Chapter Twenty-Four

 

Even the cool breeze on the street offered no air. Ash couldn’t breathe or think. His mind wouldn’t clear. Out of patience, he signaled the valet to bring his car around again. They knew him by sight, he’d called for Hammer’s Lexus enough.

There’d been no word from Colby and none from BPD. It was as if she’d disappeared in the same thin air he now fought to catch a breath in. Ash knew it might be futile, but he was intent on a face-to-face with his buddy. Whatever Hammer Dugan was up to, it had something to do with the Beantown arsonist and Colby, maybe Liam, though how, Ash had no idea.

He hit the gas the moment he cleared the rounded drive at the hotel entrance. Left at the corner, he aimed for Hammer’s quaint little bungalow up north in Cambridge. It took him minutes to make the distance, and by then, he verged on losing control. The bugger hung up on me. You don’t do that to your friends. You just don’t.

The car moved as predicted in its commercials, gliding easily around the curves and hugging the corners that led to Hammer’s residence, a red brick Colonial built back from the street on a half-acre filled with trees and shrubs. Similar homes completed the prestigious cul-de-sac, all with two-car garages and primly landscaped lawns.

For a struggling insurance salesman with a wife who didn’t work and three kids under the age of five, Hammer certainly lived the life. Bold black shutters attended each of the eight second-level casement windows. Picture windows adorned the lower level, their sills underscored by empty flower boxes. ’Twas the fine entryway that brought bile to the back of Ash’s throat, forcing the need to spit to the side. Bloody hell, you’d think General George Washington lived here instead of a simple insurance salesman

Two cream-white columns abutted the five wide concrete stairs, themselves protected beneath a grand portico of the same color. For a colonial, the place had enough ginger-breading at each corner and edge to make it look—odd—in a pathetic, after-thought way. The canvas-covered sailboat parked on the concrete pad aside the garage, its naked mast pointed skyward, added to the unsettled aura of the home.

The day turned dismal with rain, matching Ash’s flagging spirit. He’d dialed Colby’s phone enough to know her battery was dead by now. Or that someone had removed it.

Parking across the street, before the cul-de-sac circled in on itself, Ash left the Lexus behind. He palmed his phone and brought up the app for a swift ride home. One way or the other, he had no more use for his friend’s car. Not unless Hammer had a good reason for ditching that call. Ash would love to hear it.

Taking two steps at a time, he rang the bell and waited while the drizzle increased to a downpour. Thunder rumbled, and Ash ran a hand over the back of his neck, needing someone to answer the door.

After another round of knuckles to the wood, his angst ramped beyond the need to know where Hammer was and into pure aggravation. Ash didn’t have time for one more dead end in this gods’ blessed day. Where the hell was Hammer or his wife? Was she too sick she could nah tend to the bell? If she was, where was Hammer? Why was he not here to care for her? Where were the children? It made no sense.

For good measure, Ash took a tour around the house and into the backyard. No toys anywhere. No picnic table or swing set in the shade. Nothing indicated that a family with wee children lived here. What was going on?

Tired of the chase, he called up his friends on Uber. He had better things to do than wait on a jerk with no loyalty to his friends. Damn Hammer to hell.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hello?”

A voice! “I’m here! Down here!” Colby called out, her throat sore from having yelled too long and too hard over the past hours.

“Whatever are you doing in here?” Same voice. Dumb question. How did this person know where she was when no one else did? What had alerted her to call out to Colby when Colby could barely speak? Her voice had turned hoarse with the cold and her calling for help. Colby certainly wasn’t in plain sight of anyone. Still… this was a good sign. Kind of…

“Can you get me out of here?” she asked raggedly. A tiny wisp of hope—tinged with a whipping dose of alarm, unfurled in her chest. Her lips were dry, her butt was sore from sitting on concrete, and if that rat came back one more time…

“Umm, maybe. I think I can. Let me see what I can do. I’ll try. Don’t go anywhere.”

I’m being saved by an idiot who thinks I’m as dumb as she is. But, oh well. Out of this basement hole was still out.

Colby scrambled to her knees, now stiff from her cramped confinement. Her rat friend had continued making quick visits, but not once had he set his sticky toes on her bare skin again. Still, she could hear him and he didn’t sound like a small thing. She pegged him at maybe the size of a small cat. Or dog.

Too angry at having been ambushed, too chilled by the change in weather to sit still, she’d handled every square inch of her tomb-like prison, searching for a way to escape. She’d found nothing but floorboards and wooden joists overhead, concrete walls lined with jagged rebar spikes on all four sides.

The floor was dirt and the air had gotten colder. This dark place reminded her of the horrors endured by American prisoners of war in Vietnam. Those poor men had been stuffed into cages and concrete boxes too.

She wanted out despite the sure knowledge more trouble waited, that the person rescuing her was likely the same who’d abducted her. No matter. This timid voice was the first to acknowledge she still lived. Colby intended to keep on living.

Scraping and thumping sounded overhead. Then something heavy being dragged or pushed. At any rate, it scraped loudly enough Colby could follow its path above the traffic noises. Dirt and dust trickled over her head, but anything was endurable now.

At last, a light cracked Colby’s ceiling as floorboards were lifted, one by one, then set aside. There was no trapdoor, which explained why she’d found no clasp or lever from below. Whoever’d stashed her had simply taken up part of the floor to hide her.

A shiver slithered across her shoulders. How many concrete pits were there in this nightmare? Could there be more women stuck in this place? Then I’ll just have to rescue them after I’m out of here. Once I call Ash. And the police.

At last enough floorboards were cleared out of her way. Colby angled her shoulders up and through the four-by-eight joists. Thankful, but cautious, she palmed the beam and hefted the rest of herself up and out of that dingy pit. Only after she was out of there did she turn to face the crazy woman at her back, the one in the weird long skirt and cape.

She was a tiny thing with dark hair that hung in thick, those-can’t-be-real ringlets, and—you got it—a bonnet. She totally had the part of one of Dickens’ characters down, and she acted as timid. Except for her make-up.

That was more Mae West than Goody Two-shoes. Ruby red lips. Rounded cheeks pink with blush. A speck of a mole above her upper lip. Blinking, she cocked her head sideways as if she didn’t know what to make of the woman who’d just climbed out of her floor.

The liar. Colby knew better, but decided to play along until she could break for cover. Dusting her palms to her thighs, she dared her would-be rescuer to spin another lie. “How’d you find me?”

Another doe-eyed blink had Colby wondering if the lights were on, but no one was home inside that empty head.

“You must be thirsty,” her rescuer offered breathlessly.

What an innocent sounding voice she had, complete with an ultra-feminine quaver that made Colby want to up-chuck. Why do women do that? Of course I’m thirsty! And you’re stupid!

She latched onto the bottle of water extended from this dimwit damsel’s hand, not surprised to see the woman’s bright red fingernails capped with black tips, another sign of crazy. Check.

“Thanks,” she said evenly before she twisted the cap off and slugged down a good long swallow, keeping her eyes on Little Miss Muffet. Water. Wow. You never know how good it feels going down until you’ve gone without it for a while.

What she could see of the room beyond her was—strange. Three kerosene lamps on the floor cast a golden glow over a round woven rag rug that lay across an empty wooden chest a man could’ve fit in if he was stupid. Colby wasn’t. The thing looked like a crudely made coffin.

Shifting her bare feet, she tightened her right hand into a fist, offering the bulk of her left shoulder as her first line of defense, prepared to strike if Miss Crazy so much as stepped in her direction. “Who are you?” She damned well needed to know. “And where the hell am I?”

“Delores.” The woman’s voice was as light as a dandelion puff on the wind, and twice as annoying. “And you’re here.” She waved at the hole in her floor. “How ever did you get down there?”

“You tell me,” Colby shot back at her. “You put me there.”

Florence—Delores—fluttered her fingers against her high-button collar as if the notion made her faint. “I would never.” Blink, blink. Gasp, gasp.

Yeah, not buying the act, sister.

Colby backed away, not sure where she was headed, but damned sure on her way out of there. Traffic meant people so she had to be in a town somewhere. Maybe still in Boston. There’d be time to interrogate Delores later. Get your ass out of here, Quaid. Move it!

She made it as far as the door, when it opened. The last thing she saw was a fist. Somewhere on her way to the floor, she could’ve sworn she heard Delores singing, “Ring around the rosie. Pockets full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall… dowwwwwwwwwn.”