Gabe Rio.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Josh said.
Gabe didn’t even blink, his face washed in the dimming daylight that streamed down from above. The former captain just grimaced, settling himself more securely against the shaft wall, and got a better grip on Josh.
“We go in tandem,” Gabe said. “First me, then you. I’ll go up a few feet, then help you after, and keep you steady, then climb up after you. Tori’ll watch you on that side. But we’ve gotta move our asses.”
Josh stared. Seconds ago he’d been cursing this man’s dead brother. Gabe had been guilty of multiple crimes, and Josh had come along and ruined his life. Now, without hesitation, the man came to his aid. He had no words to thank Gabe, or to express his doubt or surprise. He doubted anything he said would be welcome, or sufficient.
“Let’s go,” Josh said.
They climbed just as Gabe had described, but it felt excruciatingly slow. Sykes and three of the other sailors were scrambling high above them, having covered nearly twenty feet already. To Josh’s right, Alena and her grandson had their reunion on the rock wall but there were no tearful hugs. The two Boudreaus exchanged a few words and then they were climbing, breathing hard and focused entirely on where their feet and hands could find purchase. One of the sailors, a lieutenant, had a harder time than the others and kept about even with Voss, who had slowed down so as not to get too far ahead of Josh.
“What happened to Dr. Ridge?” Voss asked.
Josh swallowed hard, remembering the screams. “Wrong turn.”
He didn’t mean it as a joke, and Voss didn’t take it as one. They were past the point of humor. Long past.
For minutes that seemed an eternity, he climbed, Gabe gripping his armpit and pulling upward on muscles that burned with strain. His clothes were tacky with blood and stuck to his skin and the flesh around his wound tugged with every movement of his arm, but still he climbed, unwilling to consider the alternative.
“Jesus,” said the lieutenant, above him and to the right.
Josh risked a glance up at him, noticing how fast the light was fading, and saw that the sailor was staring back down the shaft. When next he rested, with Gabe scrabbling up a few more feet, Josh looked over his shoulder.
The ledge where they had come into the shaft had been submerged. Now that the tunnels were flooding, water pouring in from all sides, the tide had begun to rise even faster. But it was no longer the tide that made his muscles clench and his heart race.
The tide could only rise so far, but even as the tide rose, the light receded. They were on the eastern wall of the shaft, climbing in the last vestiges of sunlight that peeked in over the rim above. A clear line separated day from night in that shaft, and it moved up toward them as fast as they could climb, perhaps faster.
And just behind that demarcation, like runners at the starting line, the sirens clung to the walls of the volcanic shaft, creeping upward along with the encroaching darkness, just out of the sun’s range. If some of them were sluggish during the day, they had certainly woken now. In a single glimpse, even with his eyes not adjusted to the balance of light and dark, he could make out fifteen or more of them, and others were climbing the western wall of the shaft, where the sun had long since surrendered its hold.
“Oh, my God,” he whispered.
His numb fingers missed a hold. He scraped them raw grabbing for another, slammed his shoulder against the wall and screamed at the impact. His voice sounded a little like a shriek, and even something like the cry of the sirens that echoed all around them.
“Careful!” Voss shouted.
Tori shot her a hard look. “We’re being careful! He’s fine!”
If he could have managed it, Josh would have laughed. He was far from fine.
“Just keep going,” he rasped, breathing hard. Even his eyes hurt. His whole body felt heavier and he knew that blood loss and trauma were taking their toll. He would be lucky to hang on, never mind climb.
Yet with Gabe’s help, he kept going.
Tori didn’t know why she stayed with him. She wanted to just climb. Sykes and Mays, and another sailor she didn’t know, were moving fast, maybe twelve or fifteen feet from the top. Garbarino and another sailor had moved over to try to help speed the Boudreaus along, but they were making decent time.
She should climb. She should leave Josh behind. He had said as much himself at least half a dozen times back in the tunnel and she knew he would not blame her now. And maybe that was why she couldn’t do it.
It wasn’t love. No matter what she’d been through, or how many foolish things she had done in her life for the sake of unworthy men, she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that. But she had made a connection with him, gone to a place inside herself that she had never found before, and it had made her see herself in a new way. And the woman she now saw in herself would never abandon this man, or perhaps any man, just to save herself.
So close to death, and yet it made her feel alive.
Voss hated her. She wanted to peel Tori right off the wall and toss her down into the water like feeding time at the zoo. Over the years they had been partners, Josh had become her best friend. How was it possible that he could get tangled up with this woman, a suspect, in the middle of a case? How was it possible that he could feel something for her, could sleep with her, endangering his career and the squad and their partnership? Could Voss have misjudged him so completely, or was there just something about Tori Austin?
Voss hated her, but she admired her, too. Six feet away, Tori mirrored her terror back to her. An invisible link tethered them together, two women striving to survive. Two women who couldn’t conceive of letting this one man die. Voss had been hardened by her career choice and the things she had seen, but what had forged that steel in Tori Austin?
Jealousy didn’t suit Voss. She despised it in herself. She loved Josh but had never been in love with him, would never have jeopardized their partnership by pursuing something sexual — something complicated — with him. But they had developed an intimacy that she had never felt with anyone, and intimacy wasn’t easy for her.
Now this woman they ought to be putting in jail had gotten a piece of that, and Voss hated her for it.
But she wanted her to live.
“Come on, Tori!” she snapped. “Don’t let him slow down. We’re racing the goddamn sun.”
And they were. Both women looked down and saw the line between light and darkness sliding up at them, chasing them toward the surface and the sky, and they climbed faster.
Alena’s chest burned. It felt tight and her breath came too fast and she focused on the muscles in her arms, waiting for pain that would be a telltale sign of a heart attack. But that pain didn’t come. The fist in her chest was the grip of fear, as all of her illusions about her life were stripped away. Her work was important — more important, maybe, than she had ever realized — but she thought of her daughter, and the time they could have spent together. Time squandered in favor of adventure and discovery. Alena loved those things — they meant the world to her — but not as much as her family meant.
Her fingers searched for a crevice, found it, plunged in, and she boosted herself a few more feet before reaching for higher toeholds. The shaft angled downward at about eighty percent here, and the climb was getting easier. Faster. Above her, Lieutenant Commander Sykes and one of his men were nearly at the top, the sun limning them in golden halos, like gods coming down from Olympus. Nearer, but still a few feet higher than she was, Garbarino and a sailor she didn’t know scrabbled side to side in search of better grips, moving like spider-men, then pausing to check her progress.