A Quill Ladder (44 page)

“
We have copies of the maps. Just leave it. You need to come with us.
”

“
I
’
m double-parked,
”
the very bad man yelled from the Sidekick.

“
Let
’
s just go, Mark,
”
Sandy said.
“
It
’
s not important.
”

Mark shook off her hand and started in the direction of the dogs. Sandy chased after him, and the Sidekick followed, moving along the curb with Dr. Ford bellowing something about needing to go and not having much time. Sandy grabbed Mark again but he brushed her off and started running. He ducked into the alleyway where he had seen the dogs turn, moving full tilt now. His legs burned and he felt a little off balance, perhaps leaning too far forward, but he was rather surprised to find that he was moving rather quickly. More quickly than Sandy.

He pounded down the alleyway in pursuit of the dogs (or rather his satchel; he would prefer if he never had to see the dogs again ever).

He no longer heard footsteps behind him, and when he risked a look over his shoulder, he saw Sandy talking to the fellow with the beret
—
Ian (who seemed to be the owner of the dogs and that rat and, for that reason, Mark didn
’
t trust him, even though Ian had otherwise been fairly nice).

He put on a burst of speed and arrived at a junction where two alleys crossed; there, lying on the ground, was his satchel. A clear imprint of dog
’
s teeth formed a semicircle in the leather flap that held the satchel closed, and two long lines ran across the satchel where it looked like someone had wrenched it out of a dog
’
s mouth. He picked it up and shrank behind a large dumpster in the alley to the right, beside what appeared to be the service entrance of the Dorset.

The top of his satchel was sticky and wet with slobber. All of his papers, including the maps, were gone. The sandwich was gone, too, and Mark saw the chewed-up remains of the sandwich wrapper lying in the alley. His stomach sprang to life with sharp growls of hunger at the sight of it. He had copies of the maps in his Protex safe back at the Sinclairs
’
. And he now had his satchel, and his flashlight.

He heard footsteps, and someone calling his name
—
Sandy. She turned left at the junction though, her voice getting fainter as she moved away from him. He pulled deeper into the shadows of the dumpster. He wasn
’
t sure if he wanted her to find him
—
map of Coventry Hill or no map. In fact, he decided he rather wanted this day to be over. He held his satchel tightly to his chest, caressed the gold clasp that held the flap shut, and closed his eyes, wishing that this would all disappear and he could be back at the Sinclairs
’
, making a new salami sandwich.

His fingers found a strange indentation on the clasp that he hadn
’
t noticed before. He wondered if the dogs had gouged it with their teeth. He opened his eyes and examined it. There, faintly engraved in the thick, broad gold clasp, was a pentagon. It was almost invisible unless you were looking for it. With shaking fingers, Mark probed the clasp. Sure enough, when pushed sideways hard enough, the flat disc with the pentagon on it popped out. Underneath it were stashed the barrel and the teeth of a key. Mark assembled it quickly.

He had a key too. A key to the tunnel. Or tunnels?

Mark barely had time to contemplate this before he heard a very different kind of footstep
—
the sharp click of dog toenails on the pavement of the alley.

“
He
’
s down here,
”
a harsh voice called. Mark whipped his head above the dumpster and looked. The two extremely bad men stood at the end of the alley.

Mark
’
s heart rate started to accelerate. The dogs would have him cornered in a few seconds. Suddenly the service door to the Dorset swung open, and a kitchen worker stepped out with a large bag of garbage. Mark sprang from behind the dumpster and pushed past the worker despite his cries of
“
Hey!
”

Mark bolted through the white kitchen to the surprised stares of the kitchen staff. Steam emerged in a cloud from a pot on a burner and the whole kitchen was redolent with the scents of cooking meat and cheese. Mark
’
s stomach clawed with ferocious hunger, but he barged on past the kitchen staff, through a swinging door, into a dining room (where patrons looked at him), out into the lobby, and back to the front entrance of the Dorset. The Sidekick was no longer double-parked, and the front was deserted (of very bad and extremely bad men at least). Mark contemplated running back down to the tunnel, but that would take him to the orchard, and it was the wrong direction.

Instead, he stared across the square at the Heximer Building, which was one of the dots. Did it have a tunnel too? If it did, would it make sense that the Heximer Building tunnel would take him farther south, closer to the Sinclair house? Would his key open the doors for this tunnel?

Mark decided it was worth the risk.

He bolted across the street, once again surprised at how fast he could run.

“
I just realized something,
”
Abbey said, shoveling another cold potato with ketchup into her mouth. They had decided that they should eat something while they waited, to be prepared for whatever might be coming. It was close to 7:00 p.m. by now, and still nobody had arrived home. Texts to their dad asking for the family code word hadn
’
t been answered, and Abbey was now convinced that their dad had been abducted and that Selena had written the text. They had debated going to see Simon, but after looking up the visiting hours at the home where he had been placed, they realized they
’
d have to wait until 11:00 a.m. the next morning.

“
Ian told me he was in Nowhere for fifty years. He
’
s way too old to have been dating Mom.
”

“
Creepy. I
’
m pretty sure there
’
s more to Ian
’
s story than he
’
s telling us,
”
Caleb said.

They had stationed themselves back to back in the living room
—
Abbey looking out the picture window that overlooked Coventry, Caleb looking at the picture that had Coventry Hill as its backdrop. Farley paced urgently by the front door, then the back door, then the basement door, in a rotating vigil.

Calls to both of their parents
’
cell phones had gone to voicemail, as had a call to Sylvain
’
s office. Jake
’
s mother had informed Abbey that he was out; she hadn
’
t seemed keen to linger on the phone, and Abbey could hear the clatter of a busy restaurant behind her.

“
We could call Russell,
”
Abbey said.
“
See if he has Sylvain
’
s phone number.
”

“
He might be involved in this,
”
Caleb said.

“
Or Dr. Ford and Sandy.
”

“
Dr. Ford is definitely involved.
”

“
Well, they
’
re
all
involved,
”
Abbey said.

“
We could go see Mrs. Forrester.
”

Abbey stared out at the deep dark of the January evening and shivered.

The hospital hummed and as they approached, and Abbey noticed that the air around it was noticeably warmer. They scurried through the lobby and up the stairs to the second floor. Visiting hours ended in twenty minutes.

They burst into Mrs. Forrester
’
s room to find the old woman
’
s bed empty, the blankets pulled tight over the white sheet.

Abbey spun around, but Mrs. Forrester wasn
’
t anywhere.

“
Maybe she
’
s switched rooms,
”
Caleb said.

“
Are you looking for Francis?
”
The woman with the scarlet hair, in a purple bed dress this time, flicked off her TV.
“
Her daughter came and checked her out this afternoon. Said they were going to care for her at home. So nice to see someone
’
s family caring enough about them to take them home. Not like my Ed. No sir, he
’
s going to let me rot in this hospital for the rest of my life, while he
’
s out dancing and bowling.
”

“
Sandy came and got her?
”
Abbey managed to interject.

“
Oh, yes, yes. Sandy. Nice little slip of a thing. Very pretty.
”
The woman
’
s rheumy, kohl-lined eyes trained on Abbey and Caleb more sharply now.
“
She was too young to be your mother though, so she must have been your aunt
…
but now that I think about it, she was really altogether too young to be Francis
’
s daughter.
”

“
We know,
”
Caleb said.
“
We know.
”
He turned to Abbey.
“
We better get back home.
”

“
She did leave me a nice goodbye drawing, though,
”
the woman continued.
“
Although I really have no idea what it means.
”
She held out a piece of paper.

Abbey took it. It was a drawing of a man standing behind a cash register, taking money from someone, and a snail with a curving shell. The snail had what looked like a cloud coming out of its mouth. Abbey stared at it. She had no idea what it meant. Cash Snail. Money Snail. Money Shell.

“
We should go. See if anyone
’
s come home,
”
Caleb said, angling for the door.

Abbey shook her head at the scarlet-haired woman, handed the paper back, and followed Caleb out the door.

The bus bumped them along through the night. Abbey and Caleb were the only people on it, and she stared at their reflections in the large bus window. A dark sky loomed behind them.

Cash Snail. Register Snail. Abbey ran through all the possibilities. Maybe the man in the photo was selling something. Sell Snail. Air-breathing Snail. Is that what Mrs. Forrester had meant with the cloud? Abbey closed her eyes, tried to remember the advanced biology course she had decided to take at science camp two years ago for fun, then brought out her phone and Googled
“
land snail.
”
She scanned the genus names of the snails that belonged to the air-breathing family.
Achatina
,
Amphidromus
,
Cyclophorus
,
Ena
,
Helix
.

Ena.

Sell Ena.

Selena.

Had Selena taken Mrs. Forrester? Or was the snail simply another one of the references to the golden ratio?

*****

Mark stood uncertainly in the tunnel, shifting from foot to foot. He had traversed the tunnel all the way to the door at the far end, but he had no idea where he would emerge. In somebody
’
s house? In a store? In a park?

The door by which he
’
d entered, back in the Heximer Building, had been marked with the pentagon, and his key had opened it. And according to his GPS, the tunnel had then proceeded southwest for a kilometer before jogging slightly to the east and continuing on for two and a half kilometers, just as the other one had. He had paused at the turn for a few seconds to feel the outlines of the door there, and he
’
d debated going through it, but realistically he wanted to get as far from downtown and those dogs as possible. Now he stood at the second door. The tunnel actually carried on to the southwest, but he had no idea how long that leg was. It could take him all the way to Salisbury Swamp, which was definitely not where he wanted to go.

By his calculation, he should be somewhere in the Coventry Green, a little cluster of shops and offices south of the downtown core. Most of these would be closed at this time of night. And there was no sliver of light beneath this door as there had been in the Dorset Hotel.