Wolf (28 page)

The freefall was blessedly brief. Gaby’s mind had barely grasped the horrific possibilities when she collided solidly with a smooth, cold surface. She didn’t stop moving, however. She slid down and down, so quickly that it seemed she was sliding at a breath taking speed.

It
did
take her breath. It closed off brain function for many, many dangerous moments before she could even command her body to struggle to stop the slide.

For all the good it did. She clawed ineffectually at the slick surface, finding no purchase at all. Her screams, when she finally recalled the breath and inspiration to utter them, echoed back at her at a deafening volume that drowned out every other sound.

She didn’t even realize the shaft was curved until the gently curving shaft took a sharp turn that slowed her descent. She’d just had time to register that when the surface beneath her disappeared altogether. She was airborne again for a split second before she slammed into a hard surface, skidded several feet, and stopped.

She lay perfectly still once she’d finally stopped moving, trying to gather her wits to mentally inventory her body for injury. Pain finally registered, but it was nothing unbearable. Her palms stung from friction burns. Twinges registered from her chin, one arm, and one knee. She pushed herself up and looked around.

Profound blackness so thick it seemed tangible surrounded her. A dim light in front of her was all she could see, but it took her several moments to realize that it was the weak light of a failing day above her, channeled downward by the curving shaft she’d slid down.

Grunting, she pushed herself up on her hands and knees and crawled toward the light and the sound of voices.

“Are you injured?”

It was Dr. Sheffield’s voice, she realized.

“I don’t think so,” she gasped, her voice still shaky and hoarse from fright. “No,”

she added after a moment. “Just shaken up and scratches. Nothing broken.” Her ankle, she discovered when she tried to get up, hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but she could put her weight on it. She’d twisted it, but not enough to break or sprain.

“Can you climb back up?”

She thought about her attempts to halt her fall. “I’ll try.”

She did, for all she was worth, keenly conscious of the blackness behind her and the rapidly diminishing light from above. As soon as the shock had begun to subside, her skin had begun to prickle with uneasiness, especially the skin along her back and neck, as if she could feel eyes boring into her.

She tried not to think about the possibility of snakes and spiders and scorpions in the pit with her, but her ears pricked for any furtive movements that could be interpreted as death on legs or the slither of a serpent.

She managed to crawl up the nearly flat area of the shaft, but she could get no higher. Each time she tried, she slid down again until she was wet with sweat, her
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clothes clinging to her all over.

“I can’t,” she acknowledged finally. “The surface is too smooth.”

“I’ll look for rope!” someone above announced, though she could tell he wasn’t talking to her but rather someone up top.

“Get some lights while you’re at it!” Oldman commanded, his voice raised as if whoever had gone for rope had already moved off.

“Could somebody drop a light to me?” Gaby called up. “It’s really, really dark in here.”

“Just hold on, Dr. LaPlante! We’ll get you out.”

“What do you see?”

That was Shelia—not hard to figure out even if she hadn’t been familiar with the voice. There were only two women on the dig.

“I can’t see a fucking thing!” Gaby snarled.

“Try to stay calm,” Dr. Sheffield said in a soothing voice, reminding her that she had an audience above that consisted of the entire dig team. She didn’t care. Ordinarily, she watched her language, but she’d grown up around rough, streetwise kids at the orphanage. Fostering was like a revolving door. Just about everybody made it out of the orphanage, but they almost always came back, usually more fucked up than before they’d left, angrier, more rebellious, sometimes quieter and more withdrawn, and sometimes sporting bandages and casts.

Fuck had been everyone’s favorite word, probably mostly because it sent the dorm mothers into gobbling spasms of shocked outrage every time one of them uttered it.

When she’d been very young, she’d envied the ones that got homes. She hadn’t been cute, though. She’d been fat, had flat, listless hair that was so fine it refused to lay down. And she’d had allergies, most of which she’d finally outgrown, but just enough health issues that nobody wanted to be bothered with her.

Later, when she’d finally realized what the behavior of the others meant, she was just as glad to stay where she was. She was ignored for the most part, but that beat the hell out of trying to fight off nasty old men looking for sexual playthings, women looking for live-in baby sitters and domestic slaves, and foster parents who took out their frustrations on the children entrusted to their care by beating the living shit out of them whenever they were in a bad mood—or drunk, or high.

She didn’t like dark, closed in spaces, though.

She tried to tell herself that was why she felt the prickling all over her skin as if eyes were crawling over her.

“Is it a large chamber?”

That was Dr. Sheffield again. She couldn’t decide whether he thought talking to her would calm her down or if he was more fucking interested in what she’d found than her predicament.

“A tomb, you think?” Sheila called down.

She was going to plant her foot up that bitch’s ass when she got out, Gaby fumed inwardly.

“If you want to know, send me a light down!” she yelled angrily.

“Mark and Billy went to get some things. They’ll be back soon,” Carl Oldman told her. “We’ll have you out of there before you know it.”

Gaby settled, not because she found his reassurance particularly comforting, but
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because her muscles were starting to ache from the tension of crouching in the narrow opening. The light was rapidly declining. She didn’t realize it at first because it was so bright compared to the thick blackness surrounding her, but as it dwindled she remembered that the sun had been well on its way to the horizon before she’d fallen in. It was twilight above her and before much more time passed it was going to be as black in the shaft as it was in the chamber behind her.

Total darkness engulfed her before a bright spot of light appeared above. The light was moving and she realized they must be trying to set up light to see by. A scraping sound alerted her to movement. Her heart clenched painfully before she realized the sound was coming from above not behind her.

“We’re lowering a light.”

Timely. They could have said so
before
they scared the shit out of her! But maybe they didn’t realize just how frightening it was to find oneself in a deep, dark hole?

She listened intently as the sound moved closer and closer and finally began to feel around for it. Relief flooded her when her hands at last closed around an object that she realized was a camp lantern. “Got it!” she announced, searching blindly for the switch.

The light blinded her for a moment. Clamping the lantern between her thighs because she was afraid it would slide away and break, she struggled with the rope they’d used to lower it until she finally untied it. The rope was narrow. “You going to pull me up with this?” she asked doubtfully.

“Just wait! I don’t think this one’s long enough.”

“I’ve got the end,” she pointed out angrily.

“But there isn’t enough left up here to tie it off.”

Tie it off to what, she wondered, casting around in her mind to remember anything that had been close enough, and solid enough, to anchor the other end of the rope? Nothing came to mind and a sinking sensation settled in her stomach.

Taking the lantern from between her thighs, she lifted it as she turned to survey the dark hole behind her. The light didn’t filter far, illuminating no more than a circle somewhere between five and six feet and not even that very well. She saw a pattern of stones on the floor that told her the floor had been lain tile-like but not much else.

“I think this one will do it,” Mark called out just as something hit the side of the shaft above her head.

Turning hopefully away from the dismal aspect behind her, Gaby peered up to see a length of rope slithering snake-like toward her. She lurched toward it, grabbing the end.

“Can you tie it around your waist?”

Gaby tugged at it. “Give it some slack.”

Silence greeted that. “There isn’t any,” Mark said finally.

“Goddamn it to hell,” Gaby muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing!” she said louder. “I’ve got enough to hold on to. Can you pull me up?”

She didn’t get the chance to tell them she did have a firm grip on it yet. Whoever had the other end snatched it from her grip, burning her palm. “Not yet, damn it! I wasn’t ready!”

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From the thud she heard at the top, she deduced that whoever it was had fallen on their ass. The rope reappeared. “This time say ‘ready’ when you’re ready,” Mark called down angrily.

A hysterical urge to giggle closed over her. Gaby fought it. “Give me a minute,”

she said a little unsteadily. “I have to set the lantern down somewhere.”

Scooting out of the shaft, she set the lantern to one side … just in case. If she didn’t make it out, she didn’t want to land on the damned lantern on her way back down.

Without glancing around, because she really didn’t want to see what was around her at the moment, she crawled back up the shaft as far as she could, feeling blindly for the end of the rope. Her fingers brushed it. She surged upward with an effort and caught a firm hold on it. Struggling, grunting with effort, she inched upward again, trying to get enough slack to wrap the rope around one hand and grab a hold above that. “I think I’ve got a good grip,” she gasped out finally, adding, “pull slowly,” as she turned and tried to brace her back against one side and her feet against the other. The shaft was just wide enough to make it impossible to get much leverage.

Grunting with effort, trying to ignore the burn in her palms from gripping the rope and the strain against her shoulder and elbow joints, Gaby inched upward as they pulled.

She’d managed to get just high enough to see the square above her when the rope abruptly went slack. The moment it did, she lost what little leverage she had with her feet against the sides. Uttering a sharp cry, she slid down the shaft and landed on her belly on the hard stone floor at the bottom.

“Are you all right?” someone yelled.

She didn’t recognize the voice—one of the students. “No, I’m not alright,” she muttered beneath her breath. Groaning, she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and crawled to the opening. “Not hurt! What happened?”

“The rope broke. Guess it’s rotted.”

“Well get another one!” she snapped.

Silence greeted that demand. She could hear a low voiced conversation above her, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then someone, Mark she thought, muttered just loudly enough she could hear it, “There isn’t another one. I think the natives took the others.”

Fear knotted in Gaby’s stomach, and anger. It didn’t seem to have occurred to anybody but her that the reason the Indians were so willing to work for the pittance they were paid was because they helped themselves to whatever supplies appealed to them whenever they pleased. It wasn’t unusual, at all, to go to get something and discover it had mysteriously vanished.

The rope that had broken had probably rotted like everything else did in the damned jungle because of the heat and humidity.

What the hell was she supposed to do now?

“Dr. LaPlante?”

“What?” she asked sullenly.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to wait for daylight to try again. Do you think you’ll be all right?”

Did she have a fucking choice, she thought a little hysterically? She felt like screaming and cursing them for every low down thing she could think of. It might help her feelings, but it wasn’t likely to alter her situation. “Is there an alternative?” she
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demanded ungraciously.

“I don’t think so.”

“I guess I’ll have to be, then, won’t I?”

“Why don’t you take the lantern and explore the area?” Dr. Oldman suggested, not unkindly. “I’ll make you feel more comfortable, I think, to assure yourself there’s nothing down there to worry about. We’ll be back in a few minutes and drop some things down to you to make you as comfortable as possible.”

A ladder was the only thing she could think of that would make her more comfortable. But she knew the ladders, even stacked end to end wouldn’t work. They were straight. The shaft was curved.

They didn’t wait for answer. She heard the shuffle above her and the retreat of sounds that left her completely alone. She went limp, resisting the urge to cry like a child abandoned in the dark. When she’d mastered the useless urge, she shimmied down the shaft and picked up the lantern.