by Dana Mentink
Victor walked the ladies to their room and again did his security check of the building. “All locked up tight, but leave your cell phones on anyway.”
Victor saw a trickle of fear in Brooke’s face. “So what’s the plan for tomorrow?”
Was she afraid he would call it off? Or that he wouldn’t? His mind wandered back to his earlier outburst. So out of control. So not Victor Gage. He cleared his throat. “I want to study the map again, to return to the chamber we passed, since the original library tunnel is impassable now.”
Brooke’s brow furrowed. “Do you think there’s any way to bypass it?”
“If Stryker can get around those tunnels, then so can we, even if he proves uncooperative. Stephanie is going to do some digging and see if Stryker is just the urban explorer he claims to be.”
“You think he’s hiding something?”
Victor shrugged. “Seems like pretty coincidental timing, him showing up at the same time we did.”
Brooke walked him to the main door, hesitating as if there was something she wanted to say. He studied her face, tired and concerned, wondering how much he’d hurt her by his earlier behavior.
He cleared his throat. “What I said back there, about praying and all that…” He studied the floor. “I apologize.”
“No need. You were frustrated.”
“But it was wrong to attack you about your beliefs.”
She tilted her head. “Your wife was a believer, wasn’t she?”
He shifted. “Yes. She tried to share it with me, but I never opened up to it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes, I am, too.”
Brooke’s eyes shone. “She knew where she was going,” she murmured. “She knew where she was going, ultimately, I mean.”
He stared at her. She knew where she was going.
But she’d left him behind.
Alone.
He wanted to leave the dorm, to escape the strange swirl of emotions that Brooke awakened in him, but she stopped him. “Maybe I spoke out of turn. I’m sorry. It’s just something I told my brother when his friend died. He kept asking why. Over and over until I thought my heart would break. Our pastor told him the why wasn’t as important as the where.”
“I’m the kind of person who has to know the why. I don’t blindly trust that God knows all the reasons.” He regretted his disdainful tone.
She laughed softly. “Faith isn’t blind. Faith is believing, when you can see all around you the reasons to doubt.” A bird flew up to the rafters above their heads. “Who are Pearson, Jackney and Rivera? The names you mentioned back there?”
He wanted to tell her, to spill out the burden that weighed so heavily upon him. Looking into those eyes, shining up at him, he could not do it. “I’m really tired. Maybe we can talk another time.”
She heard it for what it was, a dismissal. “Of course.”
He said good-night, desperate to put some distance between them.
“Victor,” she started, a hand half-raised.
“Yes?”
“Back in the tunnel, I—I thought I saw something, as we climbed out.”
“What?”
“It’s going to sound crazy.”
He smiled. “After what we’ve been through today, it would fit right in.”
She shook her head. “I’m sure it was just my imagination. Never mind. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Tell me, Brooke. Please.”
She turned slowly back to face him. “When we were climbing out, I thought I saw something behind one of the grates.”
The muscles in his stomach tightened. “You saw what, exactly?”
“I thought…” She twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “I thought I saw a pair of eyes watching us.” She lifted her chin. “Do you think I imagined it?”
“No, I don’t,” he said. But I wish you had.
* * *
Later that evening, Brooke prayed for Victor, for the anguish and confusion she saw deep down in him, the uncertainty that he tried so hard to mask. He was her potential enemy, a man who would be thrilled to convict her father, but she found him to be occupying her thoughts anyway, no matter how chaotic her life had become.
Pulling out her phone, she meant to dial her father until she realized it was nearly eleven, so instead she clicked open the picture of The Contemplative Lady. It seemed ridiculous to believe something so beautiful could be hidden away in the ugliness she’d experienced in the tunnels. A delicate painting would never survive, she thought, heart sinking. Her only real hope was that Colda had left some clue down there that would point her to a safer hiding place. She wondered if the police had followed their lead to the missing professor himself. The whole thing might be over by the morning.
Colda could put all the questions to rest. Surely he would corroborate her father’s story and Victor and Tuney would have to accept that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. She pulled the covers up to her chin.
Stephanie returned from her shower and climbed into her own bed. “What a day,” she said with a sigh.
“Unbelievable,” Brooke agreed. “What do you think the next step should be?”
Stephanie chuckled. “Are you afraid I’ll say ‘Go home and forget the whole thing’?”
“Actually, yes.”
“No chance of that,” Stephanie said with a yawn. “My brother needs to finish this. Victor is on a mission. I’ve never seen him so engaged, not since Jennifer died.”
“He thinks he’ll find a lead back to the museum theft, to Jennifer’s killer.”
“That’s part of it, but I think there’s something more motivating him than a painting. We’ve found treasures before, and this is something different.”
Different? Brooke didn’t know what to say. Her stomach did a strange flip. What could be motivating Victor to plow through filthy tunnels except the chance to find a Tarkenton or put Jennifer’s death to rest? “Did you know Jennifer well?”
“Very. She was a complete scatterbrain, an outgoing, extroverted woman who made Victor a different man.” She rolled over onto her stomach. “I hope he can find his way back to that man, someday. Good night, Brooke.”
“Good night,” she said, trying to picture Victor Gage as he had been before the day both their lives had fallen apart. With thoughts of his green-gold eyes lingering in her mind, she drifted off to sleep.
* * *
Brooke woke abruptly. The darkness left her momentarily disoriented. She was cold, the thin blanket insufficient to block the chilly San Francisco air. Stephanie lay quietly in her bed, her breath slow and regular.
Brooke could barely make out the time on her watch, three-fifteen. What had awakened her? The lumpy mattress or the cold? The lingering memories of nearly being crushed in the collapsing tunnel? She closed her eyes and tried to relax until a noise slithered through the room.
She sat up, heart pounding.
Quiet filled up the spaces again; nothing moving, nothing at all.
It must have been a dream.
The room settled into a silence so profound she could hear the tiny ticking from her watch.
A faint scraping noise sounded again and her pulse leaped in her throat. What was it? Something under the bed?
No.
It was farther away, a mournful scrape interrupted by a clank of metal. Then silence.
Downstairs?
Their dorm room was on the bottom floor so the only thing below them was the basement.
She shook her head and listened again.
Nothing but quiet and the relentless ticking of her watch. She considered waking Stephanie, but a seed of doubt bubbled to the surface. She might have imagined it. The details rolled into her mind before she could screen them out, the medical textbook entry she’d practically memorized.
A hallmark of FXTAS symptoms is cognitive or intellectual decline including short-term memory loss, loss of math or spelling skills, difficulty making decisions, p
ersonality or mood changes and loss of other intellectual skills.
It sounded so clinical, so benign on paper, until she began to watch the devastating effects play out in front of her eyes. Maybe Tad’s affliction was easier. His version of the Fragile X disorder left him impaired from birth, but he’d been even-tempered and genial until he hit his twenties. Her father’s mutation of the gene let him live a normal life, free to pursue his passionate interest in art, but now she saw him turning into someone else, an old man who sometimes could not remember who she was, who became angry and irrational without provocation.
Her eyes burned and she pressed her cold fingers to them. I’m not crazy. Just tired. The trembling in her body was not the horrible parkinsonism that was part and parcel of her family disease.
Deep breath. Just a nightmare. Go back to sleep.
Forcing her head back onto the pillow, she prayed silently for strength to overcome the fear she still felt eddying inside her like the gray fog outside.
Sleep, Brooke. It will be fine in the morning.
Three minutes later when she heard the noise again, she could contain her terror no longer.
“Stephanie,” she whispered, shaking her by the shoulder.
Stephanie jerked awake, eyes wide. “What is it?”
“I heard something. Listen.”
The seconds ticked by into minutes.
Brooke met Stephanie’s questioning look. “I…I heard something scraping below us.”
“In the basement?”
They listened for another long moment. Brooke felt her cheeks warm in spite of the cold. “I don’t hear it anymore. I shouldn’t have woken you up.”
But Stephanie didn’t reply. She was up and throwing on jeans and a sweatshirt.
“Where are you going?” Brooke called softly.
“To the basement to check it out,” Stephanie said.
Brooke gaped. “You can’t do that. It isn’t safe.”
She smiled. “I’m pretty good at taking care of things, just ask my brothers. And no, I’m not going to go over there and wake Victor up only to find out it’s a rat or something, so don’t even suggest it.”
After a moment of hesitation, Brooke pulled on her own clothes. “I think your brother would say this is a bad idea, but I’m going with you.”
“You’re right,” Stephanie said cheerfully. “That’s exactly what he would say, among other less polite things.”
It did not make Brooke feel any better as she followed Stephanie into the darkened hallway.
They walked softly, their feet barely making a sound on the tile as they moved toward the stairwell, flashlight beams zigzagging.
This is crazy, Brooke wanted to shout. We should not be wandering around darkened buildings at three in the morning. But there was no way she was going to let Stephanie face any potential danger on her own.
They entered the stairwell, which seemed to be several degrees colder. Brooke held her teeth together to keep them from chattering. No strange noises greeted them in the stairwell except the hollow echo of their own steps. Stephanie paused at the entrance to the basement.
“Ready?”
“No,” Brooke whispered.
“Would you feel better if I told you I used to wrestle with my brothers all the time?” Stephanie didn’t wait for an answer. She pushed open the door and beamed her flashlight around the basement. When nothing unusual appeared she snapped on the light.
It was just as they had left it. Empty and cold.
Brooke felt her stomach tie itself into knots. She’d been wrong, hearing things that weren’t there. “I’m so sorry, Stephanie.”
“No problem. Things being what they are, it pays to check everything out.”
Brooke wondered what Victor would say—probably something courteous like his sister. She shivered, rubbing her hands over her arms. “Let’s go back. Maybe we can get a few more hours of sleep.”
“Okay,” Stephanie said. She turned off the light and held the basement door open for Brooke.
“Thanks,” Brooke said, feeling a strange stirring on her neck.
She looked carefully at the metal grates set into the wall.
Was there a flicker?
The telltale sign of a human eye like she thought she’d seen before?
Nothing but the wild stirrings of her imagination.
She stewed over it all the way back to her dorm room. Her mind was conjuring up noises like her father believed he saw people from his youth clustered around him. She should go home. Go back to her father and hide away like she’d done so well until this strange adventure began.
She tried to remember why she’d felt so confident that she would sniff out the Tarkenton in the tunnels of all places. It felt like lunacy now. Was she getting lost now in a fantasy of her own making?
Worse yet, she’d dragged Stephanie and Victor into it, too.
“I’m sorry,” she said again to Stephanie. “I’m going crazy, I think.” She bit her lip feeling tears crowd her eyes.
“Or maybe you aren’t,” Stephanie said, pointing to the bed.
There on Brooke’s pillow lay a little black pawn.
THIRTEEN
Victor was furious. He sat, jaw clenched, on a chair in the women’s dorm room listening to the story unfold.
“So you went down to the basement without coming to get me? In the middle of the night? By yourselves?”
Brooke’s face flushed and she looked away, but Stephanie wasn’t the least bit chagrined.
“No time for outrage now, brother.” She handed him the chess piece wrapped in a plastic bag. “Question is, who left this and why?”
“Maybe it was Colda,” Brooke said, hope shining in her face. “He’s in hiding in the tunnels.”
“Colda is most likely dead,” Victor snapped, immediately wishing he hadn’t. He was not sure of the source of his anger, but he had the niggling feeling it was born of fear, fear that something might have happened to Stephanie and Brooke.
“Well, who else knows about the pawns?” Stephanie mused.
Victor sighed. He stretched his arms, trying to rid himself of the aches and pains accumulated in the adventure from the previous day. “I’ll text Tuney and fill him in, but I’m not sure I trust him completely. Or Lock or Stryker, for that matter. Any of them might have figured out how to get in the dorm and leave it here.”
“Are we going down there again?” Brooke said.
He knew she was still hoping, still hanging on to the notion that Colda really had stashed the painting somewhere. Something was definitely going on, but he did not think it was a straightforward game of find-the-treasure anymore. “I’m going with Tuney. You two should stay here and see what you can find out about Colda.”
Stephanie shook her head. “Sounds like we’re being dismissed.”
“I’m not going to let you two keep putting yourself at risk.”
“You know I can take care of myself,” Stephanie said.
He did, but he didn’t feel as sure about Brooke. She was so trusting, so willing to believe people. He watched her now, her face pale, tired shadows darkening her eyes. Why did he feel such a surge of protectiveness? The desperate feeling that if something happened to her he would never be the same? “It’s safer. Besides, you might be able to sniff out something about Colda’s past that would help, something the cops didn’t find and Tuney overlooked.”
Stephanie opened her mouth to argue when Brooke’s phone rang. As she listened, her face grew even paler. She clicked off the phone and stared at them. “I’ve got to go to the police station.”
“What for?”
“Something they found out about Colda, I think, but they want to speak in person.” She gave Victor a shaky look. “They asked for you, also.”
Victor felt a quiver deep down. The news wouldn’t be good, whatever it was. “All right. Let’s go. Steph…”
“I know, I know. Stay out of trouble. I’ll go check in at the office. Call me when you have an update.�
�
He nodded and they walked silently to the car. Who had left the pawn? Was it a message or a warning? Brooke was probably wondering the same thing, because they made the drive to the police station in near silence.
After a long, frustrating wait, they were ushered in to see Detective Paulson, a whip-thin man with a fringe of black hair around his balding head. “Thanks for coming. I understand you are exploring the tunnels under the college. How is that going?”
Brooke told him, sending an uneasy glance at Victor when she explained about the pawns painted on the tunnel entrances, and gave him the pawn she’d found on her pillow.
The detective broke into a wide smile. “Comes off like a bad movie. College kids probably painted all kinds of things down there. At least once a week we’re in those tunnels trying to coax them out after they busted through a grate or something. Nothing down there but pipes, we tell them, but it’s the mystique that pulls them in.”
Victor knew it was more than mystique that pulled Colda into those tunnels, but he didn’t share his thoughts. “Have you found him? Professor Colda?”
The detective’s face grew sober. “Possibly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we found his car.”
Brooke sat bolt upright. “Really? Where?”
“Underwater.”
Her eyes rounded in horror. “Is he… Did he drown?”
“Haven’t got a body yet. Car was at the bottom of the bay, windows open.”
Victor kept his voice low. “Accident?”
The detective slid his glance from Victor to Brooke. “Maybe.”
“So why did you call us here, Detective?” Victor said.
“Trouble trail.”
“What?”
“I’ve been at this business since the dawn of time and when someone has this trail of trouble that seems to follow them, it means something is up.”
“You sound like Mr. Tuney.”
“No doubt. He was a San Francisco cop for years before he got the boot.”
Victor could not hide his surprise. “Really? Why was he let go?”
Paulson folded his arms. “His story to tell, not mine. Anyway…” His gaze shifted to Brooke and he took a sip from the orange-juice container on his desk. “You come to town, a woman gets murdered, a woman who was following you. You come to Bayside in search of Professor Colda, a friend of your father’s, and now it appears Colda may have killed himself.”
