my trip in order to straighten out the cement fiasco the Port Authority had with their new terminal.”

“I remember that.” Spencer said. “There were cracks everywhere. It looked like a damn earthquake had rocked the place.”

“You saw it?”

“On the local news. I stay out of the city as much as I can.” In truth Spencer wouldn’t be caught dead in the overcrowded and generally rank Port Authority Bus Terminal. The idea gave him the chills. Caught dead. Fuck. Next subject
.
“Nothing wrong with being a hard worker.”

“I work plenty hard.” There was an edge to Jack’s response.

“I wasn’t saying—”

“That I’ve been handed everything on a silver platter?” Jack grunted, like he’d bitten down on something distasteful. “Living up to your boss’s expectations is one thing. But you have no idea the extra bullshit you have to put up with when your boss is your father.”

Spencer laughed in astonishment. “Can’t say that I relate. My dad is a royal fuckup.”

“Ah, but you assume that your dad is a bigger fuckup than mine.”

“Well, for one thing, he isn’t the CEO of New York’s largest engineering consulting firm.”

“So if you’re wealthy, you can’t be a fuckup?”

“I’d say that makes for a strong argument.”

“Well, I’d put my dad’s fuckups against your dad’s any day.” Jack blew out a long ragged sigh.

“Jack,” Spencer said with a lopsided grin. “That’s a battle you would lose.”

* * *

Rory finished cleaning up the kitchen and glanced at her phone. She thought maybe she’d missed hearing Spencer’s ring tone while the water was on. No missed calls. Nothing. It wasn’t like Spencer to go so long without so much as a text. Double shift or not, he always kept in touch. Rory dialed him again, but expected it to go straight to voice mail just like the other six calls she’d made. Frustrated, she plopped onto her mom’s hand-me-down couch and flipped through the channels. By nine she realized she wasn’t just frustrated; she was worried.

Spencer didn’t talk much about work or any of the guys on his crew. She didn’t have another number to call. By ten she started to consider hopping in her car and heading down to where a Google search said a new subway hub was planned. By eleven fifteen she was crossing the GW Bridge.

* * *

Spencer flicked on the light and checked the water line again. It had dropped only slightly. “It’s draining but it might take a week at this rate.”

“That lamp isn’t waterproof. It’s so fucking dark in here; it’d be way too easy to get turned around without it. Besides, there’s no way to know how far an underwater swim it would be to the opening in the seal.”

“I just hate lying here, waiting,” Spencer said, thinking he’d hate being swallowed up in unknown volumes of icy cold water even more.

“Dude, we’ll get through this. We’re going to get out of here.” Jack’s voice had turned low and hard, like he was warning the fates not to fuck with him. “OK, new subject,” he went on, sounding oddly cheered by the words.

Spencer felt himself cheering up a bit too. The worst crapload of luck had landed on top of both of them, but he was enjoying learning a little more about Jack and sharing some bits about himself. The thought seemed ridiculous, but Spencer smiled anyway. “Your choice.”

“Hobbies. Have any?”

“I’m a climber.”

“Rock climbing? The real deal, with ropes and carabiners, harnesses, all that?”

“You sound shocked,” Spencer said, amused.

“I don’t know. I expected you to say baseball or riding your chopper across Orange County on the weekends.”

Spencer smirked to himself. “And you? Let me guess. You’re a golfer.”

“Hate it.”

“Tennis?”

Jack laughed. “Who’s stereotyping now?”

“All you Hamptons types are either tennis players or golfers.” He was only half joking. He could count on one hand the number of people he knew who had ever even been to the Hamptons, and all of them he only knew from afar. Everything he knew about the wealthy man’s playground he’d picked up from general folklore.

“I have a little skiff that I race whenever I get the chance.”

“Ah, sailing. That’s the one I missed.

“And you forgot polo. I must remember to ask the butler to shine my boots for tomorrow’s match against the Duke of Sag Harbor.”

“Now you’re fucking with me.”

“I just didn’t want to ruin the image you’ve concocted.” He laughed, his amusement trailing off into a sigh. Then his tone changed to that of real interest. “Must be a rush to conquer some kind of impossible-looking mountain. You know, get on top of that thing and beat it at its own game.”

Spencer warmed inside with the poignancy of Jack’s words. He faced his demons every time he was on that mountain, the vertical cliff looking insurmountable as he stared up at its rugged face. It took him ten years to master the climb up to the top. He learned how to win out against his impulse to turn and look down, to be afraid. Now that mountain was his, under control, no longer the giant looming over him. “It’s almost better than sex.”

“That’s what I would say about racing my little girl.” Jack chuckled. “
Almost
better than sex.”

Chapter Five

Outside, the air remained heavy with August humidity. Rory raked her hands through her frizzed curls and listened keenly to what was being said to her. “Look, ma’am, we evacuated this block hours ago. Except for the water company, no one’s been in or out of here since.”

Rory narrowed her dark brown eyes at the police officer. “I’m trying to tell you that my boyfriend was working in this area and I haven’t heard from him all night. If he’d left here safely he would have called.” God, her arms itched. Stress made her break out in hives. She rubbed the reddening flesh against her side and tried to think. She vaguely remembered hearing something on the news about a water main break. It hadn’t occurred to her that Spencer might have been in jeopardy because of it. Now all arrows pointed to the sheet of water making the intersection of Fifteenth Street and Sixth Avenue look like a reflecting pond under the night lights of NYC. “He was working on a tunnel. Did anyone check underground?”

Rory followed the officer’s gaze to the flooded street. Several construction cones littered the area, having floated to their final resting spots. A trailer seemed suspended nearby with the water hugging it above its cinderblock supports.