I had just finished running some errands downtown, and now I was at a loss as to what to do. I had heard nothing from Viktor after Andrusha had burst in on us and announced that the sniper was at their property.
Were they okay? Had they caught him? What had happened last night?
I dialed Andrusha’s cell.
“Andrusha speaking.”
“This is Blaire. Sorry to bother you.”
His tone softened. “No bother. What can I do for you, Blaire?”
“I was hoping to talk to Viktor.”
“He just left, but I’ll text him and have him call you. Is this number okay?”
“Yes, thank you.” I hesitated. “Did everything go okay?”
“No one got hurt, but we’re still chasing him.”
Which meant that the sniper was still a threat to Viktor.
“Are you doing okay?” he asked. “How is your grandma doing?”
“We are trying to figure out our new normal.”
“I was glad to see you and Viktor talking last night. Sorry I had to interrupt.”
“I was hoping to catch up with him.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “I think he’d like that very much. I’ll let him know right away.”
“Okay, thanks.”
I hung up and walked to the curb. I looked down the busy street for a cab. Maybe I would get really bold and invite Viktor over for dinner.
A text came in from an unknown number.
Unknown: Miss me?
Viktor! My heart skipped a couple of beats. I decided to play coy.
Blaire: Who is this?
Unknown: I need to see you.
Relief, anticipation, and excitement flooded me. This was my do-or-die moment. I would tell him how I felt, and he would either shove me away or pull me close.
Blaire: Okay, when and where?
Unknown: Meet me outside the aquarium in Stanley Park
Blaire: I can be there in 15 mins
It wasn’t raining, but the sky was overcast. A cold breeze tossed dead leaves across the footpath in front of me. I should have worn my winter boots. The aquarium wasn’t open, so the front waiting area was deserted. It was also the shoulder season for tourism, so there was no one around. I wondered why he had chosen this place.
I couldn’t wait to see him. I decided I would break the ice and just run into his arms. I needed to hug him, and if he held me back, I would know where his feelings lay.
My phone rang, and it was an unknown number.
“Hi.”
“Hey yourself.” His voice sounded warm in my ear. “Andrusha said you called.”
“I don’t know your number.”
“It’s been really busy here. I was going to call you tonight, I promise, when there were no distractions.”
I looked around. The wind whipped against my legs. “What do you mean tonight? Where are you?”
“I’m heading home.”
I looked around. “So why did you ask me to meet you at the aquarium? Do you live near here?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your text. You told me to meet you here.”
“Blaire?” He sounded pained. “I didn’t text you.”
I stood there, completely frozen. “Well, if you didn’t text me, who did?”
I felt a small prick against my neck, and then I couldn’t feel my legs. I tried to speak, but no words came out. And then everything went black.
It was my headache that woke me up. I startled and realized that my hands were tied behind me and my feet were bound to the legs of the chair I sat on. It was pitch black, and I also had a gag in my throat. Eyes rolling, I fought my captivity, but to no avail.
Then a dim light glowed from behind me. I couldn’t see the person who turned on the light, but I could sense them.
“You’re awake.” He had a low, smooth French accent and a soothing tone.
From behind, I could feel big hands push down the gag in my mouth. My mouth was so dry it felt like I had tried to swallow cotton balls.
Hands from behind guided a water bottle to my lips. “Drink up, now.”
I turned my head away. “What is that?”
“Just water.”
I took a tentative sip. It was cold and refreshing, and then I was gulping as fast as he bothered to pour it.
“Easy, now,” he said. “No need to be so greedy.”
He took the bottle away, and I was panting. I turned my head and could see that there was a lantern on the ground just behind me. It cast a circular dome of light over me, but I struggled to see past the light. Only dark shadows lurked. The ground looked like black gravel. I couldn’t see him.
And the room was completely silent other than the sound of water below me, slowly trickling.
“We’re in some sort of mine.”
“Very good.”
“Are you the man who shot my grandfather?”
“I was sorry about that particular collateral damage, but to answer your question, yes—I shot him.”
I could barely choke out the next word. “Why?”
“I was actually there for Viktor, but I realized I didn’t want the game to end, so I shot your grandfather instead. Tell me, was Viktor enraged? Did he take it personally?”
“This is all about Viktor?”
He hummed a note. “It didn’t start that way.”
I needed to keep him talking. “How did it start?”
“I was hired to oversee the transport of the USB drive by the broker—just to make sure no one interfered. Running into Viktor was only a coincidence. A happy opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
I tried to look behind me, but I only saw more shadows. “Why do you hate him so much?”
He moved to stand behind me, and he whispered with his lips against my ear, like a lover would. “Because the love of my fucking life left me for him.”
I cowered from him. “Justine.”
I heard the cock of his gun. “Don’t say her fucking name.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “Sorry.”
“Not as sorry as Viktor will be when we are done today.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
He laughed a slow, low laugh. “No, this is where it gets fun.” He lifted the lantern. “Take a look around.”
I sat on an armed wooden chair at the end of a tunnel. With the lantern light, I could see that I sat next to a dark, never-ending abyss. He threw a flare over the edge, and it became a tiny speck of light far below me. Then he threw a second flare across the abyss. It landed on a ledge that was directly across from where our tunnel ended. It looked like the continuation of the tunnel, but its side had been caved in with rocks right near the mouth.
“There used to be a wooden footbridge here, but it’s gone now,” he said, as he adjusted the ropes above me. “The drop next to you is a natural fissure in the rock, worn down by millions of years of water running.”
“What are you doing?”
“Well”—he adjusted another rope above my head—“you’re going to be sitting on this chair, hanging over that abyss with these four ropes holding the chair in midair. The drop is about one hundred feet, which, in case you didn’t know, is about nine stories. When you fall, you will freefall for almost three seconds before you splat on the ground like a watermelon.”
Oh my god.
“You’ll be sitting in this chair, and your hands will be tied to the back. Viktor is going to come along this tunnel because I’m going to create a trail for him with flares.” He shone his flashlight down the tunnel. He pointed his flashlight to the ledge above. “I’m going to be on that ledge with my rifle and my night vision.”
“I don’t understand,” I stuttered.
“It’s very simple. When he arrives, he will be struck with two choices. He can stand here, safe from my bullets, and watch the ropes burn until you drop to your death. Or he can reach out and try and pull you to safety.”
“But then you will shoot him.”
“Obviously. One of you will live—I’ll make sure of that. It will be his choice.”
My voice was shaking so hard I could barely speak. “What do you mean, the ropes are going to burn?”
He smiled at me. “I’ve doused the ropes in a flammable agent. Once he gets here, I’ll light them on fire so he has a finite amount of time to react.”
“He won’t have time to run and get help.”
“Cute and smart. Come on now. Time for us to get set up.” I felt him drag the chair closer to the edge.
“Please don’t,” I begged, terrified of both the height and the darkness. “I’m scared of the dark.”
He laughed. “Isn’t this fun?”
And then he shoved the chair over the edge.
I screamed, and my high-pitched fear echoed around me as the chair violently jerked on the four ropes. I pitched forward, and if my arms hadn’t been tied behind me to the chair, I would have been flung forward off the chair into the depths below.
By the time the chair stopped jerking and came to a stop, dead center over the shaft, I was sobbing uncontrollably.
“Easy, now,” he said. “Time for me to get set up. Start thinking of what you want to say to your boyfriend. I have a feeling he’s going to try and save you.”
I watched as he disappeared down the tunnel, dropping flare lights as he went. And then everything went silent. I hung there. All I could hear was the sound of running water far below and the creaking of the ropes above.
holyfuckholyfuckholyfuck
I was too scared to look down, and then I heard his voice.
Viktor was yelling. “Blaire.”
“Viktor,” I cried. “I’m over here.”
I could hear the sound of his footsteps running.
“Stop! Don’t move,” I screamed when he came around the corner.
He lifted up his hands. “Whoa, Blaire.”
Tears were streaming down my face. “He’s waiting up there for you. You’re here to watch me die.”
“No, that is not going to happen.” He sounded so calm and matter-of-fact.
I decided in that moment that I was going to save Viktor. “He’s going to set the ropes on fire above me. And you’re going to watch me fall to my death.” I could taste my own snotty tears on my lips. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Easy, Blaire.”
“Viktor, listen to me. I need you to shoot me before I fall. I can’t have the last seconds of my life to be me plunging to my death. Save me those few horrible moments.”
“Hang on. I’m coming to get you.”
“He’s going to shoot you if you come into his line of vision. There is no beating this.”
“Okay, okay,” he soothed. “Can you move your hands?”
“They’re tied behind my back.”
He knelt down and started to take something off his back. “Blaire, I need you to become very still. Can you do that for me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Steady breathing—like that yoga pose you like.”
“Corpse pose? But I’m not lying down.”
“I want the pose where you just stay completely still and you breathe very calmly.”
“Okay.”
“Now, flatten your left arm against the chair a bit. Don’t move.”
I looked over at him, my eyes widening in horror when I saw he was pointing his rifle at me.
“What are you doing?”
He lifted his face from the scope of the gun. “I’m going to shoot the rope off your hands.”
“What?” I squeaked. “No!”
“We need to get your hands free. Don’t move, Blaire. Corpse pose.”
Corpse pose. Now that’s ironic, isn’t it?
Oh god.
I focused forward and then I took twenty steady breaths. The shot was deafening, and then my hands were free. Which meant I no longer was tied to the chair. I grabbed the sides of that slippery chair, feeling like I was on a carnival ride gone wrong.
I looked over at him. “Now what?”
“Now I need you to stand on that chair and start swinging it. Swing it toward me. We need momentum.”
“For what?” I clutched the armrests of the chairs so tightly that the bones in my fingers ached.
“So you can jump toward me.”
“God, no! Viktor!” More tears leaked down my face.
“Come on, Blaire. You can do this for me.”
“I can’t,” I told him honestly.
“I want you to lift up your left hand and grab the rope that’s above your head.”
“No.”
“Blaire, you want me to come out there with you?”
Yes. “No, he’ll shoot you.”
“Try it my way first. You can do this.”
I slowly lifted my hand and dragged it up the rope above my head. The thick fibrous cord felt rough and prickly against my skin. I lifted my other hand along the other rope.
“Now I want you to hang on with all your being and get your feet beneath you, okay?”
I don’t know how I did it. I think I mostly blanked out, but suddenly I was standing on the chair, wavering. I felt like I was standing on a tightrope. If I hadn’t been so unsure of my balance, I would have sat back down again, but I was now simply too afraid to move.
He held my eyes and gave me an easy smile. “This is no different than when you were on a swing as a kid, Blaire. Remember when you used to stand on the seat and pump your legs to make the swing go higher?”
“My nanny never let me play on the swings. Not even to sit on them.”
He looked momentarily baffled. “Are you serious?”
“She said it was dangerous. Now I understand her side of things.” My voice was trembling.
I heard a whooshing sound, and then droplets of flame showered around me. I screamed and looked above my head. One of the ropes was on fire.
I screamed again as another flaming arrow flew over my head and another rope caught on fire. But this time, gunfire echoed around me. Viktor was against the wall of the tunnel, and he was shooting upwards.
“Now I know where the fucker is,” he said. “Things have turned in our favor.”
Ashes and burning threads of rope rained down around me, falling below my feet, before disappearing into the darkness.
“I’m not sure how this is an improvement,” I gasped.
“Okay. We have a time limit, Blaire. Time for you to start pumping those cute legs in earnest.”
This was my way of saving Viktor from risking his life. I moved to hold different ropes so that I was facing Viktor, and then I tentatively started to shift my weight back and forth, moving the chair a bit more with each shove of my legs.
“That’s it, darling,” he encouraged me, as he looked above at the ropes. “Just a bit harder, okay? You have to work a bit faster.”
Another flame arrow whooshed above me, and the light increased overhead as another rope ignited. More gunfire as a fourth flame arrow was shot. Now all the ropes above me were crackling in earnest, setting off an ugly smoky orange glow above my head.
I started to pump my legs harder. I could hear the ropes ominously creaking above my head. “Is this going to hold?”
“Yes, it’s going to hold. Keep going.”
“How do you know that?” I gasped from my exertion.
“I just know.”
But my luck ran out.
I screamed as one of the ropes snapped. The chair suddenly tilted to one side, throwing my balance off. I clung to the ropes above me as my feet scrambled on the slanted chair. The chair careened toward Viktor, but he was backing up. As I started swinging toward the other side, he came flying through the air toward me. The force of his weight against the ropes nearly sent me flying, but he grabbed me hard as we swung toward the other side of the abyss.
“Hang on, Blaire,” he grunted, pulling me to him.
I wrapped my arms around his neck as we swung backwards, once again a target in the sniper’s line of fire.
I felt the moment the bullet hit him. His body jerked hard. But somehow he managed to hang on. There was a responding fire from his gun, and then he roared in my ear as we swung wildly toward the other side with even more force.
And then, against my will, we were flying through the dark, through the air.
I could feel him throw me, and then I slid forward on the ledge on my side as gravel chewed into my shoulder, my hand and my legs. Dust kicked up into my mouth and eyes. I lay, collapsed, for a second. I was on the ledge on the other side of the tunnel. Beside my face, the flare burned an eerie orange.
Where is Viktor?
I sat up and spun around.
“Oh god,” I cried out as I saw Viktor half clinging to the edge. The lower half of his body was off the ledge. I scrambled toward him. Using a strength I didn’t know I possessed, I somehow managed to help him drag himself onto the ledge.
He was barely conscious as he rolled onto his back. “We made it.”
I looked around. We were on a ledge that was completely blocked off by rocks. I couldn’t see the upper ledge from this angle, which meant the sniper couldn’t see us either. All my energy went into not panicking.
“I need you to help me put pressure on my wound.”
“What?”
He tried to roll off his shoulders. “There are pressure bandages in my bag. Help me get my bag off.”
I yanked his bag off his shoulders, and then dumped everything out. I ripped and pressed bandages onto the wound in his abdomen. It reminded me of that night with my grandfather. But unlike my grandfather’s wound, which had been practically spurting, this one seemed to stop bleeding when I put pressure on it.
I looked around the ledge. There was no way out. We were basically buried in a coffin with a view. “Do you think he’s going to come to the other tunnel and shoot us?”
He pressed his hands over mine on the bandage. His eyes held mine captive. “I’m pretty sure I hit him.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out as a sob. “Well, that’s one good thing.”
“The plan was for us to climb out the air shaft.”
“What air shaft?”
He pointed up to a small black air vent, about chest high, that I had completely missed the first three times I’d looked around. “Blaire, I am not going to be able to crawl out.”
I was crying so hard I could barely speak. “We’re stuck here.”
“No, just me.”
He wanted me to crawl into that tiny black hole and disappear into the rock face.
Never going to happen.
“Is your wound bad?”
He lifted his head. “Gut shot, slow bleed, high risk of infection. I have maybe an hour, two max, before I will need surgery.”
“Let me check your phone for reception.”
He handed it to me, but no matter where I stood, there were no bars anywhere on his phone.
I dropped beside him and licked my salty lips. “You’re saying that if we both stay here, we both die—you probably much quicker than me.”
“Yes.”
“But if I crawl through the air shaft, I might be able to find help and save both of us.”
He lifted one hand to my face. “I’ll understand if you can’t, but for the record, I totally think you can do it.”
I was openly sobbing. “You think I can do that?”
“Blaire, it’s going to be so easy. You take my keys and my phone. My truck is parked on the south side of the road. Call Andrusha and 911—you might have to drive to get reception, but once you’re through, you’re safe, you know?”
I tried to quell my hysteria. “How do I know where to go when I’m in the air shaft?”
He lifted one limp hand around my neck and pulled me down close to his face. “I believe in you, okay? No matter what—you remember that.”
Oh my god. I pressed my mouth to his. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“You can do this, Blaire. I know how brave you are. Just think of our future.” And then his hand slowly fell back and his eyes drifted shut. He had lost consciousness, leaving me alone.
And this is what it will be like when he dies.
So I might as well save our asses.
With shaking hands, I found a flashlight in his bag. I also found a pair of pliers and a knife. I ripped open and pressed all the bandages to his stomach, and then I covered him with my coat and put a medium-sized rock on top of his stomach. I had no idea if the pressure would help, but it was my best effort.
My entire body trembled as I stepped over to the air shaft.
There was no grate. It was just a small, narrow carved space about chest high. It took some effort, and I scraped my chin and my knees, but I managed to lift myself into the small passageway.
The shaft was just a carved space in the mountain rock. Someone had crawled through here at one point and chipped it out by hand. The air inside was cool and dank in a choking sort of way. The space was so small, I could barely crawl. I moved two feet into the dark, unknown tunnel and screamed out loud with fear and terror. My entire body was a stiff board before I collapsed into sobs.
I fought my entire being in order to stay in that tunnel. I knew if I got out, I would never be able to get back in.
Viktor was lying there, bleeding, relying on me.
Focus on him. Focus on getting help for him.
Move forward, one knee, move forward, opposite hand. Breathe. He believes in me.
This became my mantra as I slowly crawled through the tiny space. So many dark thoughts flooded my mind. What if I got lost in there? What if I got stuck and couldn’t get back out? What if they never found my body? What if I backed out and I had to sit on the ledge and watch Viktor die—before I slowly died my own painful death?
Move forward, one knee, move forward, opposite hand. Breathe. He believes in me.
I broke down sobbing and crouched there, almost frantic with mind-numbing panic and fear.
I might have been hallucinating, but suddenly I could hear my grandfather’s voice. Blaire, you’re a tough cookie. Remember what he said.
I wiped my tears and focused on my breathing.
Remember what he said.
I was not going to be a coward. If I was going to die, I was going to die trying. That meant I kept on going. I started to inch forward. My knees felt raw, and so did my hands.
Remember what he said.
Viktor had said to me, “Think of our future.” Not his future, not my future—but our future. Think of our future.
“You’re going to take me on that damn date,” I said out loud to him. “You hear me? When I get out of this stupid, horrible tunnel, and I save your ass for once, you’re gonna man up and you’re gonna take me on my damn date.”
I imagined him showing up on my doorstep, meeting my grandmother. Driving me some place quiet where we could kiss in the shadows and whisper little things to each other.
And when we walked back to his car, he’d pull me into the shadows to kiss me right, like he had been teasing all night.
Move forward, one knee, move forward, opposite hand. Breathe. He loves me.
“And another thing,” I said out loud. “I want kids. Lots of them. Three at least—maybe even more. I’m open to any kind of family, but it has to be big. There has to be lots of us. And you need to show up. Not just when there’s danger but when I’m sad or pissed.”
I tried to imagine what that looked like and realized that Viktor would look damn hot with a baby strapped to his chest.
Move forward, one knee, move forward, opposite hand. Breathe. He believes in me.
“And I want to go back to Asia for our beachy vacation and maybe a bit of adventure.” I kept crawling and I kept talking. “You’d better recover fast. Because you’re coming with me.”
Suddenly the air tasted fresher. And then I could see light ahead of me—a dim glow. I worked harder and moved faster, and then I was pushing through cobwebs and I was at the end of the air shaft. I was at the entrance of the mine. To my right I could see the cool, rainy sky.
I tumbled out of the shaft and pulled out the phone. I had coverage.
With my shaking, bloody hands, I started to dial.
