Chris Jordan - Torn

Makes me want to scratch her eyes out. Bitch.

“This is a mistake,” Weems says, his big eyes imploring me from deep in his homely face. “Mr. Shane is a trained professional and he strikes me as very competent. But you-” He hesitates, clears his throat.

“But I’m what, a girl? A housewife? I plead guilty. I’m not a cop, I’m not an investigator, and I’ve no idea what I’m going to do. But I’ve got one thing nobody else has, not even Shane.”

Weems raises his misshapen eyebrows.

“I’m his mother,” I say. “Now show me how to open the hatch or I swear I’ll bite your ankle.”

The hatch is built into the tile floor of the shower stall, and at the push of a concealed button-a worn bit of tile, actually-the floor of the stall lifts open, powered by a hydraulic hinge. I can’t help thinking that Noah would think it was very cool, having an entrance to a secret tunnel in your shower stall. Boys love that kind of stuff. Apparently grown men do, too.

“But you don’t have a weapon,” Weems protests.

“Wouldn’t know how to use it if I had one. If you see the FBI before I do? Tell them to be extra careful. Shane makes a big target and he’ll have Noah with him.”

“You’re so confident,” Weems says, marveling.

“What choice do I have?”

And then I’m slipping down the rungs and the last thing I see before the hatch shuts is Weems’s little feet, clad in black Nikes.

He’s no bigger than a boy.

The tunnel is even spookier on my own. Plus there are strange, scuttling noises transmitting through the fiberglass. After a moment I realize it must be Shane, scooting along and using his hands for balance, and sure enough when I call his name he curses, distant but distinct.

Nice. I’m here to help and he greets me with a four-letter word.

It’s fairly easy for me to catch up. I can run, he can’t.

“Bad idea,” he says, hands on his knees, panting. “Go back while you’ve got the chance.”

His forehead is bleeding a little, from where he must have bumped into a light fixture. Being extra tall obviously has its disadvantages.

“You’ve made your position clear,” I say, forcing myself to be calm. “Now what’s the plan?”

“Haven’t got one,” he admits. “Get inside and see what happens.”

“That’s it?”

He shrugs. “This kind of situation, all you can do is react. Plans never work.”

“You don’t want to have to worry about keeping me safe, is that it?”

“Exactly.”

“Then don’t. Here’s the deal. I’ll go first, and if they catch me I’ll make a fuss. A really big fuss. While they’re busy with me, you find Noah.”

“Damn,” he says, looking rueful.

“What?”

“That might actually work.”

We move along the tunnel until we’re under another vertical shaft, the connection to the Pinnacle, according to Wendall Weems. He claims to have never used it because they’d then know he somehow could evade security, and because for the last six months the Pinnacle has been Evangeline’s domain. The few times he’s been inside to visit Arthur Conklin’s sickbed he’s been accompanied by her guards, his every movement noted.

Shane looks up, peering into the shaft. His voice is a husky whisper. “You sure you want to do this?”

I place my foot on the first rung. “Shane?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t stare at my butt.”

He grins. “He who leads gets butt stared at. That’s the deal, so live with it.”

Taking a deep breath, I head up the rungs, into the darkness at the top of the shaft.

At the top, I hook one arm through a rung, reach around with the other, find the hatch release handle.

“Ready?” I whisper down to Shane, poised a few rungs below my feet. Can’t see him, but I’m keenly aware of his large presence, ready to catch me if I fall.

“Ready.”

“Here goes nothing.”

I turn the release handle and the hatch pops up, followed by a clatter of metal. Very loud. Loud enough to chill my blood. So loud they’ll know we’re here.

“Quickly!” Shane urges.

Taking a deep breath I scramble up through the hatch and roll out of the way, colliding with a bucket and some awful, stringy thing that feels cool and moist and somehow dead.

A damp mop. We’re in a custodial closet, redolent of ammonia and pine-scented detergent. And it’s as dark as the shaft below. Surely the commotion with the bucket must have alerted them to our presence. Any second a door will open, and lights will pin us to the floor like bugs.

Shane and I lay side by side, barely breathing. Waiting.

Silence. Other than my heart slamming.

After a minute or so Shane gets up on his knees, fumbles in a pocket, and produces a small halogen flashlight. “Never leave home without it,” he whispers, panning the beam around the closet. The place is a bit larger than I first thought, jammed with cleaning equipment. Considering the amount of stuff lying around, it’s a miracle the hatch only disturbed one bucket. Which, obviously, sounded a lot louder to us than to whoever else might be listening.

Encouraged by his confident behavior, I get to my feet, being careful not to bump anything else. Which necessitates me more or less clinging to Randall Shane. With a pang I realize that the last time I was this close to a man it was Jedediah, and we were hugging goodbye as he left for what would be his last trip.

Don’t think about it. Don’t feel it. Not now. Now is for Noah. No room for anything but your son. Finding him, saving him, holding him, telling him it will be okay, because if he’s alive and safe then it really will be okay, no matter what else might happen.

Nothing matters but Noah. Not even me.

“It’s four o’clock in the morning,” Shane whispers. “Hour of the wolf. They must all be asleep.”

He sounds very pleased, eager to get on with it. I borrow his little flashlight, flash it around until I find what I’m looking for, what I know must be there.

“Not hour of the wolf,” I whisper back. “Hour of the vacuum cleaner.”

Go with what you know. My father used to say that, usually when he was about to do something foolish, but I guess when the pressure is on, you tend to fall back on the familiar. I may not know anything about guns-Shane has one, as it turns out-or tactical assaults, or undercover operations, but I do know from housework. Miele, Hoover, Shop-Vac, whatever the brand, I’m your girl. Take charge of renovating an old farmhouse and you do a lot of cleaning up. For sawdust you want the Shop-Vac, for the fine dust that comes from sanding drywall compound, the Miele can’t be beat, provided you remember to change the filter when you change the bag.

Not that I expect to do much cleaning. But with a rag on my head, holding back my hair, and a sturdy work apron with voluminous pockets, I certainly look the part. The vacuum cleaner, a Sanitair upright carpet model, has a five-amp motor and a thirty-foot power cord. Not that I actually intend to turn it on. But it makes a good prop, and rolls easily over the carpeted floors.

Having something to push gives me confidence. As if I have a purpose, a reason to be there, and something to argue about when I am, inevitably, asked to explain myself.

Much to my surprise, the Pinnacle seems to be empty at this hour. Where are the patrolling security guards, the fanatical cultists scheming in the dead of night? Resting their little heads on their little pillows, apparently.

The place is huge. Vast. The ceiling soars so high I couldn’t even begin to estimate the height. The blueprints gave me a sense of the layout, but not of the actual volume, which seems to be on the scale of a football stadium. The giant, inward-slanting windows have been sealed with what Shane says are automatically deployed blast shutters.