by B. J Daniels
The deeper they ventured, the less confident Ella felt. Hopefully, Waco was still on the line. That was, if there was cell phone coverage in here. That was, if he could hear her.
The place was massive. Even if he could hear her, he wouldn’t be able to get to her in time. She was on her own with just her wits to guide her. But she still had the key, and so far, no one had threatened her. Yet.
* * *
JEREMIAH HAD WAITED until the two cops had left before “borrowing” one of the ranch pickups and heading for the Hanover place. He’d parked a ways down the road and worked his way cautiously to the back of the house. He didn’t see Waco or Hud.
Using the glass cutter he’d picked up from the ranch shop—how wonderful that his new family had everything he needed for a break-in—he began to cut open a back window that seemed to enter a guest bedroom. Like so much of the house, it hadn’t looked used.
Waco and Hud had ordered him to stay put in the cabin the family had provided for him on the side of the mountain overlooking the ranch. As if he was going to be left out of this.
He smiled to himself as the glass popped out. He caught it and gently laid it on the ground. Then, using his sweatshirt on the sill to keep from cutting himself, he slipped inside the house through the back window. He knew the Hanovers didn’t have any kind of security since he’d checked that out when he and Ella had paid their earlier visit.
Jeremiah landed quietly inside what appeared to be a bedroom that hadn’t been occupied in a very long time. The old iron bed had been stripped of everything but the mattress, and there was dust everywhere. He moved like a cat across the floor and opened the door to peer out into the long hallway. He had some experience with breaking and entering—but only when called for, as he would have told Helen, who’d done her best to control his criminal behavior. This was definitely called for.
This whole house felt empty. He wondered how he would be able to find Ella. He was wondering how the cops would find her when he heard a floorboard creak behind him.
Waco grabbed him by the back of his collar and hauled him into the bedroom, closing the door. “I told you to stay home,” the detective whispered in his face. From the cop’s grin, it was clear that he’d known all along what Jeremiah had been up to—and had followed him.
“I have to help my sister.”
“The best way you can help her,” Waco said as he whipped out his handcuffs, “is to stay put.”
Jeremiah heard the familiar snick and felt the cold metal of the cuff snap around his wrist. Before he could react, the cop snapped the other end around the ornate iron headboard.
“Say a word and I will hog-tie and gag you,” Waco whispered next to his ear. “You don’t want to get your sister killed, right?”
Jeremiah nodded and sat on the edge of the bed, giving the cop a you got me, all right? look.
Waco nodded. “Stay here.” With that, the detective was gone.
* * *
ELLA WAS LOSING track of all the twists and turns Lionel was taking. She couldn’t keep a running commentary about each move or one of them was going to get suspicious. “It’s like a maze, isn’t it? I have no idea where we are.” Of course, none of the Hanovers commented.
Finally, at the end of another hallway, he stopped at a large double door. As he pushed the door open wide, she felt a cold gust of stale air. Clearly, the huge room was normally kept closed.
Lionel flipped a switch and the overly ornate fixtures in the room exploded with light.
“Wow!” Ella said, unable to not exclaim at what she was seeing. She knew that a lot of older, large, expensive homes in the area had once had such a room. “A ballroom! It’s huge. It makes me want to dance.”
Neither Lionel nor Mercy looked in the mood to dance. “I bet you remember dances in here.” She looked at Angeline since Lionel and Mercy were ahead of them and not answering.
“When I was small,” Angeline said almost wistfully, her weakened voice echoing in the enormous empty space. “My grandfather loved parties and music and dancing. He used to fill this room.”
“That must have been something to see.” Ella took in the gold leaf, the huge faded spots on the wall—where paintings had once hung?—the heavy burgundy brocade on the walls below the ornate sconces, as Lionel led the way across the parquet floor. He stopped dead center and turned to look at them.
Ella had lagged behind a little. So had Angeline in her wheelchair. Only Mercy had been on Lionel’s heels.
She could feel the anticipation in the air as Lionel ordered Mercy to help him with the huge Oriental rug. It appeared to be in better shape than any of the other rugs Ella had seen in the house.
That alone, she realized, was a clue. The rug had to be worth a lot of money and yet it hadn’t been sold. It only took a moment to find out why. As Lionel and Mercy strained to roll it back, she saw the irregularity in the flooring.
Mercy stared down at the floor, then up at her brother. “How long have you known this was here?” she demanded. “How long have you been keeping this to yourself?”
He ignored her as he knelt and pushed on the side of an inlaid handhold in the flooring. It opened enough to allow him to get his fingertips under it. He lifted the trapdoor to expose a wooden staircase.
Ella stepped closer as they all crowded around the opening. The stairs were only a few feet wide and dropped deep into the ground. The air rising up at them was icy cold and smelled of damp earth, as if it had been some time since the trapdoor had been opened.
At the bottom of the dozen steps stood a hulking solid-steel vault set in the wall. She said the words out loud for Waco. “You have to be kidding. An underground vault cut into the earth below the ballroom? Those stairs down look a little...old. Your grandfather did this when he built the house?” It definitely hadn’t been on the plans of the house that Hud had procured for them.
Next to her, Angeline rolled closer to stare down at the vault. But it was Mercy who let out the cry of surprise and delight. “That’s got to be it!” she exclaimed. “That’s got to be where he hid his fortune! You found it!” She was practically clapping.
“The key,” Lionel said tersely as he spun to face Ella.
She could almost feel how close he was to the edge of control. He appeared wired, as if he’d been anticipating this moment for far too long. She wondered how long exactly. More than thirty years ago, after he’d killed his father and taken the key he’d been disappointed to find out didn’t open the vault? Or long before that?
Heart in her throat, Ella reached into her pocket, her fingers locking around the key. She froze for a moment with sudden doubt. Had Waco heard everything so far? What if Marvin had fooled them all by wearing a key that didn’t open the vault? What if he’d hid the real key somewhere else entirely? More to the point, what would happen to her if the key didn’t open the vault?
Ella hesitated a few seconds too long.
“Give me the damn key,” Lionel demanded as he pulled a gun from his jacket pocket. The look in his eyes told Ella that he would shoot her if she didn’t hand it over—and quickly.
“You don’t need that gun.” It surprised her, how calm she sounded. She pulled the key from her pocket and handed it to him.
That was when she saw his expression darken. He advanced on her so quickly that she didn’t have time to move before he grabbed her with his free hand. He opened her jacket and pulled up her shirt before spinning her around to tug at the waist of her jeans, looking for a wire. Her uncle had been right. If she’d been wired for sound, Lionel would have found it.
“Did you really think I would go to the cops?” she demanded indignantly with a laugh and a shake of her head as she stepped away to straighten her clothing.
Lionel trained the gun on her.
She saw his gaze go to her left pocket. “What?”
“Take your hand out very slo
wly,” he ordered. “And it better be empty.”
She withdrew her hand and he lunged at her, driving his free hand into her pocket and pulling out her cell phone. The copy of the will had also been in that pocket. It fluttered to the floor.
He stared at the phone for a moment. From the look on his face, he was chastising himself for being so foolish. He hadn’t even considered a wire earlier—let alone thought she would have a cell phone.
Fortunately, she’d disconnected the call with Waco when Lionel had first grabbed her. Now he tossed her phone across the room, his gaze boring into her. “How foolish of you to come alone. You didn’t even bring your brother with you. But you were right earlier. We should do this together. Then, if the key doesn’t work... Come on,” he said, motioning with the gun for her to lead the way down the stairs to the vault.
Ella had no desire to go down there, but she didn’t see any other option at the moment. She moved to the edge and took a tentative step. The old wood of the first stair creaked under her boot. She took another. Behind her, Lionel’s weight on the steps made the entire staircase groan and sag a little.
It was even colder down here, the odor of wet earth strong. She could smell Lionel’s nervous sweat, as well, reminding her that he had a gun trained on her back. Before Ella reached the last step, he shoved her aside, and still holding the gun in one hand, he fitted the key into the vault with the other.
His hands, she saw, were shaking. She was shaking for a whole different reason. If that key didn’t turn in that lock—
She heard the click, saw the key rotate and let out the breath she’d been holding. Relief made her knees go weak as she watched him turn the handle.
The huge steel door swung open.
Chapter Twenty-Four
As Waco quickly made his way through the maze of hallways, he had a mental image of the original house plans Hud had supplied. But the place was so large, it was taking too much time. He’d heard Lionel search Ella and was thankful he hadn’t fitted her with a wire. But she’d had to disconnect the call. Now he had no idea what was happening, and that had him terrified.
All he knew for certain was that he had to get to the ballroom as quickly as possible. It didn’t surprise him that it had been Lionel who’d found a trapdoor leading to stairs beneath the floor to an underground vault. Nor did it surprise him that Lionel had a gun.
He knew Ella could handle herself—as long as that key opened the vault. But even if it did, he knew that Lionel had no plan to share the fortune. Not one of them had wanted to see the will. Either because they didn’t believe it was real, or because it wouldn’t matter after tonight...
That meant that Waco had to reach Ella and fast. He’d suspected Lionel as the killer. It made sense. But he’d also worried that all of them might be in on it, even though Mercy seemed too scatterbrained and Angeline too frail. Not that he didn’t think any one of them was capable of killing the others for the money.
Waco just hoped to have made the arrest before that happened, since Ella was at the heart of it. He tried to tell himself this was like every other case he’d ever had. He knew danger. He’d been wounded more times than he wanted to think about since he’d taken this job. That was because he caught the dangerous cases and always had.
But even as he tried not to run through the house and let them know he was coming, he couldn’t pretend that this case hadn’t taken a turn he’d never expected. He’d fallen in love with one of the civilians. Now she was risking her life to end this.
* * *
ELLA STARED INTO the vault. When she looked at Lionel, his eyes were as wide as her own. He must have been holding his breath, because he let out a whoosh of sound before he screamed, “It’s empty!” He sounded both shocked and furious. His gaze swung to her.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, either. Her first thought was that her mother had cleaned it out with this key years ago.
“How is this possible?” Mercy called down the stairs, sounding close to hysteria.
Angeline laughed from her wheelchair. “Why are you both so surprised that he lied? Our own father. The bastard lied to us our whole lives. There never was any money.”
All the color had drained from Lionel’s face. He seemed to be at a loss for words. Ella figured his mind was probably whirling like hers. It was only a matter of time before he came to the same conclusion she had.
Ella made a run for the stairs and got up four steps before Lionel grabbed her ankle. He jerked hard, trying to pull her back, but she locked her fingers around the edge of the wooden stairway and hung on.
The gunshot made her start. Her fingers slipped and she slid on her stomach down a couple of stairs. Overhead, she could hear screaming and the crash of Angeline’s wheelchair, but all that was drowned out by a second and third gunshot.
Lionel released her ankle. Had he killed both of his sisters? She heard him moan a second before he crashed backward into the steel door of the vault. She looked behind her. His chest bloomed with blood as he slowly slid to the ground.
For a second, Ella couldn’t move. She lay sprawled on the stairs, feeling disoriented and confused. She’d been so sure that she’d been hit by one of the bullets. But if Lionel hadn’t fired them, who had?
Only an instant lapsed before her brain kicked in and Ella quickly started upward, desperate to get out of this hole.
But after only a couple of steps, what she saw at the top of the stairs stopped her cold. A dark shape loomed over her, the figure holding a gun. The barrel was pointed in her face.
“I’m going to need that key,” Angeline said. “Fetch it for me, won’t you?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jeremiah laughed after Waco left the room. With his free hand, he pulled the lock-pick kit from his jacket pocket. It didn’t take him more than a few moments to get the handcuff off the bed frame. He worked just as quickly to unlock the one on his wrist. He couldn’t have it dangling and making any noise.
The guys at Helen’s bar had taught him all kinds of helpful things—even though Helen had threatened them with physical harm if they led him astray. He didn’t think of it in that context. He was smart. He’d proved that at the university he’d attended with the falsified papers Helen had gotten him.
The problem was that Jeremiah wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. Nothing his university adviser had suggested had appealed to him. He wanted something exciting, and his degree in mechanical engineering, though helpful at times, just didn’t cut it.
Once he had his hands free, he shoved the cuffs into his jacket pocket and considered what to do. Staying in the house, knowing that Waco was in here somewhere looking for Ella, now seemed like a bad idea.
But he had a thought. Rather than go through the house, he went back out the window. As he moved along the edge of the house, keeping to the dark shadows, he looked for something he’d seen earlier.
His uncle Hud was somewhere around here. He didn’t want to get shot. But he wasn’t about to go home, either. That was when he remembered seeing what had looked like the opening into an old root cellar. Now, as he found it, he saw the lock on the door. This time it took a little longer since he didn’t want to use his flashlight he’d brought with him.
The lock finally gave and Jeremiah pulled open the door. The moment he did, he noted the stairs that dropped down. Quickly, he stepped inside and closed the door behind him before pulling out his flashlight and shining it ahead of him.
At the bottom of the stairs, he realized he was in a narrow tunnel—and that the tunnel headed in the direction of the house, just as he’d suspected.
He shone his flashlight into the tunnel, the light small and dim. He couldn’t tell how far it went—or where it ended.
That was when he heard gunshots.
* * *
WACO HEARD THE GUNSHOTS—the reports echoing through the house. He
realized he’d gotten turned around and had taken the wrong corridor. He rushed down the first hallway and the second. Seeing double doors at the end of the next, he pulled his weapon, rushed to it and shoved the door open at a run. Stumbling into what appeared to be the library, he swore.
There was nothing there but dusty books on miles of bookshelves. He couldn’t believe this. He tried to calm himself, imagining the house plans he’d studied. The ballroom. He couldn’t get to it on this floor, he realized.
Swearing, he turned around and hurried back down the hall. He wanted to run, to sprint, but he knew that the echo of his boots on the wood floorboards would warn whoever was wielding that gun that they were no longer alone.
He’d heard...three shots? Or was it four? He couldn’t be sure. They’d echoed dully through the old massive house. He could feel time ticking away too quickly.
Waco wanted to scream Ella’s name, needing desperately to hear her voice and to know that she was still alive. Soon Hud would be busting down the front door, backup on its way. Waco had to find Ella before that happened.
* * *
ELLA STARED AT ANGELINE. It was as if years of age and ailment had fallen off her as she’d freed herself from that wheelchair. Her hand holding the gun was steady as a rock.
“The key,” Angeline repeated with that same frightening smile.
Ella realized that she couldn’t hear Mercy. Earlier, she’d thought she’d heard her cry out in pain. Nor had Lionel made a sound since falling back into the vault’s door. It appeared that Angeline was a very good shot.
She looked over her shoulder. She did not want to go back down those steps. She especially didn’t want to have to step over Lionel to get to the key. “Why do you want—?”
