Out Of The Deep I Cry (45 page)

“I just swallowed some water when I fell.” He coughed. “So much for avoiding showers to keep my cast dry.”

Her hand touched his hair. She knelt in the water beside him, wincing at its bite, and touched his face, his chest, his arms. He was soaking. “You’re okay? What else did you hit?”

He was touching her, as well, the pat-pat-patting of fingers asking, Are you here? Are you whole? He folded one of his hands over hers. His fingers were cold. “I twisted when I fell. I knocked my arm pretty good, but at least I didn’t break my head open. How about you?”

She rotated her arm, and a steady throb in her shoulder sizzled into a cramp of pain. She sucked in her breath. “I think I banged up my shoulder a little. Everything else is working fine.” She stood up, holding on to his hand. “Let’s get out of this water.” She found his other hand, clasped it, and hauled. He was taller than she, and heavier, and she had to lean backward to get the leverage. When he was upright, she wrapped her arm around his waist, he slung his arm over her shoulder, and they hobbled toward the stairs.

She could hear him every time he had to step on his broken leg. He breathed in through his nose, hard, and held it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This hurts, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll be fine.” He clipped his words.

The back of her outstretched hand banged against wood. “Ouch,” she said. “Okay, let’s get on the stairs.”

She waited until Russ had sat on one of the steps and pulled himself up out of the water. Then she crept up the stairs, bent over, one hand touching the edge of the wooden planks so she wouldn’t fall off, the other held over her head. Her fingers hit something solid. The trapdoor. “I’m going to try to open it,” she said. For a second, she thought of the stuff she had seen on it, the mouse pellets and the dirt and God knew what else.
It’ll shower off
. She braced her shoulders and upper back against the door and pushed. Nothing.

She went up another step so that she was folded tight beneath the door, and pushed again. This time she felt something giving way, the ripping sound of wood splitting. Her feet slid inward. She heard a crack.

“Holy crow!” She scrambled to a lower rung just in time to avoid breaking through the step. She reached down. She had splintered it into two pieces.

“What happened?” Russ said.

“I’ve discovered the stairs are weaker than the door.” She made her way hand and foot back down the steps. He took up most of one rung, so she sat above him. “I suppose I should try the other one.”

“Bolted shut?”

“Yeah.”

“Then the other one probably is as well. Give it a rest before you try it.” They sat for a moment. “Was that who I thought it was?” he asked.

“Allan Rouse.” She was seized with another spasm of shivering. “Showing some flexibility on that ‘First, do no harm’ thing. At least he promised to send help back for us.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She could tell from his voice that he was shivering, too. “He didn’t provide a timeline for our rescue, by any chance?”

“No.”

“ ’Cause whether it’s before or after we die of hypothermia will make a difference.”

She hunched over, trying to find some core of warmth in her sopping clothes. “Yeah.”

“What do you have on under that coat?”

She rasped a laugh. “Are we back to that again?”

His voice was patient. “Just answer the question.”

“One of my clerical blouses.”

“Take off your coat and move down here next to me. Keep hold of it.” She could hear the zipper on his jacket, and the plank creaking and bumping as he repositioned himself. She struggled out of her clinging coat before carefully feeling her way to the next lower rung, touching wood and then a damp jeans-covered thigh.

“Excuse me,” she said. She swept her hand back and forth and realized he had straddled the step, jamming his good leg between this rung and the next, resting his cast on the step below them.

“Sit with your back toward me.” He had taken his arms out of his parka, leaving it hanging from his shoulders. She did as directed, drawing her knees up, draping her coat over them like the proverbial wet blanket. He wrapped his arms around her. “Better?”

“A little, yeah.”

“It won’t keep us in the long run. It’d take our clothes three days to dry out in this humidity, and the temperature can’t be much above forty degrees. But I’ve always found it’s easier to think when you’re warm.”

“This isn’t exactly warm.”

“Give it some time.”

She let her head tip back. He rested his cheek against her hair. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he sighed. “I should have made you stay in the car,” he said.

“Darn right, you should have.”

He laughed, and she joined him, laughing helplessly and shivering and clutching at her coat so it didn’t fall.

Eventually, they fell silent. Where their bodies met, wet shirts crumpling between them, she began to feel warm. Even the damp underside of her coat didn’t seem as frigid as it had a few minutes ago. “I think we’re throwing off heat,” she said.

“It wouldn’t surprise me.” His voice was dry.

She opened her mouth to make a joke and was amazed to hear herself say, “I’ve thought about this.” He was quiet. The darkness, the anonymity of it let her go on. “About you holding me, I mean. Not about being stuck in a wet, freezing cellar. In fact, when I imagine it, it’s usually in a much warmer place. With fewer clothes on. And, of course, none of those inconvenient moral issues hanging over us. So it’s pretty much a fantasy. Free-floating. Please stop me before I make more of an ass of myself than I already have.” Her cheeks were so hot she could have steamed her coat dry with them. “Sorry. I tend to babble when I’m nervous.”

He tightened his arms around her. “I know,” he said, his voice low in her ear. Then she felt his lips on her cheek, and she turned her head, and his mouth slid over hers and they were kissing. It was sweet, so sweet, and as his mouth moved over hers she felt a string she hadn’t known was tied tug free inside her chest, and everything that made her who she was fell open to him. She made a noise, encouragement, maybe, or applause, and he slanted against her harder, his hands tangling in her hair. His mouth, his hands, the moan trapped in his throat made her mindless. She licked, kissed, stroked, clutched, utterly lost in him until a twist of her hips sent her coat slithering down across her knees, heading for the water below. She yanked free of him and grabbed it before it fell.

They both froze. The cold, damp air chilled her blouse, raising gooseflesh all along her arms. She could hear him, rasping for breath.

“I’m-,” he started to say, and she cut him off.

“Don’t say you’re sorry.”

“God, no.” In the pause, she could hear him trying to catch his breath. “Are you?”

She ought to be. She knew that. “No,” she said.

Another sharp breath. She thought she could feel him, leaning toward her. Then he said, “This isn’t the time. Or the place.” His voice was thick and harsh.

There isn’t any time or place,
she wanted to cry, but she kept it to herself. Instead she said, “Hold my coat. I’m going to try the other door.” A jolly wade through icy shin-deep water should cool her ardor. She thrust the coat at him and went down the stairs by hand and foot. They weren’t as far above the water as she had thought, and when she stepped off the stairs into the icy murk she knew why.

“The water’s rising.” She tried to keep her voice calm. “It’s up past my knees now.”

He swore. “The river,” he said. “It’s rising.”

“What?”

“Every year, we get some flooding with the snowmelt. Add in a few hard rains, and presto. Flash flood. Goddamnit.”

His muffled swearing followed her as she sloshed across the floor, hands outstretched. She cast about for the other stairs, and had a moment of disoriented panic before whacking into a semisubmerged step. She crawled out of the water to the top and pushed against the trapdoor. She shoved and rattled it for form’s sake, but she knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Any luck?” he called. His voice spread through the darkness, lapped against the outermost walls. She realized the cellar was bigger than she had thought, probably encompassing the entire footprint of the building.

“It’s not budging.” She gritted her teeth and descended into the water again. “Any idea how deep it’s likely to get?”

“Deep. The Millers Kill has been known to rise ten feet above normal, and we’re well below water level right now. There must be a weak spot in the foundation.”

“It’d have to be more than a weak spot. It’s got to be coming in by the gallon to rise this quickly.” She waved her hands in front of her and struck a brick column. She paused. “I don’t hear any water rushing.”

“Probably a chunk missing near the cellar floor. Could be this place is partially underwater most of the year, except maybe midsummer when the river is at its lowest. The good news is, the ceiling is definitely above water level, even when the river’s high, like it is today.” His voice was much closer. She sloshed forward, gritting her teeth against the cold slicing into her legs.

“And the bad news?”

“It’s not much higher. If the water rises to level with the Millers Kill, we’ll be sitting in it up to our necks.”

In water a few degrees above freezing. He didn’t have to spell it out for her. As the heat leached from their limbs, they would go numb. Then, as their bodies started to shut down, they would get sleepy. Finally, when their core temperatures cooled to seventy degrees, they would die. She had seen a special on the Discovery Channel that had said fishermen in the North Atlantic could survive ten minutes in the water without survival gear. She and Russ wouldn’t last much longer.

She collided with the stairs. “I think there may be a way out,” Russ said as she hauled herself, dripping, up the steps. “I think there may be a bulkhead here somewhere.”

“You mean a door in the cellar? With steps coming down from the street?” She sat on the rung below him.

“C’mere,” he said, wrapping his hands around her arms and lifting her into the cradle of his legs. He drew her close and tossed her coat over her. “There’s nothing on the street side. But I’m pretty sure I remember seeing one facing the river. I used to fish all along the kill back when I was a kid. It was a long time ago, but it’ll still be here. Somewhere.”

“But if it’s facing the river, wouldn’t it be underwater, too?”

“Maybe. But even so, we’d be out of here. At the worst, we’d be carried down-river some until we could swim for the shore.”

“No, at the worst, we’d be swept away in the freezing water and drown.”

“Yeah. Well.” He tightened his hold on her. “I’m going to try it. I want you to sit tight on these stairs.”

“So I can be the girl from
Titanic
who stays high and dry while you, the guy, vanish beneath the icy waves? I don’t think so.”

“Didn’t we just agree you should have stayed in the car?”

“I was joking.”

“Clare.” Maybe it was the total darkness that made his voice so intimate. “If anything were to happen to you, I’d…”

“You’d what?”

The darkness, and the sense that they were the only inhabitants of a world bound by the unseen walls stretching out around them.

“I’d walk into my brother-in-law’s field and lie down and let the corn grow up around me.”

No one else in their world. No costs, no considerations, only two voices in the dark. And honesty.

“Okay. Same here.” She twined her arms over his, hugging him closer. “Remember the helicopter?” She had taken him for a disastrous ride last summer.

“I promise you, I will never, ever forget the helicopter. So long as we both shall live.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “You told me to hold on.”

“So now we’re both holding on. No you going and me staying behind. We sink or swim together.”

He pressed a kiss into her hair. “Even if I said please?”

“No.”

He made a noise deep in his throat.

They sat in silence for a while. Clare was damp where she wasn’t wet, aching with the chill, and both of them reeked. She felt as if she could stay right where she was forever. But the realization of it roused her. They didn’t have forever.

“I may as well get down there and see if I can find this bulkhead before it gets any deeper.” She leaned forward, folding her coat and draping it over one of the steps. She climbed down the stairs and waded into the water.

“Hang on.” She could hear a bumping sound as Russ went down the steps on his rear. He gasped when he hit the water. “I’m coming with you.” He jostled her arm, trailed down and took her hand. “Let’s see. The stairs are parallel to the river side of the building, so the wall should be right-” They struck an uneven patch of stone. “Here,” Russ said. “You go left, I’ll go right.” He gave her hand a squeeze before letting go.

She spread her hands over the dank stone and began her search. Step, sweep. Step, sweep. Cobwebs stroked her face and clung to her hair. She tried not to think of the creepy-crawlies that might be living there. At least nothing was squeaking. The only sounds were the lapping of water against stone, Russ’s periodic huffs of pain as he bore down on his broken leg, and her own chattering teeth. She reached the corner of the building.

“I’m at a corner. Do you want me to continue? This wall runs away from the river, parallel to the street.”

“No, come on back toward me.”

He didn’t have to ask twice. She waded through the water, trailing one hand over the stone to keep her bearings. “Where are you?”

“Right here.”

“How’s your leg?”

“Better. Of course, that’s because it’s gone numb.”

“Mine, too.” Touching his back to orient herself, she moved past him and pressed both hands against the foundation wall. The moldy, old, something-died-in-here smell was worse. She tried not to breathe too deeply. Step, sweep. Step, sweep. “Is it my imagination, or do you feel the water rising?”