Page 32 of Oddly Fine

“You know, chico—I bet this is more action than you ever got in life,” Beckett mused, as he continued crawling his way up the dead priest’s skeletal remains. “My momma’s right—I’m going to hell,” he added, as he finally made it to the back wall—or he supposed it could be the front part of the coffin. The wooden end of the coffin had disintegrated when he’d attempted to pull it out, leaving nothing but wood splinters behind. He ripped those out of the way quickly, and then pressed the handsaw to the rock panel seam beyond it, heaving a sigh of relief as the blade sank in with little resistance. It was to his advantage that his night vision goggles afforded some protection from flying dirt and debris. Lying down as he was, it was a terribly slow, tedious process. He constantly struggled to get the right angle, and the blade kept sliding off the seam. This panel was thicker than the first one, so it wasn’t easy to get the handsaw to cut through it. Beckett tried changing his position by supporting himself on his elbow, but he slipped on a piece of something—only God knew—and he banged his head hard against the top of the space as he tried to keep his balance. The hit wasn’t too hard, but the memories that accompanied it were like a wave of cold water in the fucking Arctic. Enclosed space, very little light, the intense feeling of suffocation, all combined with the inability to breathe. Beckett forced himself to concentrate on what he could touch—except in this instance, the rock wall ahead of him felt all too similar to a prison cell he’d—

“No!” He yelled at himself, shaking his head and refusing to go back there again. He took a moment to rest, releasing his grip on the handsaw, and focusing on the here and now. Desperate to hold onto something familiar, Beckett reached back into his pocket and grabbed the radio.

“Daisy?” He struggled to regulate his breathing.

“Thérault?” Hayes answered immediately. “Are you okay?”

“I’m—” well, how to explain exactly how he was—“knee deep in skeletons,” he said, adding a chuckle because Hayes might not realize it yet, but Beckett had just made up a really funny pun. He waited to see if Hayes would understand, poised to clarify what he needed—

It was entirely unnecessary, of course, because Hayes always knew exactly what he needed. “You’re in Canada. You jumped into a tunnel like a total dumbass. You’ve been out of the service for ten years. You own a goddamned cat.” Hayes quickly listed several key facts regarding his current situation and life, which calmed him immediately. Beckett chuckled and took a deep breath.

“Do me a favor,” Beckett said, as he centered himself and got back to work.

“Anything,” Hayes responded promptly.

“Keep talking, Nancy,” he instructed with a pleased sigh. He tucked the radio under his chest and scooted over on his elbows, then began working away at the seam with the handsaw again. All the while, Hayes’ voice drawled on smoothly and continuously in the background.

“I own a goddamned cat,” Beckett repeated. “ And a boyfriend!” He smiled as he worked.

Chapter 6

Hayes had stopped counting how many times he’d physically threatened those who encouraged him to remove himself from the situation, but it was at least a dozen by now. As soon as Beckett had clambered into the tunnel after the two thieves, Hayes knew shit was going to go sideways. It was always that way with Beckett. The plan usually started out simple—linear—and somehow always fucking ended in a blaze of fiery chaos, which somehow Beckett was never actually directly responsible for, but always managed to land right smack dab in the middle of, regardless of the exact circumstances.

He'd wanted to go after him, of course, but with three captives in his custody, he’d been forced to stay behind and trust that his partner could handle this deal without him. He'd studiously ignored the gunshots, reminding himself repeatedly that his partner was more than capable of handling two idiots, and concentrated on getting his prisoners handed over to the proper authorities. It had only taken a few minutes before several armed members of the task force—an interesting mishmash of agency letters displayed on their jackets—had arrived to take custody of them. Then he endured a debriefing covering everything that happened leading up to the moment when his goddamned partner jumped into the tunnels.

No one was cleared to go after Beckett. Not when they didn’t have any solid facts regarding the current situation and they didn’t have eyes on anything or anyone in the tunnels. Members of law enforcement had been instructed to stay close but remain outside and, therefore, could offer no real backup.

Hayes had nearly lost his mind.

Officer Lavigne, a young, buff deputy working for the provincial police department, had taken Hayes’ official statement. He’d been incredibly patient, especially considering how frequently Hayes had stopped the process to pester him about getting updates on Beckett.

“I know you don’t want to be doing this right now, Agent Monroe, but the faster we get this done, the sooner you’re back on the case.”

Hayes supposed that was true enough, so he’d given up and given in. After repeating the same information for what was surely the 100th time, Hayes finally finished his statement and Officer Lavigne took him to speak with the people in charge so he could help to get Beckett and the thieves out of that damned tunnel. That had angered a lot of law enforcement officials. He’d met a great deal of resistance: “Who the hell are you to—” and “This is a federal task force and you’re—” His arguments and icy glares weren’t working this time. He was getting nowhere fast with these agents when Agent Cho finally walked into the crypt, her usual stoic expression firmly in place.

“What seems to be—” she’d begun, just as the first seismic vibration hit.

Everyone froze, expecting the ceiling to collapse on them, but the crypt had remained undamaged. Apart from the tunnel entrance that was completely blocked, the crypt itself was fine. The agents positioned around the school had radioed their positions, informing them of the collapse of the original tunnel entrance the thieves had dug originating from a nearby storefront. Hayes became enraged when one of the perps had confessed to digging a goddamned hole in a century-old tunnel. Officer Lavigne quickly intervened, holding him back, while he struggled to rein in his temper. But it was a close call. Shaking off the need to shoot the perp, he turned his attention to the most immediate problem. Beckett was stuck inside a highly unstable tunnel—of course he was—and the task force couldn’t take the risk of blowing up even part of a wall to get to him, because that could trigger the collapse of the entire structure.

Hayes understood that the structure was weak. He really did, but it didn’t make it any easier for him in dealing with the infuriatingly slow structural engineers working the scene. The first-class nerds took their sweet-assed time in coming up with a solution, saying repeatedly that it would be best not to dig at all, and that it would be difficult to predict anything with the apparently inaccurate building plans they’d been given. After all, they could only guess where the tunnel was, using city plans, and the two entrances they knew about, but it was entirely possible that the tunnel was actually more extensive than they’d first thought, making the risk of collapse even greater.

Still, Hayes had done his best to remain calm. Really fucking calm.

And then the second quake hit the crypt, and the string attached to Hayes’ thinning patience had finally snapped.

Hayes grabbed one of the digging tools that someone left lying near the crypt entrance, hell bent on digging the goddamned hole himself. There was no way in hell that he was going to stand idly by while Beckett was stuck in that God-forsaken tunnel.

“Whoa there, big guy!” Officer Lavigne stepped between Hayes and the tunnel entrance. “Pretty sure that’s—eh—not a good idea,” the officer said in a thick French accent. He refused to back down, even under the full force of Hayes’ glare.

After one quick glance over his shoulder at Agent Cho, Officer Lavigne advised Hayes calmly, “You want to stay, you should—probably put that down, ouais?”

He was a handsome fellow, maybe in his early 20s. He had a similar build to that of Beckett, although he was several inches shorter, and his French-Canadian accent reminded Hayes of Cynthia Therault. If he decided to take on Officer Lavigne, then it would be like trying to move a mountain. Hayes weighed his options while the young police officer waited him out, but after a few seconds, Hayes relented. After all, it would be idiotic to disturb the structure that was already precarious. He knew that, he just—

With an angry growl, Hayes put the tool back.

“Bon,” the officer said with a pleased smile. “How about we go—” He broke off when Hayes’ radio suddenly issued a burst of static.

“Daisy?” Beckett called out, but the static was making it difficult to make out the words.