Trapped (16 page)

“
Maybe I could go in there, talk to them about money,” Chris says quietly, pulling back. “They’re not the masterminds behind this – Phil just said as much. They’re not the ones who planned this, with everything at stake. Maybe they’ll —“

I shake my head, tears gathering. “Phil and Henry want blood. It won’t work, Chris. They’re taking us out. All that’s left to decide is how many others they’ll…they’ll…”

“Don't say it,” Chris says quietly, his blue eyes studying mine. We can hear the low voices of the workmen, still debating. But they’ll come to a decision, maybe sooner, maybe later. Either way…time is running out.

“The
Governor.” I stand suddenly, looking over toward the town car. “They said something about someone else to take care of. They’re after him, too. But Governor Rosings has been calm and prepared throughout this whole thing – he can help us, Chris.”

“But
Emily—“

“We have to try,”
I say, pulling him to his feet. “We’ll…we’ll tell him what we know. And maybe he’ll help us come up with a plan.”

Hand in hand, we walk around the back of Simon Tara’s truck, ducking low as we hurry across the middle of the tunnel, stopping
silently behind the Governor’s car. The town car had ended up just a dozen yards behind the plumbers’ truck, within easy view of their open cargo area, though the rear of the truck had been angled toward the railing so that it was impossible to see there from most of the rest of the tunnel.

Chris raises his head slightly, studying the angles. He points to the driver’s side, the side most out of view to the plumbers. Crawling slowly, Chris approaches the rear door, tapping lightly.

For a moment nothing happens, and I wait in silence, just behind him. Then we hear shuffling from inside the car, and the door opens slightly.

Governor
Rosings looks out, first straight ahead, then down when he notices Chris.

“Can I help you young man?” he says, his voice obviously groggy from how late it is.

“Please…please, can we come in and talk?” Chris’s voice is a mere whisper, the fear in his eyes enough to get the Governor to open the door immediately.

Chris cra
wls in, and I scramble in after him. He closes the door softly behind me and shuts out the harsh light of the tunnel.

My first thought when we enter the town car i
s
cozy.
The back seat is large and spacious, with plenty of floor space before the darkened partition that divides the Governor from Bernard’s driver’s area. Upholstered in warm, polished wood and plush black leather, the interior of the car appears nearly as clean and wealthy as the outside looks. The Governor had slid back to the seat on the right side of the car, while Chris had climbed in and taken the left seat. With the middle seat’s cushion flipped down to form a table, Chris had helped me scramble in and kneel on the floor between his legs.

Folding t
ables had been installed in the backs of the front seats, and the Governor’s side has his table flipped down, supporting a glowing laptop that the Governor quickly shuts. The sleeves to his white dress shirt are rolled up to his elbows, his tie and black suit jacket left discarded above the rear dashboard. The space is only dimly lit, the outside light barely filtering through the darkened windows.

No Jacuzzi, I note absently, though it seems like the
Governor has indeed been living in style. The pockets behind the front seats are neatly lined with books and other reading materials, while the cup holders possess several almost-full bottles of water.

We’re silent for a moment, my hands gripping Chris’s knee tightly as we face the
Governor, wondering where to start.

“Well?” The
Governor asks, still adjusting the interior of the car. He moves the laptop around, shuffling a few other items out of sight.

“
Governor Rosings,” Chris says, pausing to link his hand with mine. “We’ve…something’s happened. We’ve been suspicious of the workmen parked ahead of you for a long time, and I think…I think…”

“You think what?” he asks, his voice pleasant as he finally turns to us.
Face relaxed into its resident smile and eyes shining from ingrained laugh lines, the Governor seems inherently trustworthy.

“We think they’re going to try to kill us,” Chris says slowly. I watch the
Governor’s face fall, the lines becoming more harsh and solemn.

“We’ve been trapped down here a week, son. That’s bound to do something to the mind. Add to that hunger and thirst, and it’s easy to become paranoid—“

“We’re not, sir,” Chris says quickly. “You see, we know something about them…we know that they’re the reason this tunnel collapsed in the first place.”

The
Governor’s eyebrows bend in a frown, and Chris squeezes my hand. “That’s a serious accusation you two are making.”

“It’s true,” I tell him, my heart pounding. “I saw three of them working on the side of the road, just before the cave-in. The other two had met them there, with the truck, when they…when they set off some kind of explosion or something.”

“I saw the explosion on the eastern side,” Chris says, his voice low and steady. “I saw something like a bomb go off.”

The
Governor raises his eyebrows. “It couldn’t have been some pipes bursting? There’s a lot of pressure in this tunnel, you know, and the landslide could have –“

“I know what I saw,” Chris interrupts. “We both do. They’ve been lying, from the beginning.”

“And yet you’ve seemed awfully cozy with them,” Governor Rosings says, crossing his arms as he leans back. “We’ve seen you from the car, playing card games with them every day.”

“To avoid suspicion,” Chris says quickly. “And to get some of their food. They came prepared with tons of it – stacks and stacks of soda, chips,
cookies – fresh fruit and vegetables, even. They said they just liked to keep snacks in the truck for the jobs they work on –“

“Sounds reasonable enough.”

“But it’s way too much. They came prepared, sir, to stay down here and wait out rescue as long as they have to.”

Sitting on the floor, I have to look up to watch both
Governor Rosings and Chris. The Governor, with his nostrils flaring slightly, seems much more tense than his carefree posture would indicate. Chris’s flashing blue eyes and low voice may be convincing him, then, even if he seems to be belittling our concerns.

“Why would they do such a thing?” The
Governor asks. “Why would anyone want to hurt so many innocent people?”

“We think they were hired by someone to do it – someone who’s targeting politicians.
So many were travelling through here after the convention…there were predictions on the radio that as many as a dozen congressmen lost their lives, as well as several Presidential candidates.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “I know some of my colleagues might have lost their lives down here, but nature’s a mysterious thing…a freak landslide seems just as plausible.”

“We know that’s why they did it!” Chris’s voice is getting louder, and I squeeze his knee tightly to quiet him. “We know,” he repeats.

Above me I hear something slide open, and I look up to see Bernard’s face in the window of the partition. “Everything okay,
Governor?” the driver asks, looking through with surprise.

I lean closer to Chris
, hoping to catch his eye, to offer my support. My knees shift slightly, bumping into some things that were jammed under the seat. I let my hand drop down, feeling lightly…an overstuffed trash bag, I think, rustling lightly under my wandering fingers. And several long, heavy rectangles that feel like part of a computer.

“Just some late night visitors,”
the Governor says, relaxing once more into his seat. “Nothing to worry about.”

Bernard nods once, sliding the window closed agai
n. We all wait to hear the latch click before anyone speaks.

“They know we know about them,” Chris picks back up. “We overheard them talking just now. They’re planning on killing us. They might be planning on killing everyone down here, to leave no witnesses.”

“We’ve survived more than a week down here, son. Think rationally about this. Why would they—“

“
They killed Simon Tara, because he found out the truth,” Chris says, desperation in his voice. “And now they’re planning on doing the same to us!”

“Simon Tara died of natural causes,” the
Governor’s eyes are harsh, clearly impatient. “I saw him myself. These are just wild speculations, boy, about good people—“

“And they’re going to try to kill you too! We overheard them – they’re going
get rid of us, and then take you out, too. You’re the only politician that survived this cave-in. They’re not going to leave the job partially done.”

This stops the
Governor up short. “You heard them say that? That they’re going to kill me?”

“They said they had ‘one more’ to take care of. It’s you they were talking about,
Governor Rosings…we’re sure of it.”

His face relaxes slightly, before hardening into a frown again. “How many people have you told about this? Are the others…in danger as well?”

“We haven’t told anyone,” I say quietly. “We didn’t want to risk it.” I look down, unable to read the Governor’s expression. He’s concerned, I can tell…but concerned enough to believe us?

My eyes catch on the opening in the middle seat – with the cushion flipped down, I can see a small door that leads to the trunk. He hadn’t remembered to close it when Chris and I came inside, and my eyes can dimly make out several bulky objects in the trunk of the town car.
Cases of water, I think…and boxes and boxes of orange crackers.

The
Governor’s hands dart quickly, slamming the small door shut to block my gaze. His eyes meet mine briefly, flashing in the dark interior.

“I just don’t think there’s much to tell,” the
Governor says quietly, his voice ringing with finality.

“Everything we just told you—“

“Everything you said to me,” he raises his voice over Chris’s objection, “is the unfortunate product of two teenagers with wild imaginations and too much time on their hands. You’re tired. Your bodies are stressed from lack of food and water, from the difficult conditions down here. You’re imagining things.”

“We know what we heard!” Chris nearly yells. “We know what we saw!”

“You have no proof!”

The car is silent, both the
Governor and Chris breathing heavily. Chris’s hand tightens on mine with crushing force. The Governor is making it more than clear that he doesn’t believe us…that he’s not going to help us.

We’re on our own.

“Leave now. Go back to your car. Get some sleep.” The Governor’s voice is low and hollow, just a shimmer of his normal warm tones. “The rescue team is only hours away. We can forget this conversation ever happened.”

Chris’s eyes narrow, the brilliant blue sparking in the dim light. I think for a moment that he might say something else. Instead he jerks the door open,
stepping out quickly as he helps me out behind him.

Gripping my forearm, he
drags me roughly behind the town car. After making sure all the plumbers are still safely in the back of the truck, he pulls me across the middle of the tunnel and back behind Simon Tara’s truck again. Kneeling down, he takes a moment to catch his breath, and then looks me steadily in the eyes.

“He wants proof, Emily.”

“I don’t see how we can get any,” I say quietly, my eyes taking in his feverish excitement. “We told him everything we know.”

“There’s
one thing we can prove, though.”

I frown. “There’s no
way to verify what we saw – the plumbers on the side of the road, the explosion. There’s no way to record that conversation we heard.”

“But
our last piece of evidence against them, maybe the most powerful – that they killed Simon Tara. We can prove that. I’m sure of it.”

I take a deep breath, my stomach unstable. “How?” I ask him quietly.

His eyes shift focus, moving beyond me.

“By going to look at the body.”

Chapter 16 – Time and Space

“If I thought it was safe, you know I’d make you stay down here, right?”

I laugh unsteadily as Chris wraps his hands around my waist, his voice low as he stands behind me on the concrete bench.

“I’m not sure what he’ll look like…after a couple of days…”

“I’ll be fine,” I tell him quickly.

His fingers tighten around me just a little. “I hope
I
will. You ready?”

Bending my knees, I jump upward as Chris lifts me, his strong arms carrying my weight easily. My hands connect with the concrete edge, fingers clasping the torn metal floor of the ventilation area.
Although my shoulder is still sore from the fight a few days ago, I’m able to hang on to the edge. Chris’s hands move quickly down my body, sliding down my legs as he lifts me up higher.

I’m catapulted up, and I’m soon able to turn and sit on the edge, legs dangling downward. Chris’s blue eyes are questioning as he stares up at me, and I shake my head slightly. We know Mr. Tara’s body is up here, but thankfully, I don’t yet see it.

I take a deep breath, feeling what I can only hope are butterflies in my stomach. I think I smell…
something
.

Turning to lay on my stomach, I reach a hand back down for Chris. His eyes
glance quickly toward the plumber’s truck, toward the dim lines of the town car. We don’t want to be caught, so Chris can’t use a lawn chair to stand on to give him a few added inches. He’s going to have to leap straight from the bench to the ceiling.

Taking a few steps back to the edge, Chris lunges once, twice, and volleys himself upward. His arm clasps my wrist, and I wrap my fingers around him tightly. Thankfully, his other ha
nd finds a grip on the concrete. Muscles straining, he tries to pull himself up from his tenuous hold, but his fingers start slipping.

“Come on, Champ,” he grinds out, his fingers tearing into the concrete. I pull with all my strength, his weight crushing my arm into the
concrete. We pull, and I hear a few pieces of concrete shake loose and hit the floor below.

“Argh,” I grind my teeth, pulling harder. The thin material of my pencil skirt slides too easily on the metal floor, and I can barely get traction.
The muscles in Chris’s arms bulge as he pulls upward, legs swinging wildly below him.

“Come on!
” We pull harder, his hand sliding down my arm just slightly. I lift up on my knees, jerking him up with me, as he uses his other arm to jet upward. He manages to get his free elbow up onto the floor, and I wrap my arms around his shoulders, helping to pull him the rest of the way.

He pulls his legs up, backing away from the opening as he catches his breath. “That was easier when we had more energy, I think,” Chris says, rubbing at the new scrapes on his arms.

“Yes,” I say, shaking out my shoulder and examining my scrapes as well. Chris’s eyes trace over me, studying me again, before settling on my legs. In our struggle to get him up, my black pencil skirt had risen high on my thighs. Too high, I realize with a flush, quickly adjusting the skirt to conceal my legs again.

“Well, Champ. Not only is your upper body amazing—“

“Don’t say anything,” I cut him off, earning a smile from him. Despite the seriousness of our situation, I feel my lips draw into a smile to match.

We stand up, looking around the ventilation area with uncertain eyes. Although I don’t see anything, I can
still faintly smell something putrid, like rotten eggs. Chris comes up to me, holding me close again. “Emily, just walk behind me, okay? When I see him, I’ll take a close look for…for any sign of foul play. But I don’t think you need to look at him.”

I nod silently, agreeing.

Chris takes my hand, leading the way toward the eastern side of the tunnel. We walk carefully, and the smell seems to grow stronger. I place my feet directly behind Chris’s, keeping my eyes glued to the ground until he stops.

He’s silent for a long while, studying whatever it is I’m not looking at. He doesn’t step closer, nor further away. He just stands there, studying.

“Emily,” he sighs my name, his voice unsteady. “If you can…I think you should see this.”

“Umm…is it…is it bad?”

He gives a harsh laugh. “Yeah, it’s bad alright.”

My hand tightens on his as I peek around him, my eyes widening as I see the prone figure in the light. I recognize the old man, though it hardly looks like him. His skin is bloated and discolored, with something of a greenish hue. His neck is twisted at an unnatural
angle, his eyelids wide open as he stares toward us, lifeless. Hair in disarray, his tongue is protruding just slightly from his mouth, a dark liquid trickling outward.

I feel nausea creep up, but it’s quickly replaced by shock. Bec
ause anyone who sees this body would know that Mr. Tara did not die from old age, or any other disease. The skin on his neck is twisted and torn, the deep bruising still visible under his discoloration.

He was strangled to death.

“Chris,” I whisper, turning to him in fear. “That doesn’t look like ‘natural causes’ to me.”

“I know. Asphyxiation…
they strangled him, probably with a piece of rope or something.”

“No,” I shake my head. “I mean
natural causes.
What the Governor said…he said he
saw
Mr. Tara. He said he
knew
it was ‘natural causes’ that killed him.”

Chris is silent for a moment.
“There’s no way anyone could mistake this as a natural death.”

We breathe heavily in the silence, staring at the
torn, bloated flesh on Mr. Tara’s neck.

“He lied to us,” Chris whispers. “
He knew Simon Tara was murdered.”

“But why
, Chris? Was he suspicious of them already – was he trying to keep us quiet?”

I watch as hi
s eyebrows bend deeply. “Or was he trying to protect himself?”

Our eyes lock. The
Governor…could
he
be the boss the plumbers had referred to? Could he have hired them to blow up either side of the tunnel, trapping them – and him – safely in the middle until rescue came? Could he have ordered Simon Tara killed, then helped with the cover up?

Could he be planning to do the same thing to us?

“Emily, right before he died…Simon Tara had said he wasn’t going to confront the plumbers – he told me that he wanted to talk to the Governor, report the problem to him,” Chris says slowly.

“
I saw tons of water and crackers still in his car, Chris. And a big bag of trash from him eating all this week.”

“And he gave you that apple, and that other food, after the fight.
He distributed food and water to everyone, too, saying it came from Simon Tara, but really…it was all his.”

“His laptop…it still had power. And
I’m pretty sure he had at least a dozen extra laptop batteries in his car – I think I felt them, under the seat.”

“He came prepared,” Chris says, closing his eyes.

“Just like the plumbers,” I whisper.

“Oh my God, Emily. We went to him for help…”

“And told him everything.”

His eyes open in a flash, darting quickly to the hole we’d climbed through to get up here. The bright white light of the tunnel is shining through, a beacon in the dimness of the ventilation system.
It’s tempting us, calling us to flee the striking revelations, to seek safety in the light of the tunnel.

But we can’t go back down there. Phil and the other workmen had been deciding what to do about us. They had been contemplating letting us live, buying our silence
if they had to. And when it was only the plumbers who suspected us, we still had a chance.

Governor
Rosings, though…he can’t take any risks that we’ll say anything. He’s come this far, killing hundreds of people by plotting to collapse the tunnel. He’ll kill us to ensure our silence.

He’ll kill anyone he has to. The evidence is less than five feet away from us.

I feel my knees weaken.
I did this
. I wrote the note. I lost the note. And I wanted to tell the Governor.

Chris’s eyes dart over my pale face
, then he grabs my hand and moves us quickly away from the body. Away from the entrance to the tunnel as well. I follow him numbly as we walk the length of the ventilation system, all the way to the far corner of the eastern entrance, beyond where Chris’s car must lay buried among the rocks and concrete from the cave-in.

The floor of the ventilation system
is peppered with small holes, the bright line of the tunnel below shining through. We give them a wide berth, as we had before when we’d explored this area, in case the ground around the holes is still unstable. Now we take the added precaution of being as silent as possible, so no sound could alert anyone below to where we are.

We walk as far as we can, stoppin
g only when we come up against the wall of broken concrete and boulders. I can see the scattered traces of the rock that had nearly fallen on me, that Chris had saved me from. Several others seem to have tumbled down since we’d last been up here as well.

“On this side, the cave-in isn’t
as settled,” Chris says quietly, letting go of my hand to test out some of the debris. “Things are still moving, just a little. From where I slept at night, further back, I would lay there and listen to the occasional rock fall. If there’s a way out, or at least a place to hide, this is where we’d find it, I think.”

Carefully he climbs up a few of the
larger rocks, his feet testing and moving across the boulders rapidly. A few smaller pebbles slide down when his foot missteps, the noise sounding impossibly loud as the sounds echo down the metallic walls. Still he keeps moving, arms reaching, testing, pulling. The roof to the ventilation area is so high, maybe forty feet in all, that I can easily see his plan. If we can climb high enough, there’s a chance we can slide back above the tumble of debris, safely hidden from view.

Whether or not we could remain there till rescue
comes, however, is impossible to tell.

“Emily,” Chris whispers, pausing to look down at me. “Do you think you could climb up here? It’s not very solid—“

“I’ll be fine,” I tell him quickly. Whatever it takes to get out of the line of danger, I’ll manage.

Nodding, Chris returns
to his task. He reaches toward another rock, climbing, finding a handhold a little further up.

Tentatively I step
forward, placing a foot on one of the lowest boulders, a gnarled mass of steel and concrete. I try my weight on it, bracing my hands on the pile of debris above it—

“Chris!” I whisper loudly, pressing my hands more firmly against the rocks. I move to another one, reaching lower, until at last my hands are on the ground. “Chris – the ground. It’s vibrating.”

Chris looks down at me mid-reach, his eyebrows knotted. “Why would…” the words trail off as his fingers splay over the rocks near him. Slowly he starts climbing back down, landing softly next to me to kneel on the floor.

“You’re right…it’s faint, but the floor here is vibrating.” Feeling around us, we try to sense where the vibrations are coming from.

“What’s causing it?” I whisper. “It’s not…it’s not caving in again?”

“No, you remember the last time – there was nothing subtle about it.”

He keeps searching the floor, testing his forearm against it to pick up on the smallest vibrations. After crawling about a dozen feet away from me, he returns quickly.

“Champ, this was a good find. A really good find.”

I look at him, waiting as his lips slowly curl into a smile.

“It’s the rescue team,” he says, his eyes sparkling. “It’s
gotta be.”

My eyes widen as I feel the ground again, using the softer skin of my forearm to test it, as Chris had. “They’re c
oming from the eastern entrance, then? I think I heard something on the radio about it a while ago.”

He nods. “Drilling
their way through. They’re close – we wouldn’t feel the vibrations if they weren’t. Emily – they could break through soon.”

Our eyes lock.
We’ve made it.

Smiling, Chris wraps me in his arms, pulling me into a
tight embrace. My hands lock around his back, exulting in the feel of him. For so long, almost since the beginning, we’ve lived in fear of being caught. Fear of revealing what we knew. Fear for our very lives.

And then, just
minutes ago, our worst fears became reality. The plumbers found out that we knew about them, that we were just biding our time until we were safe enough to report them to the authorities. We had turned to the one person we thought had the power down here to help us. And that proved to be our worst mistake of all.

But now – I squeeze Chris more tightly – now we’re
probably just minutes away from being safe. The rescue team will break through, their tunnel bores giving us the access to the outer world we’d been more than a week without. In front of new authorities, the plumbers and the Governor would be powerless to stop us. And once we were outside of the tunnel, separated and safe, we could reveal all we knew. Seek justice for our week-long imprisonment, and for all those killed for the Governor’s ends.