Locked Inside (11 page)

“What kind of promise?” Marnie asked. Her legs tensed, feet pressing on the floor. Her hand tightened on the bottle. One more good slosh, and then—

Leah leaned forward. Words spilled from her in a hectic rush. “I was thinking about what you said. About my being entitled to half of Skye’s stuff. When this is over, when—if—I let you go, you have to swear you won’t say it was me. Promise me that you know I’m entitled and that you’ll say you never saw my face.”

Marnie froze in shock, momentarily forgetting the bottle. A confusion of thoughts bombarded her.

“I can’t let you go, otherwise,” Leah went on urgently. “I have to think of myself. You do see that? I would like the money—I’m entitled, you’re right. And maybe later on you and I could meet, and pretend to only discover then that we’re sisters, and
then
I could change my name.” She paused. Her eyes pleaded.

Marnie swallowed. “Oh,” she managed feebly. “That’s an idea. So … so, we’d write the ransom note together, you and I, and get you the money, and then you’d let me go, and we’d meet up later on, like in a year or two? Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Yes,” said Leah. “Yes!”

She is nuts, Marnie thought. If she were Leah, she certainly wouldn’t trust the promise of a captive. Why, even if Marnie actually did keep the secret, there would be evidence all over the place, and did Leah Slaight think it wouldn’t be suspicious if she
left Halsett abruptly? Did she think the police, the FBI, whoever, were that dumb? Did she think Max wouldn’t be quick to trace the ransom money?

Let’s hope she is that dumb
, said the Sorceress dryly.

But it wasn’t just dumb, Marnie thought. It was pitiful, sad. This woman wanted a sister, a mother, so badly … Marnie could understand….

No, don’t get sympathetic! She’s dangerous! Never forget that.

“I don’t want to kill you,” said Leah intensely. “And I would trust your word.”

“You would?” Marnie’s mind whirled. Was this a better option than trying to escape? Should she trust Leah, take the “do nothing” choice?

Beneath her fingers lay the bottle. She might never again have such a perfect opportunity, with Leah distracted, the door open.

Marnie wasn’t conscious of thinking, of sorting through her options and choosing a particular path. She fixed her eyes on Leah’s. She watched as Leah released the gun in her lap and lifted both hands in a pleading gesture. “Let’s be sisters,” Leah said. “For real.”

This is it
, urged the Sorceress.
She’s not touching the gun, the door is open, the bottle is ready. Trust yourself, not her.

“Promise me,” Leah said again. “Promise me, as Skye’s daughter. Promise me, on her soul.” She held her empty hands out. Her eyes bore into Marnie’s. “Promise me—as my sister.”

I could just lie to her, Marnie thought frantically. Or I could actually keep the promise—it wouldn’t
make any difference. The evidence would speak for me. And if I took this risk now, if something went wrong …

The Sorceress was silent. She had already spoken. Marnie was on her own.

Marnie looked directly at Leah. “I promise,” she said.

She watched Leah shut her eyes, in deep emotion.

And in that moment, Marnie lifted the seltzer bottle, gave it a final, sharp shake, and, in one beautiful flow of movement, leapt to her feet, untwisted the cap, and aimed the bottle opening directly at Leah.

T
he seltzer exploded even more spectacularly than Marnie had hoped, showering everything in a 270-degree arc centered on Marnie’s hands. Moving forward in the same instant—a bare second before Leah yelped—Marnie threw the bottle forcefully in the direction of Leah’s head and sprinted toward the door.

Go for the gun, go for the gun!
yelled the Sorceress, but Marnie didn’t pause. She grabbed the door and flung it wide.
Shut her in, then!
demanded the Sorceress, and Marnie wasted a precious moment grabbing the knob and slamming the door behind her. In the very next second she heard the padlock fall to the floor and bounce out of arm’s reach. There wasn’t time to grab it, get it back into place, close it, lock Leah in. Marnie’s chest rose and fell. Suddenly and with utter clarity, she knew the Sorceress had been right: she should’ve thrown herself on top of
Leah and tried to grab the gun. Five seconds ago, it had seemed the riskier choice.

Too late now.

Leah was screaming actual words. Instinctively, Marnie threw herself back against the door in the same moment that Leah grabbed the knob on the other side to push the door open. Marnie dug her heels into the rough floor and gritted her teeth, holding the door closed with her body. Then, behind her, Leah crashed against the door, skidding Marnie forward an inch or two. Marnie shoved back, managing to force the door shut again. She could hear Leah retreat, preparatory to another slam. She braced herself.

Leah was taller and heavier than Marnie. Marnie didn’t need the Sorceress to tell her that all the laws of physics were on Leah’s side.

Once more, Leah slammed against the door. It pulsed. Grimly, Marnie hung on.

She looked frantically around and saw an escape route only a few yards away: a wooden staircase leading upward. Three seconds to get to it, another four to sprint to the top. Once she got outside, her chances would surely be better.

Slam.

It was harder, this time, to push back. Marnie knew she couldn’t handle many more of these. She scanned the area again. Was there something she could quickly shove against the door? She saw some old wooden two-by-fours, paint cans, an ancient microwave oven, a big overstuffed lounge chair against the far wall. Yes!—no, she could never push the chair into place in time. Refastening the padlock
was a better idea, but could she do it quickly enough? She knew the answer was no.

Slam.

Marnie panted. The soles of her heels, braced against the floor, hurt horribly. She simply could not get through more than a couple more of these assaults. In fact, Marnie thought distinctly, if Leah abandoned the run-and-jump technique and merely pushed for a sustained two minutes, it would all be over.

She moved from the door and grabbed up a two-by-four.

One …

Two …

Three—

Slam!

Screaming, Leah hurtled through the door, right shoulder first, right hand holding the gun at her side. She was moving fast, expecting a resistance that wasn’t there, and ran past Marnie.

Marnie swung the two-by-four. It connected solidly with Leah’s shoulders. Leah staggered but didn’t fall. Didn’t drop the gun.

Her head, why didn’t you aim at her head?
wailed the Sorceress.
Try again, try again!

Marnie felt sick. The Sorceress was more violent than she was. How could she physically aim at someone’s
head?
This wasn’t Paliopolis; it was real and she couldn’t—

Leah had swiveled around, her eyes wild with rage, with fear, with—betrayal. She raised her gun arm.

Marnie became aware that she, too, was screaming. Heart in throat, she took a frantic step back and swung the two-by-four again. Low. The end of the two-by-four collided with the underside of Leah’s right hand, forcing it upward along with the gun it clutched. Marnie backed up and lashed out again.

The gun went flying sideways through the air across the room, smacking against the far wall and falling behind the lounge chair. Marnie gasped. Her eyes locked with Leah’s. Leah’s body blocked the way to the staircase. The gun was about equidistant from both of them.

Leah bolted for the gun.

Dropping the two-by-four, Marnie raced for the stairs. She ran the five-yard dash of her life. She had enough time to get away, to get out; she knew she did. Gaining the foot of the stairs, she reached out and grabbed the railing and used it to swing her body around and onto the staircase without losing momentum. Her feet pounded up the stairs. One, two, three, four, five—

With terrific force, she collided into someone who’d been racing down the stairs even more rapidly than she’d been racing upward. He—it was a he—yelled something, as, once again, the laws of physics spoke decisively in Marnie’s disfavor.

She landed painfully, tangled with the tall newcomer in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. They lay, stunned, for several seconds too long. Marnie knew it. She felt the vital moments tick away as she got her wind back.

She waited for sounds from above. Police sirens. Shouts. Someone who was with this stranger who’d collided with her. Tentative hellos. Anything.

Nothing came.

Leah said, in a voice that shook: “I’ve got the gun.”

Marnie examined the newcomer’s shocked face, so close to hers. Unless they were recruiting teenagers, he couldn’t possibly be a member of the police or the FBI. A neighbor who’d heard the ruckus? An accomplice of Leah’s?

No,
said the Sorceress slowly.
Not Leah’s accomplice. Not a neighbor.

“If either of you moves,” said Leah, “I’ll kill you.”

Marnie didn’t move. Neither did the young man. He was a little older than her, Marnie guessed. The shaved head definitely did not add to his looks. He was nobody’s idea of gorgeous. Except—except for his eyes.

“Sorcer—Marnie?” he said. “Marnie, it is you, right? I heard screaming. Sorry—are you all right?”

Sorcer.

You know who this is
, said the Sorceress.

It was impossible. It was completely and utterly impossible. And yet, on another level, it seemed completely natural. Of course he would show up. He always did, lately.

Marnie felt her mouth shape itself into a bitter little smile. “Hello, Elf,” she said.

“
S
orceress,” said the Elf, formally, with a duck of the head that in any other situation might have been gallant. Here, now, sprawled and entangled at the bottom of a flight of basement stairs, it was merely preposterous. Marnie felt an incipient bubble of hysteria. Then, anxiously, the Elf said again: “Marnie? Are you okay?” And hearing the cadence of his voice, Marnie thought foolishly: Oh.

Oh, it’s you.

“I’m just fabulous,” she heard herself say.

She had landed mostly on top of the Elf. Beneath her palms, Marnie could feel his heartbeat, accelerated from running and from the fall. Their eyes met. Marnie’s heart performed an involuntary gymnastic contortion.

“Get up!” Leah Slaight’s voice slashed across Marnie’s thoughts. “Both of you.” As if she felt she
needed to repeat it, Leah added shrilly: “I’ve got the gun.”

Marnie kept her eyes on the Elf’s face, which had gone very white. “I don’t suppose you’re with an undercover teenage SWAT team,” she said to him.

The Elf shook his head. His lips formed words that didn’t come out. They might have been, I’m sorry.

“Not criticizing, just checking,” Marnie babbled. “You never know. People aren’t always what they seem—”

“Now!” barked Leah, who had evidently seen many police movies.

The Elf’s shoulders raised in the tiniest of shrugs, and it was as if the small movement restored something of Marnie to herself. Awareness of a couple of new aches penetrated. Her right elbow, in particular. She blinked and looked away from the Elf. Carefully she levered herself off him and onto her knees. For the first time since the running collision, she raised her eyes and looked fully at Leah Slaight.

Leah was six feet away, fixed in a bent-leg stance with both hands on the gun. Her face looked as if it was molded from melted wax. Her eyes were pieces of flat black coal. The mouth of the gun, too, was a single large black eye. Leah was listening intently, and Marnie knew instinctively that she was trying to hear whether anyone else was coming. Someone who might have come with the Elf. Police, maybe.

The silence elongated. Only a few seconds, yet it seemed to last forever.

“You too,” said Leah to the Elf, more quietly than before. “Get up.”

The Elf lifted his torso from the floor and then paused, leaning on his elbows. Thankfully distracted from Leah, from the awful silence, Marnie frowned down at him. Had he just winced? His lips were tight.

“Are you okay?” she asked him. This time her voice came out sounding almost squeaky. She could feel the gun, its eye, staring at her. No. At them.

The Elf succeeded in rolling to his side. He reached down to touch his ankle and winced again, clearly in pain. A single sentence formed itself in Marnie’s consciousness, in illuminated letters.

We are both going to die.

With the sentence came an inchoate rush of emotions. She had been escaping. In fact, if the Elf hadn’t come barreling down the staircase she’d surely have made it away! And now he was hurt, and in danger too, and it was all her—no, it was his own stupid, stupid fault! If he hadn’t been so fast down the stairs, if—he was always messing her up, always! This was not Paliopolis—and, oh, now,
now
, she couldn’t stand it if he too—

“I need a little help getting up,” said the Elf. He had turned his head and was speaking directly to Leah; speaking calmly, matter-of-factly, and with an unobtrusive note of courtesy. “Can Marnie help me? Would that be okay? It’s my ankle.” As if he were conversing at a party, he added: “Typical. I’m kind of clumsy. My mother says it’s because my feet are too far away from my head.”

“Who are you?” said Leah. Her voice was not steady, but the mouth of the gun was. Very. “What are you doing here?”

Marnie stilled. Yes, she’d like to know the answer to that second question, too.

“I’m a friend of Marn’s,” said the Elf, again in that calm, conversational tone. “Some people came to my house a day or two ago, thinking she might’ve been planning to visit me. I knew she hadn’t, so I figured I’d drive up here and look around. See if I could find her.” In his voice Marnie heard the lingering amazement that he had, in fact, found her.

And wait a minute. What had he just called her? Marn? Rhymes with barn? Eww.

“No,” Leah said impatiently. “Why—how—did you come
here
?” She gestured around the basement.

“Well, first I went to Halsett with my buddy Dave,” the Elf said, as if it were an entirely reasonable thing for him to have been doing, as if this were an answer.