Блейк Пирс - Once Buried

“Here,” she said. “Reach down and take my hand and pull me up.”

“I’m not sure I can reach that far.”

“Sure you can.”

The man laughed. It was a pleasant, friendly laugh. Even so, Courtney still wished she could see his face.

“I’ll take care of everything,” he said.

He stepped away and out of sight.

Then she heard a rattling of metal and squeaking, grinding sounds coming around from behind her.

The next thing she knew, she felt a huge weight crashing down on her.

She gasped and sputtered until she grasped that the man had just dumped a load of dirt on her.

She felt her hands and legs getting cold – signs of panic, she realized.

Don’t panic, she told herself.

Whatever was going on, she had to stay calm.

She saw that the man was standing with a wheelbarrow tilted over her. A few remaining clods of dirt tumbled out of the wheelbarrow onto her head.

“What are you doing?” she yelled.

“Relax,” the man said. “Like I said, I’ll take care of everything.”

He rolled the wheelbarrow away. Then she heard a dull, drum-like pounding against metal again and again.

It was the sound of the man shoveling more dirt into the wheelbarrow.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and let out a long, piercing shriek.

“Help!”

Then she felt a heavy clump of dirt hitting her directly in her face. Some of it got into her mouth, and she choked and gagged and spit it out.

His voice still sounding friendly, the man said…

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to yell a lot louder than that.”

Then with a chuckle he added…

“I can barely hear you myself.”

She let out another shriek, shocked at the loudness of her own voice.

Then the man dumped the new wheelbarrow full of dirt onto her.

She couldn’t scream again now. Her throat was clogged with dirt.

She was overcome by an eerie sense of déjà vu. She’d experienced this before – this inability to run from danger or even to scream.

But those experiences had only been nightmares. And she’d always woken up from them.

Surely this was just another nightmare.

Wake up, she told herself again and again. Wake up, wake up, wake up…

But she couldn’t wake up.

This was not a dream.

This was real.

Special Agent Riley Paige was working at her desk at the BAU building in Quantico when an unwelcome memory swept over her…

A dark-skinned man was staring at her with glassy eyes.

He had a bullet wound in his shoulder, and a much more dangerous wound in the abdomen.

In a weak, bitter voice, he told Riley…

“I order you to kill me.”

Riley’s hand was on her weapon.

She ought to kill him.

She had every good reason to kill him.

Even so, she didn’t know what to do…

A woman’s voice snapped Riley out of her reverie.

“You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

Riley looked up from her desk and saw a young African-American woman with short straight hair standing in her office doorway.

It was Jenn Roston, who had been Riley’s new partner on her most recent case.

Riley shook herself a little.

“It’s nothing,” she said.

Jenn’s dark brown eyes were filled with concern.

She said, “Oh, I’m pretty sure it’s not nothing.”

When Riley didn’t reply, Jenn said, “You’re thinking about Shane Hatcher, aren’t you?”

Riley nodded silently. The memories were coming pretty often these days – memories of her terrible confrontation with the wounded man up at her dead father’s cabin.

Riley’s relationship with the escaped convict had been rooted in a weird, twisted bond of loyalty. He had been at large for five months, and she hadn’t even tried to curtail his freedom – not until he began to murder innocent people.

Now it was hard for Riley to believe that she had let him go free for so long.

Theirs had been an unsettling, illegal, and very, very dark relationship.

Of all the people Riley knew, Jenn knew best just how dark it had been.

Finally Riley said, “I just keep thinking – I should have killed him right then and there.”

Jenn said, “He was wounded, Riley. He posed no threat to you.”

“I know,” Riley said. “But I keep thinking I let my loyalty get in the way of my judgment.”

Jenn shook her head.

“Riley, we’ve talked about this. You already know what I think about it. You did the right thing. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Everybody else here feels the same way.”

Riley knew that it was true. Her colleagues and superiors had heartily congratulated her for bringing Hatcher in alive. Their goodwill was a welcome change. As long as Riley had been in Hatcher’s thrall, everybody here had been justifiably suspicious of her. Now that the cloud of suspicion had lifted, her colleagues’ faces were friendly again, and she was greeted with renewed respect.

Riley truly felt at home here again.

Then Jenn grinned and added, “Hell, you even did things by the book for once in your life.”

Riley chuckled. Certainly she had followed correct procedure in how she had apprehended Hatcher – which was more than she could say for many of her actions during the case she and Jenn had just solved together.

Riley said, “Yeah, I guess you got a real crash course in my… unconventional methods.”

“I sure did.”

Riley chuckled uneasily. She’d ignored even more rules than usual. Jenn had covered for her loyally – even when she’d broken into a suspect’s house without a warrant. Jenn could have reported her actions if she’d chosen to. She could have gotten Riley fired.

“Jenn, I really appreciate—”

“Don’t even mention it,” Jenn said. “It’s all in the past. Whatever comes next is all that matters.”

Jenn’s smile broadened as she added, “And I don’t expect you to act like a Girl Scout. You’d better not expect me to either.”

Riley laughed again, more comfortably this time.

She found it hard to believe that she had recently distrusted Jenn, had even considered her a true nemesis.

After all, Jenn had done much, much more for Riley than be discreet about her actions.

“Have I thanked you for saving my life?” Riley asked.

Jenn smiled.

“I’ve kind of lost count of how many times,” she said.

“Well, thank you again.”

Jenn said nothing. Her smile faded. A far-off look came over her.

“Did you want something, Jenn?” Riley asked. “I mean, why did you stop by?”

Jenn just kept staring down the hallway for a moment.

Finally she said, “Riley, I don’t know whether I should tell you…” Her voice trailed off.

It was easy for Riley to see that something was troubling her. She wanted to reassure her, to say something like…

“You can tell me anything.”

But that might be presumptuous.

Finally Jenn seemed to shiver a little.

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Without another word, Jenn disappeared down the hall, leaving Riley with a distinctly uneasy feeling. She’d long sensed that Jenn harbored secrets of her own – perhaps some very dark ones.

Why won’t she trust me? Riley wondered.

It seemed that one or the other of them was always a little distrustful. That didn’t bode well for them working together as partners.

But there was nothing Riley could do about it – at least not yet.