Michael Koryta - Last Words

Maybe Cecil fought back. He resisted; he escaped.

Fought back well enough to avoid death, but not well enough to kill Ridley? Cecil was a large and powerful man. He had no shortage of firepower in that gun cabinet. If he’d been able to gain the upper hand even for a moment, why had it ended with Ridley and Julianne already out of sight in the cave, and Cecil limping after them?

Something was wrong in there. Something didn’t make sense in there.

Danielle’s body had occupied Mark’s focus. Her body and the blood. So much blood. It had been hard to consider much else. But there had been other things. Paracord, the kind that lay in neat coils all around Ridley’s house. Duct tape, more of which Mark had seen in the cave. The tape had been different, though. The tape on the floor in Cecil’s home had been pulled off and lay in a tangled clump. The tape in the cave had been sliced perfectly in two. The latter made sense. Ridley was a knife man. Ridley and that ever-present Benchmade. His reflex weapon, the one he’d drawn on Mark.

Far more important, though — Ridley was also a rope man. He cared for them, worried over them. Ridley was a knot master. He’d have untied the paracord, not cut it. Rope men did not cut their ropes if they could possibly avoid it. And even if for some reason he had decided to cut it, Ridley would never have needed to find a pair of kitchen scissors for the task. He’d have used the knife, just as he had on the tape in the cave.

That wasn’t his work. Someone else cut Julianne loose.

Or they hadn’t cut Julianne loose at all. There was tape left behind in the cave but no rope. Why would there be? Ridley would have untied it and kept it. Rope was valuable to him. So who had been cut loose in Cecil’s apartment? The work had been awkward — all the lengths of cord hacked into pieces. That was the product of someone who didn’t understand the knots at all, who simply kept cutting until all the cord was loose. Had Ridley bound Danielle up, leaving her to be hastily freed by Cecil?

Not Danielle. There wasn’t enough time for her to go through all of that. I’d just spoken to her. So that leaves...

Cecil.

Which meant that Danielle had freed him.

So who had pulled the trigger on her?

I’ll send for Cecil. It’s his baby now, she had told him just before she hung up the phone. He’d thought that meant that she was going to ask Cecil to block him from the property. That the trouble Mark represented was about to be Cecil’s baby. It had seemed obvious. She was calling her caretaker in to do his job. But maybe she wasn’t calling him in for the obvious reason. Maybe she was calling in Cecil for another reason entirely — to answer for himself.

It’s his baby now.

For the first time, Mark was fully aware of the cold in the cave and of the darkness ahead and behind. There were three people belowground with him. He’d thought one was an enemy.

Maybe he had two.

Julianne sat on the stones with her legs crossed. Her helmet was beside her, and she held the sapphire necklace in her hands. Her face was obscured by shadows in the flickering candlelight, and Ridley couldn’t make out her eyes. He wanted to see them and find the comfort that they held, but he couldn’t afford to sacrifice the darkness. The truths that he wanted out of Trapdoor had all been lost in the dark. He would have to find them there.

“We’ll start with an offering,” he said. He set the knife on the stone near his right hand, blade open.

“No,” Julianne said. “No, Ridley, that’s not how we start.”

“Things are different here.” He reached into his backpack and pulled free a roll of papers.

“What is that?”

The pages were larger than normal, the long format of legal documents.

“This is a trust document,” Ridley said. “Dated October second, 2004. You know what’s special about that time and this place. I don’t need to explain it to you. All that matters to you are contained in a few lines.”

He knew the document so well he could have recited the lines from memory, but still he flipped through the pages. They deserved to be read once more.

“‘To be executed ten years from the date of this agreement or at the time of my death, whichever comes first,’” he read aloud, “‘with the stipulation that all terms of this agreement are rendered wholly null and void if the circumstances of my death are determined to be the result of criminal action.’”

Julianne was staring at him with an expression he’d never seen on her face before.

“What is this?” she said. “Why was this agreement made?”

“Let me finish. Let me read the beautiful line, the one that gave me hope and patience for so long.” He worked his tongue around his mouth in a fruitless attempt to bring moisture to it, and then read, “‘At which time all holdings of Trapdoor Caverns Land Trust will become the property of Cecil Buckner and Ridley Barnes.’”

Julianne didn’t speak. Ridley took a deep breath and shook his head. “How much that meant to me, I can’t explain. But those were in different times. Patience can hold you only so far in the absence of truth. Cecil doesn’t understand that, because Cecil doesn’t have the same questions. I’ll trade for the truth. It’s a bargain I hate to make, but I’ll trade the trust for the truth.”

He was speaking more to the cave than to Julianne now. He fed the title page of the document into the candle flame. The flame chewed around the edge of the paper and flared brightly but then died, leaving one charred corner. He shouldn’t have been surprised.

“She has no use for documents,” he said. “Certainly no use for talk of ownership. I always understood that. My request was that I be referred to as a steward of Trapdoor Caverns. That was the role I wanted. Apparently, it was not the right legal term, but it’s all I wanted to be.”

He set the partially burned document aside and took the knife in his hand. “Now it’s about to be your show,” he said. “Are you ready for that?”

“Let’s talk more about this.”

“No.” He shook his head. “We will talk about Sarah. Where she was found, how she was found. You’ll have to trust the cave. We’re so much closer to the truth now. All you have to do is open the door for me. You’re the only one who can do that.”

For a long time she was silent, but when she finally spoke, her voice was perfect, the cadence he’d come to know and require.

“If you would like to face the water and focus on that portal, you may do so,” she said.

He turned obediently, and now Julianne and the candle were in his peripheral vision, a flickering in the corner of his right eye. He could see the shadow line of the stream and the place where it disappeared. He turned to look at her. With the blackness at her back and the candlelight before her and those pale clothes and her blond hair, she seemed to glow.

“I’ll need total darkness,” he said.

“Even from the candle?”

“Yes. I’ll need it the way it was back then.”

She hesitated, but then she leaned her face close to the candle’s warm, soft light, parted her lips, and exhaled soundlessly, and the candle extinguished and they belonged to the blackness.

“All right. Let’s work our way toward that day together, shall we?” she said. “Always together. Never alone. Remember that you are never alone here.”

Not a problem, Ridley thought. Not in Trapdoor.

“You may focus on that spot,” Julianne said. “On that portal. It may be the place where the present ceases for you and the past begins. Take your time if you wish, and maybe you will wish to let the water guide you. You may wish to remember all of the days we have done these exercises together and all of the progress you have made. Your confidence and your strength. Remember that you are required to follow it only as far as you wish.”