Ink and Bone(96)

She tried to find purchase with her foot, but the wall was slick, nothing to put her toe on. Fingers slipping. Darkness calling. Her mother had tried so hard to keep Finley from this place. Amanda knew all along that something horrible would happen to Finley here, hadn’t she? Some deep mother’s instinct, or maybe she was more like Eloise than she let on. And all Finley could do was rail against her and rebel, do exactly everything her mother didn’t want her to do. As her fingers lost their grip, she was sorry, truly sorry for being such a little brat. She hoped on the other side, she could find a way to go back and tell her mom that she’d been right all along. Amanda deserved that.

She couldn’t hold on anymore, not with the dark pulling her and her strength waning, fingers cramping. She was going to fall. How far down? What was down there? She closed her eyes and prayed.

Voices and light broke into her awareness.

“I heard her.” Rainer’s voice was strident with worry. “I heard her voice.”

“The tunnels play tricks,” said someone else. “It’s hard to know where sounds are coming from.”

“Yeah,” said Rainer. “The tunnels play tricks. But I heard her.”

“I’m here,” she called, her voice strangled with effort. “Hurry, I can’t hold on!”

“Finley!” Rainer called. “Where are you?”

“In the hole!” she said. “Here!”

“Oh my God—where?” She saw a light bouncing on the ceiling. It gave her strength. She gripped her fingers, worked her feet, still struggling to find someplace to dig her toes in.

“Here,” she said again to give them the sound of her voice. She wasn’t going to make it; her fingers slipped another millimeter, the dirt soft, breaking away.

“Rainer,” she managed, her voice strangled with effort, with fear. “I’m sorry I brought us here. Tell my mom I’m sorry.”

“Tell her yourself,” he said.

There were strong hands on her wrists then and she was looking up at Rainer, into his beautiful dirty face.

“Hold on,” he said, gripping hard on her arms, taking her weight. She felt blessed relief, started to weep with it. “We are so going back to Seattle. This place is f*cked.”

She laughed a little, more a choking sound as he pulled her. But even then she knew it wasn’t true. She was sorry that she hadn’t listened to her mother, that she’d come to The Hollows. But she also knew that this was where she belonged.

Jones caught up to them then, and he and Rainer lifted Finley out of the hole. When she was safe on the ground, she started to cry, dropping into Rainer, who held on to her tight. She let him, clung to him hard. She didn’t even think to ask him what the hell he was doing in the mines.

“The girl,” she said to Jones. “It wasn’t Abbey Gleason. It was Eliza Fitzpatrick. Did they find her? Do you have her?”

“The police have her,” said Jones. “She’s going to be okay. But the Gleasons—”

He let the sentence trail with a sad shake of his head. -“Eliza’s mother has been called. At least we’re bringing one little girl home.”

The signs were all there, Finley just hadn’t understood them completely. The Little Bird, the boy with the train turning out to be Eliza’s brother. She tried to stop the downward spiral of self--recrimination, but she could feel its tug. If she’d been more, better, more open—if she’d focused more on understanding, rather than setting boundaries, would the messages have been clearer?

“Poppa and Bobo,” said Finley. “They’re gone.”

“The police are searching for them,” said Jones. He peered off into the darkness with a squint. “There’s nowhere to hide down here.”

Finley knew he was wrong. There were a million places for them to hide; they belonged to these tunnels, in these woods. The Hollows would hide them until she was ready to give them up. Finley tamped down the tickle of unease. We’re not done here, she thought.

“How did you get down here?” she asked Rainer as she helped him stand. He was hurt, his leg stiff and bloody, his face pale and strained. Jones stood and dusted himself off, and headed in the direction of lights and voices.

Rainer told her what happened, how he followed Abigail, then fell into the mine. How he followed the sound of her laughter until he heard Finley’s voice.

It surprised her; Finley wouldn’t have thought of Abigail as her ally. Abigail was always running her own agenda, like with the wedding rings, willing to use Finley and consider her collateral damage. Abigail liked drama and trouble, not rescue.

“Let’s get you some medical attention, son,” said Jones, returning to them. He took Rainer’s other arm, and the two of them helped him out down the long tunnel and out of the mine. Even as they left, Finley felt an energetic tug at her back.


*

Eloise Montgomery had seen a good many things. Too many, she thought, as she pulled her car to the side of the road and donned her red wool hat, pulled on her gloves. She couldn’t bear the cold anymore; it tightened her joints and seemed to burrow under her skin, causing her very bones to shiver inside her flesh.

The full rainbow of human suffering had revealed itself to her and she’d been asked to bear witness to all the violence men and women could do, all the havoc they could wreak through their neglect or ignorance or evil intentions. And the truth was, the honest truth was that she was tired.