The stairs opened onto a storage room. For a basement in the Midwest, it felt small—too small. Could it be because the house was built so long ago? Or were the rumors right? Were there secret rooms and a tunnel hidden somewhere down here?
Slowly, he swung his flashlight from one side of the basement to the other, covering every nook and cranny. He slid it over the tower of boxes, the line of crates and chests, and the table with its household tools. His actions intent on allowing her a moment to collect her defenses against her fear.
“You could wait upstairs if this is too much for you.”
“Like I said before, I’d rather be with you. Staying in an empty old house by myself will feel…”
“…claustrophobic?”
She gave a nervous laugh. “I was going to say creepy, but yes, a little claustrophobic, too.”
“When did you first start feeling this way?” Please don’t let her say when he locked her in the cell. “Or have you always been afraid of small spaces?”
“About nine months ago. I’d gone to a teaching conference with some of my fellow teachers. We had four people staying in one room. All they talked about was teaching or their families.” A soft sigh escaped her. “Which usually didn’t bother me, but after five days of enforced camaraderie and boring workshops packed with people, I felt suffocated.”
“Did it get better after you left the conference?” he asked as he moved his beam back through the dark room, slowly searching each section of wall for an opening.
“I felt better once I got home. But the next week, when school started, I realized my classroom felt the same. Cramped, crowded, suffocating.”
“What did you do?”
“First I opened the windows. That worked well, until the weather turned too cool. I tried to have the door open, which my boss insisted remain closed. Finally, I decided I needed some psychiatric help.”
“You went to a shrink?”
She peeked over his shoulder. “A psychologist. You make it sound like I went to see a voodoo priestess. It wasn’t that bad. She helped me talk about things—my life, raising my sisters, putting my dreams on hold—and that’s when I realized teaching was the root of the whole problem.”
The flashlight beam stopped on one panel of the wall as he turned to look at her. “Teaching was making you claustrophobic?”
She stepped down beside him on the concrete floor. “Apparently, now that my sisters are all grown and I no longer need to support them, my subconscious is rebelling over being stuck in a classroom. She also suspected the claustrophobia stemmed from my resentment over all the years I’ve worked as a teacher, putting my life on hold.”
Grudgingly, he nodded. “Makes perfect sense. Is that when you decided to become a PI?”
“Yep. I thought being out of the classroom, dealing with different cases and people each day, and having some adventure would cure me. When I got my PI license and quit my job, I felt much better. When I left Cinci, I’d pretty much convinced myself I had it licked. That was before you threw me into a jail cell.”
Her words, a soft censure of his actions, cut his pride to the quick. Guilt washed over him. Lowering his light a little, he stared down at her. “I’m sorry about that. It was a knee-jerk reaction.”
There was no gloating in her eyes over his apology. She gently laid her hand on his arm. “I quite understand. Cleetus told me about the shooting and how the PI played a part in it. I’m terribly sorry, and I’m surprised you didn’t throw away the key, too.”
The air around them thickened. He swallowed several times. Memories, the betrayal and her easy acceptance of the whole sordid mess swirled around in his head. “Cleetus told you everything?”
“Yes.” For a moment she looked at him and opened her mouth to say something, only to have her gaze shift beyond him. “Oh, my God. Look!”
Shoving the turmoil in his mind away, he stared at where she pointed. The flashlight beam illuminated a line three-quarters of the way up the opposite wall. If you looked hard enough you could just make out the entire outline of a doorway in the panel.
“I think we found the entrance to the tunnels.”
Bobby scooted past him. Her fear barely under control, she began pulling crates laden with old, musty clothing out of the way in an almost maniacal effort. Any other time the antique material and clothing styles would’ve stopped her from madly thrashing through them to admire every piece of history.
Today, she needed to do something. The confines of the room and Gage’s physical closeness clawed at her senses. One good thing about being in the creepy basement, at least the darkness had hidden her blush of embarrassment at admitting to such a cowardly character flaw.
The bottom crate had to have bricks in it. She gave it a shove. The only thing that moved was the dust in a loud cloudy oomph.
“Here, let me get that before you hurt yourself.” Gage reached between her and the crate.
Grinding her teeth, she stepped out of his way. For two decades she’d managed to handle every problem or situation by herself. Now, in three short days she seemed willing to share the load with this man. Of course he never gave her much chance to argue.
As soon as he had the crate moved far enough to give her access, she squeezed behind it. “I’ll bet there’s some secret button to open this somewhere along here.” Dust flew around them as she pressed her fingers over the panel. Suddenly, the edge popped inward and back out like a spring. Dank, musty air whooshed from behind it. “I found it!”
“I can see,” he said, right behind her.
This time she didn’t jump. Maybe she was getting used to him.
“If you’ll move back out of the way, we need a little more room to get the whole thing open.”
She shifted back past him, her body brushing softly against his hard planes. Trapped between him and the other crate, she fought desperately to take in a breath, to control the sudden panic that filled her.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re safe.”
Whispering the words, he ran one hand down her arm. Shivers of delight followed, quickly replacing the fear. As she glanced up at him, the corner of his mouth lifted in that smile that melted her heart the first time she saw him. Then he winked.
Air filled her lungs once more and her pulse slowed to its steady lub-dub rhythm once more. He was right. She’d been even closer than this to him last night, trapped between him and the bed. Safe. Secure. Well pleasured.
“Okay now?”
Not trusting her voice, she nodded and stepped back out of the way. Leaning his shoulder into the crate, Gage gave it a hard shove. The wood scraped across the floor as it moved another foot. “That should do it.”
He picked up his flashlight from where he’d laid it on the top of the crate and handed it to her. “Hold this while I open the entrance more.”
As he gripped the panel’s edge and pulled it open, she flashed both lights into the widening crevice beyond. God, she hoped nothing popped out like rats or bats. She shuddered, making both beams wiggle into the dark tunnel beyond.
His warm hand settled on one of hers, slowly taking one of the flashlights from her. The edges of his brows knitted in concern. “We don’t have to do this. We could go upstairs, call one of my deputies and you could wait outside in your car.”
For a moment she took inventory of herself. Normal breathing. Normal heart rate. Heck, even her palms didn’t feel sweaty. “No. I’m good. I want to see where this leads.”
Whether she meant the tunnel or this thing between them, she wasn’t sure, but she knew one thing for sure—she meant to explore both as far as they would take her.
He gently laid his hand against her cheek as if he knew she meant more than the tunnel in front of them. He winked again. “Okay. Hang on one second.” Leaning over, he pulled an old bamboo cane from inside another tall crate.
“What’s that for?”
“Spiderwebs.” He rolled his eyes upward a moment and gave a little shrug. “I’ve never m
uch liked having them hang over my head or clinging to my body.”
The big, bad sheriff was afraid of spiderwebs? Just like Indiana Jones’ fear of snakes, his vulnerability only made him sexier. Suddenly her claustrophobia didn’t seem such a bad thing. Everyone had something or other they feared. Some men feared commitment, some women being alone. She and Gage just manifested their fears more outwardly.
With a sweep of the cane, he pulled several cobwebs off the tunnel’s entrance and shook them free. Only then did he step inside. Taking a fortifying breath, Bobby followed him into the tunnel.
An immediate chill ran over her, but not of fear. The cool earth lay behind the wood-planked walls, reminding her they were underground. Slowly they moved down the corridor. Gage bent slightly to fit into the short space and stopped every so often to sweep ahead of him for cobwebs.
Despite the narrow confines of the hundred-year old tunneling, Bobby realized she felt at ease following Gage. His mere presence assured her of safety and gave her confidence. Right now she could almost forgive him the cell incident.
***
He knelt down in the copse of trees watching the tunnel’s exit. He’d driven up the old drive and seen both their vehicles parked out front. He’d quickly hurried over here to watch for them to emerge.
When he’d left town, he’d prayed they hadn’t headed this way.
Had they found the hidden entrance in the old mansion? No one knew it was really there except for him, the cook and Gil Byrd. And they certainly weren’t telling anyone from the grave. A quick glance at the watch.
Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes he’d been sitting in the damp grass and thicket beneath the trees. Fifteen minutes waiting to see if they’d found their way out.
He’d give them ten more. Hopefully, they wouldn’t show. That would mean the tunnels and secret room were safe. He’d have time to finish tying up loose ends and close down the business before anyone knew what he’d been up to.
What if they did find the tunnels?
He’d have to find some way to make sure they didn’t get any closer.
Chapter Thirteen
The odor hit Bobby’s nose before they actually found the room.
“Oh, God. Not again.” No matter what they told you on TV crime shows—or didn’t tell you for that matter—she’d learned one thing this week, death had a unique smell. “I don’t suppose that’s some hundred-year-old corpse, is it?”
“No, I’m pretty sure this corpse is of the twenty-first-century type.” Gage muttered a few curse words as they trudged closer to the offending smell.
“Who do you think it is?” Why she was whispering was beyond her. Not like the body was going to complain she was making too much noise.
“At this point I have no clue. But with the luck we’ve been having, it’s going to be Rusty.”
“After what he did to Teeny, wouldn’t that be a good thing?” She wasn’t usually this bloodthirsty, but frankly, drawing and quartering was too good for the guy.
“Not really. He deserves to be punished for what he did to her, but I need someone to give me some answers. She’s out of it and I’d hoped he could lead me to his supplier. If he’s dead, so is the trail to the dealer.” Gage paused to swipe more cobwebs out of the way, flashing his light farther into the tunnel. A large room appeared in front of them.
As he scanned the light down to the room’s floor, a large mass came into view. It took Bobby’s eyes a moment to adjust to the image, but slowly she could make out the shape of a body curled on its side—the back to them and a large pool of something dark beneath the head. “Do you think that’s Rusty?”
“Won’t know until we get a look at him.”
As they moved closer, more of the room behind the body came into view. Where Gil Byrd’s home hadn’t seen visitors in quite some time, this place appeared well used. Scales and boxes were piled all over the table and floor.
“How did he die?” she asked without looking too closely.
“Looks to be the same as Harley. Someone bashed his head in.”
“Wonder if they used the same statue?”
“That would be a little too convenient.”
Gage stopped just inside the doorway and turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. Even in the eerie light she saw the concern in his eyes.
“I can’t get you out of here very fast. So I need you to keep your cool for a little longer. Do what we did at Harley’s. Focus on the room and surroundings, not the body. Put those skills of observation you showed me at Harley’s yesterday to good use and just tell me everything you see. Okay?”
Not trusting her voice to remain cool and collected in the light of his concern, she simply nodded. Had they just been at Harley’s the evening before? That meant they’d discovered two murders in as many days. Say what you wanted about Westen—sleepy little boring town it wasn’t.
Gage stepped over the body, taking her hand to steady her as she followed. Without a downward glance, she kept her back to the corpse and focused all her attention on the room’s contents. Slowly she scanned the room’s entire width and breadth. Two wooden cots lay upended against one wall. Another wall had two trunks piled against it, and the third wall had another exit carved out of it.
“That looks to be how they got in and out of here.”
“Would explain why no one ever knew this was here and the lack of finger or footprints up at the Byrd house,” Gage said from just beside her knee, where he’d squatted down to study the body.
“The table’s full of boxes of plastic bags,” she said as she moved closer. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of tweezers. Using them, she lifted one bag to study the contents in the flashlight’s beam. “Crystal meth.”
“And you know this how?”
“Sadly, we had a kid trying to sell the stuff on campus last fall. The principal and the police did an in-service with us to make sure we knew what it looked like if or when we saw it in our kids’ desks. Seems the drug users and drug pushers are getting younger and younger.”
“What grade did you teach?”
“Seventh grade history and computer technology.”
“Ah, that explains how patient you are with Cleetus and the computers.”
“Believe me, he’s a much better student than some of my former ones.” She laid the bag of drugs back on the table, took the tweezers and poked through the box, counting the number of bags inside. “There are a hundred bags just in this one box. What’s the cost of one of these?”
“Street value?”
“Yes.”
“Probably between ten and twenty dollars a bag.”
“If there’s a hundred bags in each box, that means there’s about two thousand a box, times…” quickly, she counted the number of boxes, “sixty-five boxes, that’s over a hundred thousand dollars here. Dear God.”
“And more bad news,” Gage said, standing up, holding a wallet and state ID. “It’s definitely our man Rusty. Whoever is behind this is running very scared.”
“He’s killing off anyone who can connect him to both the bank fraud and the drugs.”
“The way you think is downright sexy.”
For a moment they stood and stared at each other, the intensity between them almost palpable in the room’s small confines. She wanted him to kiss her, but she didn’t want what they shared tainted by the grisly scene around them.
Almost as if he read her mind and agreed with her, he stepped to the side. “Tell me what else you see.”
Slowly, she studied the room. “Some wooden dishes and old eating utensils probably left over from the Underground Railroad days. A modern scale, for measuring out the drugs, I’m sure. Couple of chairs.”
“Good. Now what don’t you see?”
Puzzled at what he was getting at, she considered the room and what she knew about meth. News reports talked about how easy it was for people to cook it in their own kitchens. “There’s no stove to cook it on. No pots, nothing to manufact
ure it in.”
“Right. Which means this is simply a storage space for the end product.” He took her elbow and led her to the other exit. “That’s a good thing for us.”
“Why?”
“Meth labs are highly explosive and they leave the chemical residue on everything, even the air. Just inhaling the air in a meth lab can get you high on the stuff.”
“So where are we going now?” she asked as she followed him up the new tunnel.
“We know where the other exit leads. Let’s see where this one ends.”
“What if it leads to the meth lab? Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”
“Don’t worry. I have a feeling I know exactly where this goes.” He reached back to take her hand and steadily moved farther into the tunnel, which seemed to gradually lead upwards.
***
At the end of the tunnel, they encountered an old wooden door covering the exit’s top. Gage reached over his head and gave one good shove. It creaked open halfway and stopped. He peeked his head out the opening. In the dim evening light he couldn’t make out much.
Grass. Bushes. Trees. Nothing moving.
He lowered himself back into the tunnel and took Bobby’s cold hand in his once more. For a woman with such a bad phobia, she was keeping a tight leash on it. “I know you don’t like being in there, but I want you to stay here for a minute.”
“Why?”
The slight tremble in her voice tore at his gut. “I want to be sure no one is waiting out here to jump us.”
“Don’t take any chances. I haven’t finished all my fantasies when it comes to you.” Before he knew her intent, she leaned in close and kissed him hard. She stopped just as abruptly, her eyes widened with worry. “One minute. That’s all you get, then I’m coming out. I don’t want you getting hurt to protect me.”
“Make it two.” Her concern touched that spot deep inside he thought he’d closed off for good. For the first time since his father’s death he felt like his life mattered to someone besides himself. He slipped his gun out of the back of his jeans.
Close To The Edge (Westen #2) Page 20
