Clare and Russ were flung backward and to the side as the pent-up water crashed through the bulkhead doorway into the cellar. The freezing water battered her, yanking her away from Russ, who was swinging one-handed in the torrent, clawing for the door handle. She dug her fingers into her wrists, locking herself around his waist. A wave slapped her face, leaving her blind and choking, and before she had the chance to hack the water from her mouth another one broke around her, and her head was underwater. She scrabbled at Russ’s shirt, dragging herself up his body. She broke through to the air and gasped.
“-around my neck,” Russ was shouting, and she flung one arm, then the other, around his neck and pushed herself up until her head was level with his. She wrapped her legs around his waist and hung on as they tossed in the torrent hurtling through the confines of the doorway. They pitched from side to side, water sluicing over their faces, floating higher and higher as the river sought its level. She felt Russ’s arms straining downward against the flood tide, clinging to the door handle that had been their lifeline, but now threatened to anchor them under the rising water.
“It’s too low!” she shouted in his ear. “You have to let go!”
“Hang on!” he shouted. She tightened her arms and legs and felt a jolt as he let go one hand and the water tried to sweep them away. He whacked his free hand against the door, fingers scratching for some purchase. His back shifted, he heaved his other hand forward, and they were head and shoulders above the water again. His arms were trembling with the effort of tethering them to the door.
She blinked the water out of her eyes and looked through the doorway, where a patch of steel-wool sky threw off just enough light to limn the bricks of the outer wall and the white froth of the river gushing over the rocky embankment and whirlpooling through the doorway. Russ held them fast through the suck and slop of the water crescendoing in dark currents between the stone walls. They bobbed higher. The cascade eased, from a dam spill to a millrace to a stream. The flow from the river outside eddied around them.
“Hold on,” Russ said. “I’m gonna try to get us out of here.” He released his hold and pulled them, hand over hand, along the upper edge of the door. They were floating so close to the ceiling that Clare bumped her head when Russ hauled forward.
They reached the edge of the bulkhead door. Russ jammed his fingers between the door and its frame. “I’m not going to try to swim across this. The cold. It’s making it hard to move.”
She jerked her head in a nod. From here, the bulkhead opening looked to be a mile wide. Her arms and legs felt heavy, detached. Her hands, clasped around her wrists, seemed to belong to another person. She had stopped shivering, stopped hurting. Instead, she felt numb. Numb and exhausted. And she hadn’t even been working, like Russ had. She had just clung on like a limpet.
“I’m going overhand along the top of the door frame,” he said. “Once we’re out of the bulkhead, I think we’ll be able to walk through the water toward the higher ground.”
She nodded again.
“You okay?”
“Cold.”
He rolled over, facing upward, and reached for the frame. Clare clung to his back, her hair trailing in the water, her face tipped high so she could breathe. Hand by hand, he carried them across the current. Her head bumped against something solid.
“Wall,” she said.
He turned, plunging his hands in the water, feeling for the top of the bulkhead’s outer wall. “Got it,” he said. His voice was thin. Tired. “I’m holding on to it. Climb over my back up onto the bank. It’s only about a foot underwater there. Keep to the building.”
Clare had to flex her hands to get them to unlock. Her muscles were cramped and unwieldy. She could barely control her arms and legs as she splashed and floundered over Russ. For a second, reaching down past his head and feeling only more water, she panicked, until she struck the rubble that made up the narrow strip of land between the riverbed and the chandlery. She crawled onto it, turned to face Russ, and collapsed. The water came to her chest. “Give me your hands,” she said. “I’ll pull you over.”
His flesh had all the warmth of a dead fish. She tightened her grip on his hands, braced her unfeeling feet against the edge of the bulkhead’s stone wall, and, pushing and pulling, hauled him out of the pool that was the entrance to the cellar.
He flailed his way onto the submerged embankment and sagged against her, panting. “We gotta get out of here,” he said when he had caught his breath.
Leaning on each other, they lurched to their feet. Standing, the water was up to her shins. Russ steered her toward the side of the building, and pressed to the wet bricks for balance, they staggered over the uneven, moss-slick stones of the embankment. Her clothes were so sodden, and her legs so deadened, that she didn’t realize they were walking out of the river’s overflow until she noticed that the slosh-slap of her steps had changed to a squish-squelch of boots on rock. She moved away from the wall. “Let me help you,” she said, shouldering beneath his arm to act as his crutch. They stumbled over garbage and up the eroded slope to the road, and she could see Margy Van Alstyne’s car, and it was the most welcome sight in the world.
They crossed the road like zombies. Russ popped open the driver’s door, and Clare staggered around to the other side. They fell in at the same time, clunking the doors shut behind them. It took Russ three tries to get the keys out of his pants pocket, and when he finally started the engine and they were hit with the first blast of hot air from the vents, Clare went boneless. They sat in silence.
After a minute, she noticed his cell phone, dangling from the car charger. She tugged on the curly cord, fishing the phone off the floor. “Look,” she said. “You’re still connected to my phone.” Which was lying somewhere at the bottom of the submarine cellar.
Russ didn’t open his eyes. “Hear anything?”
She pressed the phone to her ear. “Glug, glug,” she said. He rolled his head to look at her. She started to laugh. He blinked, then started to laugh as well. They laughed and laughed until their bodies shook and the Camry rocked and tears rolled down their cheeks.
Eventually, they wound down to gasps and sighs. She pressed the off button, hanging up on the river, and handed him the phone. He stared at it as if he was having a problem remembering what it was for. He looked at her. “If you were Allan Rouse, where would you be right now?”
“Home with my wife.”
“That’s my guess, too.” He punched in a number.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to send two cars over there. I’m going to have one of ’em stop at the station for some dry clothes. And I’m going to drive to Rouse’s house and nail that son of a bitch to the wall.”
Chapter 38
They pulled up behind a black-and-white already parked outside the Rouses’ home. Butted up against Russ, supporting him as he limped to the door, Clare felt like a half-drowned cat returning home to the man who had stuffed her in a sack and tossed her in the river. The cold rain was a misery on her just-thawing skin. She thought the evening had inured her to further shock, but she blinked in surprise when the door was opened by Mrs. Marshall.
“Good God.” Mrs. Marshall stepped aside, wrinkling her nose at the smell. They limped into the entrance hall. “What on earth happened to you?”
Clare could hear a drone of voices from the living room. “It’s a long story,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
Through the archway, she could see Renee Rouse, hovering over Officer Mark Durkee, who was reading the Miranda warning from a laminated card to a crumpled, raggedy figure curled up in the recliner. “Do you understand these rights as I have told them to you?” Durkee said.