by Julie Miller
“You creep,” she said. She obviously held a better light source as the room was brighter than it had been. “How could you, and with her of all people!”
The responding male voice sounded young, too. “Don’t be like that, Tabby,” he said and his voice cracked. Chance felt Lily jerk as she heard it, too. “Come here, come on, kiss me.”
“Don’t call me Tabby. I’m not a freaking cat.”
“No, you’re just a freaking freak!”
The unmistakable sound of a slap was followed by a mumbled oath and then hurried footsteps as one of them ran up the stairs. It must have been Tabitha because the boy swore again and raced after her.
“That was Todd,” Lily whispered.
“The plot thickens,” Chance responded.
* * *
LILY SHONE THE little flashlight around the room they entered. A big furnace that looked as though it hadn’t warmed so much as a mouse in decades squatted in one corner. What appeared to be a workbench ran along another wall, its sole adornment an inexpensive-looking CD player and a few empty beer bottles. Tucked in a corner, they found a cot topped with a couple of rumpled blankets and a pillow. Another closed door finished off the decor and Chance opened that to reveal a small stack of used bricks, a broom and a spool of some kind of wire. Shelves on the back wall were surprisingly cluttered with odds and ends.
“This must have been the maintenance room,” Chance said.
“Now a teenage love nest,” Lily said. “Is that why Betsy trailed Tabitha, because she either knew or was suspicious about a relationship her boyfriend had with Tabitha?”
“Why else?” Chance said.
“Her brother...”
“Died months and months ago at the hand of a mysterious man who confessed his guilt. Maybe Betsy feels as though Tabitha has already taken too much from her.”
Lily nodded as she turned the light back into the room and focused on the cot. On the wall behind it, someone had carved initials. T.S. and W.C. and encircled it with a heart. A black line had been drawn to cross it out. Tabitha Stevens and Wallace Connor? Maybe. Lily hoped Wallace’s parents never saw this tawdry place. There was another heart next to it that appeared to have been created using the same black ink as the line that crossed out the first heart. This time the initials T.S. and J.B. were crudely drawn.
Was this like a trophy bed for Tabitha? It seemed strange a girl would do something like this and yet there was no doubting that Tabitha was a young woman with an attitude and an appetite.
A glimpse of pale lace caught Lily’s attention and she took a few steps to get closer. What was that crunching sound? As she looked down at the floor, she heard footsteps and instantly turned off the flashlight, grabbed Chance’s arm and pushed him into the closet, closing the door quietly behind them,
He apparently hadn’t heard the footsteps and started to speak, but she put a finger where she assumed his mouth was to hush him. His lips were soft, his breath warm and she was distracted for a second until a band of light streamed through the gap under the closet door. Todd swore under his breath. “First she hits me and then she sends me on an errand,” he mumbled. “Where is that thing? Oh.” The door slammed a second later and the closet once again plunged into darkness.
“Tabitha left her shawl on the bed,” Lily whispered. She started to move and tripped on the spool of wire. Afraid a crash would bring Todd running back, she grabbed the shelves for support. To her surprise, the whole wall kind of rocked beneath her hand. “Chance?” she whispered.
“I’m right here.”
“The back wall moves.”
“You mean the shelves are wobbly?”
“No, the whole thing feels like it could rotate or something.” She turned on the flashlight whose beam was visibly weaker than it had been.
Chance put his hands on the shelves and wiggled them. They could both see and feel movement. He took the light from Lily and shined it on the unit. “You know, these shelves don’t look as old as the church. And they’re screwed in instead of nailed. Someone retrofitted this unit.”
Lily tugged on one of the cans. “It’s stuck,” she said.
Chance gripped another and when it refused to budge, another. “They’re all stuck. That’s too big a coincidence. They must have been glued in place.”
“Chance, maybe these shelves are really a secret door. In the movies there’s always a candlestick or a book that acts as a lever.”
They both immediately started pulling on various items. Chance hit the jackpot a few moments later when he touched a red vinyl binder with “maintenance schedule” written on the spine. He tilted it toward himself, and they could both see the hinge at the base of the binder that activated a mechanism. The shelving unit twisted silently in the middle creating space on either side.
“Well, I’ll be,” Chance said.
Lily shined her flashlight around. The floor and walls were all made of dirt reinforced with lumber. Best of all, a lantern hung on a hook to the left. As Chance lifted it free and switched it on, Lily turned off her flashlight.
“It’s a tunnel,” she said.
“It’s a scary-looking thing,” Chance added. “That wood looks like it’s one day away from collapsing under the weight of all that dirt above it.” Ground water had also seeped from the earth. The place had a forbidding, dank appearance and feel.
“Do you think Tabitha or Todd know about this?”
He shined the lantern light on the ground. “I can see a few footprints dried in the mud. Hard to tell when they were made,” he said. “There’s no way to know for sure, but I’d wager they don’t have the slightest idea this is here. Let’s take a look.” He touched a more obvious lever next to the hook that had held the lantern and the door swung closed without a squeak.
It was only wide enough to walk single file. Chance led the way. Lily followed along, but as the tunnel kept going and going, she began to get anxious. The oppressive smell of the earth along with the occasional previous collapses jarred already frazzled nerves. But more important than that, how was investigating this tunnel helping them find Charlie?
They finally came to a wide spot of sorts. A metal trunk sat against the wooden support and Lily stopped walking. “Look at that,” she said. “What’s it doing here?”
“Someone had to bring it for some reason,” Chance said and then chuckled. “Do I sound like Captain Obvious?”
She smiled. “It’s not very big, but I have to sit down for a minute or two and it’ll do.” The day had held so many levels of stress that it seemed to have lasted forever. The trunk provided an adequate perch. Chance set the lantern on the floor and sat beside her. Lily leaned her head against his shoulder and peered up ahead where the tunnel stretched on into darkness. The silence felt tangible and when she spoke again, her voice sounded too loud. “Tell me about going to see Jeremy. And you still haven’t explained why you asked about McCord.”
She listened as Chance related how he’d barged into Jeremy’s house as though determined to find the woman who’d played him for a chump. He hemmed and hawed for a few minutes as he obviously tried to figure out if he should be candid and she assured him the time for dissembling was way over.
“You’re right,” he said. He took her hand and rubbed her knuckles with his thumb. “He told me to drug you.”
“Drug me? With what?”
“Just a second, I think I still have—” he began as he patted his coat pockets and then added, “Yeah. Here they are. These look familiar?
“My old prescription for barbiturates,” she said, recognizing the label.
“The plan was I give you the pills and take Charlie.”
“He wanted you to kill me,” she said bluntly.
“Yes. If I were you I’d get rid of those.”
“No kidding,” she said as she
shoved the bottle in her own pocket. “Well, Jeremy wanting me out of the way so I won’t talk is nothing new. Why in the world won’t he just divorce me? Pride? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe you’re an heiress and don’t know it.”
She laughed. It wasn’t something she’d done a lot of lately and it felt kind of good. “No, that’s not it. But he is getting awfully reckless sending a man he just met to do his dirty work.”
“That’s what’s been bothering me,” Chance said. “And why I asked about McCord. I’m wondering if he sent McCord up here right after Charlie was taken. Maybe McCord reported back that he’d seen Charlie. I don’t know, but that might have caused Block to leap at the chance of sending a hothead like he thinks I am to take care of you. Then McCord takes care of me and whisks Charlie back to Boise. The people at White Cliff can’t complain to anyone because they’re the kidnappers and Block sends Charlie overseas to boarding school.”
“Is that his plan? Did he say that?”
“Yes.”
“That jerk.”
“For all we know, McCord already found Charlie and we’re being set up. I murder you, McCord murders me. But if we live through all of this, I can testify what he wanted me to do to you. You can bring charges and get rid of him for good.”
Like it was that easy, Lily thought to herself with little hope she and Charlie would ever be free of Jeremy’s manipulations. “If McCord is here somewhere, he has to realize by now that you haven’t killed me and maybe he reported that back to Jeremy.”
“I suddenly feel like I have a target on my back,” Chance said.
“Welcome to my life,” Lily murmured.
“You should realize we’re undoubtedly locked outside the gate by now,” he added.
“I didn’t think of that,” Lily said as she noticed a brass lock attached to the trunk’s hasp. “I wonder what someone is hiding in here,” she mused aloud.
“I’ll bring my gun next time and shoot off the lock,” he said.
“And bring all that ground up above us down here? No thanks.” She peered up the tunnel again, then at Chance. The thought of going back to that drab apartment to wait until morning was just too much to bear and that was if they could even get through the gate. “Maybe it’s time to call it a night,” she murmured.
“I’d like to know where this leads.”
“I know, me, too. But how does that help Charlie?”
“I’m not sure, Lily. But how do we know it doesn’t?”
She was quiet for a minute or two before adding, “We could come back sometime after Charlie is safe.”
“That’s true.” They sat contemplating their own private thoughts until Chance stood up and pulled Lily to her feet. “If you want to go back, we’ll go back.”
She wasn’t sure what to do. What was right and what was wrong? She looked into the dark and then up at Chance. “Let’s give it a little longer,” she said.
“Okay.”
Twenty minutes later, the floor of the tunnel started an incline and Lily began to hope they were close to the end. When the light finally glinted off a solid surface ahead, she felt like yipping with joy.
The lever was the same as the one at the church end of the tunnel, a simple handle built into the wall beside a hook on which to hang the lantern.
“What if this opens directly into somebody’s house?” she asked as she caught Chance’s hand.
“That seems unlikely to me,” he said. “This tunnel is at least three miles long, maybe more, which means a lot of earth was moved when it was constructed. I’d wager someone used mining tools to build it. But even if it does lead into a house, it’s pretty late now and whoever owns it is probably asleep. We’ll just get a feel for where we are and leave, okay?”
She nodded and held her breath as the door swung open just as the other had. The space that appeared was cluttered with boxes stacked atop each other. Chance immediately started investigating the boxes and Lily noticed a path existed from the double metal doors at one end to the entrance to the tunnel. The building sported a domed roof and the air felt cold and dank. She could see no windows. The door on this side also consisted of shelves and they held yet more boxes with lettering she couldn’t make out as Chance had taken the lantern with him.
She looked back into the tunnel, dreading the return trip underground, and that was when the light from the distant lantern reflected off a metallic surface. She felt around until she found a cylinder of some kind hanging from a hook right inside the door. Pulling it into the light, she found herself looking at a red-and-white soup can that rattled when touched. It turned out to have a false lid that she pried off with her fingernails. She dumped a key tied to a ribbon connected to a small medallion into the palm of her hand. She put the lid back on the can and replaced it.
Chance spoke from over her shoulder. “What’s that?”
“A key I found in that phony soup can right inside the tunnel entrance,” she said. “It’s kind of small. Suppose it goes to that trunk?”
“It might.”
She handed it to him. “You take it. What did you find in the boxes?”
“They all seem to contain the same thing: food, canned or freeze-dried. The shelves are stacked with boxes of MREs.”
“Military food?” she asked.
“Yeah. Meals Ready to Eat. Last forever. I think I know where we are. Come with me.”
“Let’s close this door, first, just in case.” They spent several minutes looking for the lever that opened and closed this door from the outside. Chance finally came across it when he tried to lift a heavy box from the shelf. The effort triggered the mechanism and the door closed soundlessly. They left the lantern right outside the tunnel and then carefully picked their way across the pitch-black room. Chance finally slid what sounded like a metal bar. The door opened and night air, moist and fresh, greeted their faces.
Lily could see very little as it was quite dark, but here and there a light glowed through a window in the distance. “Where are we?” she asked.
“White Cliff. I asked Maria about these bunkers earlier today. She said they’d been built way back at the beginning of things and were now used to store stuff.” He took Lily’s hands. “I’m going to see that you get to your place safely, then I’m coming back here. I’ll take the tunnel to Greenville and tomorrow I’ll drive the truck up here. By then you’ll have had a chance to make sure Charlie isn’t at the school. Together we can go see Maria.”
“I told them you were staying in my apartment. Won’t they think it’s odd when you’re not there?”
“That can’t be helped. I can’t leave my truck all night at the diner and risk it gets towed. You’ll have to tell them you changed your mind about having me stay with you. Tell them I dropped you off at the gate and you walked home alone.”
“Okay, that should work. Where will you sleep?”
“In the truck. Don’t worry about me.”
They closed the door behind them and Chance took her arm. “Hopefully no one will notice us,” he added as they carefully picked their way along the muddy path toward Jefferson Park. They didn’t risk so much as Lily’s little flashlight.
“Whose house is that?” Lily asked as they passed pretty close to the big white house at the hub of the community’s wheel.
“The head honcho, Robert Brighton and I guess his wife, Maria’s sister. Maria lives there, too, in the back with her boys.” They paused in the shadows near the fountain, avoiding the solar powered spotlight directed on the three figures. “I don’t know where your apartment is,” he said. There wasn’t a soul around.
“It’s a block or two from the park, right in the middle of the town where they can keep an eye on me.”
Eventually they got to her apartment. He leaned down and kissed her and her heart pounded. She’d
been attracted to him since the first time she laid eyes on him. She’d been new to the ranch and standing outside with Charlie when Chance rode his horse into the ranch yard. There’d been snow on the ground and the air was cold so that both man and beast exuded clouds of vapor. Charlie had trembled at the sight—he’d never seen a horse before. Chance had gotten off his ride, stared into Lily’s eyes and smiled, then he’d swung Charlie into his arms. She’d been about to protest this stranger manhandling her boy, but Charlie had grinned ear to ear and when, after Charlie agreed, they rode off with Charlie sitting in the saddle in front of Chance, her quiet, cautious child had actually squealed with delight.
Chance had captured her attention at that moment and she’d had to struggle with herself to keep from jumping out of the Jeremy Block frying pan and into the Chance Hastings spa ever since. Neither place offered protection or safety. One was just a hell of a lot nicer place to spend your time.
Her head seemed to spin and for one blinding moment she glimpsed herself as an outsider might. A slightly built woman kissing a tall man, comforted by his strength and power, trusting his plans.
What was she doing? Indulging him in some pointless quest while her son was held prisoner, while her husband plotted to kill her and banish their boy to a nameless, faceless school? Charlie would wither and die off by himself like that. He had one person to champion for him and somehow she’d allowed herself to do it so poorly that now she was as good as bound and gagged.
So much of life had been terrifying for so long. She had to fight the weakness that coaxed her back for an encore performance of the old Lily. The meek her, the one who leaned on broader shoulders.
“This is our first date,” he whispered against her cheek.
