Page 28 of Oddly Fine

“Better hurry up and get going then!” He took one last quick look around. It was a goddamned good thing he did, because he spotted a large canvas bag on the ground not far from where the female thief had emerged from a side tunnel.

“Oh, snap! Jackpot!” Beckett crowed with delight, grabbing the strap on the oversized bag and hefting it onto his shoulder.

Another small vibration in the air gave him pause. At his feet a few pebbles appeared to shift slightly. He stopped to take a closer look at the ground, but the vibration stopped. Wondering what the hell caused that, he frowned briefly and then lifted the heavy canvas bag higher on his shoulder. Transferring his attention back to the two thieves, he tucked the guy’s gun in his waistband and pointed his Glock at them.

“Jeez—imagine if you’d gotten away with it? That would have bought you a nice yacht!” he told his two prisoners as he nodded back the way he’d come. “Chop, chop, Bonnie and Clyde!”

With mingled groans of pain and displeasure, the two thieves headed down the tunnel for their walk of shame.

“So where do all these tunnels lead? The McDonald’s in town or—” He doubted he’d get any kind of real answer, but thought he’d ask anyway.

“Fuck off!” the woman snarled.

Beckett chuckled and, with his free hand, reached for the radio in his back pocket and turned it on. The channel was buzzing with activity, the different teams relaying their positions to command.

“This is Agent Thérault from Team Five. On my way back towards the crypt. I have the two other thieves with me—and the money!” He didn’t bother hiding his smugness.

“Roger that, Thérault. Extraction team is waiting for the hand off,” Agent Cho replied over the comms. She sounded thoroughly pissed off despite the success of his mission. He wasn’t surprised. What a bitch.

Then it happened again. That same vibration, but this time it was followed by a new sound—like the grinding of rocks.

“What’s that?” the female thief asked, her voice quivering with fear.

Beckett looked down to see rocks and dirt dancing beneath his feet. He brought the radio to his mouth to respond to Agent Cho, thinking it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

“Roger that—” he began, just as the ground movements stopped.

Suddenly, everything went dark.

Strangely enough, this wasn’t the first time he’d been buried alive. Growing up in Canada, Beckett and his siblings had spent every snow day building forts in the backyard. Their mother, of course, had consistently ordered them not to before leaving for work. Like that was ever going to be a deterrent for that rowdy bunch of idiots! Once both parents left the house, all of their rules left with them. Especially when building snow forts was so damned much fun—surely their French-Canadian ancestors would have applauded their industriousness.

One time when he was in 4th grade, he and Maggie had spent all morning building a huge fort. It had been—at least from his youthful perspective—a thing of beauty. Using the garden shed as a back wall, their fort had one big room, a roof, and an entryway. His sister had even shaped a “couch” out of snow. It was only big enough for one person because Maggie had eventually tired of the construction process and retreated to the house.

Beckett was left on his own to finish the last minute touches. He’d been hard at work patching the walls and poking holes through the front wall—so he could shoot at the enemy while remaining hidden—when the ceiling had caved in. Typically, his brothers would have thoroughly hosed down the exterior as soon as the outside walls of the fort were finished, so a hard, icy shell would form and reinforce it. But Franklin had refused to help at all, and Jackson had been gone all morning since he’d slept over at his girlfriend’s house the night before. Beckett hadn’t bothered hosing it down since the snow was already hard when he packed it. But the temperature had risen steadily all morning, and the previously hard-packed snow gradually softened, making the whole structure unstable. Beckett had no clear recollection of the ceiling collapsing. He’d realized it only when he was suddenly pinned under several feet of snow, trapped and unable to move. Luckily, he’d fallen on his hands and knees, leaving a little space between him and the compacted snow beneath him. While the weight of the fort’s ceiling on his back was extremely heavy, he could still breathe. Fortunately, he wasn’t stuck there for long because Jackson returned home just in time to see the fort collapse on top of him and rushed to dig him out. His brother looked panicked—understandably so, but Beckett hadn’t felt much of anything. Intellectually, he’d understood the danger. He’d known that he could have died under that pile of snow, but it was as if “maybes” and “ifs” failed to shock his nervous system like they did everyone else’s.

This situation was remarkably similar. Aware that he was surrounded by tons of dirt and rock, trapped in an underground tunnel that no one knew much about—beyond awareness of its existence—he wondered who would ride to the rescue. When the ground finally stopped shaking, he took stock of his physical condition, noting that he was uninjured and able to breathe, so there was no need to panic.

Annoyance—that was his initial emotional response.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Somebody moved beneath him. It must be the female thief. He’d thrown himself on top of her when the tunnel began to collapse. He’d have to go check on the other thief.

“Are you injured?” He maneuvered them out from under the rubble.

Thankfully, most of the collapsed section was several feet away. Small chunks of concrete had fallen on top of them randomly so they’d just end up with just some minor bruises.

“No,” she responded. “Jimmy?” she called out to her partner in crime.

Beckett heard some muffled sounds a few feet away and hurried over to help the guy. A slab of the concrete wall had fallen on top of him. He was lying face up, features contorted with pain.

“Fuck!” Beckett bent down, placing his hands under the slab, and tried to shift it, but it didn’t move. “Can you breathe?”

The man nodded in response but didn’t speak.

“Thérault! Thérault! Come in goddammit!” The radio in his back pocket suddenly came to life. He heard that brief exclamation from Hayes then nothing but static. Beckett gave it a whack against his leg to knock off the dirt.

“We’re alive,” he responded, as he moved around the trapped thief to try another way to move the slab. The woman was crouched near Jimmy’s head, talking to him soothingly. She’d started crying again. Oh, joy.