Trapped (17 page)

I tilt my head up, meeting the glimmer of Chris’s eyes as he looks down at me. I don’t know what will happen to
me and Chris, once we’re free from here. He’s made it more than clear that ours is only a fake relationship. That the interaction we’ve had was only for necessity’s sake – that we’ve just been allies in a common cause, united by what we both suspected and discovered.

But surely, after everything we’ve been through, there’s more to it than that. Surely there’s a chance that we could have…have a real relationship.

Chris is studying me again, reading my thoughts through my eyes. Other than in extreme fear or extreme excitement, he hasn’t held me or touched me out of view of the plumbers. He’s treated me just as a friend: comforting, caring, teasing – except when we could be seen. Fake personal touches in view of the plumbers. A fake kiss to ease Phil’s suspicions.

And then a real kiss…to make up for that first one.

Nothing he’s done should have led me to this. He’s said everything he should, treating me solely as a friend.
Nothing more, nothing less. He hasn’t asked me anything personal, never inquired whether or not
I
had a boyfriend. Never said he’d see me again, when this was all over. Never mentioned that he wanted to.

But somehow, against my better judgment – indeed, probably against
everyone’s
better judgment – I’ve fallen in love with him.

I close my eyes at the thought, but I can tell it’s too late. Chris’s arms tighten around me, and I wait for him to say something. He must know how I feel…and how it kills me that he doesn’t feel the same way.

I feel his chest expand, feel his breath catch as he tries to phrase the rejection.

“Emily, I—“

“Shh,” I say, pulling away from him. I don’t know what I heard, but I know something’s wrong.

Standing quickly, I hurry back toward the middle of the tunnel, all thoughts and worries about our relationship status gone for the moment. I heard something…I’m not sure what—

“Not in their usual place.”

I stop short, my breath catching. The voice is muffled, but I can make out both the words and the deep tones. Stepping carefully, I walk to the nearest hole in the ground and bend down
to listen.

“
At the girl’s car then?”

I can see one of the men in gray coveralls below me, glancing around at where Chris usually lays.

“Rosings said to search everywhere. So I’m searching everywhere.”

His gaze scans over toward where I know the railing is
, back toward the debris blocking the eastern entrance, then to what I must assume is the Rodriguez’s van. He bends down, looking for signs of us underneath the car.

“Get the keys to the truck from Doug and search in there, under all the junk in the back, too. I’ll search the van.”

Chris bends down beside me, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder as the two workmen walk back in the other direction. He places his hand on the cold metal of the floor, then his forearm, and I do the same.

“No vibrations,” I whisper.

“A little, I think,” Chris says, but I can read his concern. With the workmen searching the tunnel for us, below our very feet, we don’t have much time left.

And if the vibrations have disappeared after just a hundred yards, then we could have been wrong about when the rescue team will break through.

We may have much more than minutes to wait…it might take hours.

Moving slowly across the ventilation area, w
e follow the workmen’s progress silently, ducking under the steal cross-beams as we go. One of them – Bob, Chris tells me – searches Simon Tara’s truck, moving things around in the back seat, tossing out moving blankets and a toolbox as he searches for anywhere we could hide. There are no holes to look through to see who’s searching the Rodriguez van, but it doesn’t sound as if they’re actually going inside the car to look around.

“They must be trying to keep their hunt a secret
from everyone,” Chris barely breathes the words into my ear. We’re terrified of making any noises, of giving ourselves away.

“That’s good, right?” I whisper to him, my lips close to his ear this time.

He nods. If they’re not letting the other survivors know what they’re up to, it means that they plan on letting them out alive.

We move
on from our small hole over Simon Tara’s truck as the plumbers move on. They don’t bother to search the Governor’s town car, of course, though we can see one of them bend to look under it, as well as under the plumber’s truck. We can hear the faint voices of the other plumbers as they pass by – they must all be just standing there, waiting for us to be found.

Chris stops me when I move to find the next hole to follow their progress down the tunnel. “Wait,” he whispers softly. “
They must know that we’re familiar with this area up here…you mentioned something about it in the letter, right?” I nod silently, my chest thudding with anxiety. “They’ll come up and look for us, though maybe not just yet. But the only hole large enough for them to get through is the one in the middle.”

His finger points swiftly to the large hole we had crawled through.
He pulls me safely to the side of the ventilation area, listening quietly for them to pass the opening without stopping.

We both must exhale a sigh of relief as we jog forward several moments later. The next hole shows us Kevin and Jason’s car, which one of them is searching through. We can just barely hear the other’s whispers as he gazes through each of Hannah Avery’s windows.

“Could they be in the trunk?”

“Maybe. Jimmy it open in the back, if you can, but don’t wake up that chick in the front.”

We hear a spring and a pop, then a soft click soon after. The man searching Kevin and Jason’s car does the same.

The only
hole left we can look through is the one right above my mom’s car, and we hurry there next. I can see Bob as he looks through each of Mrs. Potts’s windows, then he cracks a joke to the other guy in coveralls about how “no one could last long in that car.”

Chris and I lock eyes for a moment before turning back to watch them. Mrs. Potts’s reputation seems to be bad enough to have extended even to the plumbers.

They approach my mom’s car slowly, and I can feel my heart thunder in my chest. Chris takes my hand, squeezing it tightly.

What will they do
, my nerves scream as we watch them,
when they don’t find us there? Will they freak out? Will they make demands on my mom? Will they hurt my sisters?

Bending down, Bob checks under the car before they even approach it. I can read his confidence – this is the last place in the tunnel we could be, and they fully expect to find us here.

I squeeze Chris’s hand back. They approach the car, looking carefully through all the windows, their shadows thrown briefly across the sleeping forms of my sisters. They move around to the trunk, wrenching it open carefully with a small crow bar.

They close the trunk softly, staring at each other for a moment. Whispering words I can’t quite hear.

Chris pulls me back quickly. I can just barely see Bob turning his head toward us before they’re out of my line of vision.

“They’re coming up here next,” he breathes, moving me further away. His eyes
dart fretfully back toward the bright opening in the middle of the tunnel. “We can’t go back that way. Not enough time.”

Sprinting, he pulls me with him to the edge of the western side of the ventilation area, our feet sliding lightly across the metal floor. I remember how impenetrable the rock wall had seemed when we were up here before, but it appears catastrophically more solid and unyielding now. The tumbled mountain is firm and tightly packed – and much, much more vertical than the eastern side.

“Shit,” Chris breathes, barely pausing as he hurries to find a foothold. He starts in the middle, able to climb a few feet before he has nowhere left to go. Running, he tries again toward the left hand side, angling for a space I can see about fifteen feet up.

He's able to climb a few feet before his hands slip and h
e slides back down. He looks at me over his shoulder, his eyes wide and bright.

I
move to trace the wall as well, trying to find some kind of climbing hold. Working my way to the right, my hands grasp at the boulders, trying to find some path up the wall that might work.

“Champ,” Chris says, coming up behind me. “Maybe if I lift you, you can crawl up somewhere. There’s nothing down here at our level, but maybe—“

I shake my head. “There’s nothing at any level. We can’t go anywhere on this side. Can we run back to the eastern—“

He turns his head sharply, looking to the large, bright hole. We can see movement in the steady stream of light.

They’re…they’re coming.

Pushing me behind him, Chris backs us up to the rock wall. My knees feel weak as I cling to his back. They’ll find us, any moment they’ll find us. And that will be it.

The dark figure of a man appears with a grunt as he’s boosted up from the ground below. My stomach drops as we watch another man come up through the hole. Then another.

Then another.

With a firm grip on my wrist, Chris slowly lowers us to the ground. The ventilation system is so poorly lit, and the length so long, that they won’t be able to see us without coming much, much closer. And maybe with just two of them we might have stood a chance in a kind of struggle. But with four of the strong-armed plumbers up here…there’s just not much we can do besides hide.

And sadly, our hiding place is
impossibly conspicuous.

My eyes dart around wildly while Chris stares at the four in the distance, studying their actions. The rock wall is high, impossible to climb. And it extends from one side of the tunnel to the other, meshing seamlessly with the metallic walls that are still standing. There’s nothing useful, nothing to hide behind, nothing to defend
ourselves with—

“Chris!” I whisper, pointing to an object just a few feet away from us. He turns quickly, loosening his grip to crawl over to the mirror shard.

“It’s all we’ve got,” I say softly, my voice barely audible.

“It’ll do.
”

He places the piece of mirror carefully in his right hand, the broad, flat end fitting neatly into his palm.
His fingers wrap around the length of the shard, and I see him wince as the uneven edge digs into his flesh. But he only tightens his grip, holding the jagged piece of mirror in front of him like a knife of sorts.

Pulling me behind him, he backs us into the corner. I can barely see the forms of the plumbers in the dark – they’re walking away from us, going to check near Simon Tara’s body first.

“Maybe we can run back to the opening, slip through while they’re searching?” I whisper.

“No…whoever they left down there, he’ll be watching for us to do just that.”

We wait in silence, our hands clinging tightly as tears sting my eyes. We made it so far, lasting down here for so long, only to fail now. When rescue is so,
so
close.

In the distance, I’ve lost sight of the plumbers. But they’ve been on the eastern side long enough to have searched. They’ll be turning around now, knowing we’re here, trapped on the western end.

Bending down, I lay my forearm on the ground, hoping against hope that the whole ventilation system would be vibrating, with the rescue team seconds away from break through to the tunnel.

Chris looks down at me, his eyes wide with hope. I shake my head slowly, sadly. It’s too late.

Straining my eyes, I look down the ventilation system, wondering just how long we have. But my eyes fall on the steel cross-beams, their wide, X-shaped structure designed to bear the weight of the mountainside. Joined in the middle and secured tightly to the walls, the ventilation system is dotted with these crossed structures just about every dozen feet. We had walked fairly easily under them in the center, but along the edges the cross beams are too low for Chris to be able to duck under them.

T
he X’s are layered vertically, too, one on top of the other, as multiple supports had been needed to ensure the solid structure of the ventilation system. My eyes trace the path of the nearest cross-beams, watching them zigzag nearly forty feet from the bottom to the top of the ventilation area. My blood is pumping so quickly, my head pounding, that it’s like the beams rise exponentially higher, disappearing into the ceiling.

I don’t pause to think. The
workmen are coming. I can see them, just barely, on the other side of the large, well-lit hole. If we’re going to act, we have to do something now.

Wrenching away from Chris, I race along the edge of the tunnel to the nearest
cross-beam. I grip it with both hands, launching myself upward as I scramble on top of it. The steel is flat on top, just wide enough for me to stand on two feet. Leaning against the metal wall, I turn, meeting Chris’s wide eyes before he scrambles up there with me.

But he doesn’t stop. Moving carefully toward the center, he walks along the beam, reaching up until he can grasp the
crossed one above it. He jumps, pulling himself up to the next one before shimmying over and reaching for me.