Candy Crush (30 page)

She moved the flashlight back and forth, but
she couldn’t really make anything out. She could tell that the room
was probably no more than six feet high. Brandon wouldn’t be able
to straighten up to his full height down there. The walls were dirt
and she suspected the floor was too. The ladder was rough wood and
Gabriella wished she had a pair of gloves with her, because she
knew curiosity would force her to go down into that cellar to have
a look around. She could hardly make them out, but there were boxes
or something down there, piled on the floor.

“Probably more overstock,” she muttered to
herself, feeling annoyed. “More stuff to clean up. I can’t believe
this place isn’t infested with mice or rats or something.”

Butter hung over the edge of the hole in the
floor, tail wagging, tongue lolling out of her mouth. Gabriella
pushed her away. “Don’t even think about it,” she warned the dog.
“You’ll never make it down there without falling.”

She considered simply closing the trap door
and walking away, pretending she hadn’t ever found it in the first
place. But curiosity was a powerful emotion. If those boxes really
were more overstock, she would need to deal with them, sooner
rather than later. And if they weren’t boxes of candy – what were
they?

In truth, it didn’t seem likely that it was
candy. Surely nature would have taken care of it by now? The candy
store had been empty for at least two years before Gabriella bought
it, and the amount of overstock piled on top of this trap door
suggested that this door hadn’t been opened in many more years than
that.

She had to go down into the cellar, to
determine just what was in those boxes.

With a world weary sigh, Gabriella turned
and placed her foot on the first rung of the crudely designed
ladder. It creaked, but held her weight. Butter stepped up next to
her and peered into the hole again.

“Stay up there,” Gabriella commanded.

When Gabriella reached the ground, she
breathed a sigh of relief that nothing scurried out of her way. “No
animals,” she called up to Butter, who was once again at the edge
of the opening. At least now if she fell through the hole in the
floor, Gabriella could catch her.

Gabriella moved the flashlight back and
forth across the small space. It was approximately half as large as
the storeroom above, and the only thing down there was a pile of
metal boxes.

“Probably not candy,” Gabriella muttered to
herself as she inspected one of the boxes. “Why would someone go to
these lengths to store candy in such a humid place?”

Each box was secured with a metal latch that
had been rusted with time and humidity. Gabriella made a
half-hearted attempt to open one of the boxes, but she knew it was
futile before she even started. She was going to need something
stronger than her own fingernails to free the rusted latch from its
home.

Before she climbed back up the ladder to
search for a tool with which she could open the boxes, Gabriella
tried to lift one of them, thinking she would prefer to investigate
the contents while standing aboveground, but it was too heavy for
her to consider trying to get it up the ladder.

By the time she returned to the storeroom,
sifted through the items on the shelves, unearthed a flathead
screwdriver and then returned to the cellar, she was sweating. As
the cool, damp air hit her moist skin, she shivered and felt
strangely ominous. Gabriella glanced up at the hole in the ceiling
above her head and considered again just climbing the ladder,
closing the trap door and pretending she never found it in the
first place.

Why was she suddenly so nervous?

“Snap out of it. Gabriella,” she commanded
out loud. “Just open the damn box so you can get back to Brandon’s
house and take another shower.”

She crouched next to the pile of boxes and
used the screwdriver to dig at the rusted latch, until it finally
popped free. She then had to shimmy the head of the screwdriver
into the small crack between the lid and the box because it was too
rusted to simply open with just a small tug.

The lid abruptly flipped open, spraying
Gabriella with shards of rusted metal. She squeezed her eyes shut
and waved her hand in front of her face as she spit out a mouthful
of the stuff.

“Yuck.”

She blinked her watering eyes open and
lifted the flashlight, aiming the beam at the contents of the
box.

“
Ohmygod
!”

Gabriella leapt to her feet and pressed a
hand to her chest as she took several deep breaths, trying to get a
grip on her racing heart. She aimed the flashlight beam at the box
and looked again.

“Maybe this is the reason someone doesn’t
want me to open the candy store,” she mused as she looked down at
rows of neatly stacked twenty-dollar bills, wrapped with rubber
bands. She knew she shouldn’t touch them, but she did anyway, just
to see how deep the stacks went.

Gabriella lifted out ten stacks before she
hit the bottom of the first box. The stacks were two across and
four down. “That’s a lot of money,” she said to herself. “And
that’s only one box.” She did a quick count. “Fourteen boxes. Holy…
wow. That’s a lot of money.”

Gingerly, as if she thought the stacks of
bills might combust in her hands, Gabriella placed them back into
the box and closed the lid, then stepped away until her back
brushed against the unfinished wood of the ladder.

“I think I need to let the police know about
this,” she said as she climbed out of the cellar.

She closed the cellar door, and then because
it made her nervous to leave it exposed – even though she was
fairly certain no one would realize it was there unless they knew
about it ahead of time – she pushed a set of steal shelves from one
wall to another, so that they were at least partially covering the
door in the floor.

She then stepped into the bathroom and
washed her hands and wiped her face with a wet paper towel. She
brushed dirt and rust flakes off her clothes and flipped off the
light as she left the bathroom. She grabbed her keys and purse off
of a shelf and opened the backdoor. Butter darted out and then
began barking madly.

Gabriella noticed that a car had been backed
up to within a few feet of the door. The trunk was open.
Gabriella’s brain registered that this situation did not feel
right. She immediately tried to push the door closed, but a foot
was wedged into the doorway. She gave up her efforts and turned and
rushed through the storeroom, heading towards the front of the
candy store. If she could just get through the storeroom door,
someone – preferably Brandon, from his office directly across the
street – would see her, would see her assailant, and would come to
her rescue.

But she was tackled from behind before she
reached the door. She fell to the floor, knocking the air out of
her lungs. Before she could gather her strength to fight, she felt
something press against her neck. A scant second later, there was a
pinprick of pain and within another few seconds, her mind began to
fog, and then it shut down completely.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Brandon glanced at the clock in the upper
right hand corner of his computer. Four twenty-six. Late enough, he
decided, to call it quits on a Friday afternoon. Besides, he was
exhausted from lack of sleep and worry, thanks to the late-night
visit from Gabriella’s ex-boyfriend’s brother. He hoped to hell
that Gabriella had gone to the police station and they had already
contacted the Dallas PD, who were hopefully in the process of
arresting Miguel Martinez. Brandon had a feeling he would not sleep
well until he knew Miguel was either behind bars or kicked out of
the country.

He glanced up from his computer screen and
looked at the plate glass window that faced the candy store
directly across the street. Was Gabriella even now at the police
station? Or was she still at the house, catching up on the sleep
she missed last night? He hadn’t seen a single trace of activity
across the street, and he looked at that damn candy store a hundred
times a day, at least.

A flash of buttery yellow caught his eye and
drew it downward. Butter was there, at the door to the DDA office,
scratching and barking madly. The thick glass drowned out the
sound, but he could tell she was barking by the way her mouth kept
opening, over and over, without pause, as she stood on her hind
legs and scrabbled at the door with her front paws.

“What’s she doing on this side of the
street? And why’s she having such a damn fit?” He stood up and
headed across the office to the door. As soon as he pulled it open,
the dog rushed inside and began running circles around his legs,
without ever letting up on the incessant barking. He waited a
heartbeat and then glanced outside, looking for Gabriella. If the
dog was here, Gabriella couldn’t be far behind.

But she wasn’t on the sidewalk and her car
wasn’t parked out front. “You didn’t get out and wander over here,
did you?” he asked, looking down at the dog. She danced at his
feet, still barking nonstop.

“Stop already!” he snapped. The barking was
giving him a headache. “Why are you so damn excited?”

He stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked
across the street. The candy store was dark. The setting sun glared
off the windows, making it impossible to see inside. As soon as he
opened the door, Butter bolted across the street and went running
down the block.

“Butter!” Brandon called, thinking at the
same time how much he hated that name. Who named their dog
something so silly as
Butter
?

But he smiled as the thought occurred to
him. He shook his head and realized Gabriella could do any old
silly thing she wanted, just as long as he was somehow involved.
His smile widened. Gabriella was gun-shy when it came to
relationships, but that’s okay, he could wait.

He thought about the older women in his
family. If only they could see him now. Brandon Sarantos, local
heartthrob, renowned playboy, was ready to settle down, after
having only met Gabriella a couple weeks ago. Mind-boggling. But in
a good way.

Definitely a good way.

Butter’s barking jarred him back to the
present, and he realized she had not stopped when he called her,
and was still charging down the block. He called out the dog’s name
again and then jogged across the street after her. She rounded the
corner at the end of the block and Brandon jogged up to the corner
just in time to see her bolt around the corner again, down the
alley behind the candy store. Brandon was starting to feel slightly
alarmed now, so he picked up his pace and chased after the dog.

When he reached Butter, she was frantically
scratching at the back door to the candy store. Gabriella’s car was
parked under the stairs leading up to the apartment. “Did she lock
you out?” he asked the dog, even as his heart rate inexplicably
accelerated.

Quite suddenly, he had an impending sense of
doom. He rapped his knuckles on the door but no one responded. He
looked around and noticed another set of tire tracks. Someone had
backed right up to the back door. He glanced around again and
spotted something on the ground near the door. He stepped closer
and his heart stuttered in his chest.

“Gabriella’s purse,” he said.

He opened the purse and pawed through it.
Her phone was there, but her keys were not. Purse in hand, he
bolted down the alley, running home as fast as his legs would carry
him. Butter belatedly realized he’d left and chased after him,
still barking nonstop.

He ran straight to his house, burst through
the back door and began shouting Gabriella’s name. When he received
no response, he switched tactics.

“Gabby, answer me, damn it!” She may get
pissed off at him for using the nickname she only tolerated from a
select few individuals, but at least he would know she was safe and
sound and nothing had happened to her.

Unfortunately, that tactic did not work.
There was no response to his shouts.

He raced upstairs, checking every room
before he finally pulled her phone out of her purse, found Emmett’s
number and pressed send.

“Hey sis,” Emmett said when he answered the
phone.

“Emmett, it’s Brandon. Have you seen or
heard from your sister lately?” He could hear the panic in his own
voice.

Emmett was instantly on alert. “What do you
mean, lately? I haven’t talked to her since yesterday. What the
hell is going on?”

“She’s gone. Her purse was on the ground
outside the candy store and the dog is having an apoplectic fit.
She swears she saw Miguel Martinez’s brother snooping around the
house last night.”

“Oh
shit
.”

He could hear shuffling, movement on the
other end of the line. Probably Emmett pulling on his coat and
digging for his car keys. He hadn’t known Emmett for very long, but
he could tell he was a highly protective younger brother.

“I’m at your parents’ house. I’m on my way
to your house right now.”

Five minutes later, Emmett’s rental car
screeched to a halt at the curb in front of Brandon’s house.
Brandon rushed out the back door, leaving Butter howling in the
laundry room. Emmett leapt out of the car and met him on the front
lawn. “Tell me what happened,” Emmett demanded.

“Last night, Gabriella saw some guy snooping
around the house. She said it was Miguel’s brother” –

“Hector,” Emmett said grimly.

“Yes, that’s it. We called the cops and they
came and took him away. Gabriella stayed home today, to sleep in,
since it happened in the middle of the night, and I know she didn’t
go back to sleep afterward. She was planning to go to the police
station to follow up, since they didn’t talk to us last night”
–

“They didn’t take a statement last
night?”