Chapter Nine
Cobwebs draped over Roxana as the narrowing crawl space forced her onto her hands and knees.
Jason had thought of secret wall art and an apology letter.
Couldn’t the guy have thought about a backup flashlight?
Extra batteries? One of those helmet lights that would lead the way?
He seemed to have prepared for everything else.
Old wood planks and rocks lined the never-ending passageway. She couldn’t imagine anyone crawling underground like this unless it were a life-or-death situation. “What people would go through to grab a drink.”
She hadn’t thought about how far she’d have to travel underground, but if she’d had to guess, Roxana would’ve pegged the tunnel as no longer than the length of her block.
Stupid assumption.
Bootleggers didn’t care about her neighborhood. They wanted to come and go with booze. She had to have crawled at least halfway to downtown Louisville, scraping her knees and inhaling a metric ton of dirt, cursing the man she loved.
Dirt stuck to her face and neck, sweat burned her eyes, and her racing heart needed a break. For the first time since she’d crawled into the wall, Roxana stopped. She tried to tuck her legs under her, but didn’t have enough room to sit upright. Claustrophobia poisoned her perspective.
“Pull yourself together.”
She did. More or less, and tried to reason that Spiker and Vanka couldn’t find her underground.
Spiker wouldn’t fit through the tunnel, though Jason had.
Vanka would fit better than all of them, but there wasn’t any way her high-priced outfit and killer heels would crawl what had to have been miles underground.
“Where’s this stupid ladder?”
Roxana barreled forward again, promising herself she’d almost reached the end. Go faster. Just a little further.
Her head smacked into something.
For a mind-numbing moment, she didn’t feel the pain.
Then it hit. She swayed, unable to remain on her hands and knees, and pitched face-first, landing on her stomach, hands cupping the top of her skull.
Her vision would’ve dimmed if she hadn’t already been wrapped in the dark.
There was nothing she could do but try not to cry.
The pain simmered down.
She caught her breath, surprised that blood hadn’t dampened her hands. The knot rising on top of her head would be one for the record books, though.
After another minute and one helluva pep talk, she carefully investigated her surroundings until she found the culprit. Her head had slammed into what felt like an overhead slab of concrete that jutted downward as if it had broken under too heavy a weight.
Her temper grew as her nauseating headache worsened.
Maybe Jason should’ve added that to his note.
Then again, maybe the ceiling hadn’t been like that the last time Jason had crawled through.
Her mind raced through the possibilities of everything that could go wrong.
She hadn’t thought of the laundry list of worries that she’d have listed if Hagan had told her that crawling through this tunnel was part of his job.
She didn’t know how she’d gone this far underground without thinking about what could happen, but now that she clearly saw how the tunnel could collapse, she pushed her wooziness aside, determined to avoid death.
With her head held low and her outstretched arms searching for the next problem, Roxana powered deeper into the tunnel.
Several hard turns had given her hope that she’d reached the dead end.
She had even been certain she’d passed openings to other houses.
The end never seemed near. Hot darkness wrapped its claustrophobic, possibly heartbroken claws around her chest and whispered that this was too much.
That she’d run from one problem into the next, and now she’d die far too early, so much like her dad and brother.
All because she didn’t know the man she’d fallen in love with.
Even if Jason had used her in part of a masquerade, why would he send her into a tunnel to die?
No matter how hard she clung to her anger, she couldn’t believe he would.
Whoever he was, whatever he’d thought of her, she refused to fathom that she was the collateral damage Vanka had so casually mentioned.
Roxana pushed onto her hands and knees and moved as quickly as she could manage. She deserved answers, and Jason deserved a big kick in the ass. He believed she could handle this, and of course, she could, if for no other reason than to deliver that big kick in the ass.
Pinpricks of light from high above were the only warning that the tunnel was ending. Without a sense of time or direction, Roxana finally had enough room to sit up and wasted only a few deep breaths before groping the wall.
Her hand clipped against a metal bracket. She found another one several inches above the first. Calling the oversized, uneven pieces of scrap metal a ladder was a stretch, but she shimmied up them like the ground might give way, trying not to think how high she’d climbed.
Exactly as Jason detailed, a bag waited on a nail the size of a railroad spike.
She lugged it onto her shoulder and pushed the manhole cover.
The thing didn’t budge, and her heart seized.
Jason’s warning came to mind. It might not move.
Okay, so it hadn’t, and his suggestion to use her back and shoulder sounded simple. But, it wasn’t.
Roxana teetered at the top of the miniature, underground silo, and cursed physics. She tried to move it again. Nothing happened.
“Time for Plan B.” Roxana slung the bag onto the spike and braced her left foot directly underneath it. So long as the wall remained intact, she wouldn’t plummet to her death.
Carefully, she shifted her center of gravity over the black hole she’d climbed from and hesitantly let go of the ladder. Her so-so leg strength kept her in place, and with her shoulder and hands, she pushed into the manhole cover.
A crescent of light broke as dirt showered the tunnel and adrenaline surged in her veins. She didn’t pull back until blinding sunlight burst through.
The hot summer day felt like a blast of cool air. Only giving herself a second to catch her breath, Roxana pushed the manhole cover over enough that she could throw her bag out and then crawl through.
She found herself on her hands and knees in the grass.
Roxana glanced at a section of picnic tables and a bewildered couple. They didn’t say a word, and she didn’t have the energy to do anything more than sprawl forward, arms and legs out as if she were trying to make a snow angel in the grass, face-first on a summer day.
“Are you okay?” a woman called.
That was probably her cue to keep moving. Roxana rolled over and lifted a weak thumb up toward the benches.
The other woman tried again. “Are you sure?”
“Probably.” Her hoarse voice splintered. Roxana swiped her hand over her sweat-slicked face and scraped away a layer of dirt. “Who knows?”
The women approached as if she might be a crash-landed alien. The last thing Roxana needed was to cause a scene, but if she didn’t say something, they might call the police to report… hell, she didn’t know what they’d say, but Roxana had to go.
In the distance, she recognized a stone bridge, meaning somehow she’d found herself in the middle of Tyler Park. If that were correct, she’d gone at least a mile. Maybe two. She pushed onto her knees, and her legs shook.
One of the women approached with her phone in hand. “Honey, are you hurt?”
“I’m okay. Thanks.” Roxana glanced at her dirt-streaked arms and legs. “Just took a wrong turn somewhere.” She stood up. “Is this Tyler Park?”
The woman nodded and lifted her phone. “Can we call someone for you?”
Who would Roxana call? Hagan and Jason were the people she trusted. Not so much anymore. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
“If you change your mind…”
“Thanks.” Roxana hooked the backpack’s straps over her shoulders and took off without a clear plan in mind. The only objective she had was to add distance between herself and her house, as well as the manhole cover.
She found her bearings and tried to hustle, but could barely walk. Jason’s backpack weighed her down, and after crawling underground for what felt like hours, her body was like a beached whale carrying a heavy bag while wearing roller skates.
How would Jason find her? Better question, after today, why would she want him to find her? Answers, she reminded herself.
Without money or her car, she was on foot and in need of a place to hide out. Cherokee Park came to mind. She stayed on the side streets, then cut down the alleys behind Bardstown Road until she reached the park.
Roxana scanned the wide-open entryway and decided, not that she knew much about strategic advantages, that she’d chosen the best location she could, given her circumstances. If Spiker and Vanka tracked her to Cherokee Park, they’d likely be in a car. Roxana would avoid the drivable loop.
If they—or maybe just Spiker, considering Vanka’s footwear—were on foot, Roxana could position herself on top of one of the long, rolling hills. Even if Spiker and Vanka split up, approaching from opposite directions, Roxana could see them before they spotted her.
Actually, that was a surprisingly good plan. She gave herself a mental pat on the back, then hoofed around the park until she located the best spot.
Behind the protective, yellow flowering of an overgrown lady’s slipper bush, Roxana collapsed and smiled. Perhaps she had some of the same superhero genetics in her DNA as her brother.
The park was quieter than she’d expected.
The heat and humidity levels had to be record-shattering.
The late afternoon sun baked an empty swing set.
No one roamed with their dogs or played ultimate frisbee on the hill.
After another inspection of her surroundings, she felt secure enough to unzip the bag and snoop.
The contents mirrored the emergency preparedness box that Jason kept stocked and ready in her house and car.
Roxana had always assumed they’d prepared for a tornado, but apparently, his forward thinking readied them for armed hostage takers.
So much for the naive belief that her man was a stable, sane creature who was nothing like her heroic brothers who routinely taunted death.
What else had Jason hidden in plain sight around her house? Had he painted Morse code in the trim in her bedroom? Imprinted secret messages on a beer bottle?
No matter what else he’d done in her house, he’d thought to pack her a bottle of water and Gatorade chews in the event she had to run for her life. She cracked the bottle open and took a long drink before digging into the candy-like electrolytes.
Orange was her favorite flavor. Something he had known.
They had joked that she was the only person who searched out orange-flavored candies and drinks.
Jason had tried to persuade her that purple grape or cherry red were better, but she never wavered in her commitment to orange.
The flavor that was both a color and a taste.
Remembering their silly debate made her misty-eyed.
Her chest tightened as she wondered if he’d purposefully chosen orange electrolytes.
Did it matter if he’d lied about everything else? None of it mattered if their relationship was fake.
Her throat knotted. She unwrapped an orange chew and refused to dwell on what the flavor might mean. She returned to the bag and removed a packaged emergency blanket, unable to stop the torrent of questions. Why had Jason signed off with “I love you” if their relationship was fake?
Were orange-flavored electrolytes and I-love-you notes enough to outweigh a deception of this magnitude? Roxana tossed the blanket aside and refused to read good intentions into the items chosen his escape plan.
The familiar wrapper of her favorite caramel crisps snack bar caught her eye.
It was sealed in a plastic sandwich baggie with other options.
Ones he might eat. She inspected them. According to their wrappers, they were less concerned about taste and more focused on calories and protein. Definitely for him.
Roxana set those aside and continued her supply inspection. She needed something more than ibuprofen for her headache. If Jason could produce an escape tunnel on demand, he could’ve packed an instant ice pack. But no.
Roxana gave in to her swimming headache and leaned back. The clouds floated through the sky as the sun inched westward on the windless afternoon. Her eyes closed, and for just this moment, she would pretend that orange chews and caramel crisps meant far more than they probably did.