Don't let them know that you know. Don't let them know that you know, he repeated over and over in his head as his hands nervously sank into the murky soil under his body, inching himself backward ever so slowly. Sweat trickled down Sam's face and back even though the air was frigid in the subterranean duct. He would move his hands, feeling the slippery movement of slithering under his palms and fingers, urging him to cry out, but he did not entertain his fear. After pushing back with his arms, he would carefully shift his hips and legs in the same manner, gradually creeping backward out of the tunnel.
“Don't rush, Sam,” Nina warned. “Take your time. We'll wait as long as it takes.”
“I'm getting there,” he replied. “I don't think they are onto me ye… aow! Jesus!”
“Mr. Cleave?” Virgil cried.
“Sam!” Nina shouted with a hint of panic.
“I'm okay,” Sam answered. “Just a bloody thorn, or shard of glass in the mud. My flashlight is giving up the ghost so I can't pull it out right now.”
“Just get out so we can put some ointment on it. I have some antiseptic cream in my pouch here,” Joanne said reassuringly.
“Alright, thanks,” Sam thanked her in a shaky voice. “Christ, this little paper cut is killing me. Like a bee sting. Fucking hell!”
“Like a bee sting?” Joanne gasped. “Sam, did you see the thorn? Can you see how big it is?”
“This is not the right time to worry about trivialities, Jo,” he moaned.
“Sam! Listen to me!” she insisted, sounding mildly vexed. “Take a moment and shine on the wound so you can see what it is. Please. Please, just… just humor me.”
Sam obliged. Hardly bright anymore, his light fell on the place that burned and throbbed. The mud on his hand was stained with blood, as he expected, but there was no thorn; there was no glass in his skin.
“Sam?” Nina beckoned.
He was quiet, apart from a sigh that escaped him.
“Can you see anything?” Joanne asked.
“It's just blood and mud,” Sam reported, his voice beginning to falter.
With a very concerned expression riddled with subliminal terror, Joanne whispered to the others, “That sounds like a snakebite to me. I pray to God that I’m wrong, though.”
“Jesus! Oh my God! Again!” Sam wailed from nearby, just across the threshold of the septic tank. “I th-think I got b-b…” he started, but his words were interrupted by another cry of agony.
“Holy shit! They’re attacking Sam!” Nina screamed, bolting forward to help him, but she ran right into Virgil's obstructive hand which stopped her. The boat captain lunged forward in the weak beam of Joanne and Nina's flashlights, grabbing blindly around the edge to find Sam. Grappling wildly for a second, he groaned like a bear, pulling the injured journalist free of the dark pit and seizing his body tightly.
He carried Sam to the other side of the septic tank, shouting at the women, “Come quickly! Hurry! We have to get him to the boat or he is going to die!” They stumbled and scuttled all the way back out, trying not to show their frantic horror at the prospect of Sam's fate. Quietly, save for their panting breaths tufting out into the cold atmosphere of Martin Bay's rocky region, the group ran back to the boat. Reaching the Scarlet, the women took care of cleaning Sam up while Virgil hastened to get the medical kit to attend to the basic first aid the journalist needed to impair infection to the rest of his muscle tissue.
Abandoning their prize, literally meters away, the expedition sped away over the waves in the dead of night to reach the closest civilization they could find, hoping that Sam would not succumb to the nightmarish kiss of Olympias.
Chapter 29 — Hidden Talents
Sylvia and her husband volunteered to help Father Harper rescue David Purdue from the clutches of what they only knew where people with nefarious intentions toward the billionaire explorer and inventor they had been tracking since his deceit.
“They have been in there for ages,” Sylvia told Lance. They were standing outside the church of St. Columbanus, sharing a cigarette. Her husband appeared to be in deep thought as she talked, but she assumed it was merely the trauma of her abduction finally being undone, the relief leaving him somehow numb.
He looked at his watch. “It’s been forty minutes. Maybe he’s getting her drunk on communal wine and forcing her to convert,” Lance remarked quite dryly, taking another drag. “I know I am not the most religious of people, sweetheart, but I feel that sometimes we need to do God's work for Him.”
“Meaning?” she asked.
He looked up at the steeples reaching to the heavens, the holiness of it all, the antiquity and faith put into the masonry and glass of the majestic, massive shrine. Then he looked at Sylvia and shrugged. “That woman is evil, Sylla. She knew you had children and still she had no compunctions about putting a bullet through your skull.”
“I know,” she replied. “But how is this God's work?”
“Don't you see? Maria Winslet is a monster in human flesh. Beasts like her only hurt this world; they make it worse,” he frowned, smoking in quick pulls. “She must be punished, but not because we expect her to repent. She must be punished because she has earned torment and pain. That bitch should be put through hell before she is finally sent there with her own bullet.”
“Lance!” Sylvia gasped. “My God, what has gotten into you?”
He was furious; that was plain to see. But in the harsh comment of his wife's captor his eyes could not hide the tears turning them glassy with a shimmer. “Is it so wrong to want her to suffer like we did?” he asked. “If Father Harper does not get it out of her, I am sorry for Mr. Purdue, but I will kill her with her own gun, Sylvia. Even if it means that man's doom, by God I am going to make her pay.”
She took his shaking hands into hers and kissed him. “Don't worry, Father Harper is a gentle man with much wisdom and he will show us how to forgive her. Let's go in and see if he’s managed to find out where Purdue is being kept. Maybe being inside the church will help you find the peace you need to forgive.”
Sylvia led her upset husband into the church and closed the doors behind them. They checked the confessional and saw that Maria was not there anymore, so they proceeded to Father Harper's office to determine what information he’d managed to get from Maria.
“Where are they?” she asked when they found the office vacant. Lance's phone rang.
“It's Father Harper,” he said, followed by, “Yes, alright. We'll be right there.”
“What now?” she sighed.
“Come. He says we must meet him in the back yard of the manse right now.”
They left the church garden at the back and rounded the wrought iron fencing that separated the manse from the church. Father Harper was just opening the external doors to his home office, motioning them inside urgently. When they stepped inside Sylvia knew something bad was going on. From the sofa Maria Winslet was staring absently at them. Her face showed the signs of Father Harper's desperate apprehension of her weapon from her earlier, but she seemed docile and coherent.
“There,” Father Harper said and gave Lance a piece of paper. Upon seeing the doctor's quizzical countenance the priest informed him that those were the hack codes and passwords of the accounts Lance's money had been paid into.
“How did you get her to tell you this?” he gasped in amazement, while his wife grabbed the paper to peruse it. She recognized the names of the accounts she’d had to relay to her husband on the phone.
“I can be very persuasive. Doing God's work sometimes takes a more… sinister… point of view, I'm afraid,” the priest answered.