Bone Key Read Free Page B

sound that might have been meant as a laugh. “Your senator’s a dead man,” the voice called down from above. “Come on up where I can see you, now. I’ll end it for you quick.”
    The stream running down the stairs had become a set of rapids, Ainsley realized, his feet already sloshing in water on the cellar floor. He glanced around the darkness, fighting the panic that rose inside him like fire. The rock-carved room was as watertight as a cistern, and there was a hurricane up there, pouring its all down that steel-grated chute. Maybe it’d be best, a part of him said. Go up the steps with his head hung down like a packing house cow and get it over with.
    But he dismissed the possibility as quickly as it came. He’d go down fighting, no matter what. He glanced up at the grating and thought he saw a shadow hovering there. The openings in the grid seemed big enough to get his hand through. If the bastard were pressed close enough to the grating, he thought, his hand tight on the handle of his knife, there just might be a chance.
    “What happened to the senator?” Ainsley called.
    “That’s none of your concern,” the man said. There was a crashing as if waves were breaking above his head and a mighty gush of water down the steps.
    Dear Lord, Ainsley thought. If this place was close to the water’s edge and the tide rose sufficiently with the press of the winds, the cellar could be full of ocean in minutes.
    The voice above him came again. “Come on, boy, we’re wasting time.”
    Ainsley had stacked a second crate atop the first now, and had climbed onto it with his knees. If he stood, he could easily reach that shadowed portion of the grate.
    “Just come on up to the light, boy,” the man called, as a flashlight beam snapped on.
    The backwash was enough to outline the man’s silhouette now, and Ainsley knew it would be this moment or never. He rose straight from his heels, as if he meant to take flight, his arm extended rigidly, his hand around the knife handle like iron.
    He felt the point of his knife glance off the heavy gratework and the flesh of his knuckles shear away, but nothing could have made him lose his grip. In the next second he heard a gasp and felt his fist burying itself in soft flesh.
    There was a bright flash and a blinding explosion, and then another, but Ainsley held fast to his blade, his arm driven up through the gate past the elbow. He heard the man gasp and felt his bulk rising from the grating where he’d lurked. Ainsley twisted and pulled down hard and felt a gush of warmth bathe his arm and shoulder.
    There was a groan from above him then, and the clatter of metal on metal as the revolver tumbled free. The man’s weight was crushing, suddenly, and Ainsley felt the crates going sideways, his feet flying from under him, his grasp loosening on the knife as he fell. He went down on his back, hard enough to have brained himself, but there was a foot of water covering the rough-hewn floor now, enough to cushion his fall.
    Still the blow stunned him. He lay momentarily paralyzed, his breath knocked away. A beam of light shot up toward the grating from the foot of the steps, he realized, and he managed to move his head enough to see that the flashlight had tumbled down to rest on Ben’s unmoving chest. The man who’d meant to kill him lay facedown on the grate, blood dripping from a place below his belt.
    But he wasn’t dead, Ainsley saw. The man’s gaze was glassy, but focused upon him, and while his body was still, his hand was moving slowly across the grating like a giant white spider, inching toward the fallen revolver.
    Do something, Ainsley willed himself. Run. Douse that light. Go for the gun yourself. But all he could manage was a feeble splashing of his arms in the rising water and a
huunnh, huunnh, hunnh
bleating from his airless lungs.
    The man’s hand had found the revolver’s grip now, and Ainsley watched in fascination as his arm snaked down through the grate. He was