Chapter 16
“You’re only making it worse,” Jacob whispered to her.
He’d expected the cornered woman to try to negotiate for her life, but she hadn’t. All the tears and sobbing had been an act
to lure him in close, and it had almost worked. She understood the severity of her situation, but she wasn’t letting herself
fall apart. She kept scooting backward, her kneepads scraping rock and sandy mud. Keeping just beyond his reach.
He lunged for her—she swiped her knife—but he was only feinting.
“Oh.” He laughed. “Almost.”
He could still find ways to enjoy himself. He’d keep testing her, wear her down, wait for her muscles to tire. All he needed
was a split second. Even funneled down a tube together, the faster scorpion can still win, right? It’s all about violence
of action. Speed, strength, surprise.
Life itself is will to power.
When he was a kid his father used to take him trout fishing out in the Wind River Range. He’d always hated hooking their mouths,
no matter how many times his dad assured him that fish can’t feel pain. Their brains are so primitive, he’d say, that they don’t even realize they’re suffocating in the open air. Jacob pretended to believe him, but he could never ignore how violently they flailed. Nothing fights that hard unless it
knows pain and fear.
One evening they returned to the truck and saw a pair of human legs underneath it.
A stranger was stealing the vehicle’s catalytic converter, and this was the only time he’d ever see his father point a gun at another human.
The thief held up his hands and apologized.
He was living on the run and starving, he said.
Jacob knew his father’s temper and dreaded what was coming next, but to his surprise, his old man hadn’t seemed upset at all.
He listened to the stranger’s sob story, and when it was over, he calmly asked the guy to reinstall the catalytic converter’s mounting bolts.
No harm done. For a few minutes it almost seemed like he might share some fish with him.
Then, politely, he asked for the man’s wallet.
His keys.
His backpack.
His coat and boots.
Finally, with a rumbling cruelty in his voice, he commanded the thief to strip naked. Boxers, too. It was sundown, early October
in the high plains. With the windchill it couldn’t have been far above freezing. Even as a kid Jacob had sensed he was witnessing
something forbidden and certainly something he should never tell his mother about. But it was also an exhilarating sensation,
being bad together with his dad. He remembered laughing timidly and asking his father if he could make the guy dance. The thief made
a few half-hearted disco moves at gunpoint, his yellow teeth chattering.
Then they left. Riding away with the guy’s clothes draped in the truck bed beside an icebox full of trout, Jacob remembered
watching the pale figure disappear in the mirrors. He’d looked like a gray alien, chest heaving and barefoot on cold gravel.
Jacob and his dad had laughed for miles of dusky highway, their voices joining to form a new melody he’d never heard before,
and then miles more of contemplative silence. It felt like an hour passed before his dad finally spoke: Remember, Jacob. A living being seeks above all else to discharge its own strength.
Life itself is will to power.
For most of his life he’d believed those were his father’s words; it wasn’t until later that he learned they were Friedrich
Nietzsche’s. He’d never seen the man read anything thicker than a Little Nickel. As an adult, Jacob read voraciously with a particular interest in the works of Nietzsche, hoping they might offer hints
to understanding the enigmatic man now long gone from stomach cancer. Which ones had his father read? What else resonated
with him? Or—disappointing but possible—had he only picked up the quote from an action movie?
Now he noticed the cave walls seemed to narrow around him and his victim, the glistening limestone faces constricting closer.
The air was cloyingly humid. Even through his balaclava he smelled a sour odor, like wet socks. Wriggling through this sewer-like
space took noticeably more effort, and his skin was slick with cold sweat. It was oppressive, staying on your belly for this
long under such pressure from all sides. If the woman’s harness caught on a rock—for real this time—she’d be in serious trouble.
And still, she kept going. Deeper and deeper.
God, he wished he could just shoot her in the forehead. It would be over so fast. But firing a gun inside the Drainpipe would
be catastrophic unless Jacob solved two big problems. First, the threat of fragmentary ricochets after the slug exited the
back of the woman’s head. Second, the cost to his own hearing. He could cover one ear with his hand while he fired the gun,
but the damage to his unprotected ear would be ruinous.
It was fine. There were still other ways he could kill her.
“You know I can just guard the cave’s entrance, right?” He felt their breaths swirl together in the confined space, nicely
intimate. “I can make sure you never leave this place. I’ve got your phones. I’ve got most of your supplies and gear. Hell,
I can wait all week. You can’t. How long do you think you’ll last?”
She stared back. “Long enough.”
“You know the rule of threes, right?” He counted on neoprene-gloved fingers with his blade. “Generally speaking, you can last
three weeks without food. Three days without water. And three minutes without oxygen. Down here, which do you think you’ll
run out of first?”
She said nothing.
“Ticktock.” He tapped his wrist.
She had to know she was cut off and cornered. She could keep retreating to maintain the space between them, sure—but for how
long? Eventually she would run into a dead end or a hazard she couldn’t navigate. Or the smothering rock walls would open
up enough that Jacob could chance one more risky gunshot. To one end or another, her time was running out.
“You could always apologize,” Jacob suggested.
“Fuck off.”
“I’m serious. You don’t know who I am or what I want. Maybe it’s money. Maybe it’s revenge. Maybe if you apologized to me,
really apologized and showed genuine regret for what you did, I’ll take pity on you and decide to go home—”
She enunciated: “Fuck. Off.”
“How about we make a deal, then?” He pointed at the GoPro mounted on her helmet. “You give me your footage and your knife,
and I’ll let you live.”
“You’re lying.”
“Cross my heart.”
“I know you’re lying—”
“Hope to die.” He grinned. “Stick a needle in my—”
“Zero chance,” she said. She meant it.
This woman had a certain animal cunning that he admired. She knew the survival knife clenched in her sweaty fingers was the
only thing keeping her alive.
“I know you don’t trust me, but what other options do you have right now?
” Jacob patted the low ceiling, the rock bumpy with wartlike growths.
“Either you and I negotiate our situation here and figure something out, or we try to fight and slice each other to bloody pieces. In a knife fight, the loser goes to the morgue and the winner goes to the hospital. In all likelihood, neither of us will leave this tunnel.”
“Or,” she said, “I crawl deeper.”
“That’s fine, too.”
All bad options, dilemmas upon dilemmas. He could see the calculations running behind her eyes as she tried to reason her
way out of a no-win situation. “I’m not stupid. I’m keeping my knife.” She chewed her lip. “But I might give you the footage.”
He grinned. Here we go.
“I’ll give you the GoPro’s memory card under one condition.”
“Which is?”
“You leave.” She glared back into his red light, unblinking. He could see all of her in sharp detail: the blood vessels in
her eyes, the microscopic pores in her skin. “You take the footage and turn your big ass around and crawl back to the surface.
You get in your Jeep and disappear. We never see each other again.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Sounds nice. A happy ending for everyone. But you know, I need guarantees, too.” Jacob pointed with his knife. “If I abort
my mission and leave you here, I’m just supposed to take it on faith that you won’t talk to the cops?”
“You can’t,” she said. “You have no reason to trust me, either.”
At least she was honest.
“What matters is I haven’t seen your face yet.
” She pointed at Jacob’s balaclava, at the rubber faceplate scarred by her knife.
“I can’t describe what you look like. And once I give you the memory card, the police won’t have your voice or clothes or any other information that might help them identify you.
It won’t matter if I spend hours in a little room with some detective, racking my brain and trying to remember every last detail.
What matters is I won’t have enough. And—” Her voice splintered with emotion.
“And you already know my best friend won’t—can’t—tell them anything, either. ”
Jacob slurped on his lower lip and considered this. No face, no case, as they say. He’d already eliminated the first camera. He’d feel better with both removed from the equation.
“That’s the offer,” she added. “Take it or leave it.”
“Fine.”
“We have a deal?”
“Deal.” He held out a gloved hand.
“I’m not going to hand it to you, dipshit.” She pointed. “Back up.”
Another intelligent move. She knew she’d be vulnerable while she detached the camera from her helmet. Jacob couldn’t help
it: he was really starting to like this girl.
He held the knife in his fist and used both hands to push his body backward, giving her several feet of new space. He already
had a babygirl of his own, but maybe he’d met his match in this woman. Something about the mud and darkness, the threats and
bartering, the cold and sweat—it felt natural. The cave was a crucible for predator and prey alike.
Life itself is will to power, my son.
“There,” he said. “Feel safe now?”
“I knew it was the smart choice,” Tess says. “But . . .”
“What?”
She sighs. “It felt like I was betraying Allie. Cutting a deal with her murderer, giving him exactly what he wanted.”
“To save your life.”
“Only if he was telling the truth.”
It’s a difficult decision, and there can be no half measures. If Washington were cornered by an armed killer inside a shoulder-width
tunnel, she couldn’t be sure what she would do, either.
“I know Allie would’ve handled it differently.” Tess brushes back a strand of hair. “And the whole time, all I could hear
was her voice in my head, urging me to stop. Warning me that I was making a mistake by taking the easy option. He was just
waiting for his chance to shoot me or stab me. He was a liar. Never negotiate with a liar.”
“Keeping the footage wouldn’t bring her back.”
“She would’ve wanted me to.”
“Tess, I think Allie would’ve wanted you to take any chance to save your life.” The detective smiles tightly. “Any chance.”
Bargaining with Jacob might have been the most logical choice, but it was still risky. The video footage would have been Tess’s
most powerful leverage. Once Jacob had the memory card, his options would open up. He’d no longer need to recover the evidence
from her body, so he’d be free to kill her by more indirect methods. He could stack the Drainpipe’s entrance with boulders,
for example, sealing the woman inside to die. Thanks to his text message alibis, it would be days before anyone knew to report
Allie or Tess missing.
“I knew . . .” She takes a breath. “I knew that even if I hadn’t seen his face, he wouldn’t leave me alive. Just like how
he’d said he just wanted an apology from Allie, if we’d only just zip-tie ourselves. Whatever he said to me was a lie. Giving
him the footage wouldn’t accomplish a thing. He’d still kill me.”
She faced two grim options, then.
Take the killer at his word?
Or double down on a suicidal deadlock?
“So.” Washington leans forward. “What did you do?”
“Here.”
Jacob watched her toss it to the gritty mud between them. He picked it up to inspect in his red headlamp—a rectangular memory
card no larger than a postage stamp, 128 gigs—and then he snapped it in half.
Hours of footage, instantly gone.
She watched silently.
“You made the right choice.” He tucked both halves into his pocket, joining the one he’d pulled from the first camera. He
was fairly sure that once a memory card is broken the data is irretrievably gone, but he’d melt the pieces down in his firepit
tonight to be sure. No loose ends.
Two cameras, two memory cards. Things were looking up.
“I haven’t seen your face,” she said. “So hold up your side of the deal and go.”
At this, Jacob Herman smiled. God, this little dance of theirs was intoxicating. He wished it could last forever, even if
he understood why it couldn’t.
He pulled off his helmet—“Wait,” she said, “what are you doing?”—and the red light changed, casting wild shadows. Then he
gripped the edge of his balaclava and peeled it off. Like a reptile sloughing out of its skin, it felt good to remove the
sweaty fabric and rubber. His upper lip, starting to swell, felt better already in the cool air.
“Now,” he said, grinning, “you’ve seen my face.”
Her heart visibly sank.
“So now I guess I’ll have to kill you anyway, huh?”
Her glare turned venomous. Liar.
He loved it.
“Sorry, but you knew I was a snake when you picked me up.” Jacob patted the broken memory cards in his pocket.
“And honestly, I’m a bit disappointed in you.
After everything you saw today, you really thought we could just talk our way out of this and go our separate ways?
I’m sorry, but I lied to you. I don’t leave jobs half done. ”
He grinned at her.
“I won’t leave this cave until you’re dead.”
“He didn’t realize I’d lied to him, too,” Tess says.
“How?”
“I gave him one of Allie’s spare memory cards.” A crafty smile flickers across her face. “The real one was still in my GoPro,
still recording. I was only testing him.”
The clarity in her voice is startling.
“And,” she says, “now I had his face on video, too.”