“Worse?” I said.
“If Simon ran him over,” he said, “the question then is whether he did it by mistake, or if he saw him in the water . . . and then . . . Simon had been so angry . . . it felt right. I could almost see it in my head. And I dreamed about it, the black stuff in the water turning pink . . . it made me furious to think that’s how it might have gone down, and they had just walked away from it. I didn’t want them to forget. I didn’t want them to think that everyone else had forgotten. And I thought that if I pushed it a little, maybe something would come out, some bit of real evidence I could take to the police . . .”
“You should have said.”
“I know, Jan. But all I had was a hunch. Swear to God. And then I saw them here and they were just, so them, so perfect, so unburdened by anything, and I couldn’t stand it. So I left his name outside, and I made sure we went to the restaurant, and I left the gate open so that they’d feel hunted, exposed—”
“Shut up!” says Melissa. “Shut up.”
“And you thought it was me,” I say to her. “Lying Jan, playing head games with her friends. Well, you’d show her, wouldn’t you? Gas her. Chain her up till she talks, and when you’re absolutely sure she hasn’t told anyone else, get rid of her and anyone else who might be a threat. Flood the house with carbon monoxide. A tragic accident from which you walk away untouched, still flawless, still—”
“Shut up!” roars Melissa.
And now she’s clawing at my face with her nails, and Marcus is on her, trying to hold her back. He’s still unsteady, though, and she elbows him hard in the gut, so he shrinks away, doubling up in pain.
“You think you are going to mess up our lives like you messed up your own?” she yells at me, a Fury now, her face hard as steel, her eyes like lances. “You? A pathetic, lying, glorified fucking checkout girl? You? You are nothing! Do you know what we are worth?”
I wince at the truth of her words, and though I try to dodge as she comes for me, I stumble and lose my balance. I brace for the weight of her dropping on me, but by the mad light of the lantern as it rolls away, I see that she is unfastening the bolts to the hidden door. It takes a second for me to realize what is happening, and then the horror of it hits me as the door jolts open, and the Minotaur who has been waiting behind it comes out.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I know it is Simon under the mask. I knew that the bulk of his body is just the shadow of the air tank on his back in the gloom. I know everything. So I can’t explain the scale of the horror that descends upon me as the door kicks open and he bursts through.
Melissa steps back, and—too late—I see the little microphone pack tucked into her waistband and remember the wireless link to the scuba suits. There’s no point pretending we don’t know what he did five years ago and what he planned to do with us on this trip. He’s heard it all.
He has one of the pickaxes from the cellar in his hands, and he comes through swinging, not at me, but at Marcus.
Eliminate the threat first.
Marcus is bigger than me, stronger, but he is also still sluggish from the gas. He is also just beginning to wrap his head around what has been happening in the house, and I think, essentially good and civilized as he is, that he doesn’t quite believe that Simon will kill him right there and then.
I know different.
As Simon hefts the pick, I lunge at him, catching him side-on in a clumsy bear hug that throws him off balance. His hammer blow at Marcus still connects, but it strikes his shoulder instead of his head. Marcus cries out and falls back, clutching the wound and half crumpling in a heap. Maybe part of the pick caught his head, after all. Or maybe he is unsteady and is trying to lower his center of gravity. Either way he slumps against the wall and slides down onto his butt, legs twisted and splayed. His left hand moves between the shoulder wound I had seen and the cut on his head, which I hadn’t.
Simon takes a step toward him, trying to shake me loose, but I hang on like a wildcat. I don’t know what else to do. I cling to him, stupidly, desperately, trying to tangle my legs in his, but he jabs the shaft of the pick hard into my belly, and I slide off him, breathless and wheezing. For a second I am bent double, fighting for air in mad and terrified panic, and then he turns and lunges at me again, this time with the steel head of the pick.
I have enough presence of mind to leap back, realizing too late that I have fallen through the open door. I tumble hard, missing the foyer threshold and dropping down the steps, hitting my head, shoulder, and knees so that my body becomes a siren, my brain so full of its lights and shrieking that I am aware of the door closing after me only when I hear it latch.
I have landed headfirst against the bend in the stairwell, my feet above me, and as I fight to right myself, my injuries crying out in protest, I think of only one thing.
No. Please. Not Marcus . . .
I claw my way back up the stairs, my hot, swollen left hand tight and useless against my breasts, snatching at the door handle and pulling at it with my right. The door shakes in its frame, but it isn’t going to open that way. I slam at it with the heel of my right hand, the echoes drowning out my moaning sobs, drowning out everything but Mel’s sudden shout.
“No!” she yells. I stop, though I know instinctively that she isn’t talking to me. “Not with that! It has to look like an accident.”
“It’s too late for that.” Simon’s voice, still distorted into that slow rolling creep-show Darth Vader sound. Before it had frightened me. Now it just makes me angry, outraged.
“It’s not,” Mel says, calmer now. “We can fix it. Stick to what we said we were going to do. You deal with her, and I’ll get the generator running.”
“What about him?”
“Look at him. He’s not going anywhere.”
So Marcus has been hit harder than I thought. He is unconscious, or close to it, and Melissa is going to finish the job.
While Simon comes for me.
I let go of the door handle like it’s hot and turn back down the stairs. It’s pitch black again, but I am almost used to that now, and my feet feel the edges of the stone steps, guiding me as I scamper down.
You’re leaving Marcus. They are going to kill him, and you are running away.
I have no choice. I will go back for him. I swear I will. But I have to survive the next few minutes first and find a way to get past Simon. I reach the foot of the stairs and turn, arms spread, fingers splayed, toes feeling. I’m back in the labyrinth, in the darkness of the tunnels, and the Minotaur is coming.
I move faster than I should for safety, but there is no time to waste. My feet sweep the stone floor for anything I might use as a weapon, but they find only the rails I had thought were train tracks. They orient me, but I hesitate, hating the idea of moving back toward the dank cell that was my prison and that I worked so hard to escape.
But there is nowhere else to go, and before I have made the decision, I hear the door to the stairwell and know he’s coming.
I pace the tracks lightly, silently, my mind working twice as fast, trying to think of something, anything that might work to my advantage. His footsteps echo in the stairwell, and as I half turn toward them I see the shifting pale bleed of light from the bottom. He has a lantern. Shadows loom and flicker, showing the rough texture of the walls, and then I’m turning away and almost running to the empty cell where I was chained in the dark.