More Twisted

with grass and filled with trash—locales scheduled to become part of NeDo in the future but at the moment nothing more than evidence of what the neighborhood had once been.
    Finally he stopped, staring down at the ground. He climbed out of the car. Sandra joined him.
    “What are you . . . ?” Her voice faded. “No.”
    Ron was looking at an entrance to a large drain—the one he’d pointed out on the map.
    “You’re not . . . No, Ron, you’re not going in there.”
    “Five hundred thousand dollars,” he whispered. “Where else are we going to get a chance for money like that?”
    “No, honey. You heard what Greg said. It’s dangerous.”
    “A half million dollars. Think about it . . . . You know business’s been slow. The move set me back a lot more than I thought.”
    “It’ll get better. You’ll get more clients.” Her face was a grim mask. “I don’t want you to go. Really.”
    Ron was staring at the grate of the drainage ditch, the blackness on the other side. “I don’t think it’s dangerous at all . . . . Didn’t it seem there was something weird about what Langley said?”
    “Weird?”
    “He didn’t even check the sluice out. But he goes on and on about how risky it is. You’re an engineer; what do you think? Isn’t this the best way to get to her?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t do geologic work, you know that.”
    “Well, even to me it seems like the best way . . . . It was like Langley was telling everybody that there was only one way to get to the girl, his route. So nobody’d even try the drain.” He nodded toward the grating. “That way he’s sure he gets the reward.”
    Sandra fell silent for a moment. Then she shook her head. “I didn’t really get that sense. He’s pretty arrogant and insulting. But even if what you’re saying is true, going in there still has to be risky.” She pointed toward the collapsed building. “You still have to go underneath it.”
    “Five hundred thousand dollars, baby,” he whispered.
    “It’s not worth getting killed.”
    “I’m going to do it.”
    “Please, Ron, no.”
    “I have to.”
    She sighed, grimacing. “I’ve always sensed there’re sides to you that I don’t know, Ron. Things that you don’t share with me. But playing knight in shining armor to save some girl? I never thought of you that way. Or is it that you’re just pissed off he insulted us and threw us out of our own building?” Ron didn’t answer. Sandra then added, “And to be honest, honey, you aren’t really in the best shape, you know.”
    “I’m going to be crawling, not running a marathon.” He laughed, shook his head. “Something’s not right about this whole thing. Langley’s working some angle. And I’m not going to let him get away with it. I’m going to get that money.”
    “You’ve made up your mind,” she asked in a soft voice, “haven’t you?”
    “That’s one thing you do know about me: Once I’ve decided what I want to do, nothing’s going to stop me.”
    Ron reached into the glove compartment and took out the flashlight. Then he walked to the trunk and found the tire iron. “My coal mining gear,” he said with a weak laugh as he held up the bent metal rod. He looked at the blackness of the drain opening.
    Sandra took her cell phone from the car, gripping it firmly in her hand. “Call if anything happens. I’ll get somebody there as soon as I can.”
    He kissed her hard. And the knight—in faded jeans and an old sweatshirt, not shining armor—started into the murky opening.

    The route through the drain was, in fact, much less risky than the doomsaying egomaniac Langley had predicted—atleast in the beginning. Ron had about three hundred feet of steady crawling, impeded only by a few roots, clumps of dirt and sewage-related detritus, which was hardly pleasant but not dangerous.
    He encountered a few rats but they were frightened and scurried away from him quickly. (Ron wondered if they were charging into the spot where the rescue specialist was now working his way toward Tonya. He had to admit he liked the idea of sharp-toothed rodents scaring the hell out of his rival—yeah, Sandra was partly right; Langley had pissed him off.)
    Closer to the building, the drain became increasingly clogged. Roots had broken through the concrete walls and clustered together like pythons frozen in rigor mortis, and the way was partly blocked by piles of dried mud nearly as hard as concrete. His back in