by Jessica Beck
“Just be careful,” she said, and then she started coughing again.
“You know it. Don’t worry; I’ll be back before you know it.”
I opened the lodge door, felt the wave of heat and smoke hit me like a closed fist, and then I got as low as I could manage and crawled forward.
If Jake was still in there, I was going to find him.
Or die trying.
Chapter 24
The fire was a living, breathing thing now. It felt as though it was reaching out to me, trying to knock me out, but I wasn’t going to let it win. Crawling carefully now, I made my way forward, inching my way closer to the flames when every fiber of my being was shouting at me to go the other way. How did firefighters do it? I was finally even with the door that led to the storm shelter, and I let my hand rest on it for one second. There was a bookcase leaning against it, but I managed to prop it up enough to get to the door, though its base was still precariously poised, ready to fall at any moment.
To my surprise, the door was cool to the touch.
That had to mean that the flames hadn’t reached there yet.
Opening it slightly, I peered inside into the darkness, but I couldn’t see a thing down there.
I could hear something, though, a sound that was heavenly to my ears.
“Suzanne,” a voice called out in a soft whisper. “Is that you?”
“Hang on, Jake. I’m coming,” I said, and I started down the steps toward him.
I was nearly there when the door slammed shut behind me. Evidently the bookcase had shifted again. There was no doubt in my mind that it was blocking the door, but that wasn’t my problem at the moment.
Jake and I might be cut off from the fire for the moment, and I had no idea what other nightmares we’d face before the night was over, but we were together at last, and that was the only one thing that really mattered.
Whatever was in store for us, at least we’d face it together.
Chapter 25
I felt the water on my legs before I got to him. “Jake? Are you okay?”
“I’m just dandy,” I heard him say a foot farther down the stairs.
I splashed down and found him clinging to the handrail. The water was picking up, and I could feel the current moving against me as I struggled to reach him. “What happened?”
“I heard a noise down here, so I decided to investigate. As I leaned forward at the doorway, somebody pushed me and shut the door behind me. I must have hit my head on something, because when I woke up, I heard you calling my name.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “Whoever did it must have taken my gun while I was out cold.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I took his head in my hands.
“Why? Are you the one who shoved me?” he asked with a hint of laughter in his voice.
“Of course not. I’m just sorry that I wasn’t here for you.”
“You’re here now,” he said, and then he paused for a moment. “Is that smoke I smell?”
“The lodge is burning down all around us,” I said calmly.
“Ha ha, very funny,” Jake said, and then he stopped a moment before speaking again. “Hang on. You’re not kidding, are you?”
“I’m deadly serious,” I said. “At least the flames haven’t gotten down here yet.”
“Maybe not, but we’re still in trouble.”
“Don’t you worry. We’ll find a way to get through this,” I said. “Can you stand up?”
I felt him try, but he slumped back down a moment after nearly making it. “I need a minute.”
“Take all the time you need,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
“Suzanne, we don’t have that long until we’re both going to be in serious trouble. The water level is rising at an alarming rate,” Jake reported matter-of-factly. “It’s coming up fast now that the main room below us has been flooded.”
“I know; I can feel it moving against my legs,” I replied, not getting the significance of it.
“The ceiling’s sloped here, so it won’t be long now until this entire space is under water,” he said. “I’ve got to find a way to get up those stairs.”
“Put your arm around me. I can help you do it.”
Somehow we made it to the top, but as I pushed against the door, it wouldn’t budge. That bookcase was wedged in so tightly that I wasn’t sure it would ever move, at least until it burned with the rest of the lodge above us.
“Surely the water will leak around the door enough to save us,” I said.
“Not at a rate fast enough to do us any good. If the water doesn’t get us, then the fire surely will.” He sounded almost tranquil about the situation, as though he’d already accepted our fate.
“I’m not giving up yet,” I said. “Are you okay standing up on your own? If you can lean against the wall for a second, I want to try something. If I shove hard enough, I might be able to get that door open after all.”
“Hang on. I’ll give you a hand,” he said.
“You need to stay right where you are,” I cautioned him, but he managed to work himself toward the door after all.
“If we go down, we’ll do it together,” he said.
Working together, we put all of our combined force behind one last push that I hoped would free us, even though it meant that it would send us out directly into the roaring fire.
It wouldn’t budge, though. Despite our best efforts, we were trapped.
“This is my all fault, Jake,” I said sadly as I slumped with my back against the jammed door.
“How can you possibly take the blame for what’s happening to us?” he asked.
“I don’t mean being down here, I’m talking about being trapped. A bookcase was wedged against the door when I found you, and I didn’t move it far enough away when I slipped inside. It must have shifted again when I struggled in, and it ended up trapping us.” I was crying now as I spoke, but I barely noticed the tears.
“Suzanne, you found me. That’s all that counts.” A minuscule amount of light was coming in from the door frame, and I could just barely make out Jake’s face in the faded illumination. I saw him smile a little, and then he said, “Let’s try it again and see if we can move it together.”
As hard as we tried, though, as much as we struggled to open that door, in the end, we both realized that we just couldn’t do it.
It seemed to be that, despite our best efforts, we were both going to die tonight.
“Well, it appears that we’re not going anywhere,” Jake said with calm resolution. “What should we do in the meantime?” he asked as he joined me as I leaned my back against the door.
“We could spend our time trying to figure out who the real killer is,” I suggested.
“Seriously, Suzanne? That’s how you want to spend your last moments on earth?”
“Solving a murder with the man I love sounds like the perfect way to go out to me,” I answered him, and as I said it, I realized that it was true.
“Then by all means, let’s see what we’ve got. Why don’t you go first?”
“Well, I’m afraid to admit that this time I don’t have nearly as much as I’d like to have.”
“You might be surprised how your information might fit in with mine,” Jake said. “Besides, what else do we have to do?” I could see his grin again in the sliver of dancing yellow-and-red light still coming through the door, and I was truly happy that we’d found each other and had fallen in love, even if our time left together was going to be limited to minutes instead of decades.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s start with what we all just found out this evening. Vince told me the same story earlier that he told you all in the lobby, and I believe him. He might not be a very nice man, but I don’t think he’s a murderer.”
“Neither do I,” Jake said. “He basically implicated himself in a land-fraud scheme, but he convinced me that he didn’t have enough reason to kill Chester.”
“Well, we know that Kevin didn’t do it, either. He showe
d us all that bill with Chester’s signature on it, so as far as I’m concerned, he’s in the clear, too.”
“Agreed,” Jake said. “If it’s any consolation, I’m starting to feel a little better, maybe even a little stronger.”
“That’s good,” I said, but I still didn’t harbor any hope that he’d recover in time to make a difference in our situation. I wasn’t sure how hard a blow to the head he’d taken in his fall, but I wasn’t at all confident that he’d be able to bounce back from being concussed that quickly. “Anyway, that’s all that I know. What have you got?”
“I was going to tell you in the morning, but here goes. Nathan is in the clear as well. He was booking a cruise with his travel agent at the moment Chester was murdered.”
“Who still uses a travel agent?” I asked.
“It’s a good thing for Nathan that he did, because he had a time-and-date-stamped receipt with him here. He was going to surprise Maggie, only the surprise was on her.”
“Is that why he was holding his wallet when he walked out of your interview? I wondered about that.”
Jake smiled gently at me. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“Sometimes it feels as though I don’t catch anything worthwhile at all.”
“Suzanne, you are much too hard on yourself.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me. I suppose that means that Maggie is the only name left on our list,” I said.
“She didn’t do it, either,” Jake said.
“How do you know that?”
“She wasn’t even in town when it happened. Maggie gave Chester an ultimatum. She told him to skip his party and go to Charlotte to their favorite hotel to meet her, or she would never speak to him again.”
“But he’d already broken up with her,” I said as I moved closer. The water was freezing, and I felt the chill racing through me as it climbed higher and higher up my body.
“She thought he was bluffing, but when he didn’t show up, she knew that he was truly through with her. She raced back to April Springs to confront him, and she got a speeding ticket along the way. It gave her a solid alibi, so we have to take her name off the list.”
“If she had an alibi, why didn’t she give it to you before?”
“Suzanne, she didn’t want to have to explain to Nathan what she’d been up to. She knew she would be cleared if it came down to it, so she decided to sit on the information until she really needed it, which she finally shared with me.”
“I saw her tucking something into her purse when she walked out of the dining room after your interrogation. It looked like a parking ticket to me.”
“Close enough,” Jake said. “It gives her an irrefutable alibi.”
“So, that just leaves Shelly,” I said.
“That’s my guess as well,” Jake replied.
“How did she ever think that she could just make up an alibi and get away with it?”
“I don’t think she’s been planning very far beyond just not getting caught immediately. When I started checking her story out on the phone, I couldn’t get confirmation of it from anyone, including the one member of her staff that I managed to speak with. Don’t you think that it was kind of convenient for her that she sent them away before we all got here? There was no way that I could interrogate any of them if they weren’t at the lodge.”
“But she didn’t know we were coming until after she sent them all away,” I pointed out.
“It didn’t matter if you and your gang of suspects were headed this way or not. I’d already made arrangements to visit here on my own so I could interview them all in person. I’m sure that your plan to host the other suspects here was just wonderful luck for her.”
“How do you read it that way?”
Jake shivered a little, and I held him closer. “Suzanne, she knew that I was breathing down her neck, so she had three choices: she could run, she could try to get rid of me before I told anyone else about my suspicions, or she could offer me a scapegoat. The only thing that she wasn’t counting on was the weather locking us all here. I’m guessing that she’s used that as well by starting the fire.”
“She burned down her own lodge?” I asked, more shocked by the implication than I was at the prospect of her being a cold-blooded killer.
“You heard her say it herself. With the flood, she knew that she was finished, and I can easily see her starting the fire for the insurance payout, as well as the prospect of getting rid of me in the bargain. That money, along with whatever Chester left her, might have just been enough for a fresh start somewhere else.”
“If all that is true, then why did she volunteer to help me look for you?” I asked him, still having a hard time accepting the fact that this woman had been so cavalier with everyone else’s lives.
Jake breathed in deeply, and then he replied, “My guess is that she just wanted to make sure that I was really dead. If the fall didn’t kill me, she was probably going to shoot me with my own gun.”
“So, that’s that. We figured it all out, but not before it could do us any good.”
“At least we’ve got that much,” Jake said.
“We have more than that,” I said. “We have each other, and that’s really all that matters to me.”
“Right back at you,” he said, and then he kissed me.
I couldn’t say with any level of certainty if it actually raised my temperature or not, but it did do a world of good for my spirits. It felt wonderful knowing that together, we made a formidable team, even if we were close to the end.
If I had to go, I wanted it to be like this, with Jake beside me.
Chapter 26
“Now that we’ve got that settled, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Jake said as we leaned our backs against the jammed door. The water was up to our waists now and increasing at an impressive rate. Some water was probably leaking out around the door’s edges, but Jake had been right. It wouldn’t be enough to save us. If I had to guess, I’d say that we literally had just a few minutes left to live.
“Now’s the time to ask, then,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. This might be the end of me, but I was not going to let it define my last moments. I’d taken life head on at every opportunity in my past, and if I were meant to die tonight, then at least I’d face it on my own terms.
“Hang on. It’s here somewhere,” he said as I watched him pat his pockets, obviously searching for something.
“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere,” I answered. Gallows humor seemed to be my go-to position in my final minutes of life.
“Here it is,” he said as he retrieved something from the front pocket of his jeans. “Suzanne, I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. I love you. When I lost my wife and the baby she was carrying, I never thought that I’d be able to love again, but you’ve shown me that my life wasn’t over, and for that, I’ll be eternally grateful to you.”
“Jake, what are you saying?”
“Something that I should have said months ago.” He started to go down on one knee, but with the rising water, it was nearly impossible. Still, I had to give him points for trying. “Suzanne, will you marry me?”
I couldn’t believe it. Jake’s timing was impeccable, but there was no doubt in my mind that the proposal was sincere. “You’re not just asking me because it looks as though we’re about to die, are you?”
“Honestly, I was going to ask you anyway,” he said. “Why do you think I brought the ring with me up here? I don’t mean to rush you, but the water’s forcing my hand. What do you say?”
“I would be honored,” I said, crying again as he slipped the ring onto my finger. It felt right there, as though my hand had been incomplete without it before. I didn’t worry about Jake’s past sorrows or even my bad marriage to Max. All I could think about what that this man loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, even if it could be measured by the sweeping second hand of a clock.
“Yes. Of course
I’ll marry you,” I said.
I kissed him, but he broke it off quickly.
“What’s wrong?”
“Not a thing in the world,” he said with new enthusiasm. “Now that you’ve said yes, I’ve got a brand new reason to get us both out of here alive before you can change your mind.”
“It’s not happening, mister. You’re stuck with me now, forever and always.”
“How about we see if we can stretch that out a little then, shall we?” he asked as he began attacking the door with renewed vigor.
Chapter 27
Whether it was the added water pressure against the door or the fact that Jake and I now had something new to live for, I was amazed and delighted when the door finally started to budge under our dual efforts. Once it was open a touch, the force of the water shoved it the rest of the way open, sending us both to the floor of the lodge in a mass of water.
Our troubles weren’t over yet, though.
We were out of the flood, but now we were directly in the heart of the fire.
Chapter 28
“Stay low,” Jake said, “and crawl toward the back door.”
“I can’t see,” I said as the smoke continued to blind me. Where was the exit, and how were we supposed to find it?
“I’ll go first. Grab my ankle.”
“Got it,” I said, and then we didn’t speak again. We both needed to save our breath for the arduous journey, even if it was just a matter of feet.
It felt to me as though it took an hour, but I knew that we were only in that inferno for a scant minute before we tumbled out through the back door.
Jake had somehow managed to find our way out.
We were free of both the flood and the fire.
Now it was time to rectify things with Shelly Graham.
Chapter 29
“Where is everybody?” I asked as I looked around us. The clearing was empty, and I wondered where Grace and the others had all gone. It had finally stopped raining, but the temperature had plummeted, and I felt myself shivering uncontrollably in the cold.
