by Dana Mentink
“Shot was supposed to scare her. I’m a bad shot. I hate guns.” His breathing grew shallow. “Bad driver, too. Bad everything. Couldn’t even tail you on my motorcycle.”
“Did you shoot the woman at my office building?” Victor pressed. “Why would you do that?”
Stryker closed his eyes and fell back into a semiconscious state. Victor stood, frustration and a growing sense of anxiety prickling his body. “He must have killed Fran.”
Brooke’s hands were oddly luminous as she wiped Stryker’s tearstained cheeks. “He said them. More than one.”
Shock crashed through him. I’m a bad driver. “He apologized to me specifically.”
Her eyes met his and he looked away from the horror he saw there.
“Stryker was the one who crashed into our car.” Victor looked down at the prostrate figure. “Stryker is the man who killed my wife.”
Brooke’s head spun. “At the museum all those years ago, Stryker was driving the getaway car? Why did he come to San Francisco?”
Victor’s voice was hard. “I don’t know.” He bumped against a protruding piece of cement.
“Sit down, Victor,” she pleaded. “Let’s try to figure it out.”
Victor shook his head, head tilted to the ceiling, eyes closed. “As soon as you walked into Treasure Seekers I had the feeling these cases were connected.”
She was unsure what to say. Though she knew deep down her father was not involved with Stryker, any mention of his name would just inflame Victor. She saw the anguish on his face and it bit at her heart.
“What really kills me,” he said, voice tight, “is that I don’t feel any relief. I thought once I knew, once I could look into the face of the person that ran into us and took off…” His voice trailed away.
She stood, ignoring all common sense, and put her arms around him. “I’m sorry.”
He clung to her, brushing his lips to her neck, his embrace pulling her tight to his chest. She might have imagined it but she thought she felt the anger ease, a gentleness stealing into his touch as he stroked her hair.
“Brooke, you should be someone I hate. I’m black or white. You’re an enemy or a friend, and I thought you were in the other camp.”
“But you don’t? Hate me, I mean?”
He didn’t answer, just pulled her tighter to him and sighed deeply, a sound that shivered through the deepest parts of her.
She wanted to show him with her embrace that he didn’t have to live in such an unforgiving world. There were so many shades of color, so many glorious tints to experience besides his harsh black-and-white reality.
Though she longed to stay there, tucked into his embrace, he pulled away.
Only a few feet separated them, but the distance felt like miles. His expression was suddenly distant, shuttered.
She lowered herself to the floor, thoughts spinning through her mind so quickly she could hardly catch hold of them. She guessed Colda had shot Stryker, and if they didn’t find her aunt soon, the same thing would happen to her.
Her stomach writhed. How long would it be before Tuney returned with help or Stephanie and Luca forced their way in? She leaned her head back against the wall and squeezed her arms around herself, feeling a draft on her neck coming from the holes bored into the concrete.
She heard a groan, which she took to be Victor until she saw him staring at her.
Had it been Stryker?
She started to go to him, when a hand came from one of the holes and seized her hair.
“Go away,” a voice hissed. “Leave me be, do you hear me? Leave me be.”
Victor ran to her as she tried to yank away, the viselike grip on her hair unrelenting, long fingernails digging into her scalp.
“Stop,” Victor yelled. “Colda, let go.” He tried to pry at the fingers wound tightly in her hair.
The hand continued to pull so hard tears sprang up in Brooke’s eyes until she cried out. Victor scanned frantically. “There’s got to be a passage just on the other side. Hang on.” He ran from the room.
Brooke kept trying to twist away. “Please, Professor Colda, you’re hurting me. I’m Donald Ramsey’s daughter. You are my father’s friend.”
The grip loosened slightly. “They’re going to kill me,” the voice wailed.
“No. No, I’ll help you. We can get you out of here safely.” The tears made it nearly impossible to see, but she heard the voice soften.
“Tell them to stay away. If they come near me, I’ll kill them. I have to.” There was a half sob and suddenly she was freed so quickly she fell to her knees.
If they come near me, I’ll kill them.
Colda was insane. She heard it in the panted words hissing through the hole. Anyone who approached him would be in danger. Colda had a gun.
Terror ran rampant through her veins. She raced out of the passageway. “Victor,” she yelled. “Come back.” The hallway was black but she didn’t dare turn around. Pressing her hands to the wall, she moved in the direction she decided he must have taken. Palms scraping the roughened rock, she pushed along, stumbling and banging her shins on protruding rock. Ahead she could see nothing. Eyes searching the darkness, she tried to discover some hidden passage that she’d missed. After several more minutes, she retraced her steps. This time, she found it. A hole about four feet square cut into the rock. Warm air emanated from the hole. Victor must have crawled into it. There was no other possibility.
The idea of entering that hole made her skin clammy, but she had to warn him. Lowering herself gingerly to her hands and knees, she started in, ignoring the rock scraping through her jeans.
She had to get to Victor.
Her ankle was seized by a rough hand.
She screamed, pulling and kicking.
A deep voice yelled something which she could not understand in her fear.
Kicking desperately, she tried to push herself away, scrabbling and clawing at the rock.
She felt herself being pulled away. “Victor,” she screamed. Clawing her fingers, she held tight to a jutting rock until she could hold on no longer.
The grip tightened around her ankles and she was pulled back into the tunnel.
Brooke felt a scream building inside but the shock of landing on the tunnel floor took her breath away. A big, familiar-looking man knelt next to her.
“Sorry for the rough landing. You okay?” the man said.
He had Victor’s green eyes but a broader frame and fair hair. She nodded, trying to get her breath. “Luca?”
He nodded. “Stephanie is waiting for the paramedics. We broke through the grate to get down here and found the gunshot victim. Where’s Victor?”
Brooke forced a calm tone she did not feel. “He’s gone after Colda.”
Luca’s fair eyebrows zinged upward. “Crazy professor Colda? He’s really alive?”
“Yes, and I think he shot Stryker, the man you found. Victor’s gone after him.”
Luca didn’t waste a minute. He pushed by Brooke and worked his head and shoulders into the tunnel, grunting as he did so. After a moment he groaned. “I’m too big. I can’t fit.” He pulled back out with a look of exasperation. Brooke got the feeling if there was a crowbar handy he would try to knock down the stone.
“I’m going to help him,” she said, but Luca caught her arm.
“Not safe.”
“Now you sound just like your brother. I’m going.”
Luca looked helplessly around for another solution. Brooke didn’t give him the chance to delay her any longer. She darted past him and scooted into the tunnel, hearing his exclamation of disapproval. It didn’t matter. She had to get to Victor. Colda used to be her father’s friend, and she knew she could talk him out of hurting Victor if she got the chance.
She crawled over the uneven rock, wondering how Victor had managed to scrunch his tall frame in the confined space. Damp soaked into the knees of her pants, blood oozed from scrapes on her fingers and wrists.
Ahead she thought she heard
someone cry out. She hurried as fast as she could until she almost fell through a gap in the tunnel floor. Looking down she could see only a faint glow, but there was no sound.
Her breath was loud and harsh in her own ears. The heat wafted up from the space below, bringing with it the smell of mold. Victor, where are you?
Perhaps there was another way, another passage. She climbed carefully over the gap and continued on a few yards until she came to a bricked-off wall. Dead end. Victor must be back there, back in the lower chamber. She returned to the edge of the gap, listening intently once again.
Silence.
She found a pebble and dropped it down into the opening. It plinked against the floor quickly, telling her the floor wasn’t more than six feet below.
She listened again.
More silence, then a slight scraping noise, like the sound of a heavy bundle being pulled across the floor.
A heavy bundle.
Heavy, like a dead weight.
Her insides were screaming at her to leave, go back and wait for help.
But her heart was telling her something entirely different.
Victor was down there. Maybe hurt. Maybe dead. “Lord, help me,” she breathed.
Slowly, as quietly as she could, she sat on the edge of the opening and dangled her legs into the gap. The air shivered up at her, warm, too warm, black as oil and quiet as the grave. After a deep breath, Brooke dropped down into the darkness.
TWENTY
Victor was so intent on the man in front of him, he didn’t hear Brooke until she stepped close enough for the lantern on the floor to illuminate her.
“Brooke,” he said, both exasperated and oddly pleased to have her there. “I’d like you to meet Leo Colda.”
Colda sat on a chunk of cement, his face pale and despondent. His clothes were soiled and a scrape on his cheek was angry and swollen. A slight man, he sat with his knees nearly drawn up to his chin, arms folded around his legs. He peered at Brooke as if he couldn’t quite place her.
Brooke pressed her fingers to Victor’s arm. “Your brother’s here. They’re tending to Stryker.”
Victor laughed. “And Luca couldn’t fit through the tunnel?”
She nodded.
“I’m surprised he isn’t hacking away at the cement.”
“There wasn’t a crowbar handy.”
Victor felt his muscles relax for the first time since they’d started the whole adventure that morning. “I was just asking the professor why he shot Stryker.”
Colda started. “They’re after me. They want the painting.”
Brooke moved closer. “You mean my father’s painting?”
He peered at her and blinked. “You’re Ramsey’s daughter?”
“Yes. Professor, why did you take my father’s painting?”
He rocked back and forth. “They were after it.”
“Who?”
“All of them. I turned on the water to flush them out.”
Victor whistled. “So Tuney was right. You nearly drowned Brooke.”
Colda sighed. “The dean came to visit when he heard a package arrived from Donald. He saw it, the Tarkenton, and he knew right away, just like I did, and he wanted it for himself.”
Victor heard Brooke’s sharp intake of breath. “He knew that it was authentic?”
Colda nodded. “I was running tests, but it was a formality. I had to hide it until I could get it back to Donald, but the kid came after me.”
“So you shot him,” Victor said, watching Colda squirm back and forth.
“No. He tried to shoot me but I spun away and the bullet got him.”
“Ricochet, probably.” Victor locked eyes with Colda. “Where is the gun now?”
Colda shrugged. “I took it and ran.” He patted his pockets. “I must have dropped it somewhere.”
Brooke edged closer and crouched down next to Colda. Victor tried to give her a warning look—he might be lying. Colda could still have the gun on him somewhere—but she paid him no attention.
“Professor Colda, did you really steal those paintings from my father’s museum like you said in the suicide note?”
Colda’s face went wild, eyes popping.
From above them, someone called out. “Brooke? Are you down there?”
“Aunt Denise,” Brooke cried. She ran to the opening and called up to her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m banged up, but all right.”
“Hey,” Victor shouted as Colda bolted to his feet and careened toward an opening Victor had not noticed. “Stop.”
He grabbed the lantern and took off after Colda. Brooke yelled something to her aunt and then he heard her start down the passage behind him. Pipes crowded the ceiling above them and his senses pricked at him, trying to send him a message.
He was so occupied trying to hold the lantern and avoid the piles of fallen rock on the floor that he paid no heed at first.
“Colda,” he yelled at the darting figure. “It’s over. You’ve got to stop running. Let us help you.”
Colda didn’t stop.
Wires brushed Victor’s face and he pushed them aside.
Again the odd sense that something was amiss floated into his mind.
Brooke panted behind him, adding her plea. “Please, Professor Colda. We can help you try to make amends.”
“Stay away,” Colda screamed. “Stay away from me. They’re after me. They’re going to kill me.”
He vanished around a sharp turn and the odor became unmistakable.
Gas.
Victor stopped abruptly. “Gas leak,” he called as loudly as he could. “Get out.” He turned to grab Brooke but she had no time to slow and she plowed into him. The old lantern sailed out of his hand and arced through the air, smashing into the cement behind them.
They had only a split second.
He pulled on her arm and they ran farther up the tunnel as the gas ignited. The explosion ripped through the tunnel, illuminating everything in a blaze of white-hot fire that moved toward like them a hungry beast. Ahead was no shelter, no place to escape the fury that was almost upon them.
Except for one dark circle set into the floor.
He didn’t slow. They ran to the hole, leaping down into it as the heat began to scorch Victor’s skin.
He crushed her body to his, trying to pull her as far down into the space as he could, feeling the molten cloud of fire pass over them, with a deafening whoosh.
The sound vibrated through him like thunder.
And then it was quiet.
Brooke did not move in his arms.
He allowed himself to imagine it only for a moment.
What if those blue eyes did not open?
If the fire had burned away her life?
His hands began to tremble and he stroked her hair, which was now hot to the touch.
“Brooke,” he whispered. “Brooke.”
She took a slow, shuddering breath and he felt a flood of great joy that filled him completely. He held her for a long time, until she lifted her head and looked at him.
“Are we alive?” she whispered.
“As far as I can tell,” he whispered back, kissing the tip of her nose.
They struggled to their feet in what turned out to be a long cement chute, opening onto yet another tunnel. Brooke shook bits of cement from her hair. “My aunt?”
“I’m sure she’s fine. My brother will find her.” Victor pulled the flashlight from his pocket. The beam was faint, but it allowed him to make out the way ahead of them.
“I can see where Colda went. The dust is disturbed along this path. He’s trying to escape.”
“Or going after the painting.”
Victor pointed the beam back up the chute. “We can’t go back that way, so I guess we have no choice but to follow Colda.”
“Do you think we can catch him?”
“There’s still a chance.”
Her eyes were shadowed. “Victor, I don’t care about that painting. I just want to find
him so he can clear my father. Are you willing to help me do that?”
He looked at her, ready with a neutral comment or practical remark. His mind came up with something completely different. He wanted to tell her, to give voice to the incomprehensible feelings in his soul, which had started in the flooded room and come into full flower as he’d felt her breath on his neck, but he could not. “Let’s go,” he said, turning from the questioning look on her face.
* * *
They picked their way along, climbing over rocks, avoiding dangling wires. Brooke was completely disoriented. She had no idea if they were still under the university or if the tunnels had led them miles away. So many questions would remain unanswered if they didn’t prevent Colda’s escape. Part of her was afraid of the answers he might give.
What would happen to her and Tad if Colda did not clear her father’s name? Victor’s hand grasped hers as he guided her around an uneven pile of broken cement chunks. His touch drove the fears away, the memory of his sheltering embrace tugged at her.
He’ll be gone soon, Brooke. Just as soon as you get out of these horrible tunnels, he’ll walk out of your life.
She packed the thoughts away and focused on picking her way over the rocks. A sound from behind them caught her attention.
Victor heard it, too. They stopped and held the flashlight up. Their light was met with another as a figure moved closer through the darkness.
Denise’s face went from tentative to joyful when she saw Brooke. She wrapped her in a hug. “I thought the explosion might have…” She squeezed harder and Brooke hugged her back with abandon.
“Where were you?”
“Completely lost, I’m embarrassed to say,” Denise replied.
“How did you get down here?” Brooke managed.
“Victor’s brother fixed a rope for me.”
Brooke smiled.
“And he’s really mad that he can’t get his big shoulders through,” Stephanie said as she joined them.
Victor kissed his sister and squeezed her tight. “Stryker?”
“Paramedics are loading him now. Cops are figuring out how to get down here and help us.”
Brooke felt a surge of relief.
Stephanie surveyed the tunnel. “We’re still on Colda’s trail?”
