Riddle Me Wicked

Chapter 1-2

They took him deep into the forest again. Ian recognized little of the brilliant green foliage, but he’d been too worried about saving his life to enjoy the scenery. He hadn’t been in California long enough yet to learn the terrain, either. Their planes had only arrived two days previous, their camp made the day before. Today was to be their first day actually digging.

His mind worked, grateful for the distraction from the potential peril around him. Could it have something to do with the site? It wouldn’t be the first time a group protested digging up artifacts or remains, though he’d never heard of murdering an archaeological team before to stop them from working.

Ian glanced at the broad back of the leader. His gut response was no. This was a Native American site, and these were not Native Americans. Scratch sabotaging the dig as a possible reason.

The more he contemplated, the more convinced he became this was about him in some fashion. The leader stressed he didn’t want to kill Ian, which meant he needed him somehow. Not mobile, however, if he’d been willing to paralyze Ian in order to get him to cooperate. But why kill the others? Because they were witnesses? To what?

His head hurt. From the questioning, from the running, from the pain in his ankle. Without more information, it was impossible to formulate answers, and without answers, he could do little for the time being but exactly as he was told.

The trees began to thin, but instead of the road Ian had expected to see, there was a small building, with weather-washed walls and a flat roof that looked like Gulliver had sat on it. A small enclave was visible behind it, with scaffolding and ropes hanging off the large redwood shading both, and the undergrowth had been worn away in a distinct circular patch. It was a small bit of civilization dropped into the middle of nowhere California, and Ian frowned as they led him toward it.

Words were exchanged in a language he didn’t recognize. All but the leader and the two men holding him changed paths to head for the building, but his attention was focused on the small bit of land they approached.

There was a reason there wasn’t any grass. At its center was a hole, its edges mostly smooth, large enough for a man to get through if it was a tight fit and he wasn’t bothered with small spaces. The leader came to a stop and turned around, pulling his gun out from an inside holster to train it on Ian.

“I trust you will not run,” he said.

“Never walking again. I remember.”

His shoulders sagged when he was suddenly released, the two men moving past their leader to the rigging hanging from the redwood. Ian watched, curious about what they were doing, though his awareness never wavered from the gun aimed at him. It soon became clear that it was a harness of sorts, connected to a pulley anchored to the tree. The men were careful as they positioned themselves, one near the hole with the harness in hand, the other at the end of one of the ropes.

The leader used the gun to wave Ian toward the hole. “Move.”

Ian’s eyes widened. “Pardon?”

Beneath the rolls of his fleshy neck, his jaw hardened. “I did not ask you if you had any questions, Mr. Tunbridge. I told you to move.”

He choked down the other words that wanted to bubble forth. He didn’t even know what these men wanted with him, and now they wanted to stick him in some hole in the ground? Nothing good could come from it, though certainly, nothing good had come from the entire day.

With no choice but to comply, Ian took careful steps forward. The man said something in his native language, then when Ian failed to respond right away, rolled his eyes and lifted his arms, demonstrating what he would like Ian to do.

“We need to lower you down, Mr. Tunbridge,” came an amused voice behind him. “And that requires certain precautions to be taken. Unless you would prefer we push you instead.”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Ian muttered.

He did as he was shown, moving his arms, lifting his legs, until the harness was firmly secured around his groin and shoulders. It was tight and uncomfortable, and he had to discreetly adjust himself so the thick ropes wouldn’t rub against his c**k and balls. Around him, the men laughed.

“Take this time to rest, Mr. Tunbridge,” the leader said.

Before Ian could respond, the man who’d fitted him pushed him toward the hole, making him stumble. The moment the earth vanished beneath his feet, the ropes went taut, holding him firmly in place. His hands flew to the harness, gripping it tightly, and he dangled for a few seconds before the pulley squeaked. Inch by inch, he dropped into the hole, earth catching along his already sore shoulder, the world growing darker and darker as it swallowed him up.

The air cooled as he descended, and he had to blink to adjust his vision to the lack of illumination. Within a few feet, the walls disappeared, leaving him dropping through open space. An underground cavern. California was riddled with them. In the middle of the wilderness, it would make an excellent prison.

He hit the floor sooner than he anticipated, the sudden impact sending jolts of pain through his injured ankle. Ian quickly stood, trying to get a closer look at his surroundings, but the lack of ambient light made it impossible. The little illumination filtering through the opening was blocked when the leader bent over the hole.

“Remove the harness,” he called down.

The shaking started in Ian’s hands as he undid the ropes. This was really happening. He was being left underground, with no light, no food, no water, and no clue as to what was going on. He was beginning to believe it would’ve been preferable getting shot. This had the hallmarks of sheer torture.

“How long am I to be down here?” he called back before letting go of the rope.

“You will know all you need in good time,” came the reply.

The forceful tug burned along his palm, and Ian released his hold with a pained cry. He stepped back, watching it lift up and away, and with it, any hopes for an easy solution.

Once the harness was clear of the opening, the shadows disappeared, and the faint voices of the men thirty feet overhead disappeared quickly. The small patch of sunlight that remained did little to show him what his fresh prison looked like. He could barely see his hand in front of his face, and reaching out with his arms only told Ian he couldn’t touch the walls from his current position. Given what he knew, that could be either good or bad. He crouched and felt the ground, but all he could determine was that it was rough stone covered in grit. With a sigh, he sat, taking the weight off his throbbing ankle. Now, it was just a waiting game.

The waiting lasted only minutes. His ass didn’t even have time to get numb.

The whistling came first, faint and tuneless. Rather than overhead, it drifted in from his left, carried on stale air. Ian turned his head in its direction, wondering if it was a trick of the environment, and though he squinted into the darkness, he still couldn’t see anything more than murk.

As the whistling took shape, so did the shadows. A glow began to brighten the distance, like someone held a torch beneath a very thick duvet. Standing, he took a single step before reason stopped his feet from hurtling him toward yet another potential danger. He would not make his captors’ job easier for them by being foolish.

The light refined into a more definitive shape. So did the whistling, clear and no longer unknown, the quick tones of early Beatles, if he wasn’t mistaken. He c****d his head, more than a little curious about this new information, only to blink in sudden blindness when the light shone directly into his eyes.

“Hey! You’re here!” A man’s voice echoed from behind the torch, but the friendliness of his tone—an American accent, Ian noted—sharpened into alarm. “s**t, what happened to you?”

Ian lifted his arm to shield his eyes, trying to see who now approached him with far quicker steps. The man who emerged was only a few inches shorter, with dark hair shaved in a military cut, and darker eyes shadowed in a long, angular face. The additional shadow in his chin could only be a cleft, and the full s***h of his mouth was now drawn into a worried line. At the moment, his heavy brows were pulled together, and he switched the silver torch, nearly as long as Ian’s forearm, to his left hand in order to reach out with his right.

“Did they drop you down or something?” The touches were careful and fleeting, moving from one torn part of his jumper to another. “And where’s your coat? It’s freezing down here.”

In light of his predicament, he hadn’t been that aware of the temperature, but now that the man mentioned it, he did note a distinct chill in the air. The man wore a thick windbreaker, with camouflage-patterned cargo trousers, but though his appearance seemed military, the Nikes on his feet did not.

“I’ll tell you about my coat if you tell me what’s going on,” Ian said.

His acerbic tone must have convinced the man he was in no mood to be toyed with. The man stepped back, angling the torch downward out of Ian’s eyes. “They didn’t tell you?”

Ian waited for more, but when it didn’t come, snapped, “And when exactly would they have done that? When they were shooting at me? Or perhaps when they thought it would be amusing to chase me through the forest?”

“They shot you?”

When he reached out again, Ian slapped his hand away. “They shot at me. Though I have little doubt they would have done exactly as they threatened if they hadn’t managed to catch me.”

The man tilted his head back to frown at the opening in the ceiling. “Sultis!” He paused, clearly expecting someone to show up at the hole. After a minute, he growled in frustrated and shouted, “What the hell’s going on up there, Sultis?”

The answering silence was damning. Ian gave him time to realize nobody was coming, then slowly sat back down on the ground. His ankle was killing him.

“I think it’s safe to assume we’ve been abandoned,” he said with a casualness he didn’t really feel. “Though the gentleman who seemed to be in charge did say I’d know all I needed in good time. I wonder if he meant you.”

“It’s not like he knows a damn thing about all of this,” the man said. With a frustrated sigh, he dropped like Ian had, sitting cross-legged in front of him with the torch in his lap.

A niggle of guilt chewed at the edge of Ian’s mood. The man had been friendly upon approach, and genuinely concerned when he’d thought Ian injured. He’d also been reasonably alarmed at the prospect of his being shot, which in the measure of the morning’s events, put them—at least temporarily—on the same side.

He stuck out his hand. “Ian Tunbridge.”

The introduction erased the scowl on the man’s face, exchanging for an easy-going smile. “I know.” He stretched to take Ian’s hand in a firm grip. “I’m the one who told Sultis we needed you.”

“We?”

“You don’t think he came up with this plan on his own, do you? The man’s a thug with delusions of grandeur. He wouldn’t know a treasure if it had Jack Sparrow sitting on it with a giant X.”

Ian stared at him, unsure what to make of any of this. “What on earth are you talking about? And who are you?”

The smile never wavered. “Lucas Arpini. And I’m the man who’s going to put both of us in the record books.”