by Rebecca York
At first they saw the image of a leering clown. It was replaced by a video clip.
Wyatt saw a man staggering through a dark tunnel. Then lights flashed on, and Kate gasped.
“Oh God, it’s my father. He’s hurt.”
He was doubled over, holding his middle, and when he fell to the floor, Wyatt saw that the back of his shirt was bloody. As they watched, he tried to push himself up, then lay still unmoving.
“He’s dead,” the voice said. “And you could be, too. But I’m going to give you a fighting chance. You’ll just have to avoid the traps I’ve set up. And you even have an advantage—a partner. Wyatt Granger will join you for the grand tour of my masterpiece.” There was a pause, and Treeman said, “Too bad for him, he got tangled up with you. Did you think you were in danger, Kate? Did you hire Decorah Security?”
Before Kate could answer, Wyatt snapped, “Yes.”
She gave him a startled look, but he shook his head fractionally. When she realized he was warning her not to reveal how he’d found out about her, she pressed her lips together.
“Well, Decorah won’t do you any good,” Treeman went on. “His hotshot detective agency doesn’t even know where you are. You’ll have all the time you need to enjoy the fun house. Some of it’s like that stupid attraction at the Kaiser Karnival. But there are a lot of creative additions.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to give away any of my secrets. You’ll have to discover my genius as you go along, so to speak. You ought to appreciate that, Kate. You fancy yourself an artist, don’t you?”
She gave Wyatt a sick look. “Oh Lord, I’m so sorry. You came to help me, and now you’re trapped here with me.”
When he squeezed her hand, she looked startled.
“Remember, don’t say anything you don’t want him to hear,” he mouthed.
She answered with a small nod.
“Time to play,” Treeman said. “But I think it’s going to be more fun for me than for you.”
oOo
Decorah agent, Ben Walker, clicked on his cell phone and made a call to his Beltsville, Maryland, office.
“I’m at Kate Kingston’s workshop, but Kate and Wyatt are missing.”
“They’re not at the B&B?” Frank Decorah asked.
“I checked there first. Mrs. Babson, the owner, hasn’t seen them since this morning.” He swallowed hard, then said, “And there’s a funny smell in the air. It’s very faint, but I think it’s some kind of gas. My guess is that Treeman used something to knock them out, then dragged them out of here.”
“Shit. And we have no idea where he’s taken them?”
“I talked to Teddy. He didn’t come up with any leads.” Ben walked farther into the old warehouse, looking for anything that might help Decorah find where the perp had taken Wyatt and Kate.
“His laptop is gone, but it looks like he was scribbling some notes before the perp got them.
“What do they say?”
“Hard to tell. I think he was being deliberately vague. Something about a name reversal.”
“Maybe he figured out something Teddy didn’t.”
Ben nodded, wondering if the few cryptic words Wyatt had written could do them any good.
oOo
The door to the cell where they’d awakened swung open, like someone was standing behind it, pulling on the knob, but Wyatt was sure Treeman was nowhere near them. He wasn’t going to take a chance on getting assaulted, unless Wyatt forced the man out into the open.
Beyond the door was a dimly lit corridor. When Kate hung back, Wyatt gripped her hand.
“It’s going to be okay,” he murmured.
She gave him a sick look. “He already killed my father here. Why not us?”
“We’ll beat him,” he answered. He ached to add that he’d seen the two of them in the fun house in a dream, but he didn’t want to give anything away to the man who had planned this diabolical revenge.
“Get going,” the disembodied voice ordered. To emphasize the command, a blast of cold air hit them in the back, almost knocking Kate over. It was like someone had pelted them with ice cubes.
They were both shivering as they stepped into a corridor that was about four feet wide. It smelled like a garbage dump. From the dream, Wyatt had been prepared for the stench, but Kate gagged.
He leaned toward her. “Do what I tell you,” he whispered. “Even if it sounds like bad advice.”
Her head swung toward him, and he saw comprehension and hope bloom in her eyes. “You . . .”
“Yeah,” he answered. He’d seen most of it. He wished some if it wasn’t kind of fuzzy.
He studied the corridor in front of them, glad that what he was seeing looked pretty much like the nightmare. There were several paintings on the walls including a devil, a vampire, and a fanged snake. Somehow the most disturbing was the distorted clown face about eight feet ahead of them.
Kate followed his gaze. “That’s like the clown in the carnival fun house. You’d see it as soon as you entered. He’d blow a blast of air at you.”
“Thanks for the information,” Wyatt answered. He had started toward the clown when eerie music boomed out of hidden speakers. He stopped short, startled. He hadn’t heard the music in the dream. Why not? Maybe it simply hadn’t registered. Or perhaps some details were different.
Kate gripped his arm, and he gave her a reassuring look. “Follow my lead,” he whispered, hoping he wasn’t going to end up getting them both killed.
With no choice which way to go, he advanced on the clown. When he was almost even with the image, he ducked down, pulling Kate with him. They both avoided a tongue of fire that shot from the huge orange lips.
From somewhere above them, Treeman shouted, “Hey, what the hell?”
Wyatt ignored him and kept walking, along a wooden ramp where the floor slanted down. Near the end, the angle changed suddenly, and he let himself stumble over a loose board—maybe in imitation of the stairs at the old carnival attraction. Hoping he looked like he’d tripped over the obstacle, he executed a controlled tumble onto a hard cement floor, keeping himself from getting injured and keeping Kate off the floor by letting her fall on top of him.
She lay against his side, gripping his arm. He stayed where he was for a few moments, looking around, pretending to be hurt and disoriented. Ahead of them, the corridor went off in two different directions. In his dream, he knew that they had taken the right fork, and that they would come to a place where they’d have to get through a spinning wooden barrel that would knock them off their feet again.
He didn’t know what the left fork held, but he figured it was better to go with what he knew. Still, he pretended to be debating, as he brought his lips to Kate’s ears. “There’s a barrel ahead. Watch out because there are knives sticking out from the interior.”
She winced.
He turned back to the ramp where they’d fallen and tugged at the three-foot-long board that had been meant to trip him. It came up easily. He held it at his side as he headed down the right-hand corridor.
A grinding sound announced the presence of the barrel. It was turning slowly, and he pointed toward the knives sticking out at various points. Keeping Kate at his side he started through, pulling them past a set of knife points before they fell to the spinning surface.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m getting dizzy.”
“Yeah. But we have to make a run for it.” He gestured toward the end, where more blades poked out from between the staves. “You go on. I’ll block the knives.”
Kate glanced at him, then started forward. He slapped the board against a sharp point so that she could slither past. She made it out okay, but the blade nicked his arm as he went past.
They both landed on the floor, panting. When she saw the blood on his arm, she gasped.
“Are you okay?”
“It’s just a scratch,” he answered, giving himself a few moments to catch his breath.
She looked at the cut, making a small sound as she saw blood drip to the floor.
“We’ll take care of it when we get out of here,” he said.
“Get going,” Treeman called from another speaker above them.
Kate tipped her head up and gave him a murderous look. When she started to speak, Wyatt gripped her arm and shook his head.
She closed her eyes for a moment then nodded.
Wyatt hauled himself up, and Kate followed. He stared down the tunnel, trying to picture where they were. Ahead was a greased floor where you could fall and crack your head—or worse—if you were running.
“Slippery ahead,” he whispered as he put one hand on the wall and gripped Kate’s arm with the other.
They kept together. Still they both almost fell as they negotiated the slick patch. He looked down, noting the jagged pieces of glass on the floor.
She followed his gaze and winced.
They got through the grease and glass without getting cut, but Wyatt stopped short when he saw what was ahead.
In his dream, he’d stopped being able to see the fun house threats, and now he knew why—the view was obscured by smoke. It wasn’t like the smoke that had billowed up from the trash can outside Kate’s workshop. It was more like fog made from dry ice that you might see in a theater production. It wafted toward them, reaching out with cold, clammy fingers.
Wyatt brought his mouth to Kate’s ear again, hating that the dream had failed him. “I couldn’t see through the mist,” he whispered. “I don’t know what’s in there.”
She turned her head and answered, “We had something like this at the carnival. Things came at you in the smoke. But they were mostly long inflated balloons that were scary instead of dangerous. I’m betting whatever’s in here is more dangerous.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, wondering what kind of surprise Treeman had rigged up. He’d used knives before. He could do it again—or use something more creative.
“They were never lower than knee level. If we get down on the floor and belly crawl, maybe we can get through it.”
A noise behind them made Wyatt swing around to see that a solid door had dropped down in back of them.
“I guess we have to go forward,” he said aloud, silently cursing his lack of knowledge. But he knew how hard it was to move along on your belly like a snake. Unfortunately, they were going to have to do it. He hoped it wasn’t for too long.
“Don’t raise your head,” he told Kate as he got down flat on his stomach and slid forward into the mist. Behind him, Kate followed.
Wyatt kept inching forward, keeping low to the floor. He’d gotten a few feet into the tunnel when he heard a loud report and something sailed over his head, so low that he felt his hair part. Behind him Kate screamed.
“What was that?”
“A shot. He’s got guns—not balloons. Stay down,” he called, praying that would be enough to save them.
It was hard to slither along on the cold floor, but he kept moving, half his attention on Kate. He heard a shot go over her, but not quite so low.
“Okay?” he called out, his breath frozen in his lungs until he heard her say,
“Yes.”
“Stay down,” he whispered.
If the guns were in fixed positions, they might have a chance. If Treeman could adjust the aim, it was only a matter of time before the bastard shot one of them—then the other.
Chapter Twelve
Wyatt kept his face and body to the floor, scraping his cheek on the rough cement as he inched forward. He moved slowly so that Kate could keep up with him. Or was that the best way to do it?
Did they have a better chance if they put some space between them?
More shots rang out. Some were higher, but some came perilously close to his head and shoulders.
Finally he saw that he was coming to the end of the smoke. He picked up his pace, plunging into a wider space, then wormed his way around to see Kate sliding toward him. When she reached the end of the tunnel, she started to get up. He pulled her down just as a blast of shots rang out—bullets that would have killed them if they’d stood.
He eased Kate to the side of the corridor, wanting to take her in his arms but knowing that would be dangerous. All he could do was reach for her hand and squeeze hard.
“You did good,” he whispered.
“How much more of this?”
“I wish I knew.” He looked back the way they’d come. “I don’t think he could see us in there.”
He lifted his arm, waving it in the air. There were no shots but Wyatt was sure it wasn’t a good idea to stand or even sit.
Could they rest here after the ordeal? The answer came as a roaring sound from the other end of the tunnel. He looked up to see a wall of dark water racing toward them down the tunnel.
Kate gasped as she stared at it in horror, then gasped again as the force of the flood hit them.
Wyatt was pulled under, and he struggled to get his head above water as the sudden flood knocked him and Kate against one wall and then the other.
As it ebbed, it dragged them back into the smoky tunnel, where more shots rang out, the bullets whizzing too close for comfort.
As more water poured in, buffeting Wyatt and Kate, he scrabbled to keep them both from being pushed farther back. Wrapping her in a tight embrace with one arm, he kept the other hand against the wall. When his fingers hit against a projection sticking out, he grabbed it. As the water subsided, a panel swung outward, and suddenly he was staring into another narrow tunnel. Was it part of the torture chamber? Or was it an access door Treeman had put here because he knew this would be the end of the line for anyone who had taken this route through the fun house?
Making a split second decision, Wyatt darted back the way he’d come, closing the access door as he lay still in the eddying water.
“Don’t move,” he whispered to Kate.
She lay on her side, one fist under her cheek to keep her nose above the water. When Wyatt heard footsteps, he did the same, lying with his breath shallow and his eyes slitted. He was thinking that if Treeman was coming in here, he would have turned off the automatic firing system. At least Wyatt prayed that was true.
A pair of legs clad in gray slacks stepped into the watery passageway.
Wyatt waited—waited—his heart thudding as he strove for the right moment.
Treeman approached, coming to a stop close to Wyatt, a pistol in his hand.
Wyatt whipped out a foot, catching the killer in the legs.
Treeman screamed. He must have had his finger inside the trigger guard of the weapon, because he fired off several shots while he wavered on his feet in the slippery corridor.
As the man went down, Kate sprang up, landing on his back and pummeling him as she pushed him into the water. Between them, they wrestled him onto his stomach.
Wyatt shoved the killer’s face below the surface, holding his head while Kate straddled his body, clamping his arms at his sides with her knees. When he thrashed, she rose up, then came down hard, knocking the wind out of him.
He tried to roll to his side, but between the two of them, they kept him pinned in his own watery trap. The struggle seemed to last for an eternity, but finally the man who had tried to kill them went still. Kate breathed out a sigh of relief, but Wyatt warned her,
“He could be playing possum. Stay where you are.”
Just then a crashing noise made his heart leap into his throat. Was the fun house serving up one last threat? He tensed, ready for trouble. Instead, a familiar voice rang out,
“Wyatt? Kate? Are you there?”
He recognized Ben Walker and knew that someone at Decorah had deciphered the notes he’d left in the workshop.
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
“Basically. But I don’t know how to tell you where we are—except somewhere in this damn maze.”
“Where’s Treeman?”
“Here. He figured we were dead. Or he was going to finish u
s off. We turned the tables on him.”
“Keep talking. I’ll find you.”
“Watch out. Don’t go into the fun house tunnels. They’re full of traps that could kill you.”
“I’m in what looks like an access corridor.”
“Stay in it,” Wyatt said.
Long moments passed. Cautiously Wyatt let go of Treeman, ready to grab him again if he came back from the dead like a monster in a horror movie, but the killer stayed where he was—unmoving.
A flashlight beam cut through the darkness of the tunnel to his left.
“We’re about twenty feet further on,” Wyatt called out. “Through the access door.”
He scooted toward the light. Kate followed, and they pushed into the second tunnel.
The beam played over them.
“You look like drowned otters. Are you okay?” Ben asked.
“Yes.”
“Wyatt’s cut,” Kate corrected.
“It’s not bad. Kate, this is Ben Walker, one of the other Decorah agents. Ben, this is Kate Kingston.”
They both murmured a greeting.
“I guess you read my notes?” Wyatt said.
“Teddy duplicated your name-reversal research. I would have gotten here faster if you’d told him what you found out about Treeman’s location.”
“I was planning to. The bastard gassed us in Kate’s workshop before I could send a message.” Wyatt pushed himself up and reached for Kate’s hand.
When she was on her feet, he pulled her close, holding her for a moment.
“I want to get out of here,” she whispered.
“Yeah.” He turned to Ben, “You know where to find the closest exit?”
“Uh huh.”
They hurried down the narrow corridor, around a corner, and into a media room set up with an array of video cameras that showed various locations in the building. One view was of the cell where they’d woken up. Another showed the barrel that turned under your feet. And taped to the wall were screen shots showing Kate and Wyatt scrambling through the traps in several locations.
“Nice,” Wyatt muttered as he took them in.
“For his photo album?” Kate muttered.
