Blindfold (23 page)

Everyone agreed to that plan. Even Scout, who didn't like being dictated to.

The trio was just about to leave with their carts

when the sheriff asked from the doorway, "Anyone know why someone might want to send Keith and his girlfriend into that culvert?"

Startled, their heads shot up to stare at him.

"Excuse me?" Maggie said, turning around on her ladder so that her back was to the rungs. "What did you say? Alex, turn the music down."

The room grew quiet.

The sheriff marched on into the room. "I asked you if you knew any reason why someone might want to kill those two."

"Kill?" Helen echoed. "It was an accident. And they didn't die."

"No, but they could have, if it hadn't been for Whittier. And there wasn't anything accidental about it. They were shoved into that culvert by another car. Maybe a truck. We're checkin' out the paint now. Black or dark blue, looks like. I figured, since those two been givin' all of you a hard time," glancing at Maggie and adding, "'specially you, Maggie, you might know somethin' about how this happened."

"Well, we don't," Helen said tartly, "and frankly, Sheriff, I'm getting a little tired of being accused of things I didn't do."

He waved a hand. "Yeah, I know, Miss. But the thing is, what we've got here is attempted murder, pure and simple." He laughed shortly. "Not that there's ever anything pure or simple about most murders. But that's what this is, for sure." His eyes swept the group. "So none of you can help me out here?"

They all solemnly shook their heads.

He nodded. "Okay, then. Ill let you know what kind of car the culprit was driving."

When he had gone, the library echoed with a resounding silence. And Maggie knew why. It wasn't just the news that the two had been attacked deliberately, that it hadn't been an accident. It was that everything had changed again, so swiftly, when they least expected it. They had planned, as they would on any ordinary day, to finish up here and then go eat, probably pizza, just like they used to before all of this stuff began. Because they had thought it was all finished. Even she had finally decided that Helen was right, and they were safe now.

Wrong.

Someone had tried to kill Chantilly Beckwith and James Keith. They might have done the attacking before, with Maggie as their victim. But this time, they'd been the victims, which changed everything. It meant there was someone else out there who meant people harm. No one knew who that someone was, so that "someone" could walk freely about Felicity without anyone stopping them. No one was safe. No one at all.

wet. I skidded and broadsided a tree. I haven't had time to take it to a body shop yet, so the scraped paint is still there."

"You didn't say anything about having an accident," Lane said.

"He didn't say anything about saving James and Chantilly, either," Maggie said defensively. "You already knew it when I got here. Someone else told you."

Whit sent her a grateful smile. "It wasn't an accident. I told you, I just skidded and scratched the car on a tree, that's all. But I'm not so sure the sheriff will see it that way."

"Did you file a report?" Scout asked.

Whit sighed. "How many times do I have to say it wasn't a big deal?"

"Okay," Scout said, turning to grip the canvas cart filled with books. "But the sheriff might make a big deal out of it." As he moved away, pushing the cart, he added over his shoulder, "Everyone knows you'd do anything to protect Maggie. And those two had threatened her."

Maggie was stunned for the second time in ten minutes. Scout's comment about Whit protecting Maggie had been said so matter-of-factly, as if Scout had completely accepted it. She hadn't even had a chance to talk to him yet, to explain that while he was still her good friend, what she felt for Whit was very different. She had meant to. It seemed only fair. But then, she'd been distracted lately....

Scout must have figured it out for himself. He

wasn't stupid. And he sounded as if he were okay with it. That would be nice. One less thing to worry about. If there was one thing she didn't need right now, it was more bad stuff to worry about. She had plenty. Of course, so did Scout. Maybe that's why he wasn't willing to waste any more energy on her.

"I think," Helen said clearly, "that right now, we should just go ahead with what we were doing. Lane and Whit are right. What happened to James and Chantilly doesn't have anything to do with us. So I'm going to go wash up . . . Alex, you coming? Maggie? . . . and then when Lane and Whit and Scout come back from the new courthouse, I'm going to go stuff my face, because I deserve it after working this hard." And without waiting for Alex or Maggie, she left the room.

Maggie, still trying to comprehend how quickly she had lost the sense of safety she'd been feeling, said, "You can't take those carts over now. It's too dark out."

"We can see." Whit reached down to rearrange the top layer of books in his cart. "There's plenty of light from this building, and from the windows of the new building. Besides, we know our way through that alley by heart now, don't we, Lane? We could walk it in our sleep."

They wheeled their carts to the door. In the doorway, Whit turned to call to Maggie, "Aren't you going with Helen?"

Maggie had been repeating under her breath, "Helen's right, she's right, nothing to do with us, nothing, we're fine, we're fine ..." lb Whit, she

said, "Sure. I will, in a sec. I just have another handful of books up here. I don't want to leave the shelf unfinished. But I'm going, I promise. Can't eat pizza with filthy hands."

"Alex, you stay with her until she leaves," Whit ordered. "Keep an eye on her, okay?"

Alex nodded. "Sure. Relax, Whit. Go, go! We can't eat until you get back." He turned the music on again, and went back to work on the bottom shelves.

Pushing his cart, Whit followed Lane out of the room.

Maggie turned around to reach for the last few books. "So," she called down to Alex, "you think James and Chantilly ticked off some bad characters?"

"Looks that way. And like I said, we shouldn't be surprised."

"Well, we weren't expecting the sheriff to come in and hit us with that news, Alex. I was just beginning to relax. Should have known better," she added.

"Quit worrying, Maggie. Your hair will turn gray."

They worked to music for a while, then Maggie called, "You said you weren't going to help with this, Alex, and I know it wasn't because you were afraid, the way Helen and I were. Why did you change your mind?"

Alex didn't answer her. She decided he couldn't hear her over the music and repeated her question, louder this time. He didn't answer.

"Alex? You still down there?"

Silence.

Maggie's hand, on its way to the shelf, paused in midair. "Alex?"

Before she could turn around to see where he was, the lights went out. Every light... the overhead light, the lights on the tables far below Maggie, the light in the glass display case.

The room was so dark, Maggie could no longer see her own hand.

Her voice rose as she called Alex's name again then again, and again, until she was shouting.

The music clicked off suddenly. And then, "He's not he-ere!" a falsetto voice sang out from far below Maggie. "He had something really important to do. Wanta go for a ride?"

Maggie clutched at the top rungs of the ladder. "No!" she shouted, "no!" Her heart skipped a beat.

But her cry went unheeded. The ladder shook slightly as hands far below Maggie seized it... and pushed ... hard.

Maggie was nearly jolted off as the tall, wooden ladder flew from the middle of the wall to the far end, where it slammed with a thud into the corner bookshelves, empty now. An arrow of pain stabbed Maggie's left shoulder as it hit. Before she could recover, the ladder shook again, and this time it sailed from the left corner all the way down the long, shelf-lined wall to the opposite corner, slamming into the shelves there with a sharp, cracking sound. This time, her right side took the blow.

Maggie screamed Helen's name, then Alex's, then she screamed again, "Stop! Stop it!"

A falsetto laugh rang out below her. Then the ladder was in motion again, racing down the wall. It was going so fast, Maggie knew that when it hit, it would hit hard. She might not be able to hold on this time.

She was up too far. If she fell...

Her only chance was to move down the ladder, lessen the height from which she was almost certain to fall if her tormentor didn't stop. And she didn't think he planned to stop.

She tried. But descending a speeding ladder wasn't easy.

Where was Helen? Where was Alex?

She managed to lower herself by one rung before she hit the wall again, her shoulder and left side taking a brutal blow against the wooden shelves jutting forward.

"Back and forth, back and forth/ 9 the falsetto voice sang, "isn't this fun, Maggie?"

It knew her name. It... that thing below... torturing her... making her dizzy and sick and certain that she was going to fall to her death any second now. It knew her name.

"Stop it!" Maggie screamed. "Just stop it! Why are you doing this?"

"Because you were bad, Maggie. You were very, very bad. You spoiled everything for me. Now you have to be punished. Getting tired of holding on, are you? Of course you are. It's hard to keep holding on

when everything is going wrong, isn't it? Boy, dont I know it! Here we go, one more time ... /"

Maggie made it down another rung during the flight from one end of the wall to the other, but she was so sick and dizzy, she knew the evil voice below her was right She couldn't hold on much longer.

This time, when she hit, the impact knocked her sideways, her feet, her legs leaving the ladder and swinging in midair above the floor. If her hands hadn't maintained their death grip on the third rung from the top, she'd have fallen. But her body weight was tugging on her arms, and her shoulders were on fire.

"Stop!" she gasped. "Stop, please!"

"Cant" the falsetto voice answered. "Cant do that Why don't youjnst let go? I mean, I dont have a lot of time here, Maggie. I want this to end now, so I can split before it's too late. Come on," teasing, cajoling, "just let go, okay?"

"No!" she screamed. "No!" She couldn't see a thing. She was operating on instinct alone. She swung her legs to the left, got one foot back on the ladder, then the other. Pulled her body sideways, threw it against the ladder. She was back on. But she was still too high up.

A shout. No longer playful. Angry. "Let go!"

"Never!"

This time, the push alone took Maggie's breath away. Too exhausted to attempt climbing down one more rung, she braced herself instead for the blow.

are the lights out? Who's in here with you? What's going on?"

Then, though Maggie heard no footsteps, there was the sound of a door slamming shut off to her left. The side door. Someone had just left?

The lights went on just as Maggie slammed into the far wall. Because of the speed of the ladder, this was the harshest blow of all, and she screamed in pain as her body hit.

But the ladder stopped then.

Gasping with relief but determined not to cry, Maggie sagged against the ladder, her body trembling violently, her head against a rung.

Lane ran over to stand below her. "Maggie, where's Helen? And Alex? What's been going on in here? Are you okay? Should I come up and get you? Whit is going to kill Alex for leaving you in here alone."

Maggie lifted her head. "Please don't say fetZZ," she said, almost laughing, but knowing that if she started, she wouldn't be able to stop. "I'm coming down now. I am coming down."

But she couldn't move. Her hands were frozen to the ladder rung, and refused to obey her command to let go.

Lane, understanding, was about to climb up to help her when Helen entered the room, and a second or two later, Whit and Scout. Though they had no idea what had happened, one look at Maggie was enough to realize that she was desperately in need of help.

"I'll go," Whit called. He sprinted the width of

the room and was halfway up the ladder before anyone could argue.

While Lane was filling Helen and Scout in on what little she knew, Whit stood just below Maggie, speaking in a quiet, reassuring voice, repeating over and over again, "You're okay, you're okay, just let go and start backing down. I'm right here, I won't let you fall. Trust me, Maggie."

And although the only thing her dazed mind was sure of was that she trusted no one and nothing at that moment, the voice worked its magic, and after what seemed to those waiting at the foot of the ladder to be a very long time, Maggie peeled her hands off the rung and began a long, painful descent. Whit stayed so close to her, they looked like one person climbing down.

The minute Maggie's feet hit the floor, her knees buckled. Whit caught her on one side, Scout on the other. Thus supported, Maggie gasped, "Where's Alex? He was here, and --" glancing around -- "now he's not. Where is he?"

They found him beneath a long, rectangular wooden table against one wall. He was unconscious, but there was no blood. When he came to, a few minutes later, he rubbed the back of his head, but couldn't remember what had happened. "I never saw a thing," he said in a dazed voice.

Whit called an ambulance from the sheriffs office downstairs. Maggie had to tell her story three times before the sheriff and his deputy were certain of the details. She was careful to repeat her attacker's quote about "splitting." She thought it

m

might be important. But as far as what had happened to Alex, she knew nothing.

"I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything. I had my back turned away from Alex, and the music was loud. All I know is, when I called Alex, he didn't answer. And then I was off on my little ride," Maggie told her friends while they were on their way to the hospital.

"Goodman will be okay," Scout told her. "The paramedics said it didn't look like a fracture. Maybe a concussion. They probably won't even keep him overnight. He's going to feel really lousy, though, when he finds out what happened to you."