Michael Koryta - Last Words

“Yes,” he said. “We’ll go ahead. That’s all that needs to be done.”

Julianne nodded. He felt his trust for her returning despite his better judgment.

“Step carefully,” he said. “We need to stay in the shadows.”

Staying in the shadows required walking under the footbridge instead of across it, and that meant they’d have to cover the rest of the distance over the ice, which had cracked once already. The creaking and groaning sounds were all around them, but Ridley preferred that risk to climbing back onto the creek bank and standing exposed in the floodlights.

They moved slowly across the slick surface. Once, there was a sharp crack like a gunshot, and Ridley braced himself for the fall. The crack had come from a tree branch, though, not the ice. The weak limb snapped and its load of snow fell to the earth with a sound like the release of a held breath. He nudged Julianne forward again. They passed beneath the bridge and then made it up onto the rocks. He looked back up the drive and could no longer see Danielle’s flashlight. It didn’t matter. He just needed to get inside.

Cecil had better have told the truth about the keys. If he lied about that and I do not have the right keys, then God help them all. I’ve come too far to be lied to.

The first key he tried fit the lock. He exhaled and turned the key and heard the bolts slide back. When he pulled the door open, it scraped on the stone and sounded terribly loud, but he didn’t allow himself to look back, just shoved Julianne through. He saw no way to lock the door from the inside and he didn’t have the time to waste, so he left it standing ajar. He walked Julianne ten steps inside the cave and then he paused and took a deep breath.

“All right,” he said. “It should go easier from here. She will understand why we’ve come. I’m sure of that.”

Almost as if in response, a gunshot thundered from somewhere outside the cave. Julianne went rigid and Ridley spun and stared back at the entrance. He saw nothing but snow and ice.

Cecil is free, and Cecil is shooting. I could have killed him. Should have killed him. She stopped me.

Julianne’s hand found his. Squeezed. He looked at her fingers as if he weren’t sure what they were. She tugged him forward, tilting her head again, indicating the black depths that lay before them.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, we will just leave them behind. We will leave them all behind.”

She nodded and tugged again. This was wrong — he was supposed to be the guide, not her. But he also knew she was right. There was no reason to retreat to the surface. Not now. He walked ahead, moving quickly and without light because he did not need it here. This was the old tour route, the ground carefully scraped free of any obstacle, any potential lawsuit. Pershing had shown no respect for the cave in the way he had cleared the tour route.

They went far enough that the entrance disappeared from view and total darkness descended and then he stopped and drank in the wonderful smell of the place — stone and water and power. Traces of blood, yes. But the power was there.

Julianne seemed aware of it too. Her body had stiffened and she was pivoting her head as if straining to see in the dark.

“It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” he whispered. “You’ll see so much more of it than most. More than anyone else alive. I’ll take you farther, I promise. The tours they ran, those were like making people pay admission to admire a mansion’s front porch but never letting them get inside the door. I’m so excited to show someone else what lies beyond. Nobody has seen these places but me, do you understand that? And she was mine. She was going to be mine.”

His own whispers returned to him in a soft echo and he felt a pang of regret, thinking of all that this would cost him.

“What’s done is done,” he said, and then he pulled his helmet free from his pack and put it on and turned the headlamp beam to red, the night-vision setting. A crimson glow covered Julianne’s face. He slipped his knife out and opened the blade, and her eyes went a little wide but still she did not resist. Not once had she made a move to run or fight him. She had demonstrated nothing but trust in a situation where he had expected no trust. It took courage, but he understood the manipulation in the technique. She was trying to create a sense of partnership so that he might let down his guard.

He leaned as close to her as he could, nose to nose, his eyes on hers, her face awash with red light, their exhaled breath creating mingling tendrils of fog.

“I’m giving her up for the truth,” he said. “No one will ever understand what that means. No one but her. I had hope for you, even for Novak. Misplaced hope. But we’re still here. And the lie you told me once will need to become the truth now. Do you understand me? Do you understand what that means?”

She nodded.

He moved her hair away from her neck gingerly and brought the blade up against her flesh and made a soft “Now, now,” like a parent removing a splinter from a child’s finger, as he sliced through the tape. He peeled it loose and her lips parted but she didn’t speak. She just breathed. Her breath fogged in the red light like bloody vapors.

“I told you that I would show you everything I could,” he said. “And I do not tell lies, Julianne. I do not tell lies. For a long time, I thought that you did not either.”

“I want to help you,” she said.

Ridley smiled. “Sure you do. And now you have your chance. We’re here for the truth. Your job is to help me remember. Can you do that? I have faith in your abilities, if not in your integrity.”

She gave an unsteady nod. None of her usual confidence. Trapdoor could do that to you. Trapdoor could turn the brave to weak in a flash.

He put the knife back in his pocket and retrieved the sapphire necklace and pressed it into Julianne’s palm. He held her hand tightly, the stone between them.

“That was around Sarah Martin’s neck,” he said. “Then it was in my hand. I want to know how that happened. That’s your job. That’s your life.”

Ridley’s truck was pulled off the road just in front of Trapdoor.

Mark parked behind it. His headlights caught the rear window and showed an empty interior. When he cut the engine he felt as if he could hear his own heartbeat. He got out of the car and approached the truck. There was no one inside, and the dusting of snow across the hood and windshield told him that it had been parked here for a while. He’d been on the phone with Danielle MacAlister not five minutes ago. The truck had been here longer than that.

He started to walk around the gate and then hesitated, turned, and went back to his car. Opened the door and found the map he’d peeled off the wall of Danielle’s basement, the last map Ridley had turned over to the MacAlister family. Folded it and put it in his pocket.

“You won’t need to go inside,” he said aloud. The reassurance felt necessary. His mouth was dry just thinking of the place. Something in the stillness of the night whispered otherwise, though, whispered that Ridley hadn’t left his door wide open and his truck here because he intended to skip stones over the frozen creek.

Twin tracks of footprints leading away from the truck said that he hadn’t come alone either.

Mark thought about calling Blankenship. But what was there to report? The appearance of trespassing, which Mark was about to do himself? He’d come here to confront Danielle, not pursue Ridley. Suddenly both were in play.

He followed the tracks away from Ridley’s truck. The size difference was apparent. Ridley was traveling with a woman or a child.

Julianne?