Hobart led her down the porch steps to the dry, dusty ground in front of the house, and then into the overgrown field. He heard the weeds whipping the fabric of their pants as they walked. He could smell the broken stems in the dark night air.
When they had gone a hundred yards, he could tell she saw the grave. Her breath caught, and she went rigid for a second. Then she walked a bit unsteadily for a couple of steps, but tried to hide it, until she began to cry.
EMILY WAS GOING to die. The earth, the calm, warm night air, the complex smell of the pollens and roots of the weeds and the juicy smell from the broken shafts all seemed vivid. She felt as though it was probably appropriate to cry, but she managed to stop. Crying was bleeding her of strength.
She said quietly, “I really didn’t burn down my own house. I’ve been telling you the truth.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“Doesn’t it matter to you?”
“Matter? Sure it does. I didn’t set those fires, and you didn’t. He did-the man the evidence is about. He got there while I was wasting my time on you. Bad luck for both of us.”
“So you’re going to kill me and bury me in a hole in the middle of the night. My fam-my friends-will never know what happened to me.”
“That’s the plan.”
`But that won’t help you, it will just help him. If I’m gone, then there won’t be anybody who knows he killed my husband to hide some crime. There won’t be anybody left who knows he had anything to do with us.”
“I gave it my best effort. If I had the evidence, then he wouldn’t get away with any crimes. I searched for it, I held you up for it, I broke into your husband’s office. I scared you into trying to find it. The time is up, and I still don’t have it-my time and your time.”
“It’s not up. We can still keep trying.”
“He’s already destroyed it. He’s in control now. All I can do is kill you and collect my money.”
Emily considered telling him. She knew where the evidence was. She knew it had not been destroyed. She knew what the box looked like, and approximately what it contained. But she knew that the idea of trading the evidence for her life was an illusion. If she told this man, he would kill her. And then he would kill Sam Bowen to get the box. She had to get that idea out of her mind. There was no giving in, no surrender.
There was nothing left to do but try to fight him. She would try to butt her forehead into his face. She would take advantage of his momentary shock and pain and kick him, trying to push him into the grave. Then, whether she succeeded or not, she would run toward the highway. Immediately she noticed that having a plan, no matter how foolish, made her feel stronger.
As she walked, she worked out various details. She would have to make her move a surprise when she was at the grave. When she ran, she would have to sprint as fast as she could for a minute or two with her hands behind her. It would be difficult to keep from falling with her hands cuffed like that. She hoped that walking this way would be enough practice to help her do it. In any case, this was all the preparation she would get. She concentrated on hating him, visualizing her head smashing into his face.
He said, “If you can tell me where the evidence is, then I’ll leave you alive. I’ll get in my car and drive off. It will take you an hour or so to walk to town and wake somebody up or flag down a car on the road. That’s all the time I’ll need. I’ll leave you alone.”
Emily made herself the perfect liar. She had no doubt that he intended to kill her, and that telling him about the box would only get other people killed. “If I had found it, I would have given it to you. I haven’t found it. At this point, I’m wondering if this evidence even exists. Maybe if Phil said he had it, he was bluffing. I don’t know. In a few minutes, it’s not going to matter-at least to me. I’ll be dead, won’t I?”
The man in the mask kept her walking toward the grave, and Emily could make out its exact shape and contours. The hole looked deep and dark. There were two high piles of dirt-one on each of the long sides-but the head and foot were clear. She walked toward what she felt was the head, hoping he would come, too, and he did.
There were three more steps. Two. One. She whirled and used her legs to spring into him to butt his face, but he seemed to have become smoke. He wasn’t there. He was already to the side of where he had been. He tripped her and pushed so she fell full length on her belly beside the grave. In an instant, he was straddling her. She felt the gun muzzle pressed against her cheek.
He said, “That wasn’t a very effective move.”
She was trembling a little, waiting. She wondered if she would hear the shot.
Then she felt the gun move away from her cheek. He seemed to be putting it out of her reach somewhere. So that was it. He was going to rape her before he killed her. She felt his weight shift downward so his body was above her thighs. She prepared herself for her clothes to come off.
He was fiddling with her handcuffs. There was a click, then another. The handcuffs came away from her wrists.
He said, “I can’t let you walk a road like that with handcuffs on. If the wrong car comes along, you’re liable to end up dead, anyway.”
“You’re letting me go?”
“You don’t have what I want.”
“But the grave. I thought-“
“I need to have a half hour or so before anybody comes after me. It’ll take you that long to dig your way out. Get up.”
Emily stood. He took her hand and lowered her into the grave. She looked up, and it disturbed her to see the sky as a dim rectangle of light with the man in the ski mask framed in it. All he had to do was pull out the gun, shoot her, and push the dirt in on top of her.
He said, “I’m sorry I put you through all that for nothing, especially making you strip that night and everything. I thought you had what I needed.”
She said nothing.
He turned away, and for a moment she heard the sound of him walking through the weeds.
She stepped backward to the wall of dirt at the foot of the grave. She was not a tall woman, and the opening looked far above her head. She waited for the sound of the man’s footsteps to come back, but she didn’t hear any. The earth smelled wet and loamy, even though it hadn’t rained for months. She imagined there were worms and bugs, but the grave felt like a refuge now.
After what seemed like a long time, she heard a car engine, and then the sound of tires on gravel, with the ticking of stones kicked up against the steel undercarriage. Then she heard the deeper sound of the engine accelerating. She couldn’t tell which direction it was going from down here, and she knew she was going to regret not having better hearing. The sound faded.
Emily allowed herself to feel a tentative sense of relief, and then as though she had opened a window in a flood, the joy roared in to engulf her. She took a breath of air and it seemed to keep coming, her lungs filling to strain her rib cage. She let the air out in a long, low “Oooooh-hooo.” But her voice still sounded scared. “I’m alive,” she said aloud. Then she put her head in her hands and allowed herself to cry. After a time, she seemed to run out of tears, and she took off her jacket and dried her tears on her sleeve.
Emily looked around her. She would have to dig her way out with her hands, just as he had said. She tried to jump up and pull some of the dirt down into the hole, but she couldn’t reach high enough. She tried three more times, but with each jump she was farther from succeeding. She tried digging a set of footholds into the earth wall at the end of the grave, like the rungs of a ladder. It took a long time, and it hurt her fingers. She couldn’t seem to make the holes deep enough to hold her weight, and each time she tried to climb, her foothold would break and she would fall back down. Finally she measured a spot on the wall that was as high as she could raise her foot, and concentrated on gouging one big hole in the wall at that spot.