Not a reassuring thought.
“If he comes down that ladder,” Reyva said, “we knock him off, pin him down, take the gun, and lock him in that nicely convenient cage. Got it?”
“Got it,” Mariana said.
But Claire said, “If.”
“Sorry?” Mariana said.
“Ifhe comes down the ladder. He doesn’t have to. He can wait us out. Eventually, we’ll run out of food and water. Water first.” The bucket had only gathered an inch of rainwater. If their captor had decent supplies, all he’d have to do was wait. Eventually, either they’d be forced to emerge, or they’d be too weak tofight back when he came down to finish them off.
Reyva lowered her fists. “You’re right.”
She knew that she was.
“I hate that you’re right.”
She knew that too, and she hated it too.
“So, now what?” Mariana asked. “We can’t just sit here, waiting for him to decide the time is right to... you know.” She dropped her voice even lower on the wordsyou know.
Claire tapped her fingers, counting the taps as she thought. The killer had two options: come down or wait them out. And they had two options: stay or go.
Not up, though.
That was not an option.
Turning her back on the ladder, Claire faced the opening to the cave that they had all been so studiously ignoring since coming down here. “We could see where that leads.”
She braced herself, expecting a round of arguments.
But Mariana just turned on her phone’s light and aimed it at the hole. “Lesser of two evils.”
Reyva nodded. “Sure.”
Just... sure? Really? Claire stared at both of them and then at the hole in the wall. It looked as if the concrete had been gnawed away. The edges were rough and crumbly. Beyond it was a tunnel of rocks and dirt. Roots dangled down, squeezed between the rocks.
It wasn’t impossible, she thought, that someone had used this tunnel before—for example, when fleeing the Lake House fire. They could be embarking on a well-trod escape route. Or thepath could lead to a dead end.Emphasis ondead, she thought.
Always fearless, Reyva said, “Okay, let’s do this.”
Reyva climbed through the hole first, with her slimmed-down pack on her back and her phone in one hand. Mariana followed.What makes them so brave?Claire wondered. If she’d been asked the same question, Claire knew how she would’ve answered. She would have said:I’m not.She was just well practiced at faking it. She didn’t know, though, what gave Reyva and Mariana the strength to continue.
Or why they trusted her enough to listen to her. Her friends, classmates, random acquaintances... most of the people she knew discounted her as the pessimist, the downer, the scaredy-cat. Once, with Priya, she’d tried to convince her to leave a party early. Don’t go to the bonfire. Don’t drink so much. Don’t trust Zach; he doesn’t care about you.
You’re afraid of living, Priya had told her.
No, she’d said.I’m afraid of dying.
She’d been right, partially: the cops had come, but Priya had accused her of calling them, even though she hadn’t.... Claire didn’t know why she was thinking of this now. At least Zach hadn’t been an arsonist/murderer.
Reyva and Mariana listen when I say we have to leave.They seemed to care what she said and what she thought.Please don’t let them find out I’m faking it.
Claire followed them into the tunnel, also with her mostly-empty backpack and phone. She glanced back once, into the shadowy bunker. It was full of proof that they’d been there: their wet clothes, all their muddy footprints, everything they’d leftbehind, but there was no sense in trying to hide that. If the killer didn’t know they were here already, he’d have had no reason to shut the hatch.
Of course, by leaving, they were losing their advantage if he decided to come down the ladder—it was obvious they’d been there, and it was obvious where they’d gone—but maybe he didn’t know about the tunnel. Maybe he thought he’d taken care of them by trapping them in a hole without food or water, and he’d already left the area.
She kept telling herself that as they fumbled their way through the cave: this was the best out of two terrible choices. Unless it wasn’t, of course. It was possible that the cave didn’t have an exit. Or that it narrowed so much a person couldn’t squeeze through. Or it could have pits or crevasses they could fall into, cliffs they could fall off, or underground rivers they could drown in.
