I dropped, still clutching Clyde. Water soaked my clothes, his fur.
Mac’s shot caught Roman high in his left shoulder. He shrieked—a cry that rattled my eardrums—and dropped his gun. It skimmed away in the rising water and fetched up against the wall as Roman sank to one knee.
Mac stepped fully into the corridor behind me.
“Hands up!” she yelled.
Roman lifted his head. His face was spattered with blood—his or Hiram’s or both. Beyond him, Hiram lay unmoving.
Somewhere deep in the earth, a great rumbling built. From far away came a series of cracks that sounded like tree trunks snapping, then an oddly muffled whump.
Roman sank to all fours, his elbows bent, his good hand grappling for support. “Can’t . . . ,” he said weakly. “Hurts.”
I eased off Clyde. “Fass!”
But even as Clyde leapt, Roman’s groping hand found my gun where it lay near his knee. Clyde was in midair when the gun went off. The sound boomed in the small space.
Then Clyde slammed into Roman, and the two of them tumbled backward.
I ran after Clyde. He had his jaws clamped around Roman’s arm. Roman was awake, but he didn’t move or make a single sound. His eyes followed me as I kicked the .45 farther out of his reach and grabbed my gun where he’d dropped it.
“Don’t move,” I told him. “The more you struggle, the harder he’ll bite.”
I wanted to check Clyde. I wanted to fall on my knees and run my hands over him, see if Roman’s shot had struck him.
Instead, I ran past him and Roman and Hiram, rounded the corner, and skidded to a halt in a small room.
Light came from a lantern set on a barrel. There were two cots. A shelf stacked with food. A pair of shovels propped in the corner. A table covered with the makings of bombs. On the other side of the room, a small opening led to what appeared to be another tunnel, this one narrow and maybe five feet off the ground.
Nothing of Lucy.
“Lucy? Where are you, honey? You’re safe now.”
The ground shook for a second or two. One of the shovels teetered and crashed. Then everything went very, very quiet.
My eyes scanned the room again. On one of the cots, the huddle of blankets gave a slight twitch.
“Lucy!”
I dropped next to the cot and, terrified at what I might find, drew back the blanket.
I knew her face. Had held it constantly in my mind, seen it in my dreams. The lively brown eyes, the soft brown hair.
But now Lucy’s face was rigid with terror, her eyes wide and vacant. When I reached a hand toward her, she flinched.
“Lucy,” I said. “My name is Sydney. I’m going to take you to your dad.”
She blinked. “My daddy is dead.”
“No, Lucy, he’s very much alive.” Willing it to still be true. “He was hurt, but now he’s waiting for you.”
She shook her head. “I saw him.”
I remembered the picture she’d drawn, the one in Ben’s desk. “He told me to tell you something. He said, ‘You have to be brave, Lucy Goose.’”
Her eyes came into focus, met mine. A small bit of the horror there was replaced with hope. “He told you that?”
“Cross my heart.”
“It’s wrong to lie. My mommy said so.”
“No lie, Lucy. Let’s go see him.”
She held out her arms and I scooped her up and carried her back toward the tunnel. I paused next to Hiram, took one look at his wide, staring eyes, and stepped over him and out of the room.
Clyde had released Roman’s arm but sat close. My partner looked unhurt. Roman had fallen onto his back when Clyde hit him, and now he lay in an unmoving, broken sprawl. His eyes were wide and empty, his mouth open. Maybe Mac’s shot had nicked his heart and he’d bled out. One could always hope.
“Mac!” I called.
Silence.
I set Lucy down next to Clyde and turned her away from the body of her half uncle.
“Lucy, this is my partner, Clyde. I want you to wait with him. I have to go back down the tunnel and get one more person. Wait here, okay? There’s a bomb, so you have to stay very, very still. Wait with Clyde and don’t move. Can you be brave again?”
Her eyes widened in her pale face, but she nodded.
“Pass auf,” I said to Clyde. Guard.
I hurried down the tunnel, stepping over the trip wire. The light was faint here, and I pulled my goggles back over my eyes. The world came greenly into view.
Mac sat with her back to the wall, her legs stretched in front of her. Her face was white and still. A chunk of flesh was missing out of her right leg, halfway between her knee and her hip. She’d removed her belt and yanked it tight around her thigh as a tourniquet.
Beyond her, the tunnel ended in a pile of rubble. And from beyond that came the sound of water rushing.
“Mac?” I crouched next to her. “Mac!”
She opened her eyes. “Lucy?”
“She’s waiting. We have to get out of here.”
She smiled. “Roman?”
“Dead. Now get on your feet!”
“We’re trapped,” she said. “The water . . .”
“There’s another tunnel. Get up!”
She pressed her palms against the ground, bent her good leg, and pushed. I grabbed her beneath her arms and hauled her to her feet.
She screamed when her bad leg touched the ground.
I slung her arm across my shoulders, and we hobbled along the tunnel. At the trip wire, I lifted her over and we shuffled on toward Lucy and Clyde. I helped Mac lean against the wall, then bent to pick up Lucy.
The four of us rounded the corner past Hiram’s body, which was already half-submerged by the rising water. We sloshed our way across the room to the mouth of the tunnel. I shone my light down the passageway—it disappeared into the distance, but a faint breeze trickled my face. Of course Roman would have another way out.
“It leads to air,” I said to the others. “But it’s narrow. We’ll have to crawl.” I looked at Mac. “Can you manage?”
“I’m not liver paté,” she said.
“No,” I said. “You most definitely are not.”
I fitted my headlamp on Lucy, then hoisted Clyde into the tunnel, followed by Lucy. Mac insisted on going last.
“If you stop, you’ll force me to come back for you,” I said.
“I won’t stop.”
I scrabbled after Lucy, then heard Mac’s sharp intake of breath as she lifted herself in after me.
I tried to determine if we were moving toward or away from the river, tried to picture where the tunnel would emerge into the dawning day—if indeed it did. I tried not to think of the four of us getting trapped here as the water rose; tried not to think of Cohen or anyone else who might have been caught in the tunnel behind us when it gave way.
Every ten yards or so, Lucy would stop, and then Clyde would stop as well. I could hear him waiting up ahead, panting in the moist coolness. Behind me, Mac’s breaths came in ragged gasps.
Each time Lucy stopped, I urged her on. “Follow the dog, Lucy Goose. He’ll take you home.”
And each time, after a minute or two, she’d start up again.