Ink and Bone(87)

He slid the answer bar. “Finley,” he said. “Hello?”

But there was only static and then the click of the line going dead. He had no signal bars at all. Then one flashed, tantalizingly, but then was gone. He tried to call back. “Calling Finley’s Mobile” it read, teasing him with an expectant line of ellipses. But it hung there. Call failed. He tried again, and again, and finally slumped back against the dirt wall.

He’d watched that movie about the kid who’d gone out in the desert, fallen into a gap between rocks, got pinned, and wound up cutting off his own foot to survive. Or was it his hand? Either way, Rainer knew that he was not that kind of guy, not that he had any call to cut off a limb at the moment. But if it came to that, he knew he was not going to be the guy who did “whatever it took to survive.” He just didn’t have that kind of energy, the “belly of fire,” as his father liked to call it. In fact, if Rainer had a light for the joint in his pocket, he’d be smoking right now to take the edge off his fear. Then he’d probably pass out, wake up too dopey to even think about how he might get out of this. Generally that’s what he liked about pot; it softened the sharp edges of anxiety and fear and worry. You didn’t forget about any of the things that nagged at you; you just stopped caring about them. When he was high, he was less angry, too. Yeah, but all of that energy? Finley countered during an argument about his pot smoking. That’s what keeps people from just lying around all day, eating Doritos and playing Call of Duty.

He dialed the phone again, lifting it high into the air, as high as he could to try to get the signal. Nothing. He let his arm drop to his belly.

He remembered thinking, too, what kind of an idiot went out into the desert alone to begin with, not telling anyone where he was going? That was just plain hubris. And what was so great about being “a survivor”? Why was that such an admirable quality? It wasn’t like that guy was risking his ass for someone else. He just didn’t want to die. What was so unique about that? No one wanted to die. At least Rainer had an excuse for being out here alone; he was taking care of Finley, which is the only thing that had ever gotten him off his ass to do anything. If it weren’t for Finley, he wouldn’t have graduated high school. He wouldn’t have driven across country. He wouldn’t have opened his own tattoo shop. He did all of those things just to be worthy of her. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have fallen down this hole either.

The phone rang again, sending an electric startle of hope through his body.

“Finley,” he said. “Christ.”

“Rainer?” She sounded young and panicked. “Rainer?”

“I fell down one of those mine tunnels. I’m down here. I’m okay, but I can’t get out.”

“Where are you?” she said before the line started to crackle and buzz.

“Fin?” he said. “Can you hear me? Finley!”

Silence was the only answer. He let out a cry of frustration, tried to call back. The call failed and he tried again. Nothing. Then he took a few more deep breaths, tried to calm himself down.

He used the light from the flashlight app to illuminate the area and realized he was sitting beside a narrow set of tracks. Looking up, he could just make out the place through which he’d fallen, a thin mouth where some ambient light stole in.

He rallied, using all his strength, pulling himself to his feet with a roar of pain. Then he was standing, looking around for one of those ladders, for a place where he could get a signal on his phone. He had to get out of here. He couldn’t die in an abandoned mineshaft while Finley was in trouble above.

He heard something then. Was it laughter? Or was it the sound of someone crying? It was too far, too faint, but when it sounded again he started moving toward it. Was it a birdsong? No, it was the voice of a girl—or was it? Something about it filled him with hope and gave him a new rush of energy, the pain in his leg fading. Maybe he had an instinct to survive, after all. It was a damn good thing he didn’t have a lighter.

He used the compass app to find his way north.





TWENTY-EIGHT


Merri pulled on the jeans she’d left over the chair and dug her sweater out of the bag, hastily getting dressed. She was pulling her coat on when she stopped and sank down onto the bed. The snow was falling heavily outside her window, and clouds above were glowing from the light of the hidden moon. Doubt whispered in her ear. This was crazy. What was she going to do? Plug those coordinates into her phone and drive there?

And yet every nerve ending in her body tingled with that intent. The instinct was powerful, compulsive. How many times had she ignored her instincts, done the opposite of what she knew was right? Like the day Abbey disappeared, wasn’t there something inside her that knew, just as Jackson had claimed, just like Abbey’s dreams, that she should go with them. The pills had quieted that voice, and all the other voices inside her. Not quieted exactly but muffled. She could hear the sound, but not make out the words—the worry, the self-criticism, the anxiety, the catalog of complaints and not-good-enoughs. Her mood had improved. Hell, her marriage had improved. In some ways, she was a better mother—less short-tempered and stressed. But she was not herself.

“Maybe that was a good thing,” she told one of her shrinks. “Maybe in some cases it’s not always such a great thing to ‘be yourself.’ ”