Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (55 page)

“They’re coming.”

He looked up as if that would help him hear through the dirt and wood above. The thumping of booted feet and shouts of serious men came through the layers of ceiling and floor.

“I was going to die in the house and escape through the tunnel, the long way, to Ludwig, while you were safe under the truck.”

I stepped toward him, my LED moving the shadows across his face. “We have to do your plan, but with two.”

He pressed his lips together and looked down. He took my hand. “
Si,”
he said. “We will.”

A shout echoed over the walls, and he and I jerked our heads up. It was close, but not so close. In the closet maybe. Maybe they’d opened the door.

I felt his breath on me, short and shallow, and his eyes were a little wider under his bloody forehead. I put my hand over my mouth.

“
Adesso!
” he snipped, “And put the light out.”

I did. He tugged me with him into the darkness. I tripped and he yanked me up. “A little ways, and I’ll put the suitcase at the halfway point between the end and the closet stairs. Then we run.” We came to a point where glass insets in the sidewalk let a little illumination through. It was night, and the spots of blue lamplight made more shadow than brightness.

“If people are coming, by the time we get there… we have to give up.”

He jerked me forward, until the only barrier to me falling was his body. “I. Don’t. Give. Up. Any. More.” He said it through his teeth.

“I don’t want to kill anyone else today.”

In the dimmest of light, his brow shading his expression, he whispered, “I can plant it here, before they come down. There will be a bomb between us and them, but we need to be protected.”

“There’s a well,” I said. “Fiona used to throw her empty vials down there.”

I didn’t give him a chance to answer. It was my turn to yank him to where we had to go, clicking my little light on when it got too dark to see. I pulled him through a room with a ditch that smelled of dried meat and over to a rotted-wood platform with a water pump. It keened to the side.

I found the rusted iron ring in the center and pulled up a wooden circular lid. Antonio shone his light down it. It was dry as a bone, and smaller than I remembered, with no vials, as if someone, some kid or some adult hiding something, had filled it in.

“Plant the bomb behind the wall and—”

“Get in,” Antonio growled, dropping the suitcase.

“But you won’t fit.”

He knocked my feet from under me and caught me, carrying me in both arms, and as effortlessly as he did everything, he put me into the hole.

It was a tight fit. I couldn’t fit a kitten in there with me, much less Antonio.

“Two explosions,” he said. “Wait for them both. Then come through the house across Ludwig Street.

“Where will you be?”

“There.”

Shouting, close by. Voices on stone. They’d found the partition and moved it. I thought we’d have more time. There was no chance he would get close enough to the closet to block the way and then back to safety in time.

“You have to detonate now,” I said. “Before they come down. You’ll never make it.”

“Two explosions. Wait. Then get out and run to the house. The car is in the back. Don’t stop until you’re in the car.”

“Wait!”

“I have to put this thing by the stairs, back there, to keep them from coming down. No more delays.”

Before I could answer, he slammed the lid back on.

Darkness. Silence.

I knew the distances all too well. The halfway point between the well and the house, under the street, was too far for him to get to, and that suitcase would blow in some cop or security guard’s face. If he left it close to where we were, the time it would take for him to get to safety would cause the same result.

He would die. And in the middle of the realization, the explosion hit. The earth seemed to move against me on the left and expand away on the right.

He couldn’t have gotten away. No one could run that fast.

I wanted to get out. I needed to see where he was, but I had to wait, and the second explosion came on the heels of the first. I cringed because it came so fast.

I didn’t wait a second longer than I had to. I shook the ringing out of my ears and put my hands against the trapdoor. It was red hot, and I snapped my palms back with a curse.

Closing my eyes and steeling myself, breathing, counting
three, two, one
…

I punched the wood. The burning sensation was nothing compared to the hardness of the surface against my inexperienced hands. But it moved, just a little, shifting to the ledge and over. I saw the room above in the crescent of space between the well edge and the lid, bathed in flickering red light and letting in a blast of heat.

I shifted and wedged my foot above me, pushing at the lid with the soles of my feet, and kicked upward. The lid creaked and shifted, the circle breaking at the diameter. Beyond it, the ceiling smoked. I scrambled out of the hole, careful not to touch anything that could have been hot.

The air was scorching and the smoke thick enough to burn my eyes and throat. I crouched and got out of the room and into the service hall.

There, I saw the origin of the fire, where the hundred-year-old roof beams burned and the smoke was thicker than sour cream. It was closer to the carriage house, as if Antonio had actually walked back the way we’d come to set the bomb off, which would have made his way back to the house even longer.

Could he have made it to the house, between closing me up and the explosion? I tried to remember how long the interval had been. Ten seconds?

I couldn’t think about it, but as I scuttled to the house across Ludwig Street, digging into the recesses of my memory to recall the way, the seconds ticked, and I knew there was no way in hell he’d made it. No. He’d planted the bomb near the carriage house to block whomever was on the way down.

Pockets of fire raged in the corners, and smoke billowed in angry curls. My chest burned, my feet found every fracture and crack in the ground, and the heat felt like it was blasting at my back until I eventually found the end of the tunnel to the house across the street.

The door was ancient and heavy. My eyes burned so badly I couldn’t do more than feel for the hundred-year-old knob and deadbolt. They were hot to the touch, and I cursed. I picked up my skirt and shielded my right hand with the fabric then licked my left hand and quickly turned the deadbolt. I opened the door and closed it behind me. The air in the stairwell seemed seven hundred degrees cooler. I took it in as if I’d never breathed before, and my lungs punished me by feeling as though they were being stabbed with every gasp.

After a couple of blinks, I looked up. The stairs were the same as they’d always been, and at the top was a rough-hewn oval where Antonio had broken through the wall.

Antonio.

Fuck.

I ran up the stairs. Tripped. Fell. Got the hell up. I ran again and reached the dark basement, falling palms-first onto sharp plaster chips. I screamed. It hurt badly. I looked down, and even though I couldn’t see well past my singed eyes and the room’s darkness, it was obvious my hands were burned.

I swallowed. That hurt, too. It had been worse than I’d remembered down there. I’d been intent on getting out, getting to Antonio. I hadn’t even known I was in hell. And where was he? Was he still down there? What if he was burning to death on the far side of the tunnel, and I was up here with my feet on cold plaster, waiting?

I thought about going back down. I saw myself wandering through ten miles of tunnel, calling his name. I knew I shouldn’t have let him put me in that well. I shouldn’t have let him close the lid or walk away or any of it. I should have protected him the way he protected me.

And that was what he’d done. He’d protected me every step of the way. He’d put me under the umbrella of his love, and I’d done nothing but stand in his way. I’d made it my business to assert myself, and in doing so, I’d put him between me and death.

“Antonio.” I whispered, but no one answered. I didn’t even know who I was calling to in that dark basement. He wasn’t there. He couldn’t have made it and closed the door behind him. It was just me, with a murder on my conscience and my docket, on the run, alone.

Don’t stop until you’re in the car.

“Get it together,” I said to myself. I could cry about Antonio another day. Today, I had to make his death worthwhile. I breathed, even though it hurt, and looked over the basement. One stairwell went up to the house; I knew that. A blast of cold air came from another shorter, rough-hewn exit that led right outside. I heard the sirens through that opening and went to it.

The fresh air hit my face like a Freon blast. The yard went back a hundred feet and was surrounded by cinderblock and cast iron. A white car waited by the exit, which led to a back alley. I couldn’t tell the make, but it was nondescript, looking like a million other cars in the city. I walked to it, wondering how I was going to open the door without bloodying the handle or drive without touching the wheel. And then, ten steps in, I berated myself for worrying about my stupid problems after what had just happened, and I had to fight an emptiness and uncertainty I’d never felt before. The plan had been to go to Tijuana then drive south to Guatemala, and fly to Greece under different names. I couldn’t remember if I’d promised to stick to the plan. Was it the right thing to do? Did it even matter without him? I put my head on the cool roof of the car, listening to the sirens a block away. I prayed that no one was hurt, that I could gather the strength to drive away alone, and that Antonio was in heaven.

The smell of burning wood that saturated my clothes reminded me of him, and I decided I’d never wash that fucking dress. We’d tried everything together. We’d done crazy things, wild, irresponsible shit. My God, I’d shot someone. I was a murderer for the rest of my life. I’d killed two men: Paulie, on purpose, and Antonio through sheer recklessness.

My breath hitched, and though I tried to hold back the tears, they came nonetheless. A minute to cry. I had to just take a minute to breathe, mourn, and cry.

Like angelic comfort from the firmament, a hand came on my shoulder.

It was a cop, maybe, or some other authority figure come to arrest me, or Daniel gently comforting me before handing me over for a hundred infractions. Then I felt a hand on the other shoulder, and through the smell of burning wood that saturated my clothes, hiding all other scents, came a voice.

“Passenger side, Contessa.”

I spun so quickly I got dizzy and fell into Antonio’s arms. I was saved, pulled from the jaws of despair. I didn’t care why or how, just that it was true that he was with me.

“What? Theresa? What’s wrong?” He pushed me away, and when he saw I cringed, he looked down. My hands were up, in front of me. He took them from underneath.

“
Gesù
, what happened?”

“I thought you were dead,” I said.

His ripped shirtsleeve dangled off his elbow like bunting. “Not yet. I run faster than you think.” He held his finger to my face, first pointing then stroking the length of my nose. “But next time we go to a wedding, the worst that will happen is you get too drunk to dance.”

“I don’t drink at weddings.”

He put the hand without the ripped shirtsleeve on my cheek and kissed me in the dark yard, with the crickets squeaking their mating call and the
thup-thup-thup
of the helicopters getting closer.

“You ready to go?” his mouth whispered into mine before he kissed me. God, I couldn’t believe I thought I’d lost that hungry mouth, those lips, soft with intention, framing a brutal tongue. I couldn’t touch him because my hands were still raw and burned, but he pulled me closer in that kiss. I wanted him to tear me apart against the side of that nondescript white car.

But I pushed the kiss off before I could ask and he could be tempted to comply. “You driving, Capo?” I barely had enough breath to finish the sentence.

“
Si, amore mio
.”

He walked me to the passenger side and held the door open for me. His arm was bloody under the torn shirt, but he didn’t say a word about it. He knocked on the hood of the car as he came around, as if sending me a message that everything was all right and that he had it under control, and when he got in and the gate opened, I knew he did.

The car pulled into the street, and we drove south, to our life.

theresa

ijuana was filthy. A year ago, I would have been happy to leave because of that alone. The heat, even in December, the layer of crud on everything, the narrow alleys that smelled of piss, and the stink of old tequila and beer in the air would have been enough to get me on a plane early.

We had no phones, no way to be contacted. We were gone. Poof. Disappeared. I never felt so free in my life.

“Terrified,” I said to Antonio. He looked as if a layer of worry had been scraped from him. He looked younger, even.

“Fear is a good thing,” he replied, leaning over the bar, tilting his glass bottle on the bar surface, leaving an arc of condensation behind. We’d stopped in a small hotel that looked as if it was going to give up any minute and collapse into a pile of wood and dust. “Keeps you honest.”