“Hang on, baby! I’ll get you out!” He sprung to his feet and raced across the footbridge, then skidded to a stop and strode up the lock wall to the upstream gate. Grasping the end of the lock-key with both hands, he felt a sticky substance against his palm. He swung the key and heard the rush of water grow louder, then immediately pushed it hard in the opposite direction. The bubbling sound subsided. The wicket had only been opened part way. He exhaled in relief as the bubbles below him dissolved into swirls. Glancing at his palm, he saw that it was stained with a viscous fluid that looked like blood.
“Nicky!” he cried, walking back along the wall to a vantage point where he could look under the bridge, “are you hurt?”
“I can’t get out! I’m chained!” She answered without looking at him and his anxiety mounted again. She sounded drugged… maybe she was cut! She could bleed to death in the water! What had happened? How was she chained?
“Hang on, Nicky! I’ll get you out!” He sat down with his legs dangling over the edge, then set his hands against the wall and dropped into the lock. As he collapsed into the water, his feet struck silt at the bottom and penetrated to the buried stone floor. He stood and let the water stream from his head and shoulders, then turned toward the gloom under the footbridge.
When he was able to focus, he saw Nicky standing nearby, head still hanging forward and hands pressed against the stone wall. He waded over and put his hands on her shoulders. “Nicky,” he said softly, “are you bleeding? What happened?”
“My leg,” she whispered, still without raising her head or lowering her arms. “It’s chained… a metal box…” She sounded distant and her breathing was shallow, but she didn’t seem to be in pain. Vin couldn’t see any obvious injury. Beneath her wet v-neck shirt, her shoulders trembled at his touch. “Shackles…I can’t lift it. The water… getting deeper…”
The shackles! Preoccupied with the disappearance of the toolbox from Gladys Island, he hadn’t noticed that the leg-irons he’d unearthed along with it had vanished as well. If one of the cuffs was clamped to Nicky’s leg, did that mean the other was locked to the missing toolbox? The keys! He dug into his pocket, hoping they were still there. One for the toolbox, one for the shackles.
“Nicky!” he said quietly, leaning toward her ear. “I turned off the water. It’s not rising anymore.” Her breathing seemed to slow and deepen but her eyes remained closed. “I’m going to duck underwater to try to find the box. I think I have the key to the shackles.” He saw a trace of a nod, then looked down to guess the location of the box. “OK, Nicky. Just stay where you are.”
He dropped into the water and thrust his arms to push himself down. When one hand felt the mud at the bottom of the lock, he swung the other outward and touched Nicky’s calf. Which ankle were the leg-irons clamped to? He swept his hand down along her leg in search of the cuff but found the chain instead. It was taut, and his hand traced its path outward from her ankle. The other cuff was clamped to the toolbox just over a foot away. He groped to find the handle and curl his fingers around it. It felt exactly like the handle he’d gripped on Gladys Island. What kind of insidious treasure was this? The pressure in his lungs was building, so he tightened his grip and pulled his feet beneath him.
As he stood, he heard a splash and felt the turbulence of a fallen body. Nicky must have collapsed into the lock! He needed air before trying to help her, so he rose for a breath and scanned the surface. There were swirls beside him and he felt a forearm brush his leg. Still holding the toolbox, he reached his free arm into the water and leaned over. Just as he touched a receding leg, he felt a metallic jab against his right ankle. He winced and withdrew as the handle was yanked out of his hand and the box fell back to the bottom of the lock.
“What the hell is…” He dropped into the water and swung his arms for Nicky but felt only her swirling wake. When he kicked his feet out, he felt a sickening tug against his ankle. This can’t be… He lifted his right foot and felt the closed cuff as the shackle bit into his skin. Pulling his ankle toward him with both hands, he felt the weight of an attached anchor. In disbelief, he tried to pull the cuff open with his fingers. It was firmly locked.
He released his shackled ankle and stood. Where was Nicky? Was someone holding her underwater? “Nicky!” he yelled against the echoing walls. The disturbed water was slopping back and forth in the lock, chop reflecting from the sides. “Nicky!” No one answered, but he saw a presence rising slowly from the surface along the far wall, a few feet from the upstream gates. It was her. “Nicky! What’s happening?”
Hands parallel, she was gripping something on the lock wall. Her back hunched and her head and shoulders ascended a foot. She was climbing a rope ladder that lay flush against the wall near the upstream gate. That’s the ladder from our basement, Vin thought. I didn’t notice it when I ran across the footbridge… the key was on the opposite gate, so I wasn’t looking at that part of the lock. His pulse raced as a wave of nausea and despair engulfed him. “Nicky!”
As she climbed without turning toward him, his queasiness distilled to anger. He plunged underwater and brought his knees to his chest, traced the chain to the box, gripped its handle, and stood up, balancing tensely on his free left leg. Nicky was climbing from the ladder onto the top of the lock wall. He hopped on his free leg until he was under the middle of the footbridge and had a better view. She unhooked the ladder and methodically pulled it out of the lock.
“Nicky! We can find someone to help you! But you need to get me out of the lock!” Nicky rolled the ladder as she retracted it, then dropped it balled-up onto the grass. “Nicky, if you drain the lock, I can open the shackles and climb out!” He felt himself leaning so he hopped to regain his balance. “You can use the lock-key, Nicky! You just need to move it to the lower gates! The key is on that stem,” he said, gesturing toward it as he began to shiver. “If you cross the bridge, you can lift it off.”
With her wet clothes clinging to her body and her dripping hair screening her face, she walked onto the footbridge. He pivoted under the bridge and looked hopefully up at the berm-side wall, waiting for her to reappear. He was starting to cramp from balancing on one leg, so he lowered his shackled foot to the lock floor. To keep his grip on the toolbox, he bent over until his mouth was near the water. Nicky emerged and walked unhurriedly along the lock wall to the swing beam, where she leaned over to grasp the lock-key with both hands.
“That’s right, honey,” Vin said, as she rocked it lightly back and forth. “Now just lift it straight up off the stem.”
With a fluid motion that belied the resistance of water against wicket at the base of the stem, she swung the lock-key ninety degrees. Upwelling water immediately formed haystacks against the back of the upstream gate.
“Nicky! Turn it the other way!” The swelling and bubbling water rolled down toward his face, so he stood again but lost his balance and had to drop the toolbox. The rising water broke over his sternum and slopped against his collarbones.
“Nicky!” he screamed. She released the lock-key, walked deliberately out around the end of the swing-beam, and returned to step onto the crossing plank. “Nicky,” he pleaded. “Help me! Turn the key the other way!” She proceeded along the walkway to the center of the lock, where the swing-beams and crossing planks met in a shallow V.
Then she stopped and turned toward Vin. The water surged and lapped at his neck and his brain filled with questions and fears. As she faced him, he could see her gleaming legs were unhurt. Her wet khaki shorts hugged her slender, boyish hips, and her drenched shirt clung to her strong shoulders and small, well-formed breasts. Her lowered chin and downturned eyes were framed by dark and dripping hair. That’s Nicky, he thought, trying to reason through a tide of adrenaline and fear. That’s my fiancée. She must be in some kind of trance. I can break it! I have to get through to her!