“No, at the worst, we’d be swept away in the freezing water and drown.”
“Yeah. Well.” He tightened his hold on her. “I’m going to try it. I want you to sit tight on these stairs.”
“So I can be the girl from Titanic who stays high and dry while you, the guy, vanish beneath the icy waves? I don’t think so.”
“Didn’t we just agree you should have stayed in the car?”
“I was joking.”
“Clare.” Maybe it was the total darkness that made his voice so intimate. “If anything were to happen to you, I’d…”
“You’d what?”
The darkness, and the sense that they were the only inhabitants of a world bound by the unseen walls stretching out around them.
“I’d walk into my brother-in-law’s field and lie down and let the corn grow up around me.”
No one else in their world. No costs, no considerations, only two voices in the dark. And honesty.
“Okay. Same here.” She twined her arms over his, hugging him closer. “Remember the helicopter?” She had taken him for a disastrous ride last summer.
“I promise you, I will never, ever forget the helicopter. So long as we both shall live.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “You told me to hold on.”
“So now we’re both holding on. No you going and me staying behind. We sink or swim together.”
He pressed a kiss into her hair. “Even if I said please?”
“No.”
He made a noise deep in his throat.
They sat in silence for a while. Clare was damp where she wasn’t wet, aching with the chill, and both of them reeked. She felt as if she could stay right where she was forever. But the realization of it roused her. They didn’t have forever.
“I may as well get down there and see if I can find this bulkhead before it gets any deeper.” She leaned forward, folding her coat and draping it over one of the steps. She climbed down the stairs and waded into the water.
“Hang on.” She could hear a bumping sound as Russ went down the steps on his rear. He gasped when he hit the water. “I’m coming with you.” He jostled her arm, trailed down and took her hand. “Let’s see. The stairs are parallel to the river side of the building, so the wall should be right-” They struck an uneven patch of stone. “Here,” Russ said. “You go left, I’ll go right.” He gave her hand a squeeze before letting go.
She spread her hands over the dank stone and began her search. Step, sweep. Step, sweep. Cobwebs stroked her face and clung to her hair. She tried not to think of the creepy-crawlies that might be living there. At least nothing was squeaking. The only sounds were the lapping of water against stone, Russ’s periodic huffs of pain as he bore down on his broken leg, and her own chattering teeth. She reached the corner of the building.
“I’m at a corner. Do you want me to continue? This wall runs away from the river, parallel to the street.”
“No, come on back toward me.”
He didn’t have to ask twice. She waded through the water, trailing one hand over the stone to keep her bearings. “Where are you?”
“Right here.”
“How’s your leg?”
“Better. Of course, that’s because it’s gone numb.”
“Mine, too.” Touching his back to orient herself, she moved past him and pressed both hands against the foundation wall. The moldy, old, something-died-in-here smell was worse. She tried not to breathe too deeply. Step, sweep. Step, sweep. “Is it my imagination, or do you feel the water rising?”
“It’s your imagination.”
Imagination or no, the faster they found the bulkhead-if there was one-the sooner they’d be out of this death trap. She increased her pace. So she had no one to blame but herself when she tripped over a knee-high obstacle and tumbled into the water. The shock of the cold took her breath away, and she flailed and scrambled her way back onto her feet.
“Clare? What is it? What happened?”
She forced words from her tightly clenched jaw. “There’s something here. I tripped.”
He bumped into her, and brushed her as he bent over, feeling out the obstacle. She wrapped her arms around herself and shook. I will never be warm again.
“You found it, darlin’.” He straightened, pulled her into a tight embrace, chafed her back. “Steps. It’s a high bulkhead door, which means it may not be underwater. You ready to check it out?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Good girl.” He released her.
She shuffled forward until her boots struck something hard beneath the water. She stepped up. “Take my hand,” she said. He interlaced his fingers with hers, and she steadied him as he mounted the first step. Stretching out one arm in front of her, she took a second step. The third was above the water. “It’s right here,” she said, thumping a wooden door with her knee. Russ stepped up beside her and she let go of his hand. Stretching up and down, she made out two crossbeams, bracing the vertical planks. “It must go right up to the ceiling.”
She heard his fingers tapping several inches above her reach. “It does,” he said.
The wood was soft and pulpy. Reaching left, she found out why. Water was rolling through the crack between the door and the jamb, running in swift rivulets down to the stone step below. “This thing is leaking,” she said. “There’s water backed up on the other side.”
“Not at the top. Lets see how high it goes.”
She traced the edge of the door upward, past one set of hinges, until her fingers moved past the running water onto damp, flaky wood. “It’s about as high as my neck,” she said.
“I figure there are two possibilities,” he said. “It could be water’s collected in the well created by the outside stairs. In that case, when we open the door, we’ll be hit with a gush. But we’ll be able to walk out once it’s drained.”
“And the second possibility?”
“The river’s risen above its banks here.”
“So when we open the door-”
“It floods the cellar. Right up to your neck.”
She didn’t point out that she was standing on steps that raised her a foot and a half above the floor. If the cellar flooded, it would be well above her neck.
“If that’s the case,” he went on, “the best thing we can do is hang on to the door until the water levels have equalized. Then we can pull ourselves out and hopefully hang on to the building. Once we’ve got our footing, we’ll just walk out of the water to the end of the street.”
“Sure thing. No sweat.”
“Look, I’ll be more than happy if you want to get back up on the top of the stairs and wait. You’ll be above the water there.”
“We’ve already been through that.” She reached to her right and hit his arm. “How do we open the door?”
“There are two wooden bars resting in brackets. Maybe eight inches long, two inches high. One above the door handle, one below.” He shifted. “They’re swollen with all the water. So they’re going to be hard to move.” He stood, silent. She let him think it through. “This is how we’ll do it. I’m going to kick the lower one out of its bracket.”
“How are you going to do that with a broken leg? Maybe that should be my job.”
“Your job is going to be standing behind me and hanging on as tight as you can. The only place we can get a grip and not be washed away to the back wall is the door handle here. I’m going to hold that and you’re going to hold me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“All right, get underneath my arm here and help me balance myself.”
She ducked beneath his shoulder and took as much of his weight as she could, while he drew his uninjured foot off the floor. His breath hissed between his teeth, and she winced for what he must be feeling.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! He tilted forward and stood on his good leg again.
“Did you get it?”
“I think so.” He bent over, feeling for the bar. “Yeah. The door is bowing out down here. Whatever’s behind it, it’s got plenty of force. So hang on.”