I gulped in air. We weren’t out of the woods yet. This could all go to hell in a heartbeat. The dirt around the hole was unstable and the hole was very small, but there was hope.
I scraped gently at the dirt. It filtered down around me, and I moved around, tried to get it to go down past my body. It wedged between me and the surrounding earth. Then the hole closed in on me, wouldn’t go past my chest, and all I could do was work my way back down.
I slid back into the car, felt dirt thud into the hole I’d created above, sealing off the air.
“Mort . . . I can’t . . .”
“Go up, Honey. There’s air. But be very, very careful. Don’t dislodge much dirt. Go straight up, hands first. Don’t make a big hole. Keep it small.”
She crawled into the hole and stood. I couldn’t tell what she was doing. Dirt sifted down around her, then she stopped and a few seconds of dead quiet went by. Finally, I heard her breathing, great gulps of air. But now there wasn’t much left in the car. I felt myself starting to slip away again.
I tapped her leg. She came back down. More dirt piled in after her. This was delicate, dangerous work. One misstep and we’d be down there forever.
“Your turn,” she said. “It sort of collapsed again.”
I reached up and pulled dirt out of the vertical shaft, shoved it to one side, then worked my shoulders through the windshield again. Pulled more dirt down, got some air, gently widened the hole, saw two stars now, then lowered myself back down.
Back and forth we traded places, getting air, slowly making the hole larger. On the surface it widened like a funnel as the sides kept collapsing, dirt tumbling in through the windshield. The trunk was almost full of dirt. It wouldn’t take much more. If we ran out of room, that would be the ball game.
Finally, after my fifth or sixth turn, I lowered myself into the car and said, “Try to get out. I’ll lift your feet, boost you up.”
“And leave you here?”
“One of us has to get out first. That someone is going to be you, no argument. And don’t worry, I fully intend to get out of here, too.”
“Okay. Be careful.”
She gave me the world’s grittiest kiss then crawled into the hole and stood up. I crouched on the dirt as close to the hole as I could get. I cupped my hands around one of her feet, then put all my Borroloola strength training into lifting her as she scrabbled to the surface.
Then she was out.
I felt my eyes well up with tears. She was precious. I was not. I was just a former IRS goon and a scruffy old half-assed PI, but she was pure diamond. This rattletrap, sometimes-obnoxious universe could get along fine without me. Without her, it would be a far less valuable place.
“Your turn,” she said. Her voice came down muffled.
“Here, take this,” I said, passing clothing and other things up to her. She reached down, got hold of it, took it up the rest of the way.
Half-assed and scruffy or not, I still wanted out. What I needed was leverage, a place to put my foot. I reached up and back, scraped dirt off the roof to create a step for my foot. More dirt rattled down into the car. At least I had air.
It took a while, but finally I stood up through the windshield, feet on the dash. My eyes were level with the ground outside. I lifted one leg high enough to get my toes on the car’s roof, and with Lucy pulling on one hand, hauled myself out of the grave.
She slammed into me, hugging hard, crying.
“Oh God, God, God, thank you,” she wailed.
I felt like wailing myself, but I am a rock, I am a . . .
Okay, I cried, too, came about this fuckin’ close to wailing, but managed to hold it off. If we’d been in that ragtop Mustang, we’d be dead already. Saved by a drunk kid in daddy’s car.
“For a while I didn’t . . . didn’t think we were gonna make it,” she said. Her voice sounded blubbery.
“It was close. Good thing you were born when the planets were lined up just right.”
She hugged me tighter.
Finally I looked around. Never had stars looked so beautiful. Never had ordinary air smelled so sweet. Never had I wanted to kill two people so much. Well, one person—Julia Reinhart. To stay alive, I’d had to know she was no longer on this earth. I had needed to kill her, and I had.
Now, there was Buddie and Arlene.
Except . . . maybe not.
Could I do that again? Hunt someone down and kill them? I wasn’t a judge or jury. I had been grievously wronged, as had Lucy. Buddie and Arlene had tried to murder us and had come within a hair’s breadth of succeeding. But they hadn’t, so now it was up to the law to deal with them. Those two weren’t going to escape society’s wrath and vengeance for having tried to kill us, for murdering Vince Ignacio and killing a dozen others over the years. The evidence was buried. It could and would be retrieved. No doubt most of it would be horrible beyond imagining. Buddie and Arlene were headed for lethal injections.
Another problem with our hunting down those two—Buddie was a monster. Six foot seven, three hundred fifty pounds, well fed, psychotic, and—I was guessing here but I think I was on the right track—he would make every effort to kill us and stuff us back in the ground if we showed up. Also, Arlene had a gun and she had
