Chapter 4
S ince that strange meeting, Amy had had no other communication with the group.
The new room where the meeting had been held and her locked room were just a short hallway apart.
She still didn’t know whether she was in some basement or further underground.
She detected the overpowering smell of ground coffee, which always were stronger than the brewed version or the used grounds.
She doubted it was to serve to their guests but to cover up the smells otherwise around here.
She’d had food brought in, just another simple sandwich and a bottle of water, but she was grateful.
They had also removed the poor snake. She missed him.
He’d been a companion, both of them caught in the same situation.
She hoped they hadn’t hurt him. As she sat here, huddling in the darkness, wondering at the dank cold around her, she heard a muffled sound, then what she envisioned as harsh jolts of movements outside her door.
Then suddenly she had this inner sense that she was alone.
She didn’t know why and didn’t know how, but she felt a weird emptiness.
She walked up to the door and called out, but she got no answer.
She hadn’t really tried to do that before, so she couldn’t tell if silence now was a different response.
As she stood at her door, she called out again and again.
When she tried the doorknob, it was locked.
Swearing to herself, she settled back into her bed again.
Yet, for the first time, she wondered if they would really leave her here.
And for how long would they abandon her?
She had no answers, but, if this was their way of disposing of a troublesome person they didn’t really want to kill, maybe they wouldn’t be back. If she was stuck here without food or water, how long could she last? Three days maybe? What was it for water, four?
What a terrible way to die. Not that there was ever a good way to die, but this was not how she wanted to go out. She wanted to do too many things in life. Just then she sensed something rummaging around outside. She hesitated, then walked to her door again and called out, “Hello? Hello?”
Again all she heard was silence. Then somebody tried the doorknob, but it was locked from their side too. Then came a voice, a voice she recognized, calling out, “Amy?”
“Wallace,” she cried out. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Hang on. And stand back.” After a sharp series of kicks, the door came down.
She burst into tears when she saw him and threw herself into his arms. He wrapped her up tight and just held her close for a moment.
“I don’t know where they are,” she muttered.
“A little while ago I heard a noise, maybe a silent alarm or something. Then it seemed as if everybody just left. I called out several times, but nobody answered.”
“Yeah, I wondered if somebody had caught sight of me,” Wallace admitted, “but I couldn’t stop looking for you.”
“I can’t believe you found me,” she murmured, tightly wrapping her arms around him.
“I did, but I am not at all comfortable staying here,” he shared, pulling her toward the doorway. “I don’t know if they’re coming back or if they have set a trap. However, I do know that, if they were alerted to my presence,… there’s no reason for them not to come back after us.”
“They’re looking for you,” she stated. “Although I don’t know that they came right out and confirmed that.”
“I know they are,” he murmured, as he pulled her closer and out of the room she had been held in.
As soon as they stepped outside of this general area into another hallway , she gasped. “What is this place?”
“Sewer lines,” he told her. “A whole city is down here, and your kidnappers have been using these rooms quite freely. So let’s get you out of here quickly. Are you able to run?”
She stared around, taking in the toxic smell and nodded. “The faster, the better,” she muttered. “God, this is gross, and we need to leave.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if your room was a control room, a meeting room, a staff room, or what. I have no idea,” he noted, “but that little area was a whole lot cleaner than the rest.”
“This explains the dampness, the chill,” she shared.
He gave her a smile and reached out a hand. “I do know of a couple other tunnels to get us out of here fast. I just don’t want to go out the way that they’ve been using.”
“Just go,” she urged. “I’ll follow along.”
He gave her a bright smile. “You’ve always been such a trooper.” With that, he picked up the pace and started to run.
She ran at his side, sometimes barely managing to stay on her feet because the ground underneath was so slippery.
Several times she thought she would fall, but Wallace managed to hang on to her and to keep her upright.
When they finally came to a stop, she gasped.
“Oh my God, this place seems to go on and on forever.”
“It does,” he confirmed. “It goes on for a long way, but…” Then he looked around. “I think a Y is up ahead, and they’ve been taking the one to the side, so I want to go in the opposite direction.”
“I want to go wherever they’re not,” she declared in a harsh tone.
“Yep, you and me both. We just have to make it to the Y.” He gave her a smile and squeezed her hand. “Come on.” Almost immediately they came upon it. He pointed at the footsteps and shared, “They’re all going out that way. It is a faster route. But…”
“No, no,” she said, hating everything about that path. “Let’s go the opposite way.”
“That’s the plan.” He pulled her along in the opposite direction.
She asked, “How did you even find me?”
“It’s a long story, but we found another man who pointed us in this direction, who had been held by the same group of kidnappers. At least that’s what we believe.”
She gasped. “Is he okay?”
“Yes and no. He’s been badly injured, so we took him out of here, and Riff headed up top with him.
We had to carry him because he had a lot of broken bones, but he should be at the hospital by now,” Wallace added.
“I figured after I talked to him that you were still out here because they were talking about grabbing you. He was unlucky enough to be mistaken for me and suffered terribly for absolutely nothing. I knew then that his kidnappers were most likely the ones who had taken you.”
“All they could talk about was this new government agency,” she muttered.
“The new MI6 group?”
“Yes, and it’s attracted quite a bit of interest, but it’s BS because they want to start their own group.”
“Do they know that you can do some of this stuff?” he asked, casting her a glance.
“I can’t do anything, as you very well know,” she muttered.
He gave her a gentle smile. “And they believed you?”
“I hope so. They locked me away again and didn’t really give me any information as to what they would do with me,” she muttered. “So maybe I was just fooling myself. I can’t believe they just left me there.”
“They left you there, probably assuming that you would get found,” Wallace pointed out. “After all, I think I was spotted in their area. So I’m not convinced that their intent was to leave you to die.”
She felt a little better. “One was called Dominic. He was supposedly a mind reader, according to what he told me anyway. He kept insisting that I was thinking about you. And why wouldn’t I be when it was so obvious that they were targeting people who had been at the MI6 meeting?
Dom didn’t seem to like my having answers to give back to him, but I did tell him about what had happened to me, and I think they did believe me at that point in time,” she admitted.
“I also think they were a little bewildered and seemed to struggle as they tried to figure out what to do with me.”
“Of course, so maybe my coming along when I did was good timing for them to leave.”
“Maybe. It was certainly good timing for me,” she admitted, with a happy sigh. “You have no idea how grateful I am to not be in there anymore. I’m glad I didn’t realize how gross it was just outside my little area. That would have made my time there much worse.”
He squeezed her hand gently. “Believe me, that ever since we found out you’d gone missing, we’ve been on the hunt. We got slowed down when we had no idea that you’d requested a new room at the hotel.” He turned and glared at her. “You really should tell people these things, by the way.”
“I would have if I’d had anybody to tell,” she replied, “or, you know, if only I’d known I was about to be kidnapped.” She snorted.
He nodded. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? We never really know when shit is about to happen.”
“Exactly,” she agreed. She kept hanging on to his hand as they made their way, quickly walking farther and farther down the tunnels. “You sure you have some idea where we are?”
“Can you see my footprints?” he asked.
“No, I can’t see anything,” she said in exasperation.
“Use your other eyes,” he invited.
“Oh.” She stopped in place for a moment, then shifted her perception and almost laughed. “My God, they’re practically glowing.”
“Pretty much,” he confirmed. “It’s a bit of a trick I learned a while back for finding my way around in the jungle. I managed to get my footprints to fluoresce, so I can follow them in and out again.”
“That’s amazing,” she cried out.
He laughed. “I don’t know about amazing, but it sure helps in these situations, although all we’re really doing is walking in a straight line here.” He shrugged. “We should come to the surface soon.”
“You really did come a long way looking for me,” she noted in amazement, turning around.
“Of course,” he replied, squeezing her hand. “I’d hardly leave you to these guys.”
“A lot of people would have, you know,” she murmured.
“But not me, and you know that, right?”
She gave a happy sigh, squeezing his hand. “I really, really, really appreciate it.” When he gave her a hard look, she sighed. “I know. You don’t want gratitude, blah-blah-blah .”
He laughed. “The things you remember.”