“I don’t have either of those answers.”
Ivy took off her sweater and pressed it against the small crackbetween the floor and the door. “We don’t want our light to give us away.”
“Good thinking.” Elsa lifted the lamp and looked about the room. Mr. Spalding had taken every last book, folder, and paper from this place the day he learned this was where she’d found Linus’s ERO files. It seemed to be the only room Spalding had been truly interested in.
“So this is the hiding place used for the Underground Railroad?” Ivy asked.
“That’s our best guess,” Elsa said quietly. “It even has a tunnel to the river.”
“Are you serious?”
“Help me move this desk, and I’ll show you.” Setting the lamp on the floor, the women each took a side and moved the desk away from the wall. Then Ivy took up the light and held it while Elsa pried open the door. Just as before, damp air seeped into the room.
Ivy held the light closer. “Stairs!” She looked over her shoulder at the door. “What else are we going to do while we wait?”
“My thoughts exactly.” Elsa’s pulse pounded through her veins. “Luke tested the tunnel, but this could be the last chance to explore the path ourselves.”
Ducking, they entered single file, Ivy leading with the light. “Easy does it,” she said. “Take your time.”
Cold humidity licked Elsa’s skin. The steps were steep and the darkness so intense it crowded the air. She wasn’t sure there was room for the dark and for oxygen, too. Still, a small light flickered inside the glass hurricane.
“Doing okay?” Ivy cast over her shoulder.
“Yes,” Elsa breathed. “Just think about how the people must have felt who were running for their lives, trying to get north to freedom. I can’t believe we’re in the same tunnel now.”
“I like how you think,” Ivy said. “Except for the one smalldetail that this space has changed a lot since then. Natural decay and deterioration must have taken place since the middle of last century.”
That was true. The walls of the tunnel had been braced with wooden scaffolding at regular intervals, but the wood was soft and rotting now. Elsa guessed that the boards were originally set in place right up against the earth. Now there were gaps between the wooden supports and the crumbling wall behind it. Erosion added dirt to the path and caused the ceiling to feel lower. Elsa and Ivy both had to stoop.
The temperature dropped, and the air grew thicker. She felt the strain of stepping carefully in her good leg more than in her weak one.
“Ooph!” Ivy stopped short. “Watch out. The next few steps are so covered in mud it’s like a drop-off of three feet to the next one. Good heavens, a body could break a leg on that if they aren’t watching. Still game to go on?”
Elsa marveled at the length of that speech. Ivy seemed practically unaffected by the climate, while Elsa had to focus on drawing breath. It felt like she was sucking through a drinking straw when what she wanted more than anything was great big gulps of air. “Hang on.” She steadied herself with fingertips against one of the weathered supports.
When she had chased Barney and climbed the escalator at Macy’s, shadows had crowded the edges of her vision, a warning sign that she needed to stop. Would she notice such a sign here when all was darkness already? She doubted it.
This was foolhardy. She shouldn’t be here. And she ought not be too proud to admit it.
“Elsa?” Ivy turned, holding the light so she could see her face. “What do you think?”
She thought it would require more courage to admit her limitations than to pretend she was fine and keep going. Luke’s phrase“unacceptable risk”echoed in her mind. The bravest thing she could do was to be honest about what she could and could not do.
But she didn’t have the wind to explain all that. Instead, she said, “I should go back.”
“Good plan. You go in front of me so I can keep an eye on you. Here, you can carry the lamp—unless you’d rather I do it.”
“Just hold it out to the side,” Elsa suggested.
Ivy obeyed, and since she stayed right behind her, the light was enough for each step. Still, Elsa ran her hands lightly along the walls on either side of her. The splintered boards made for lousy railings, and she could feel mud collecting beneath her fingernails. But if she became dizzy, at least she’d be able to catch herself before crashing into Ivy and tumbling down the stairs.
There was no light coming from inside the den to beckon them upward, but the closer they got, the easier it was for Elsa to breathe again. The damp air didn’t sit so heavily in her lungs, and the smell was not as rank. Besides, she’d been counting the steps on the way down. There were ten left to go up.
When the cobwebs cleared from her mind, she thought not only of the fugitives who had passed through here but also of Tom and all those men in the Great War who had had to live in darkness and tunnels, waiting to see if they would survive the next shelling or if they’d be sent over the top. No wonder Tom wanted nothing to do with this tunnel after that.
With seven steps left, the wooden supports ended, and her fingers grazed uninterrupted expanses of earth.
Until she touched something sticking out of the wall. Something that had corners.
