Trapped (7 page)

“Well, let me know what you think of the book. Or if you want to swap out, or anything,” she smiles at me. “The book is due back when we get rescued.”

I laugh at that and turn to walk back to my car. “
Party Politics and Pervasive Persuasion: Senator Harrison Baughman’s Story,
” I read aloud, settling down in my seat again. The cover art has a picture of a white-haired man, probably around the Governor’s age, standing in front of the Capitol with a huge white-toothed smile on his face. I flip to the introduction and start reading.

And almost immediately, I have to wonder if this book is going to be a
cure or a cause of boredom:

When I began my first term as Senator for the state of Arizona, I came to the nation’s capitol with awe and anticipation. My campaign had gone swimmingly, as I’d singlehandedly beaten the incumbent by a wide margin. My education at Harvard University and Yale Law School had prepared me for the legal and political dynamics I would soon encounter. My family – wife Lisa and sons Matthew and Steven – were in full support of our new role for improving the nation. We found a modest townhouse a mile’s walk from the Capitol and moved in on a sunny January morning. My first committee meeting was scheduled for that very afternoon, and I’d been driven to the Capitol for an early lunch with an old colleague.

This is certainly not how I’d anticipated spending my week.

I doggedly read on, learning about Senator Baughman’s personal life, two divorces, three terms in the Senate, and myriad other details through the
thirty-five page introduction. Boredom keeps threatening me, though, as my mind wanders.

It’s hard not to think about Governor
Rosings, for instance, when I read Senator Baughman’s descriptions of his work in the Capitol. Since Governor Rosings gave his speech yesterday evening just after the cave-in, I don’t think he’s even exited his car. And though we all saw Bernard last night when he brought round the bottles of water, we haven’t seen him today, either.

What would it like to be in a politician’s town car? Is it equipped with a mini bar and Jacuzzi? Maybe he has satellite TV in there. Or maybe he’s working away on some new twist for his political campaign.

Focus, Emily. Back to Senator Baughman.

I’m almost relieved when the sound of voices interrupts my reading. I look out my window to see Chris chatting with the hikers. They’ve successfully pitched their tent, and with sleeping bags, lanterns, and a couple of board games, they seem to be living as comfortably as my imaginary Governor.

I can’t make out their words, but eventually the hikers pass Chris a small brown bottle. Then the three of them approach the hood of their car, lifting it up and diving in.

Unable to see any more, I turn back to my book. Senator Baughman is just beginning to list his reasons for running for President when I hear a low tap on my door.

“So this is where you live,” Chris whispers in deference to my mom’s sleeping form.

He’s teasing me again, and I almost smile. “She won’t wake up. When she sleeps, she really sleeps.”

He lifts up his hands, revealing a long length of tubing. “If you have a couple of empty water bottles, I’ve come up with something of a solution to our water problem. We already got three bottles out of Hannah Avery’s car and almost six out of Mrs. Potts’s car. Care to give it a try?”

In league with the plumbers or not, I’ll do anything for some water. I bend down, gathering up the two empty bottles and two empty McDonald’s cups and follow him around to the hood of the car.

He lifts the latch and scans the contents. Passing the plastic tube to me, he bends over, unscrewing some cap to something.

“Are you sure it’s safe to do that?” I say quickly, startling him. I’ve never even seen under a car’s hood – the contents are a complete mystery to me.

But my hurried question makes him jump, and he bangs his head against the car hood. He turns around slowly, raising a hand to rub the back of his head. “I’m a mechanic, Champ, remember?”

I flush, and he returns to his task. Taking the tube from me, he slides it down into some sort of tank.

“Go ahead and take off the caps to the water bottles. I can’t quite tell how much water you have down here, but we’ll want to catch every drop.”

I hurry to follow his instructions, as he explains. “Most cars have a tank in the hood to capture and retain rain water, so that it can mix with washer fluid to wash the windshield when needed. It occurred to me that if we had a way to purify the water, it would definitely be drinkable. Kevin and Jason – who were on their way to go hiking – had iodine tincture on them, which is something of a wilderness standard to purify water so you don’t have to carry around jugs with you. So they agreed to share their iodine with everyone, and I’m going around to help siphon out the water.”

“Iodine? Isn’t that dangerous?”


“Nah. It’s only a small amount. Okay – you ready?”


He bends down to put his mouth to the end of the tube, but I stop him. “Should, umm, should I do that?”


“Have you ever siphoned gas before?”


“Umm, no.”


He smiles. “I’ll handle this one, Champ.”


Putting his lips to the tube, he begins sucking through it like it’s a straw. I watch in fascination as he draws the water up, hurriedly grabbing one container after another from me, filling each nearly to the brim.

The last large McDonald’s cup doesn’t quite get full, but that’s okay with me. Chris just quadrupled our water supply from what we had yesterday.

“So now we just add a couple of drops of iodine to each container,” he says, drawing out the brown bottle I’d seen earlier, “and mix the water around. Wait about fifteen minutes before drinking it, though.”

“How do you know all this?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “A couple of camping trips when I was younger. Nothing too major.”

“And
...and siphoning gas?”


“Fortunately it was only water this time,” he smiles at me. “Last year, when I was stealing the gas out of cars parked at the mall, that was a lot less tasty.”

“So you could sell it to save up for your motorcycle, right?”


He laughs at me. “Not falling for it this time,
Champ?”


I shake my head
.


“I guess money for college isn’t nearly a cool enough excuse.” He grins at me, closing the hood to our car. My mom’
s still asleep, we both notice.

“What are you going to do? In college,
I mean?” I ask him.

“I want to study to be an architect. Always have...but right now, I wish I had already taken some classes. I’d give anything to know a little more about building construction.”

Suspicions or no, it’s nice standing here talking to him, and I relax against the hood of the car. “Chris the car-fixing architect? I like it.”


He laughs, his lips cracking into a smile. “Alright, Champ. Well, what is it you want to do?”


I shrug. “I always just thought I'd continue along the math route.”


“Emily, the award-winning mathematician. I like it.”


I smile at him. “After this experience, though, I think I’d rather become an architect…at least to learn how to build more sturdy tunnels.”


I wait, but he doesn’t match my tone. “I’m just not sure it’s the sturdiness that’s
the problem,” he says at last.

He pauses, his eyes taking in the structure of the tunnel.
He knows something...but what?
I wonder.
Does he know something about the plumbers? About the coincidence of them all surviving – about their lie? Did he have a part in it?

Chris is still looking around the tunnel, ignorant of my thoughts. “It’s the support beams that are troubling me. Giant steel beams drilled straight into the mountainside. The radio had said that's what protected
our
section from the cave-in, but these same beams are all over the tunnel.”

My eyes follow his to the cement ceiling, looking through the holes to the cavernous ventilation system above. I can see the beams overhead, as well as identical sets that must span across the tunnel in either direction.

“You’re wondering why the support beams in
this
section held. Why they weren't destroyed as well.”

“Yes, that's exactly what I'm wondering.”


I turn to him. “Luck?”


“If that’s it, then we sure are lucky,” he says, the words drifting quietly to my ears.

They’re simple words, ones that nearly everyone who survived has probably uttered. But he isn’t saying them casually. There’s more behind them.

“Yes.” I say slowly, choosing my words. “We’re lucky this section didn’t get demolished by the landslide.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head, his voice dropping to a whisper. “We’re lucky that
we
were in this particular section of the tunnel when either side...”

I wait, eyes wide as he wipes his face with a tired hand.

“...when either side was blown up.”

Chapter 5
– Evidence

“Hey, Champ…are you awake?”

I hear the whisper and sit up
quickly, turning to look out the empty passenger side window. I don’t see anyone, or hear anything else – besides my mom’s snores, and the twins’ gentle breathing in the seat behind me.

I lay back down, eyes watching my window warily. Slowly a dark head rises, blocking out the light. I recognize the bright blue eyes and
slight grin easily.

“Come on,” he whispers when he meets my eyes, opening my car door and
reaching in for me.

I back away from him, cringing into my seat. Though
I’d been grateful for his help with the water earlier, I’m a long way away from trusting him. He knows something about why this tunnel came down. He knows something about the plumbers, something that let him play poker with them for the entire evening like they were all old buddies. He
said
that the tunnel was blown up, that this section in particular had been allowed to stay standing. And he knows that I’m suspicious of him.

Now that everyone’s gone to bed, now that the entire tunnel’s asleep and there would be no witnesses – there’s
no way
I’m going anywhere with him.

“Please, Emily. Please trust me.”

My eyes narrow. Like I’m falling for that.

“I’ll explain everything. Everything I know.
Just not here…it’s not safe here.”

His blue eyes seem to bore into me, begging me to trust him. My rational, logical self is clinging to the seat, absolutely refusing.

But my girly, betraying self leans forward just an inch, and that’s all he needs to swoop in.

Helping me quickly to my feet, he takes my hand, not giving me a chance to turn back.
We walk silently down the tunnel, past the sleeping forms of the occupants on the western side. Even though the overhead lights are bright, everyone seems to be fast asleep in their cars. But if I screamed, surely someone would wake up and help me, right?

Chris stops about halfway down the tunnel
, where the kids had been playing earlier, and leans in close to my ear. “I have an idea, but it involves your upper body strength,” he whispers, his warm breath washing over me as I nod. “You see the hole in the tunnel ceiling here? I think if we stand on that slab of concrete, and I lift you, you could climb up. And maybe pull me up after you. You up for it?”

I look at the concrete bench I’d sat on with Hannah Avery, and at the long stretch between that and the ceiling above.
He’s trying to get me away from everyone else, where a call for help couldn’t save me. No sir. Absolutely not.

But his voice is so calm, his lips so close to me, I’m nodding before I have a chance to
say no.

Chris guides me up on top
of the bench, and then silently wraps his hands around my waist. They’re large and warm as he whispers behind me. “Okay, now jump.”

I bend my knees, jumping as high as I can, and he lifts me. My fingers connect with the edge of the concrete, and I’m able to grab hold.

His arms make me feel weightless as he lifts me up higher, then moves one hand to grab my foot, launching me through and up onto the floor above. I struggle to make a dignified landing, keeping my pencil skirt wrapped tightly around my knees.
Why
is the only thing I brought to Denver a pencil skirt?

Tucking my knees up under me,
I look around at this new space, at how isolated it is. The ventilation area is high and cavernous, with steel beams criss-crossing every dozen feet or so. The air up here is cool, running smoothly over my skin. It’s like a completely different place, the floor thick enough to make it distant from the sounds and the other people in the tunnel.

I should not be alone with him up here. That much is clear.

“Stupid.” I mumble the word, resisting the urge to slap a hand against my forehead. I glance cautiously back through the hole, wondering how it would be best to get back down. Could I simply drop? Would he be mad at me? Would he do whatever he was planning down there instead?

Chris quickly brings over
one of the workmen’s lawn chairs, setting it directly below the hole I’d climbed through. I might land perfectly on it, if I managed to drop down the ten feet or so.

But I’d probably break an ankle.

Chris climbs up on the chair, ending all thoughts of escape for me.
His strong legs jump and we lock hands, his weight making me slide on the cool metallic floor. I’m able to help him get his elbows above the concrete, but it’s slow, painful progress. He lets a breath out from between his teeth as his forearm scrapes the surface, but soon he’s able to scramble up beside me.

We’re silent for a moment. I can’t tell if he senses my discomfort. I’m staring longingly back down at the lawn chair, recalculating my chances. He’s too absorbed in his examination of his new scrapes to notice, I think.

“Why does this seem to happen so often when I’m around you?” he asks quietly, looking meaningfully from his arms to his legs, before grinning. Then his eyes move past me to take in our new surroundings. The ventilation area is the same width as the tunnel below us, but it’s much taller – a couple of stories, I would guess. The dark metal walls mutely reflect a few dim lighting sources, but we can’t see very far into the distance. What we can see, though, seems virtually untouched by the cave-in. A few pieces of the walls and floor had come down, and a few boulders litter the ground. But the steel support beams are intact, as is most of the floor and ceiling.

“There’s a lot less damage up here,” Chris says, echoing my thoughts. He gets to his feet with a grunt
, and then pulls me up to stand beside him. “You see, the air in the tunnel is still being filtered. I knew it had to be going somewhere. If the ventilation system is still intact, there’s a chance – a small chance – that we might find a way out up here.”

“A way out?” I can’t help the way my voice shakes, how hope floods
through me. I mentally go back to my scribbled equations earlier, crossing out the word “RESCUE” with “ESCAPE.”

Chris looks back at me
. “Don’t get your hopes up, Champ. I don’t think this will work, which is why I wanted to wait until no one else would notice what we were up to. If it were as simple as finding a way through the ventilation system, I think a rescue team would have made it hours ago. But still, the air’s got to be filtering out somewhere.”

I ignore his warning, broadening my lips into a
smile. His eyes scan my face for a long moment before he shakes his head at me. “If I could have made that jump on my own, I would have checked it out solo,” he says, mumbling the words as he turns away from me.

He marks a path down the cavernous tunnel
, toward the eastern entrance. There are quite a few holes to the tunnel below, and the light seeping through is just enough for me to follow close in his footsteps. We bend every few steps to duck under the criss-crossing beams, though Chris, of course, has to bend his tall frame much more than I do.

T
he x-shaped beams force us toward the middle of the tunnel, where it’s easier to walk. But there are also more holes toward the center, making Chris slow down every few steps to ensure that we’re on solid ground. By our third hole, after we’ve gone at least a hundred feet, I’m used to the routine. Chris signals me to stop, and I rest my arms on the heavy slope of a steel beam, the metal cool on my bare arms. I hear a few pebbles scatter down to hit Simon Tara’s truck below, and Chris backs away carefully.

“This way,” he says,
cutting a wide path around the hole as he finds a more stable way forward.

After a
while we reach another hole, and I can see down to the eastern edge of the tunnel, where I know Chris’s car lay buried. But although the tunnel below us is filled with rocks, the ventilation system extends further. I feel my smile from earlier return. The lighting up here is too dim for us to see very far, but there’s a chance the ventilation system could extend all the way back to the eastern entrance.

“The rocks must have flooded in
toward the center, instead of crashing straight down,” Chris says quietly, his voice echoing along the metallic walls. “That doesn’t make much sense. If it was a landslide, you would think the top part of the tunnel – up here – would be the first to go.”

I think back to his ‘explosion’ comment earlier, wondering what he’s thinking.
We continue walking, making our way further down the ventilation system. We must have gone another hundred feet or so before the upper part of the tunnel becomes blocked off by rocks. Chris leans heavily against them, testing the solidity of the barrier. He takes a long, slow breath, then turns to look at me. “Well, the air isn’t flowing out from this side. Care to check the other?”

I nod
and start walking back the way we came, but Chris pulls me abruptly back against him. My eyes widen as a large rock falls down from the slope, smashing into pieces where my feet had just been. The crashing sound echoes off of the surrounding walls, the ricocheting pebbles causing a chorus of sounds. We don’t move, even after the tunnel is silent, locked in place with his arms around me.

I can
feel his heart racing against my back, feel his breath coming rapidly. My own pulse must be working hard, because I feel lightheaded. His arms seem to tighten around me, holding me to him, as we both lean against each other. I can feel him bending, feel his lips come closer to my ear. I turn slightly, my eyes glued to his mouth.

B
ut then he straightens, his whisper coming after a long moment. “That was close, Champ.”

I nod, too s
haken to do anything else. He steps away from me, rubbing his face before taking hold of my hand. I squeeze his fingers tightly, thoughts and feelings buzzing through me. It felt for a moment there like he was going to kiss me. At least…at least if he saved me, he couldn’t have any bad intentions.

It’s as if he can read every thought on my face. “You can trust me. And I know I can trust you. I knew it the second you broke through those rocks to my car.”

I nod at him, and he turns to lead the way again. I raise my free hand to my lips, wondering at the sensation. I hope he can’t read
every
thought on my face.

W
e make our way slowly down to the western side, finding the same pattern. Where the rocks must have blocked off the tunnel below us, we’re still able to keep walking, again at least a hundred feet, maybe more. Here, however, we begin to see how the ventilation system works. Above us, we can make out long metal pipes extending into the mountain – probably all the way up to the surface – channeling air in and out.

We sit down, studying
the dimly lit pipes overhead.

Chris keeps my hand in his.

“If only I could get up there,” he says after a while. “I could maybe shimmy up, make it to the surface, you know?”

“I don’t think so,” I say quietly. “They would have drilled straight through the mountain – it’s probably hundreds of feet to the top, and
there’s no telling if those pipes get skinnier.”

“Do you think any rain water ever trickles down?”

I study the clean edge of the pipe. “No rust. They probably have it covered at the surface to prevent anything from getting in.”

“Of course,” he sighs, leaning back.

I follow his lead, trying to get comfortable against the rocks, but he sits back up abruptly.

“Ouch
,” he mumbles, turning to look behind him. In the pile of debris, I can just barely see the metal fragment that had stuck him in the back.

“I’ve never been this accident prone in my life, Champ,” he says, leaning over to pull the metal shard
from the rubble. “It’s gotta be you. Some kind of bad luck thing,” he says absently, turning the piece over in his hands. And then his eyebrows shoot up.

He passes the shard
to me, and I carefully flip the piece over in my hands. “It’s…it’s a broken mirror,” I say, looking at him. “Maybe this is where your bad luck’s coming from?”

I try to smile at him, but he shakes his head.
“Not just any mirror. Look at the bottom.”

I st
udy it carefully, finding the plain text: ‘OBJECTS IN MIRR—‘

My eyes meet Chris’s, and I hand him back the shard. “How could a car’s side view mirror end up all the way up here?
From a
landslide
?”

I emphasize the last word. It’s an invitation, an opening for him to explain his ‘explosion’ comment from yesterday.

His eyes trace mine a moment longer before he stares down at the mirror in his hands. “I was probably the furthest one back who survived, Emily. No one else could have seen what I saw…”

He sets the shard to the side, lacing his fingers with mine again.
It’s a comfortable gesture, one he’s done several times now – when I first pulled him out of his car, that night as we sat talking, today walking through the ventilation system. But here, sitting side-by-side in the darkness, with his voice a low rumble…it feels more intimate.