by Hunt, Angela
The girl’s eyes are wet when they meet Michelle’s. “Muchas gracias.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” Michelle steps over the housekeeper and peers at Gina, who has retreated to the pool of light cast by the emergency bulb. “Won’t you come? You’re thin—the two of us can pull you out.”
Gina edges closer to the control panel. “I’m not breaking my neck up there.”
“But Eddie was right—it’s only a small step down to the landing. After all this, getting to the stairwell will be a cakewalk.”
For a brief instant Gina’s face seems to open. Michelle sees uncertainty, a quick flicker of fear, then the return of stubborn inflexibility. “I’m staying,” Gina says. “I’m safe here.”
“You’re in a box hanging by a few cables. You know that rocking we felt? There are rails out here, and one of them is bent. That’s why this car’s not stable.”
“Maybe I’m used to this car.” A smile spooks over the woman’s lips, fading almost as soon as it appears. She jerks her chin upward. “You girls go ahead and fight the wind and rain. Get smacked around by debris. Take your chances with looters. I’ll be fine, and heaven help anyone who tries to bother me.”
The comment makes no sense until Michelle glances at Gina’s hand. She’s holding the gun, which shines dully next to the glitter of the diamond bracelet.
“Michelle? Look!”
Michelle turns toward Isabel, who has stepped closer to the landing. Eddie’s dog, a white-muzzled golden retriever, is standing near the open doorway, her nails clicking on the threshold as she covers Isabel’s bare knees with kisses.
It’s a beast, but it looks friendly. More important, the beast was Eddie’s.
“Keep it away from the shaft,” she calls. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Michelle leans down to give Gina one last chance. “Are you sure you won’t come with us?”
“Quite sure.”
“Have it your way, then. If we make it down first, we’ll send someone up to help you.”
“I doubt I’ll need your assistance, but thank you, all the same. Now, would you please close that hatch? When the power comes on, I want this car to move.”
“Whatever you say.” Michelle touches her forehead in a mock salute, then lifts the hinged cover and drops it back into place.
With Gina’s words ringing in her ears, Michelle steps over the center beam and picks up the flashlight Eddie left beside his toolbox. She is about to duck under the edge of the doorway and step onto the landing when she hears a cry—a sound that is definitely human.
Eddie?
A thin blade of foreboding slices into her heart as she turns to face the darkness of the shaft. Is Eddie in agony somewhere below? She can’t bear the thought of his suffering, but she’s no nurse and she has no way to reach him. Still, she can’t leave him alone, not after what he did for them.
“Eddie?” She wipes her damp hand on her jeans, then clings to the sturdy beam on the top of the car and shines the flashlight over the sides. The back wall is only a few feet away, but the shaft is wider than she expected, with darkness stretching to the left and right. “Eddie, is that you?”
The frenzied wind screeches an answer, punctuated by pounding rain, and then, barely audible, she hears another reply that sounds like hello….
“Eddie?”
From a distance, a weary and broken voice: “Still here.”
A flush of relief rises to Michelle’s face. “Are you all right?”
She strains to hear a ripple of broken laughter. “I’ve been better…but I’m still hanging around.”
For a moment, she cannot speak. She presses her hand to her chest and feels her heart thump against her palm. This situation is not hopeless. Against all odds, Eddie Vaughn is alive.
Somehow, Someone has seen them and answered Isabel’s prayers.
She shines the flashlight into the open space. “Can you tell me where you are?”
The incessant roar of the storm obscures his reply, but it is enough to know he is alive. Michelle feels suddenly light on her feet, as if she could fly down the stairs without any effort at all.
“Eddie—” she releases the crossbeam to cup a hand around her mouth “—Isabel and I are out of the elevator. We’re heading to the stairwell. We’ll look for you, okay?”
She listens intently as the building stretches and groans. “Eddie?”
No answer, but a roaring bedlam rips through the air, freezing Michelle’s skin like the howl of a banshee. Despite her relief at Eddie’s survival, the voice of the storm reminds her they are not safe yet.
Before joining Isabel at the landing, she stares into the darkness one last time and, emboldened by the girl’s example, whispers a prayer for Eddie Vaughn.
At first, Eddie thought he was hearing angels. His grandmother, according to family legend, sat straight up on her deathbed, stared at the red-and-white flowered curtains, and announced that angels had arrived on a golden ladder, so she was ready to go home. Then she lay down, closed her eyes and committed her soul to Jesus.
The voice he’d heard, however, belonged to one of the women. He wasn’t sure which woman had called to him, but he definitely had his preferences. Her high voice had cut through the noise of the storm, but he wasn’t sure she’d heard his replies.
He clings to a vertical rail and smiles, glad to know at least two of them are out of the elevator. If he doesn’t climb another foot, the results will have been worth the struggle.
He draws a deep breath, peers into the inky darkness below, then lifts his face to the upper portion of the shaft. Rainwater is falling more steadily now, so the wind has definitely taken out a few more windows.
Might as well climb while he still can.
Though Felix is officially still two hours away, the wind has already uprooted a landscape of carpet and smashed the window at the end of the landing. Michelle feels its blows to the side of her head as she crunches shards beneath her sneakers and maneuvers around a pair of toppled chairs that have blown into the center of the hallway.
The stairwell has to be right around the corner. She yells at Isabel, urging her to follow, but the wind snatches her words and leaves her as silent as a mime. She makes a come-on gesture and runs, hoping the housekeeper will follow.
She turns the corner and skids to a halt on the wet floor. A soft-drink machine, dark and without power, lies on its side in front of the door that leads to the stairs. Michelle stares stupidly until she feels a nudge on her arm. Isabel stands beside her, her wet hair plastered to her face, her eyes as wide as platters. Gooseflesh has prickled her arms and a trickle of blood runs from her lip. “What do we do?”
The wind catches Isabel’s words, too, but Michelle understands her meaning. She makes a shoving motion, then pushes at the vending machine, but her strength is no match for its weight. Even in the trailer park, when kids routinely rocked the machines in a search for spare quarters, she had never been able to budge the behemoths.
She looks around and in a barely comprehendible flash she realizes that rain is falling in the hallway. These slashing raindrops aren’t coming from the sky, however; they’re falling horizontally and coming from an open window.
But this is not the time to marvel at Mother Nature. She pushes wet hair out of her eyes and flinches when something touches her leg. The dog, its fur tufted and dripping, has crept to her side.
Ignoring the animal, she yells above the ripping wind. “Do you see anything we can use to push this out of the way?”
Isabel glances over her shoulder, where a potted ficus has begun to scoot over the wet carpet. She holds up a finger, then lowers her head and runs toward an unmarked door. Taking a clutch of keys from a pocket of her sweater, she unlocks the lock.
Michelle smiles as understanding dawns. A custodial closet might have tools. Isabel appears a moment later, a mop in one hand and a broom in the other. For an insane instant Michelle is afraid the woman wants to clean the hallway, then she realizes that the industr
ial mop and broom are mounted on steel poles.
The girl is brilliant.
Michelle sets the flashlight on top of the soda machine, then takes the broom from Isabel and insinuates the tip of the pole into the gap between the vending machine and the door to the stairwell. Beside her, Isabel does the same thing with the mop, then both women brace their poles against the edge of the machine and push. Michelle’s broom slips on the wet surface, but Isabel’s mop finds purchase, enough to slide the vending machine forward an inch.
Michelle twirls her finger in the air. “Change positions!”
Approaching the machine from the side, the women again shove the handles of their tools between the heavy metal box and the door frame, then they push again. The steel poles groan and their veneers of paint crack and flake away, but the machine slides over the wet rug until the edge encounters a clump of carpeting.
Michelle drops her broom, pleased to see that they’ve created a passageway large enough for them to squeeze through. She motions Isabel forward, then she claps for the dog. The animal crouches on all fours and barks, refusing to follow.
Isabel shouts from the doorway, but Michelle can’t understand what she’s saying. She creeps closer to the dog. “Come on, pup, we need to go now.”
The dog continues to bark, its big feet splashing the wet carpet in some strange doggy dance. Michelle chews her lip. She can’t do this. She doesn’t like dogs; she’s never had one; she doesn’t speak their language. How can she help the animal if it won’t come when she calls?
She turns, about to follow Isabel, but the retriever’s frantic barking pricks at her conscience. She can’t leave Eddie’s pet. If he cared so much for this creature that he wouldn’t leave it alone with the storm approaching, she can’t abandon it in a dangerous skyscraper with the worst weather yet to come.
Despite the blood pounding in her ears, she kneels on the carpet and tries to hold the dog’s attention. “Come on, nice puppy. Come with me and we’ll get you out of this wind and rain.”
The dog looks at her, then runs in a tight circle before stopping to bark again. The sound arouses a memory that swims up through the years. Dogs know when you’re scared of ’em. When they smell your fear, they’ll attack ’cause they know they can take you down.
CHAPTER 25
Sweat pours from Eddie’s face as he pulls himself upward, then swings his left foot onto the horizontal beam across from the twenty-fifth floor. He stops to catch his breath, then eyes the vertical duct that stands between him and the landing doors.
What’s the old saying? So close, and yet so far away. If not for the vertical duct, he could sit on the horizontal divider beam and slide toward the doors, letting his broken leg hang free. Standing would be a challenge, but what’s one more?
Rain—or sweat—runs a trickling finger down the back of his neck as Eddie pulls in several quick breaths. Along with the pain of his injured ribs, a sludge of nausea churns in his belly. He can’t look down. His eyes cling to the duct as he pulls his weight onto his arms and swings his good leg toward the landing. There! Because he’s off balance, he shifts his weight onto his left leg, then removes his left hand from the rail and reaches for the duct. His eyes close when his fingers contact its smooth surface.
After a moment of quiet self-congratulation, he releases the rail entirely and curls his left arm around the four-sided duct, letting it help support his weight while he struggles to hop on his good leg. He shouts with every excruciating movement, his voice blending with the clamor of the storm, until he embraces the duct and repeats his swinging maneuver around the obstacle in his path.
Clinging to the duct like a wet towel to a nail, he lowers his forehead to the metal and shivers with fatigue. He’s not sure he can manage the remaining distance because his lungs are burning and his arms are…like gelatin.
Gelatinous, ten letters, like gelatin, rubbery. Semisolid.
In spite of the pain, he laughs when another word occurs to him: manumit, a seven-letter word meaning to free. He can’t give up if he wants to complete his manumission and finish that stupid puzzle.
He lifts his head and looks toward the landing. Nothing much to cling to over there, only a one-inch door frame and a steel strut. But at least there’s something.
All right, then. Another journey across emptiness, a few more painful hops and all the screams he can muster. He draws the deepest breath he can and stretches for the door frame.
When he finally reaches the sill, he gingerly eases his left foot onto the narrow strip, allowing himself the freedom to bellow like a bull gator when his broken limb strikes the surface of the door. His right hand is fastened to the strut with a clawlike grip; his left hand must release the rollers above the door.
Mindful of the yawning black emptiness at his back, Eddie closes his eyes and listens intently for angelic voices. When he hears nothing, he presses his chest against the smooth metal and hobbles sideways until his fingers find the locks at the top of the frame. He presses the release, then smiles when he hears a soft click. He slips his hands between the doors and exhales as they slide open with the smooth precision of well-maintained machinery.
Struggling to maintain her fragile control, Michelle crawls forward, speaking nonsense in a low voice. The skittish animal dances before her, alternately retreating and advancing, and Michelle’s heart leaps into her throat when she finally lunges forward and hooks the dog’s collar. She freezes, holding the animal at arm’s length, but it doesn’t snarl or try to bite her.
She smiles, hoping the dog understands that her intentions are friendly, and uses her free hand to stroke the dog’s chest. “Nice doggy.”
Under her palm, she feels a heart pounding as fast as her own.
“You’re scared? So am I, but we’re gonna get out of here.” She moves forward and attempts to lift the animal, but the dog is heavier than it appears. She manages to pull the retriever onto her knees, but when she tries to stand, her feet slip and both of them fall onto the floor.
“Can’t you cooperate?” Michelle’s voice breaks as she releases the animal. “Please, sweetheart. I don’t want to leave you, but you’re too big to carry.”
The dog whimpers, then licks her face. From the door, Isabel calls another indecipherable warning.
“Okay, then.” Michelle pulls off her belt, slips the end through the buckle, and makes a loop. “Come on, sweetie,” she says, slipping the circle over the dog’s head. “Like it or not, you have to come with me.”
She tugs on the belt, intending to use it as a leash, but the dog lies down, then rolls onto her side. Michelle pulls again, hoping the dog will understand, but pressure from the taut noose is forcing the animal to wheeze. The dog’s tongue lolls from her mouth as terror enters her eyes.
Good grief, she’s killing Eddie’s dog.
Frustrated, Michelle turns toward the stairwell door, where Isabel is watching with obvious alarm. “Vamos! Prisa!”
A rise of panic threatens to choke Michelle, but she can’t leave the dog, not after what Eddie did for them. What did he call the animal? Lady? Sally? No—Sadie.
“Sadie?” Tamping down her fear, she kneels to release the pressure on her belt. “Sadie, we’re going home.”
The dog lifts its head, its ears pricked forward.
“Sadie, come!” To reinforce her good intentions, Michelle drops the belt and lifts her hands. The retriever watches as she retrieves her flashlight, then the dog rolls to her feet and trots forward.
“Good girl!” When they have passed through the stairwell doorway, Michelle gives the animal a tentative pat on the head.
She turns on the flashlight as the door closes behind them. Eddie was right—it is quieter here. Though the wind continues to howl, the lack of windows and the reinforced walls have created a safe haven. Only dim exit lights brighten the space, but Michelle doesn’t expect any surprises in the stairwell—only concrete steps, two sets per floor, with handrails along each wall.
She walks
to the metal railing and shines the light over the steps. The lobby lies twenty-eight flights below, but from the eighth-floor Pierpoint Restaurant they’ll be able to survey the street and most of the downtown area.
Before heading down, though, she turns and looks at the steps that lead up. Her office lies at the top of those stairs, and Greg Owens’s file waits on her secretary’s desk. She could leave Isabel and the dog, run up four flights, grab the file and be back in ten minutes…but somewhere below, Eddie Vaughn needs help.
In the glow of an exit light, she gives Isabel a tremulous smile. “Are you ready?”
Isabel’s look of confusion melts into understanding. “Sí.”
“Then let’s go to the Pierpoint. We’ll look for Eddie on the way down.”
Isabel places one hand on a stair rail and the other on the dog’s head. “It is a good plan.”
They are halfway down the first set of steps when the fluorescent lights along the concrete walls hum and flicker. A moment later the stairwell is as bright as a new day.
Michelle clicks off her flashlight and laughs. “Gina may reach the lobby before us after all.”
Gina catches her breath as the overhead lights burst into bloom. The car shudders faintly as a machine begins to hum. She reaches for the railing, then presses a hand to her chest.
The elevator is operating; the lights are burning steadily. The car is moving downward, not in a free fall, but at a stately and relaxed pace.
Twenty-seven, twenty-six, twenty-five…
She stares at the control panel, mentally counting the passing floors even though there are no landings at the express elevators. Her heart races, her fingers flutter, but surely she has no reason for concern. A fall would feel much swifter than this, wouldn’t it?
Twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty…
At this rate she’ll be downstairs long before Michelle and Isabel. She covers her mouth to restrain a nervous giggle. What did that foolish girl say about the storm ripping the roof off the building? Who cares if it does? She’ll be safe downstairs, tucked into one of those nice leather chairs near the grand piano in the Pierpoint’s lounge. Right across from the lovely restrooms.
