Please, stop
He had hoped that with ten years in constant communion with the world below — if not in this place, then close by, close enough that he could feel Trapdoor’s heartbeat and know that his could be felt as well — a mutual understanding might grow. The cave would learn that Ridley wanted to atone for only himself, that he did not blame Trapdoor for what had occurred, and that whatever he might learn about the past, he would answer for on the surface, leaving the cave in peace.
Those hopes had vanished back in the Funnel Room, where Ridley Barnes had once entered the water with rescue on his mind and returned with a dead girl in his arms, and where tonight he had sat with an innocent—
an interloper, an intruder
— at his side. All that had followed had been hostile, and unnecessary. He’d come for the truth, and he deserved it. Instead, the cave had turned on him. He was enraged by that, because his intent had been clear and his respect unquestionable.
“She didn’t belong to you!” he screamed into the blackness. “She belonged up there! And you know it! You fucking know it!”
He was gasping when he finished, the scream spreading pain through him like a fever. All he wanted to do was pass that pain along to the cave, the source of it all. Sarah Martin had belonged on the surface, and she had not deserved harm. Ridley had not deserved harm either, and still the cave had applied her power for vengeance, nothing more. When Trapdoor turned on a good and faithful servant who had sought only the right path, who had honored every request and kept every secret? At that point, even the righteous should be allowed to resist.
He bobbed too high in the water again and his helmet cracked against the stone and he was about to sink lower when he paused to consider his helmet and the potential it carried.
He’d instructed Julianne to join him in total blackness down here because he believed it was what Trapdoor had desired of him. Now he no longer cared what Trapdoor desired.
Problems with the dark man, he thought, and he tried to recall what Julianne had said and what he’d said to her. The words didn’t seem far off, but they were hard to grasp. There was a problem with the dark man.
He found the headlamp switch and pressed it, and the shapeless dark became a tunnel, its outer reaches within the range of Ridley’s spotlight. The last time he’d passed this way, it had been only blackness. Now he could see. He could find his way back to where it had started.
He had to.
The lack of a wetsuit in fifty-eight-degree water put a ticking clock on Ridley, but the light allowed him to beat it. Maybe.
It was a question of preparation and performance now, and Ridley Barnes had been a long ten years in training.
He swam ahead. The light led the way, and Ridley chased behind it.
61
It snowed all night and then broke off just before dawn, and the clouds pushed east and left a hard, shining sun behind.
All of this happened as Mark sat in the Garrison County Sheriff’s Department. He’d given three interviews to a total of seven police officers and still hadn’t seen Blankenship. He’d asked about him several times but nobody had an answer and finally they’d left him here and told him to wait.
The state police had been the first ones into the cave, and they’d separated Mark from Julianne swiftly and handcuffed everyone, even the kidnapping victim. Mark couldn’t say that he blamed them, though. It was a hell of a strange scene down there. The last he’d heard from Julianne, she was imploring the police to go after Ridley. They promised that they would, but Mark saw the looks in their eyes as they studied the water-filled passage Ridley had vanished into and he knew that nobody was going to be rushing after him. They’d send for experts, people with the right knowledge and equipment, and by then Ridley would have had quite a head start.
He’d been waiting alone for more than an hour when Blankenship finally entered the room. He crossed over to him and pulled up a chair and sat down heavily. Reached into his shirt pocket and removed something and spun it across the table to Mark. The object came to rest just in front of him: the Saba National Marine Park diving permit.
“No prints on it,” Blankenship said. “I thought you should have it back as soon as possible.”
“Thank you.”
Blankenship nodded and he kept his eyes occupied elsewhere while Mark picked the plastic disk up and put it in his pocket.
“You got one back from him alive,” Blankenship said. “I thank you for that. It could have gone another way. It has before.”
“She’s doing all right?”
“Docs say she’s stable, and she’s talking pretty well now. Same story as you gave me. Says he came to her originally asking for help with memory retrieval and that she heard a confession. Knew it wouldn’t stand up in court and wanted to find help. She says he wouldn’t have taken help from my kind of detective. She thought he would from yours.” Blankenship’s face showed only the sleepless night.
“Did she know what Ridley wanted from her last night? Before they got down there?”
“Not hardly. He came to the house. She was sure he was going to kill her. Then they got in the cave and he said he wanted to... to do her thing.”
“He wanted to go into trance in the cave.”
“I suppose that’s what you’d call it. I suppose they made it too. She says they did. I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know what I believe of it, to tell you the truth.”
“Believe more than you want to,” Mark said. “It’s a start. Trust me. I’ve stood in your place on that one. Any luck locating Ridley?”
“Not yet. We’ll get him, though.”
Mark didn’t share his confidence, and, after seeing Ridley’s face in those last moments, he wasn’t sure they should want him back on the surface.
“What about Danielle MacAlister?” he asked. “Was Julianne able to tell you anything?”
“Danielle MacAlister walked out of the house while Ridley and Julianne were heading toward the cave. Ridley started to go for his knife, then let her pass. They were just inside the cave when they heard a gunshot.”
“Cecil.”
“It would seem that way, yes. Cecil was talking for a time. Then he realized his story wasn’t as believable as he needed it to be, and he asked for a lawyer. I was with him in the hospital while he told a weak story about going into the cave to try to make sure Julianne Grossman was safe.”
“Bullshit. He went in to kill them. The only problem he had was that they were in the dark. That meant he had to show himself to them instead of the other way around. There’s no sneaking up on Ridley Barnes in the dark. If Cecil wanted to clip him, he should have done it on the town square under a bright sun. My guess is he’d have found a sympathetic jury in Garrison.”
Blankenship let that one pass and said, “You understand why he killed Danielle?”
“She was done with whatever story they’d been protecting, would be my guess. She went down there to prep him for my arrival and found him trussed up. Cut him loose, and then...”
“Paid for that mistake,” Blankenship finished. “Yes. That’s my read. Cecil has some risk in all this that I don’t quite understand yet, some risk that made murder acceptable so long as he could blame Ridley for it.”
“But what is that? What’s he protecting?”
“You see the shit Ridley brought in there? The paperwork?”