Sands of Time (Out of Time #6) (33 page)

“You’re sick,” Jack said.

Vale ignored him and nodded toward one of her men who started to drag Elizabeth down the tunnel and into the burial chamber. Her burial chamber.

Elizabeth protested and dug her heels in, but she was no match for his strength. She turned her head just in time to get one last glimpse of Simon and the pain and agony on his face etched into her memory.

She felt a swell of panic and called out to him. She could hear him and Jack as they struggled. Her mind raced, but she couldn’t find a way out. The four walls already seemed to be closing in on her, the air already feeling thinner in her lungs.

“Elizabeth!” Simon cried.

“I’m all right,” she called out, even though she wasn’t.

She heard his breath catch.

“We’ll find a way,” she said and in that instant, believed it. As insane as it was, she believed it.

The man who’d held her left the chamber and Vale stood back as two of her men came forward with a huge sledgehammer.

For some reason, Elizabeth thought there’d be a pause. That he’d lift the hammer and Vale would tease them with a chance at their final goodbyes, but it didn’t happen that way. The man swung the hammer and one of the struts shifted.

She could hear Simon calling out to her between blows, between the sound of the bits of dust and rock as they rained down into the little corridor.

“Simon!”

She started forward, thinking maybe she could make a run for it. Somehow. She had to do something. She couldn’t just stand there and let it happen. She took two steps closer to the opening and the man kept swinging.

It was happening. It was really happening. She stood in the middle of the room, as the blows crashed into the wood and stone. More rock started to fall and she froze in place. Bits of the ceiling in her chamber fell and she backed away.

She heard Simon calling out to her and she closed her eyes, filling her head with thoughts of him.

“We’ll find a way,” she whispered. Simon’s last words to her were lost as the ceiling of the tunnel finally gave way and the stone curtain fell, thunderous and final.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Simon called out to Elizabeth again and again as the stones fell, trapping her inside the tomb. His chest heaved with effort and emotion as he tried to go to her, to stop this, to save her. It was all in vain.

His heart lurched in his chest as the cascade of rocks came to an end. Had she been crushed? Was she alive and hurt and calling out to him in the darkness? His breath, when it finally came, was only short rage-filled bursts.

Vale walked up to him and he strained against the two men that held him.

“Such a painful decision,” she said. He flinched away from the cold hand she put on his cheek, but kept his eyes fixed on hers, promising revenge if he ever found a way out of this. She gave his cheek a light pat. “But that’s what love gets you.”

She nodded to her men who shoved Jack and Simon away. Jack took a step toward her, but a gun leveled at his chest stopped him.

Then, Vale and her men left, taking the two lanterns, their only source of light, with them.

She turned back, the glow from the lantern behind her making her no more than a dark specter in the doorway. “I wouldn’t try and follow us. Dynamite is so unpredictable.”

With one last laugh of triumph, she and her men left. Simon edged forward, but Jack stopped him. “We need to get back, away from the doorway.”

The light from the lamps faded as she and her men climbed up the tunnel. Simon turned his back on it all and stood staring at the mountain of rocks that separated him from his wife. If he started digging now…

He heard Jack’s voice, urgent with some warning, but he hardly cared. The room grew darker and darker and with each second Elizabeth felt further and further away. He could barely breathe, barely think.
Get ahold of yourself, Cross
, he berated himself.
What can you do?

“Simon,” Jack said urgently. “Get back.”

Jack nudged him with his shoulder. “Cross,” he said, his voice tense. “Get back. We gotta move.”

He hardly took notice, but the intensity in Jack’s eyes pulled him into the moment.

“Over there,” Jack said, nodding to the back wall. Simon felt himself nod and watched, mute, as Jack made his way to Hassan and knelt down. “Can you move?” Jack asked.

Hassan nodded slowly, his eyes blinking, trying to regain his senses.

“Get away from the door,” Jack said. “Over here.”

Their hands still bound behind them, Jack and Simon moved to the back wall. Hassan got to his feet just as the room fell into total darkness.

Blind now, Simon turned his head toward the chamber that held Elizabeth and tried to force himself to focus. She heard him, he knew. She would have moved back. He believed it. He had to believe it.

“Eliz—”

An earth-shattering explosion swallowed the tomb. Simon could feel a hot gust of wind push against him. He crouched down trying to protect himself as best he could as dust and small rocks flew like shrapnel into the room. Small shards of rock and pebbles sliced into his skin, but the pain meant nothing.

The blast echoed briefly, followed by the thunderous roar of tons of rock collapsing the outer tunnel, sealing them all inside.

Simon coughed as dust filled the air. The rumbling reverberated in the tomb, made louder somehow by the dark. Finally, it came to a stop, but there was no silence. Simon could still hear the ringing of the explosion in his head. All other noise was muffled, dampened as if they’d suddenly been submerged in water.

The deep, but distant timbre of Jack’s voice found its way through the murkiness that clogged his ears and thoughts.

“Everyone all right?”

Simon barely heard him and strained to listen for Elizabeth. He heard Hassan instead.

“I have been better.”

“Simon?” Jack asked, his body bumping against Simon’s in the dark. “You okay?”

Simon didn’t answer at first, couldn’t answer. He finally caught his breath. “We need to dig,” was all he could say.

There was a pause and then Jack said, “Damn right.”

Slowly, the ringing began to subside, leaving a dull throb behind. At least he could hear again, Simon thought. If only he could see.

“I will untie you,” Hassan said, his voice weak and breathy.

It seemed to take forever. Every second was one breath less for Elizabeth.

“Hurry,” Simon bit out.

Finally, Hassan untied his hands and Simon felt his way along the wall until the smooth stone became uneven and jagged—the collapsed tunnel.

He called out for Elizabeth, hoping somehow she could hear him. He waited for her answer, but none came. It didn’t mean anything, he told himself. There was too much rock. She couldn’t hear him. Not yet.

His hands grasped stones, any stone, and started to pull them away from the pile. They slid down, crashing into his legs, cutting into them, but he didn’t care. He felt for more rocks and pulled at them in the darkness. Elizabeth was alive, he told himself. She had to be alive. And he would find her.

It was a Hobson’s choice. He would die trying to get to Elizabeth. He would do that again and again without a second’s hesitation. Except now, it wasn’t just his life in the balance.

It would take their collective strength to dig their way to the outside. If it was even possible. Even if it were, he wouldn’t, couldn’t abandon Elizabeth, even if it meant only sharing a few more minutes together. But his decision wasn’t just a death sentence for him, but for them all.

“Simon,” Jack said, his voice loud and close.

Simon paused for a moment and rested his head on the rocks. He knew Jack was going to tell him it was pointless. That she was probably already dead. That the only logical thing to do was to try to dig their way out, not in. That he was thinking only of himself.

“I have to find her,” Simon said softly, hoping Jack could find a way to understand, to forgive him.

For a moment the only sound in the room was their breathing, precious oxygen disappearing with each inhalation and lethal carbon dioxide taking its place.

As Simon reached for another stone, he heard the sound of a match being lit. He turned and Jack held out his hand. One tiny flame in the darkness between them.

“
We
will find her,” Jack said.

Simon’s throat choked and he fought back the emotion that was already nearly pulling him under.

Hassan stepped forward and tipped a small taper candle toward the flame. The wick caught fire and the room glowed with light. “Trust in Hassan.”

Simon looked at both men, humbled by their sacrifice. There were no words. All he could do was numbly nod his thanks.

Jack worked his injured arm and winced. Simon looked at him, worried.

“Bigger things to worry about,” Jack said, nodding his head toward the enormous pile of rocks that separated them from Elizabeth.

“We need to conserve as much oxygen as we can,” Jack continued. “Try to keep your breathing slow and steady.”

He stepped forward and ran his hands over the rocks. “We should work along the top, try to clear a narrow path to her on top of the rest.”

Simon looked at the upper edge of the doorway. That made sense and he should have realized it. He had to try to slow down, to think. He would have to make smart decisions, if he was going to reach her in time.

“Right,” he said, thankful for Jack’s clear head.

Jack moved back to Hassan and tilted the other man’s head back. “That’s nasty looking,” he said, noting the gash on Hassan’s forehead. “But it looks worse than it is, I think.”

It was a lie, but they all pretended it wasn’t.

“It’ll be tight up there as we dig and, well, no offense…” Jack said, his voice trailing off as he looked at Hassan’s large middle.

“I will work over there,” Hassan said, gesturing to the blocked doorway to the outside. “And do what I can.”

“All right,” Jack said. “Just try not breathe too much.” He looked around their chamber. “We probably don’t have much more than eight or ten hours ourselves.”

Hassan looked up anxiously around the room, as if he could see the air itself disappearing in front of his eyes.

“Everything will be all right,” Hassan said to himself as he dripped wax onto the floor to secure the candle. He pulled two more from his belt and set them down. “Trust in Hassan.”

Jack turned back to Simon, giving him a curt nod. “We’ll get out. Diana knows we’re here. Help will come.”

Simon didn’t remind him that Diana could well be dead already and if she wasn’t, odds were Vale would see to it that she would be. Help would not be coming. Not in time, anyway.

Pushing that thought aside, Simon turned back to the mountain of stone they had to move. The tunnel had to be at least three feet wide, eight feet high and ten feet long. Digging their way to Elizabeth would mean moving tons of rock.

Jack started to reach out for a stone and Simon could see the blood that covered the back of his hand. His wound was bleeding badly.

“We need to tend to that arm first,” Simon said. It took all of his willpower to turn away from the pile of rocks and toward Jack. “You won’t be any help to anyone if you pass out.”

Jack hesitated and then reluctantly nodded.

Simon felt stronger somehow in that moment. Having his good sense back, perhaps. Jack sucked in a painful breath as he slipped off his jacket. Simon tore away his ripped shirtsleeve to create a makeshift bandage. The bullet had passed all the way through, which was good, but he’d already lost a lot of blood.

Simon wrapped the bandage around Jack’s arm and tied if off. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. Staring at this man who was giving him his life, who had saved them time and again, Simon struggled. What could he say to a man who was willing to do what Jack was?

It was insufficient and not worthy, but all he had to offer. “Thank you.”

Jack smiled in understanding. “We’re not dead yet.” He looked up at the rocks. “We’ll find a way.”

“You sound like Elizabeth,” Simon said, almost as a reflex.

Jack nodded and Simon could see him swallow his own emotion. “Let’s get to work.”

They made good progress at first, clearing what seemed to be a ton of stone, maybe it was. Large rocks and small, gravel and boulders had to be lifted and shifted away.

With discarded rocks and debris, they’d built up a set of steps so they could climb up high enough to work along the ceiling of the tunnel. They were about two feet in when more rocks collapsed down into the cavern they’d created. Simon barely had time to save his arm from being crushed.

All they could do was start again and again. Time slowly ticked away. The small candles Hassan had brought probably had three hours of burn time each, if they were lucky. The first was more than halfway gone. They’d been digging for nearly two hours, and they were barely three feet in.

If they kept this pace, they’d break through in just over six hours, at the very edge of Elizabeth’s air supply. That was if she’d stayed calm, hadn’t tried to dig herself out.

But he knew his wife. Elizabeth was incapable of sitting by and waiting. If she was alive, and he had to believe she was, she was digging, wasting her air, wasting her energy. Simon’s heart clenched at the thought and he redoubled his efforts. His muscles burned and his hands were raw, but he kept on.

Jack had forced them all to pace themselves, to take breaks. They were short but excruciating. When the last one was over, it was Simon’s turn in the tunnel and he crawled on top of the jagged rocks, and pulled himself forward. Carefully, he picked rocks from darkness and placed those he could into Jack’s discarded jacket. He tied the arms to create a makeshift basket and passed it back to Jack, who emptied and handed it back to repeat the process over and over again.

It was slow and painful, but they made progress. Simon fixated on that. With each inch, he was closer to Elizabeth.

The exchange, though, became more difficult the deeper they went. Simon was fully inside the tunnel now and Jack had to crawl in a bit as well to reach the jacket and larger stones before crawling out backward to dump them.