A/N: By popular demand (and a little prodding from my muse), here is one last chapter before holiday hiatus. This is a longer one, so maybe it will tide everyone over until I return. Next post won't be till Wednesday at the earliest, when I get back to town.
Reviewers, you're great! Thanks for the encouragement and the compliments and the demands for more. This one's for you.
Happy holidays to all of you! Ren
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Chapter Eight
No Easy Way Out
Wednesday, Late Evening
A harsh sound broke the mine's eerie silence and intruded on Grissom's uneasy sleep. Still only half aware and operating without conscious thought, he turned toward the source of the disturbance – and stilled just as quickly when new pain flared through his injured back. His eyes opened wide but saw nothing in the fathomless dark of the unlit tunnel. Nick had left him one of the MagLites, but Grissom had turned it off to conserve battery power. He'd insisted that Nick, venturing farther into the mine in search of another way out, take the second flashlight as backup to the lamp on his hard hat. Grissom vaguely remembered his own being lost as he grappled with Stevens, and suspected that it was somewhere at the bottom of the giant rock pile trapping them in the mine.
Without visual distractions, and not wanting to contemplate the headache that had abated little since he's regained consciousness, he had fallen into a doze fairly soon after Nick disappeared from view. Now it was Nick's return that had wakened him. He listened in the dark to the slow, uneven progress, the scrape of a boot when Nick's injured leg dragged across the stone. After a few moments he became aware of a faint glow gradually chasing back the featureless blackness. He counted off six minutes and twenty-eight seconds before Nick finally dropped unceremoniously to the ground beside him. The flashlight rolled from Nick's suddenly lax hand to rake its path across the surrounding rock walls. The helmet light produced nothing more than a firefly glimmer.
"No good," the younger man reported in a hoarse whisper. "The mine only goes back maybe another quarter of a mile. No escape tunnels." He paused to sip from the water bottle he'd left within Grissom's easy reach despite Grissom's insistence that he take it with him. "I saw what might be a ventilation pipe," Nick added after carefully capping the bottle, "but it's only about eight or ten inches across. If it is a vent, and if it's not blocked somewhere along the way, it should at least keep us from suffocating in here."
Grissom acknowledged the news with a brief nod. Seeing Nick's haggard face and air of total exhaustion, he wondered if he shouldn't have tried to talk him out of exploring farther. A darker, shinier patch on the leg of his jeans suggested that the gunshot wound had bled again, and pain etched deep grooves across Nick's forehead and bracketed his mouth. Despite the perspiration that slicked his face and glued his shirt to his body, his skin was as grey as the stone and his muscles quivered as if he suffered from palsy. Fever? Grissom wondered. Or shock from loosing too much blood?
"So, I guess we wait to be found," Grissom concluded. His stomach rumbled loudly, and he added with a faint attempt at humor, "Too bad we didn't pack a picnic lunch."
Nick shook his head with a grimace. "No," he protested. "No way. I can't just sit here and do nothing." He gathered himself to push up off the ground, but Grissom placed a restraining hand on his uninjured arm, feeling the fever-heat even before he made contact.
"Relax, Nick," he said quietly. "You're about to drop where you sit. You need to rest, try to sleep a while, before you expend any more energy."
"There's no time," Nick insisted. "It's going to take hours to dig us out of here." He tried to pull his arm away, but Grissom tightened his grip.
"You don't have to kill yourself digging us out. As soon as we don't show up for our shift, they'll start looking for us."
Nick responded with a thin, desperate laugh. "Yeah?" he asked. "And how long will that take? Hours. And how long after that to figure out where we are? I didn't leave any messages telling anyone where we were headed. Did you?" There was challenge and something else in Nick's unsteady words. "Even if they do figure it out, how long will it take to find us? Hell, for all we know, Stevens moved the truck somewhere miles away, and no one will even know to look for us in here. He's smart enough to cover his tracks – and ours. Grissom, we could die in here way before anyone thinks to look!"
Grissom frowned at the panic he heard building in the tumbling spate of words. "Calm down, Nick," he commanded. "Listen to me for a minute." He paused to be sure he had the other man's attention, and when he continued he used the same smooth, calm voice he would have – and had -- used to defuse a potentially violent confrontation. "I know you're scared, Nick, and you want to get out of here. I'm scared, too. I want to get out just as much as you do. And we will. Catherine and the others will find us. The files were still on my desk along with the notes I made. They will look here for us. And I think they'll find the Tahoe exactly where we left it. There's a good chance Stevens didn't make it out either. Even if he did, how can he move our vehicle far enough away to throw off a search and still be able to easily get back to his own? Think about it, Nick. Stevens' main concern would be giving himself enough time to get clear with the money."
Nick's dark eyes had closed, and he nodded slowly as Grissom wove his carefully constructed logical safety net.
"You can do a much better job of helping us get out of here if you rest and get some of your strength back," Grissom concluded reasonably. "First, though, I want you to look in the first aid kit and see if there's any Tylenol. Not aspirin. Tylenol."
Nick frowned vaguely as he reached for the kit. "You hurting'?" he asked, fumbling one-handed inside and coming up with a sealed packet containing two Tylenol tablets. He used his teeth to tear it open and held it out."
"Take them," Grissom ordered. "You've got a fever, Nick, probably from infection in that wound."
With a grimace, Nick swallowed the tablets dry, choking on them until his body shook with violent coughing. He took another sip of water to clear his throat. "All right," he conceded, leaning back and trying to catch his breath. "I'll rest – just for a bit."
Grissom carefully brought his arm up and lifted his head just far enough to slide Nick's folded jacket from underneath. "Take this," he said. "Put it on. You're going to get chilled."
Nick reluctantly accepted the jacket and draped it over his chest, unwilling to move his right arm enough to put it on properly. He said nothing more as he eased himself down again. His eyes closed wearily, and he turned his face away from Grissom. Only a few seconds later his breathing slowed and his body relaxed in sleep, and Grissom reached over to turn off the flashlight. Even conserving the batteries in their remaining light sources, there was a good chance they would be left in the dark before help arrived.
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Nick slept longer than Grissom had expected, but restlessly, disturbed by uneasy dreams punctuated by garbled mutterings and wordless sounds of distress. Grissom had debated waking him more than once, but decided that he needed whatever rest he could manage. When he was close to waking on his own, his dream talk became more distinct and seemed to be a replay of some earlier trauma involving a locked door and someone named Robbie. Grissom wondered if it was the cause of Nick's professed claustrophobia.
Nick awoke with a start and a strangled exclamation that cut through the absolute darkness. Grissom switched on the light and saw the younger man sitting bolt upright, eyes wide and unfocused, fists raised as if to beat on some invisible barrier. The movement must have hurt, because he suddenly folded his right arm close against his chest, supporting it with his left as he sucked in a ragged gasp. His features contorted in a deep grimace, which turned into an embarrassed frown when he realized Grissom was watching him closely. His color was a little better, though his eyes still appeared somewhat feverish.
"Sorry," he said hoarsely. "How long did I sleep?"
"Almost five hours," Grissom replied. "How are you feeling?"
Nick hesitated, seeming to take stock of himself. "Better." He carefully pushed up onto his knees, groaning a little at the pressure on his injured leg. His gaze went immediately to the rock wall looming before them and he inhaled a long breath. "Time to start digging."
"Take some more of that Tylenol if there's any left," Grissom ordered. "And drink some water. You'll sweat it out soon enough." As Nick dug another packet of tablets from the first aid kit and uncapped the water bottle, now barely half full, Grissom's curiosity got the better of him. "Who's Robbie?"
Nick almost choked on the pill mid-swallow. He stared at Grissom with suspicion and dread. "What?"
"You talk in your sleep," Grissom explained.
Nick took his time wiping the rim of the water bottle and replacing the top. "He's my cousin," he said finally.
"And the reason you don't like confined spaces?"
"How did…?" Nick bit back his question. Grissom could almost see the internal debate over whether to explain. "Robbie's three – no, four – years older than me," he began a bit hesitantly, "my Uncle Nate's only kid, spoiled rotten. He was always a bully -- got a kick out of terrorizing the smaller, younger kids. As far back as I can remember, we couldn't stand each other."
Grissom waited in silence and watched Nick's expression shift as the memories unfolded. His frown, almost a little boy's pout, reflected remembered as well as present pain. Almost defiantly Nick went on with his explanation. "He thought I was a wuss, because I didn't like seeing anybody or anything get hurt. One time, when we were all at Uncle Nate's place for a family reunion, he started bragging about finding a litter of kittens in their storm cellar. He said he'd killed the mama cat and left the babies to starve." His mouth twisted briefly with a taut, wry smile. "He knew good ol' Boy Scout Nicky would go runnin' to the rescue.
"As soon as I was at the bottom of the cellar steps, he slammed the door shut and bolted it from the outside. The light didn't work, and I hadn't thought to take a flashlight with me – I was just going in long enough to scoop up the kittens into a box and bring them out. It was a small cellar, hardly bigger than a closet, and with the door open there was enough light from outside to see well enough." Nick's breath went out in a long, trembling sigh.
"Man, it was so dark…I went runnin' up the steps, tripped 'cause I couldn't see a thing, fell all the way back down and broke my ankle. So I sat there in the dark, and I yelled and I screamed till my mouth was so dry I couldn't even make spit. But everyone else was way out on the other side of the house, laughing, playing loud music. No one could hear me."
Grissom understood a great deal then, including Nick's insistence on taking some action – any action – that might free them, even if he had to drive himself to exhaustion in the process. The man was determined to wrest control from the frightened little boy who had been unable to help himself.
"How old were you when this happened?"
"I'd just turned ten," he said bitterly. "Old enough not to be scared of the dark."
"And how long were you trapped in the cellar?" Grissom asked.
Nick sighed before he answered, "I don't know. Hours. It probably felt longer than it was."
"What about the kittens? Were you able to save them?"
Nick's laugh was ragged and completely lacked humor. "Robbie lied. There were no kittens." He effectively ended the discussion by clambering awkwardly to his feet, nearly toppling over when his injured leg refused to accept the weight he rested on it. He crawled more than climbed a short way up the rocks and began systematically dislodging the uppermost rocks and heaving them down to the floor below, taking care to keep them well clear of where Grissom lay and watched in pensive silence.
At first it seemed that his efforts earned him nothing except scraped and dusty hands and an increasing tendency to cough every time dust rose to clog his nose and throat. The upper layer of rock tended to crumble back down into the space he dug out. He had to pause now and then to catch his breath and let the trembling of overtaxed muscles ease. Except for occasional words of encouragement and reminders to take another drink from the nearly depleted water bottle, Grissom remained quiet. Nick's concentration was narrowly focused on the obstacle before him, and it seemed unwise to distract him from the potentially dangerous task he'd set himself. And after hours of digging, he finally made noticeable inroads on the blocked tunnel, creating a wedge-shaped space perhaps three feet long.
Grissom noted with growing concern that Nick's movements slowed, lost precision, became a product of more sheer raw determination than strength. "Take a break, Nick," he said from the base of the debris pile from which Nick doggedly and laboriously removed the rubble rock by rock. Even if he couldn't participate in their rescue, he could at least do what he did best: provide rational oversight and try to rein in the younger man's tendency toward excess.
Nick rolled another skull-sized rock from near the top of the pile to clatter to the ground below. He shook his head without looking back at Grissom. "I'm okay," he insisted breathlessly and with blatant untruth. "If I can just clear a gap wide enough to crawl through…" He broke off as his strength failed and the stone he was trying to shift slipped from his grasp to roll with brutal precision across his injured leg. He didn't have enough breath in his lungs to scream, but the choked sob that emerged instead conveyed pain just as unmistakably.
"Nick!" Grissom's pulse accelerated and he extended his arm in a futile attempt to reach out to the injured man. The muscles of his face went rigid with helpless frustration; he could only watch as Nick clutched his thigh and sucked in a rapid succession of shallow, sobbing breaths. The weakening beam of the flashlight wedged in place to provide illumination reflected off the tears that spilled down an ashen face contorted with pain. The already dark stain on Nick's pant leg grew larger with new bleeding.
The worst of the pain seemed to ease, and Nick gradually uncoiled his body to rest as close to flat as he could manage on the irregular incline. His breath still came too quick and too shallow, and tremors ran through his limbs as if he experienced repeated small electrical shocks.
"Grissom…I'm sorry," Nick whispered unsteadily. "I don't think…I can't…"
"It's all right, Nick," Grissom said reassuringly. "You've done the best you can for now. Just lay back and rest. I don't want you to hurt yourself worse than you already are."
Nick rolled his head from one side to the other, his ragged, pain-softened voice continuing to drift down like fragments of the broken stone. "No good…can't even do this right…sorry…let you down…"
Grissom ached for the torment in the younger man's fractured mutterings as much as he worried at the suggestion of delirium. Had Nick's fever spiked again after the exertions he'd forced from his weakened body? Was he starting to slip deeper into shock?
The light dimmed so that Grissom could see only the faintest outline of Nick's shape against the rocks. Nick must have noticed it too, because his hand flailed out, grabbing the MagLite and sending the anemic beam arcing wildly as he pulled it closer.
"Don't go out, don't go out, don't go out," he implored the failing light.
"It's all right, Nick," Grissom said firmly, trying to push back the panic threatening to envelop his companion. "I still have mine." He thumbed the switch to bring their last light source to life. "It still works."
Nick quieted, and his fingers loosened their hold on the spent flash. The MagLite rolled erratically down the slope and went completely dark. From his place on the tunnel floor Grissom could hear Nick's breathing slow from rapid gasps to a more controlled and measured sequence of inhale, exhale. Either the panic was subsiding, or he had passed out again.
"Still with me, Nicky?" Grissom asked, but quietly so as not to disturb him if he was drifting into sleep.
"Yeah." The response came immediately but without much enthusiasm. A long sigh ended in a weak, pained cough. "Sorry I lost it there, man."
"I'm sorry, too, Nick," Grissom said. "Sorry I got us into this mess."
Nick's hand lifted weakly, waving away the apology. "Not your fault Stevens went dark-side." He coughed again and groaned faintly as if the movement hurt. "And, hey, I could've turned you down."
Grissom had no response for that. He wasn't sure it was entirely true. He was Nick's boss, and even though he had intended the request as an invitation rather than a command, Nick might have felt it was his duty to agree. Whatever Nick's other flaws might be, he had never failed to respond to that sense of duty, however unpleasant.
"Would you have come alone?" Nick's voice had faded to a hoarse whisper, but Grissom heard it clearly enough. "If I'd begged off, would you have come up here alone?"
As much as Grissom recognized his subordinates' failings, he was equally well acquainted with his own. "Probably."
"In that case, I'm glad I came."
To be continued…