Deadly Sanctuary (35 page)

Her mouth twisted and she returned her deadly stare to me. “Rosa will be dealt with just as the other little snitch was. As for this one…” she landed several vicious and painful kicks in my side. “I should have never let him talk me out of my original plan for you. And, I should have had Roy finish you off that night in the darkroom.” The toe of her pointed shoe connected with my forehead and sent me reeling backward. Through a mist of pain, I heard their frantic whispering.

They had moved a few feet away from me, so I eyed the door with hope. A groan escaped my lips as I struggled to my knees. It felt like she’d broken some ribs and a few drops of blood spattered on the carpet from my head wound.

“Get Raoul up here,” she snarled. “Then lock her in the storage room until I figure out exactly what I’m going to do with her.”

“We have to be careful,” Charles said in a strained voice. “You remember what he told us. A second dead reporter’s gonna tip everybody off for sure.”

I wondered who
he
was as I was roughly hauled to my feet. Were they talking about Roy? Held tightly from behind by Charles, I faced Claudia’s deadly-cold eyes. “I’ve worked too hard to let you destroy everything,” she seethed. “So now, you’re going to have to vanish, Ms. O’Dell. Vanish into thin air, just like our nosy friend Dexter.” Her maniacal laugher sent an icy chill down my spine.

She marched into the study. “Bring her in here.” Charles gave me a hard shove across the room, then threw me into a chair. “Don’t move!” he commanded, then crossed to the desk and grabbed the phone.

The pain in my ribs was so intense it was difficult to keep from crying out. I heard Charles speaking in Spanish and my heart seemed to stop beating when I heard him say Rosa. I cried, “If you touch one hair on her head…”

“Shut up!” Claudia smacked my face with such force, my ears rang. For someone so thin and wiry, she had incredible strength. Eyes watering, I lunged for her, but only succeeded in tearing the sleeve from her blouse.

“You bitch!” she screamed just as the office door banged open. A brawny man bearing a rifle rushed in, seized my arm and jammed the barrel into my face. “You come with me, ¿
sí?”
he said with a fiendish grin.

Charles grabbed my other arm. “You’d better come along quietly,” he warned ominously, “or you may not even make it downstairs.” He flashed a smile over his shoulder to Claudia. “We can’t have her upsetting the patients, now can we?”

“Get her out of here!” Claudia spat, punching numbers on the phone. My legs felt like rubber bands. I half walked and was half carried down the stairs, through the maze of hallways back to the kitchen area, and then guided down a set of worn stone steps into a musty, damp smelling room.

They led me across a cobweb-infested basement, down another short flight of steps, and stopped before a formidable-looking wooden door. “Let me go!” I fought with every ounce of strength I could muster. At the clatter of a key in a lock, I screamed, “Rosa! Wherever you are, get the hell out of here!”

“Shut her up!” Charles wailed. Raoul shouldered the door open and gave me a ferocious shove that sent me sprawling into darkness.

I landed with a thud on a dirt floor. The room was every bit as black as a darkroom. Not a speck of light filtered in from anywhere, even under the door. It was surprisingly cool too. Wincing from the pain in my ribs and head, I cautiously pushed to my knees.

My hand flew to my back pocket. Thank heavens, they hadn’t discovered the knife. And double thanks, they hadn’t found the flashlight tied to the ribbon around my neck hidden in my bra. I fished it out and directed the narrow beam of light around my prison.

Claudia had referred to it as a storage room, but it more resembled a dungeon. An ancient refrigerator leaned against the far wall, along with a few cardboard boxes and a pile of lumber. The rock walls were smooth as cobblestones.

There was absolutely no doubt that Claudia planned to kill me. She had probably been calling Roy as I was being dragged from the study. I didn’t even want to imagine what they would do to me.

I rose to my feet and turned my light toward the door. There wasn’t much time. I had to find a way out before the batteries ran down.

The last thing I remembered was the sound of a bolt scraping into place. A careful examination of the thick wooden door made my spirits plummet. There appeared to be neither latch nor knob, nothing to grab onto. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this room wasn’t really used for storage. Had John Dexter been imprisoned here before he’d been murdered?

I clicked off the flashlight. Try as I could, I couldn’t remember how far we’d come from the steps that led to the kitchen. If I shouted and pounded and kicked the door, would someone hear me? It was worth a shot.

“Help! Can anybody hear me? Help!”

Sometime later, I turned my back and slid into a weary heap, my voice hoarse, my palms raw and full of splinters. How much time had passed? What were they waiting for? A flash of light on my watch produced another disappointment. During one of my violent encounters, the hour hand had broken off. Great. Now I couldn’t even count the last hours of my life. For awhile, I just sat and cried. The sounds of my own sobs finally stopped me. What good would this do? I needed to think. Giving into panic was no solution.

Summoning new-found courage, I snapped the light back on and rubbed the sleeve of my shirt across my eyes. Perhaps there was something in here I could use as a weapon against them when they returned.

The inside of the dented refrigerator produced a musty smell. Nothing of interest there. Next, I examined the contents of the cardboard boxes. They were full of empty mason jars, old newspapers, broken dishes and roaches! The biggest, blackest one I’d ever seen scurried up my sleeve. Lunging backward, I screamed and swiped at it with the flashlight until I heard it drop to the floor.

The frantic movements made me dizzy with pain. Would it crawl up my leg now? I clutched my rib cage, and backed up against the wall, giving in to a fit of hysterical laughter. At least I wasn’t alone, I thought incoherently, sliding to the floor. There were probably oodles of roaches and spiders to keep me company.

Hours must have passed in the total blackness as I sat huddled in a corner trying to figure out how I was going to escape. Why, oh, why hadn’t I confided in Tugg? By the time Yolanda delivered my letter, it would be too late. The memory of Charles Sheffield’s hands roaming over my body made me shiver in disgust. By Claudia’s remark, I gathered he had the freedom to do whatever he wished with the girls before their final destination. How sick! How revolting. What would happen to me when Roy finally got here? Would Charles be allowed to complete his gruesome plan for me?

Morbid thoughts whirled in my head like dust devils, carrying me to sleep. When I awoke I was lying flat on the floor. Everything came flooding back. Oddly, I felt clear-headed and calm. I switched on my precious little flashlight and played it over the ceiling. People never look up, I thought incongruously.

With no feeling of fear, I watched one of the shiny black roaches crawl across the ceiling and disappear into a hole above the refrigerator. A moment later it reappeared, and then a second one. Idly, I followed their progress down the far wall. The roaches were the lucky ones. They could get in and out of this place at will.

Wait a minute! I sat up and shot the beam back toward the ceiling. Where were they coming from?

From the woodpile, I pulled out a two by four and then used my knife to dig a small hole in the floor where I inserted the flashlight. I pounded the wood against the ceiling, listening closely. There was a definite hollow sound in a small area above the refrigerator.

My tennis shoes squeaked against the smooth metal as I scrambled on top of it. Desperately, I tried to remember the details of what Thena Rodenborn had told me about the old monastery. There were a series of “safe rooms,” she’d said, for the monks to hide. Also, she had mentioned a series of escape tunnels. Had I discovered the entrance to one of them? It was almost too much to hope for.

“Oh, please, please,” I whispered, using the knife blade to scrape away layers of dirt. A crevice appeared, and the more I scraped, the clearer the outline became. There was a trapdoor directly above my head. I pushed hard, straining every muscle.

After several minutes, I sat down, gasping for breath. It wouldn’t budge. How long had it been since someone opened it? A hundred years?

There had to be a way. I needed something as a lever, something I could slip into the crack and jack the door open far enough for me to insert one of the two by fours. The five slender pieces of wood I chose, cracked instantly.

“Damn!” Something much more solid was needed. I jumped down and searched through the boxes. Nothing. Even in the cool temperature, I could feel the nervous sweat beading on my forehead. Tears of frustration blurred my eyes. I was doomed. There was nothing here.

I sat down on the floor beside the flashlight. The beam was definitely getting weaker. This was not a job I could do in darkness. Think. Think of something!

My head ached again. Mingled with thoughts of escape were strong sensations of hunger and thirst. Visions of the freshly-baked cookies on the tray in Charles Sheffield’s study tortured me.

With a weary sigh, I rose and began my hunt again. When I got to the refrigerator, I tugged open the door and stared dully at empty shelves. A sudden thought emerged from my foggy brain. The shelves!

“Good old steel.” I laughed aloud, resuming my perch on top of the old icebox. The shelf slipped easily into the crevice. Pushing down, I heard the welcome creak of protest from the old timber. Debris rained on my head as I strained against the wood. My God, the thing was heavy. I pushed again with all my strength, and finally, it moved upward enough for me to grab the board I’d balanced against the wall. I shoved it into the space, safely propping the door open. There was a rush of cool, damp air.

Calling on strength I didn’t think I possessed, I shoved the trapdoor up and back, my sense of triumph mingling with the knifelike pain in my ribs.

After retrieving the flashlight and using my shirt sleeve to dust the debris from the top of the refrigerator, I hauled myself up through the hole and lay on my back until the pain subsided. Smart guys, those monks. I would bet money that Claudia and Company didn’t know about the trapdoor. And they must not find out. I’d have to lower it again.

I thought it was strange that there was no handle or latch attached to the top to pull it up, so I rested it on the metal shelf. It left just enough room for me to pry it open with my fingers.

Turning, I shined the light around. Just as I thought. Openings high enough to crawl through yawned from opposite directions. For a few seconds, I toyed with the wild notion of venturing into one of the tunnels and just as quickly dismissed it. The ever-weakening beam of my flashlight rendered that sheer folly. I clicked it off to save what little energy was left and lay in the dark, so hungry, thirsty and exhausted, I couldn’t even muster up a feeling of panic about my seemingly hopeless situation.

I finally decided that I’d rather die peacefully in the dark than face the horror of what lay ahead of me in the room below. On that dismal thought I fell into a deep sleep.

I’m not sure how long I’d been asleep when I heard the screaming. I jerked awake. A slit of gray light seeped through the crack.

“You bungling fool!” Claudia’s shrill voice turned my spine into a column of ice. “How could you do something so stupid? Do you have any idea what is going to happen to us if she has escaped? I could kill you!”

“She has to be here someplace,” came Charles’ anxious voice. I heard boxes being moved, frantic scraping. Don’t look up, I prayed fervently.

“You pathetic son of a bitch, you didn’t lock the door properly,” accused Claudia.

“I did! I swear I did. Ask Raoul.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she shrieked. “I don’t have time to argue about this. Get on the phone to Roy. Tell him to get his ass back here right away.”

“But, he just left an hour ago. He’s going to be real mad about this,” Charles whimpered.

“Never mind. I’ll call him. In the meantime, we have to find her.”

“What shall I do, Sissy?”

“Just get out of my sight. Get Raoul and Carlos to help you search the grounds. Do you think you can handle that?”

There was a thick silence for a few seconds and then Charles complained, “I still think it’s impossible. No one’s ever gotten out of here before. Let’s look again.”

“What do you think she did?” snapped Claudia. “Climb through the ceiling?”

Her words turned my stomach over. I held my breath waiting for the worst, but then I heard their voices moving away.

After several silent minutes passed, an amazing realization cut through my fear. I hadn’t heard the door close. I scrambled to my feet, pried open the trap door, and cautiously peeked down. Faint light from distant windows streamed through the open doorway. I sent a prayer of thanks to God, then lowered myself down. Alert for any sound, I moved with deliberate care across the basement to the head of the stairway.

I hesitated. Deliverance from my prison presented a new set of problems and might only serve to plunge me into further danger. I had no idea which direction would lead to freedom. Others held here against their will had escaped, I reminded myself. The question was, how?

When I eased the kitchen door open a few inches, I got two shocks. First, it was pouring rain, and second, the clock above the stove where the cook stood with her back to me read four o’clock! A tantalizing whiff of whatever she was cooking made my stomach rumble. Yesterday’s lunch seemed light-years away.

When she suddenly turned in my direction, I ducked away, shut the door, and ran back down the steps. Expecting to hear her behind me, I frantically searched for a place to hide, finally wedging myself behind a pile of boxes. In breathless silence, I waited and then it hit me. Without my wig, how was I going to move about unnoticed? By now, the entire staff would no doubt be on the alert.