Ama worked through the night, sifting pieces, turning over proverbial stones. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, what grain of evidence would be heavy enough to tip the scales one way or the other. The weight of uncertainty pushed down hardest of all, locked her to her spot on the floor. Her legs cramped beneath her, and her shoulder ached from propping herself up on her hand. Her eyes were so tired from reading in low light that she had to squint to keep the small letters from blurring. At last, she curled up like a cat and drifted into a fitful sleep within the circle of her father’s past.
HAZEL Chapter 60 | December 31, 2005 | Tarson, Georgia
THROUGH THE GRATE, I HEAR the cabinet door open, and Michael’s footsteps echo down into the hole. For once I don’t mind the distraction. For the last untold number of hours, I’ve only been able to hear the memory of Bill’s yawning, last breath. I swear it’s still echoing even now.
The cable is pulled taut by his weight. His forehead is resting on my knees, and I don’t dare to kick out for fear of dislodging him. The vision of him knocking against the wall is not one I am willing to let become reality if I can help it.
The lid slides open, pulling Bill’s hands and wrists above water. Michael lords above me, backlit from light spilling in from the main room. His expression becomes elated the moment he realizes it’s just my face staring back at him.
“You see, Hazel. You see. Fate chose you.”
“You put me in here with a cancer-stricken old man who had been in here for God knows how much longer than me,” I spit back at him. “It would only be Fate if the fight had been fair. There was nothing fair about that.”
“Who said fair had anything to do with Fate?” Michael cocks his head to the side. “I find it’s actually quite the opposite.”
“Then yeah, sure. Call it whatever you want.”
Michael plucks the ladder from the wall. I tremble with weakness and the constant exposure to cold and water. My shorts sag on my hips, heavy with water and now two sizes too big. Yet my mind remains strong, steel forged in fire, and I conjure an image of reaching the top rung, grabbing his ankles, and yanking his legs from beneath him, watching him disappear in the black water before dragging the grate over the hole and locking it shut. But this plan can only exist in my mind, keeping me warm from within. There are two other things tending to that internal fire, two secrets Bill told me before he died: the code to the door behind the main ladder, and how to find the gun he’d hidden beneath the false floor of his locker in the basement of the factory. But there is one door I can’t open between me and that gun. One door I can’t open between me and the rest of the world.
I grip the ladder. My arms shake harder. My legs wobble, feeling loose and disconnected at the knees. I drag myself up the rungs, colder with every step.
“I need my shoes,” I say, bending to retrieve them from where they’re tied.
“First, you need a bath,” he says as he slips a cord around my neck like a choke collar for a dog.
We walk into the main bunker, me ahead of him, and take an immediate left through another pair of cabinet doors. We have to duck to fit under the counter, and the grade immediately turns downhill. My back and core are too sore and weak to carry my body at the angle, and I am forced to crawl. The floor of the tunnel is dry and clean, as if it’s been swept. Michael’s feet fall behind me. He doesn’t apply pressure on the leash, keeping the distance between us the same, and I resent the twinge of unbidden gratitude.
The slope levels off, and I feel cold sand under my palms. I strike the crown of my head as the tunnel narrows and I hear Michael drop to all fours, his knees scuffle, and the collar jerks at odd intervals with the disunion in our movement. He pulls on the wire, and it bites so hard into my throat that I cry out and rock back, desperate to loosen it. I imagine the cord cutting into my skin, blood running down, and I start to thrash.
“Stop.” Michael feels around my shoulders for the wire and loosens the pressure. “I will have to keep this drill in mind. That was a nice sound, high octave. You gave me chills.”
“I’m not going to sing for you,” I rasp. “Never again. Not another note.”
“You will. Everyone does.”
Ahead, the utter blackness gives way to a crescent of moonlit dark and a burst of fresh air. I hear moving water and can smell the pine-sap-and-rotting-leaves scent of the forest. Michael holds me still with the leash and wriggles past me, leaving the tunnel first, where the top and bottom thirds of his body disappear from view. He stands still, waiting. I do not want him to pull the leash again.
I hoist myself out with my hands and immediately have to duck so I don’t hit my head on a tangled overhang of roots from a fallen tree, which all but conceals the tunnel. When the water is high, it would be completely submerged. I will not allow him to drag me up that tunnel again. I draw in a breath, flooding my lungs to bursting, and scream.
The collar snaps tight around my neck, and then I am flung backward so fast and hard that I land on my back before I even think about throwing my hands down to catch my weight. The collar draws tighter still. I can gasp in tiny breaths, but exhaling past the pressure is nearly impossible.
“No,” he scolds. I struggle to my feet, desperate for slack, but the knot doesn’t slide back. It takes every ounce of willpower left in me to not lean away as he reaches for the knot and draws the loop toward him. “Not a sound,” he says.
I plant my hands on my knees, heaving air, and wonder if even this is too loud.
His fingertips press into my back between my shoulder blades and steer me to the water’s edge. We walk out together, each of us submerged to our armpits. The current tugs me downstream, and I have to lean against it to keep from drifting. He cups water and spills it into my hair. I shake so hard my breaths become choppy, and my teeth clatter together.
Michael hovers over me and samples the air. “That’s better,” he says. “Once you’re dry, we’ll get to work.”
“I won’t sing for you,” I whisper.
“You will.”
“I won’t.” I clamp my teeth together to keep them from chattering.
Michael walks back to me until our faces are inches apart. “If I can’t make you sing, I will make you speak. You’ll see,” he says.
AMA Chapter 61 | 7:30 AM, December 6, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
AMA WOKE TO POUNDING ON the door and Lindsey’s voice calling her name. The numbness of sleep slipped from her like a blanket sliding away, and instantly she was chilly and sore from half a night spent on hard ground. She pushed herself to standing, teetering on bare feet, then limped to the door and cracked it open. Morning light burned her tired eyes, and she shielded her face with her hand.
“Lord have mercy, Ama. Are you okay?” Lindsey asked, taking stock of Ama. “Did you… are you hungover?”
“I’m fine. Why are you here? I don’t need you. I didn’t call you.”
“I called you. About twenty times.” Lindsey peered past Ama, probably trying to see if Ama had anyone else in the room with her.
“Just me. Sorry to disappoint you.”
“What the hell is going on?” Lindsey asked, and her expression hardened.