“Don’t hurt yourself. We’ll—”
“Got it. Oh, yeah, I’ve totally got this. Just…” A grunt and a heave and twist and—“My feet are down. My head is up. I am properly perpendicular.”
“Good. Don’t try climbing. The rope’s coming.”
When I look up, I can see Dalton’s light and part of his head. He is indeed inside the first crevice and now peering down the drop. Or I presume that’s what he’s doing. All I can see is the top of his head.
“Hey,” I say. “I see you.”
“Yeah.” A grunt echoes down the crevice as he does some wriggling of his own, until I can make out his eyes. I realize the light coming down is from a penlight, not a headlamp.
“Where’s your helmet?” I say.
“Didn’t fit in.”
“If mine did, yours would have.” I sigh. “You didn’t cut open your arm again, did you? The last time you came barreling after me, I had to stitch you up.”
“I’m fine.”
“Tell me that fine means there’s no blood.”
He doesn’t answer. I sigh. “Damn it, Eric. You should have learned.”
He still doesn’t answer, which means he’s not going to learn this particular lesson. If I’m in trouble, he’s right behind me. The last time, I’d been exploring a narrow chute with Petra when we’d discovered an arm. She’d screamed—that unknown trauma from her past triggered.
I’m about to joke that at least there aren’t any body parts down here. Then I remember who that arm had belonged to—Abbygail—and I stop myself.
“No body parts down there?” he says, and I smile and shake my head.
“Not this time,” I say. “Just clothing.” Which reminds me that I’m standing on it, and really should be checking that out, not chatting with Dalton. I guess that fall panicked me more than I’m letting on. I’m trembling even now with the relief of having gotten upright.
I look down. It is indeed clothing. A pair of jeans and a shirt. That’s all I can make out; Dalton’s penlight beam really isn’t doing the job. I reach up and smack my headlamp. It flickers on and then off again. Another smack. Nothing. Dalton’s stretching his arm down, saying, “You want my light? I’ll toss…”
He trails off. I’m peering up at him. He says, “Casey?”
“Yep. Still in the hole.” I wave. “See me?”
“Okay. Just keep looking up at…” He trails off again and says, “Fuck.”
“Let me guess. Will can’t get the rope?”
“No.” He inhales. “I’m going to drop the light for you. Before I do, you need to listen to me.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“Look at me until I’m done, okay?”
“Uh…”
“There’s clothing at your feet.”
“I know—”
“Just listen. That clothing doesn’t belong to Nicole’s captor.”
I’m about to ask how he can tell. Then I figure it out. He’s still talking, and when I move, he says, “Keep looking up at me until—”
I look down, following the beam of his penlight to see a skull grinning back at me.
TWENTY-FIVE
I’m standing on a body.
I don’t panic. That could be because I’ve seen too many corpses in my life. But the real reason? I decide it’s not real. I’ve hit my head on the way down, the blow penetrating the helmet, and I’m not actually conscious right now. I dreamed of getting upright and chatting to Dalton and joking about not finding body parts, and then looking down and seeing an entire corpse under my feet. It’s my brain trying to be amusing and failing miserably.
That’s what makes sense. The possibility I’m actually awake, in another cave finding another dead body? Not happening.
So I’m just going to sit and wait to regain consciousness. Plunk my ass down on …
A body. I’m standing on a body, a long-dead corpse stuffed into the hole, that “skull” not actually bone but desiccated flesh with hair still clinging to it. Long dark hair. There are earrings in the leathery flaps that would be ears. Small diamond studs.
A lover bought me diamond studs once. The first guy I dated after my attack. No, not dated. Slept with. Because even three years after the beating and Blaine, all I could manage was succumbing to the physical drive to take a lover. He’d bought me diamond studs for Christmas, and I’d ended it then. Left those studs on the bedside table and slipped out in the night, never to return.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Shock. I’m in shock. Or asleep. I prefer asleep.
Dalton calls, as if from a mile away, his voice growing sharper each time he says my name.
I need to respond. Reassure him. Even if this isn’t real, I must reassure him.
I look up. He’s wriggled into that crevice so far I can see his whole face now, eyes anxiously fixed on me.
“It’s okay,” he says. “We’ll get you out.”
“I’m fine.”
“We’ll—”
“Eric? I’m a homicide detective. I’m fine. It was just a surprise. You tried to warn me. Thank you.”
There’s a too-calm note to my voice. Definitely shock. I reach up to rub my face briskly, and I catch the stink of the long-dead on my fingers. I fling my hands down.