Compulsion (38 page)

The tunnel climbed steeply toward the surface and another iron door, which because of the sharp pitch, was more above them than in front of them. Eight yanked the handle. It didn’t budge. He put his shoulder against the metal, and when that failed, he gave the door a kick. The angle made it impossible to get much leverage. He switched to kicking the iron hinges.

“You might want to save that foot for walking,” Barrie said, trying to keep her voice from sounding hysterical. “Why don’t we try the other tunnel before you put yourself in a body cast?”

He kicked one more time, then let her pull him away. He rolled his head on his neck.

“Feel better?” Barrie asked, wishing she could kick a few things too, but that would have been both pointless and painful.

Eight spun her toward him and kissed her, a long, deep kiss, until she thought she was going to pass out from lack of oxygen to the brain. “Now I’m better. You?”

“Yeah. Fan-freaking-tastic.”

“Good, because we’re going to get out of this. Look at me.” He ducked his head so he was eye level with her, and laced the fingers of both hands through hers. He spoke so intently, it was hard not to believe him. Not to believe
in
him. “We will get out.”

Maybe the human brain was hardwired to require faith. Some people believed in God. Others believed in sports teams. Some believed blindly in their own talent or intelligence, regardless of evidence to the contrary, and then there were those who believed in family no matter how often it betrayed them. The people who mattered were the people you chose instead of the people who were yours only by an accident of birth. Real family was heart as much as, if not more than, blood.

Barrie had grown so used to the returning click falling into place whenever she and Eight touched each other that she had stopped paying attention to it. But now in the middle of feeling lost, she felt found again. She was choosing him, and she was going to believe in him, and if she ever got out of here, she was going to believe in Pru the way she had always believed in Mark.

“Yes,” she said, more certainly. “We are getting out.” She pretended she didn’t feel how cold Eight’s hands were in hers.

They retraced their steps back to the main tunnel, and followed it beneath the river until the floor sloped up again. They passed three more niches containing lanterns, which let Barrie hope that someone who had put so much thought into preparing the tunnel would have thought to leave a spare key for emergencies. She almost had herself convinced it would be there, hanging on an old-fashioned hook beside the door on the Beaufort side. Or maybe the tunnel would come out where Eight’s little sister or his father could hear them if they yelled.

She and Eight passed another branch in the tunnel that led up toward the river, but in silent agreement they walked straight on. Barrie kept hoping, picturing a ring of keys, imagining a door swinging open into some secret recess of the basement at Beaufort Hall. But the tunnel ended in a very solid oak door reinforced with iron. Eight couldn’t kick it down, and no one answered when Barrie screamed until her throat burned raw.

She gave up before Eight did, and sank to the floor. The flame from the lantern cast shadows across the bricks, and the vaulted ceiling echoed the
boom, boom, boom
of Eight’s foot on the door.

Why couldn’t the wood have been water-soaked and
rotten? Or eaten by termites? After three hundred years, a few termites didn’t seem like too much to ask.

Barrie’s head jerked up. The iron door Cassie had closed at Watson’s Landing and this door at Beaufort Hall were both protected from the elements because they were inside and underground. The door at the end of the branch tunnel Barrie and Eight had followed was still within the boundary of Watson’s Landing. Blood rushed through Barrie’s head while she chased that thought.

Everything that had been broken at Watson’s Landing, every last thing, had been designed to get her or Pru’s attention. As if the
yunwi
, whether at the request of the Fire Carrier or the spirits or by their own choice, had been trying to force the Watsons to use the gift and live up to the bargain Thomas had made.

The
yunwi
had wanted Luke and Twila found.

But they hadn’t done any lasting damage anywhere.

The garden was still in perfect shape. The boards on the dock were sturdy. The roof wasn’t blowing away or sliding off the house. Nothing had fallen on any tourists. No one had been seriously hurt.

Was it possible that the door at the end of the branch tunnel on the Watson side, maybe all of Watson’s Landing, was protected from decay and rust by magic? Maybe by the same
kind of magic that created whatever invisible barriers kept the
yunwi
on the island?

There was another door, though. There had to be one at the end of the branch tunnel she and Eight had passed on the Beaufort side of the river. And that door, presumably, wouldn’t be underground or have magical protection. If it had been exposed to air and water all these years . . .

Barrie scrambled to her feet and took off at a limping run. “Come on! I have to see something.”

Eight’s sneakers were lighter and quieter on the brick than the heavy Wellingtons she still had on her feet, and his legs were longer. He caught up in a handful of strides. She had a stitch in her side by the time they reached the top of the Beaufort river tunnel, where she could see even at first glance that the oak door was definitely more weathered and water-darkened. Hope relaxed the grim set of Eight’s jaw. He kicked the door, grinning expectantly. But it held.

Barrie hadn’t realized how sure she had been that it would splinter, until it didn’t. Now they had no more doors—and no more options. What were they supposed to do, just sit here and wait for someone to come find them? No one would have a clue where to begin to look. Eight’s boat was at Watson’s Landing, but Cassie might have done something with that, too. And who knew what kind of lies Cassie would tell to cover her tracks.

Eight must have come to the same conclusion. He was still kicking the door, with no sign of giving up.

“It’s not going to break,” Barrie said. “Stop. We should keep movement to a minimum, since we don’t have any water. We need to hold out as long as we can. Give Pru and your dad as much time as possible . . .”

She couldn’t finish the thought. All she could think of was Pru being trapped at Watson’s Landing again. And Mark, expecting her to be here and never hearing from her.

She had to think of something.

Eight slumped against the door and hung his head. Barrie had never imagined he could look defeated. In the sudden quiet, their breaths and the light trickle of sand sifting to the floor were the only sounds.

There had to be a way out of this. There had to be.

She glanced at her watch. It was almost ten thirty. Pru would be looking for her by now.

Eight’s steps scratched on the bricks as he came toward her, and she looked up as he wrapped his arms around her. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and then she couldn’t see anymore. His heart was erratic against her cheek.

“It’s all going to be fine,” he said.

“Of course it is. We should go back to Watson’s Landing and wait. And we should bring all the lanterns we can find.”

“In a minute. I’m still thinking.”

“Then think fast, would you?” Barrie tried not to imagine their lives measured by an hourglass, marked by the slow whisper of sand. So many hours until the light ran out, so many days until they died of thirst in the darkness.

Why did she keep thinking of sand? Abruptly she pulled away from Eight and moved to the bricks beside the door. Stooping, she ran her hand across the ground flecked by grit that Eight’s kicking had dislodged from the three-hundred-year-old mortar between the bricks.

“Give me the flint from the tinderbox, would you?” she asked. “I want to try something.”

Eight handed her the sharp rock, and she ran it along the mortar. It bit through, and she pressed harder, dislodging more sandy material as the flint dug in and made a narrow trench.

She paid little attention when Eight’s footsteps receded. Then his voice came from a few yards back, “I thought I’d get another flint, but there’s no tinderbox in this niche. I’m going to go see if I can find one.”

“Sure.” The word came out a groan, because Barrie was using all her strength.

She heard Eight light the other lantern. They needed to conserve oil, but on the other hand, if he got the other flint, the work would go twice as fast. She let him go.

Her knuckles scraped raw against the brick as she dug the
flint as deep as it would go into the mortar. Then she switched to using the pointed end of the fire steel to go deeper. That was less successful because she didn’t have the strength to push it through. Deciding to leave that job for Eight, she went back to using the flint. She started on another side of the same brick, working methodically until she’d done as much as she could on all four sides.

Eight peered over her shoulder when he came back. “Good work,” he said with a nod of approval.

“Try using the fire steel to clear out the rest of the mortar where I’ve already done as much as I can do,” Barrie said.

She stepped aside to let him try it, and he rammed the steel from side to side with pure, brute force, grunting with the effort. Then he suddenly jerked forward.

“I’m through,” he said, stooping to put his eye to the new void between the bricks. “But I don’t see any light.”

“Maybe there’s no moon tonight. Keep going.”

She squeezed in front of him so they could work simultaneously. She felt the rise and fall of his chest, felt the heat of his body, heard the beat of his heart. Her own breath came faster, and not from exertion.

Grief made you think about sex; she had read that once in a novel. Did fear do that too? Or excitement? Hope? Whichever it was, Eight’s scent, his warmth, his strong jaw
and kind eyes suddenly made her want to kiss him almost as much as she wanted to get out of the tunnel.

“All right,” he said a little later. “I think we need a break.”

Barrie leaned back into the crook of his shoulder, and let herself pretend this was an adventure, that they were only experimenting to see if they could claw themselves out of a pirate tunnel.

Except it wasn’t a game. Pru had to be panicking by now. And Mark. What if he had tried to call her back? Barrie attacked the mortar again, faster, harder.

Her knuckles bled, and so did Eight’s. Drops of blood freckled the floor, and there were no spirits, no shadows to bargain with.

She and Eight moved a row at a time, working in silence because talking was too much effort. When they had five rows cleared, Eight pulled his arms from around her and nudged her aside. “Stand back.”

He braced his hands on the wall. Then he kicked the bricks hard, once, twice . . . Where he and Barrie had cleared the mortar, the bricks fell outward and released a stream of mud and decaying leaves that rained back into the tunnel. Barrie jumped out of the way as the debris kept coming, splashing onto the floor and splattering her boots and legs until it finally stopped.

Eight pushed the lantern through the hole they had made. He poked his head out, but his shoulders didn’t fit. “It’s a covered stairwell. The crud that fell in came through spots where the lid above us has rusted away.”

“So we have to get through another metal door?”

“It’s corroded. I can see strips of moonlight.”

Bits of hope. “All right.” Barrie licked her lips and swallowed hard. “Let me try climbing through.”

Eight looked at her like she had lost her mind. “You’re not going anywhere without me. Let’s clear the rest of this.”

“It’ll take too long to remove enough bricks for you to fit through. I can be back here with help before then. God knows what Cassie is doing, now that she’s had time to think. And Pru has to be frantic.” Barrie wriggled between Eight and the wall and kissed him quickly. “Can you give me a boost?”

He caught the collar of her shirt and kissed her, long and deep so that the warmth of his lips turned to fire and promises. He pulled away so slowly, she felt like there was still a live strand of energy running between them, holding them together.

“Be very, very careful.” He brushed her cheek with the back of his finger. “I don’t like you leaving.”

“I’m not the one who’s leaving, baseball guy.”

“Maybe I’ve changed my mind. It’s amazing how fast you figure out your priorities when you’re under pressure.”

“Meaning what exactly?”

“We’ll work things out. Whatever happens.”

Barrie’s answering smile was shaky. It frightened her how much one person could matter to another, how a whole life could depend on a few simple words. “I thought you were going to stop reading me?”

“It’s not always about what
you
want, you know.” He kissed her again. “Now go on, Bear. Bring back the cavalry. Or at least someone with a reciprocating saw.”

Barrie wiggled through the hole, and hunched nearly in half to keep from knocking her head on the lid covering the stairwell. Ankle-deep in mud, she tried not to think of snakes. Thank god for Pru’s ugly rubber Wellingtons.