“She is, don’t worry.”
Fifteen minutes later River brought the vehicle to a stop and killed the engine.
“We’re here.” He turned to January and said, “You wait here.”
“No,” Wilde said. “You come with us.”
They got out.
River got a flashlight and rope out of the trunk.
“What’s the rope for?”
“I lied to you about the shed,” River said. “She’s down a shaft. We lowered her down on a rope. She’s fine but she’s about twenty feet down. We’ll need to pull her up.”
Wilde pressed the barrel into River’s back.
“Let’s go.”
They walked, slowly, one foot at a time, with River sweeping the flashlight back and forth. There were lots of vertical shafts.
“Watch your step,” River said.
The weather hammered down.
River flickered the light on a shaft about fifteen steps away. “That’s the one. That’s where she is.”
Wilde’s eyes followed the beam.
It was then that the side of his head exploded.
River’s knuckles broke the skin wide-open and made direct contact with Wilde’s skull. Then the man’s python hands were around Wilde’s neck, viciously twisting it and forcing him to the ground.
The gun went off.
January screamed.
River turned and Wilde punched him.
Two bloody minutes later, Wilde was standing over River, training the gun down on the man’s head. January was two steps away, holding a bleeding shoulder.
Suddenly Wilde heard a voice.
It was coming from the shaft to his left, not the one River pointed out before.
“Don’t move!”
He headed over and shined the light in.
Alabama was on a wooden beam, thirty feet down.
There was no rope around her chest or anywhere in sight.
“Are you okay?”
“Help me, Wilde! I’m losing it!”
Wilde walked over to River.
“You’re going to go down and put a rope around her,” he said.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “She’s not even alive. She’s dead.”
Wilde fired the gun into the air.
“I’m not playing.”
He and January lowered River down on a rope to the beam.
“Do it!” Wilde shouted down.
River hesitated, then unwrapped the rope from around his chest and secured it around Alabama’s. Wilde and January pulled her up.
She put Wilde into a bear hug.
From the shaft Wilde heard muffled words.
They came from River.
“Pull me out. Hurry up.”
Wilde walked over and shined the flashlight down.
The beam wasn’t very big.
“It was just an accident that Alabama landed on that,” Wilde said. “You didn’t even know it was there.”
“I thought she was dead.”
“No you didn’t,” Wilde said. “You were burying her alive.”
“That’s not true. Pull me out. We had a deal.”
“That’s right,” Wilde said. “The deal was you go your way and I’ll go mine. So go your way. I’m not stopping you.”
Suddenly Alabama was next to him.
“Wilde, you can’t leave him there.”
“He tried to kill you.”
“I don’t care. Don’t do it.”
He exhaled, deciding.
Suddenly a shape darted at them.
Wilde saw it in his peripheral vision.
It was January charging with stiff arms, intent on pushing Wilde or Alabama or both of them into the shaft.
He grabbed Alabama’s waist and swung her to the ground.
The shape went over them.
Wilde grabbed the woman’s ankle with his right hand.
Her momentum propelled her forward and her torso disappeared into the shaft. She pushed wildly against the shaft wall, screaming.
Wilde dragged her out.
She rolled away from the hole and curled up in a ball.
Wilde grabbed the rope, dropped it down to River and said, “Tie it around your chest.”
River didn’t answer.
Wilde leaned over and shined the light down.
River was gone.
It wasn’t clear if he lost his footing or whether a rock fell on him from January’s commotion or something else happened altogether. The only thing that was clear was that he was gone.
132
Wilde liked the name Secret better than Emmanuelle so that’s what he called her. Saturday night he took her to the Bokaray. She wore a short black dress and white panties. In her left hand was a glass of wine. In Wilde’s was a double-shot of whiskey, his third.
They had a table in the corner.
The dance floor was sardine tight.
The band was good.
Perfume and cigarettes permeated the air.
