Until Dark (21 page)

“Freeze!”

He turned in one swift motion, and she realized in that split second that she’d misjudged the distance between them. The heel of his left foot caught her squarely in the chest, and she fell back, allowing the intruder access to the steps.

“Son of a bitch . . .” Miranda growled and followed the assailant onto the steps. Three-quarters of the way down, she flung herself forward with both feet, landing a solid kick to the middle of his back. He fell the rest of the way, thudding onto the hardwood floor.

“Miranda!” Kendra yelled from the top of the steps.

“Turn the lights on!” Miranda called back, her gun now held tightly between both hands.

The elbow-punch to the side of her head came from nowhere and sent her spinning, but she managed to pull off two shots before going down and slamming her head against the newel post at the bottom of the steps. Somewhere, far away, a door closed softly. The gun slipped from her fingers, and she surrendered to the darkness.

Chapter
Nineteen

“How is she?” Adam’s voice was taut.

“She’s okay,” Kendra spoke softly into Miranda’s cell phone. “She was awake, though foggy, when they came to take her down for more X-rays a few minutes ago. She has a nasty gash from hitting the end of the newel post, and she lost a lot of blood. They’re going to keep her for a while, at least until tomorrow. I called Portia, and she’ll be here by this afternoon. Fortunately, Miranda has all of her personal numbers stored on her cell phone, so I was able to find her sister quickly. As quickly as I was able to find you.”

“And you’re all right?”

“Thanks to Miranda, yes. Everything happened so quickly. The commotion on the steps . . . the gun going off . . .”

“She shot him?”

“I don’t think she hit him, there wasn’t any blood, except for on the newel post, which was apparently hers. It was so dark down at the bottom of the steps. She called to me to turn the lights on, but he must have blindsided her. By the time I got the lights on, he’d hit her in the head and she went down and I ran down the steps and grabbed her gun but he was gone.” Kendra swallowed hard. “It all happened so fast. . . .”

“How did he get in?”

“What?”

“I said, How did he get into the house?”

“I don’t know. The dead bolts were on, and the windows were latched. Nothing was unlocked. I spoke with the police earlier, right after they arrived, and gave them a quick statement, then drove directly here, to the hospital. Maybe by now they’ve figured out how he entered, but I’ve been with Miranda for the past several hours, and frankly, I’ve been more concerned about her.”

“Where’s her gun now?”

“The police have it.”

“Look, I’m going to be meeting with the profiler at eight this morning, then I’ll be on my way up there. I may not get there until tonight. Is there a safe place for you to stay? They’ve already dispatched agents to your house and to the hospital, but I don’t suppose you’ll want to stay at the house. I don’t know how long you’ll want to hang around at the hospital.”

“I can go to Selena’s,” she told him.

“She’s right down the road from you?”

“Yes.”

“We can have someone watching that house as well. Who’s there, who can go with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who are the agents there at the hospital?”

“Oh. Well, there’s a tall guy with dark hair whose name I don’t know, and an agent named Will.”

“Will Fletcher?”

“I didn’t catch his last name.”

“Big guy, good-looking?”

“Very.”

“Swell,” Adam muttered under his breath.

“What?”

“I said, ask him to go with you when you leave to go to Selena’s and just stay there until someone can arrive to stick with you until this is over. John can have someone assigned by this afternoon. We’ll send someone to meet you at the house. I suspect Will might want to stay with Miranda but he can spare a few hours to watch over you until a replacement gets there.”

“Are they an item?”

“Not in the traditional sense of the word.”

“Okay. I’ll take Will wherever I go.”

“Just be safe, will you, until I can get there?”

“I’m all right, Adam. Nothing happened to me. But I feel so guilty that Miranda was hurt because of me.”

“Miranda was doing her job,” he replied levelly. “And thank God she’s as good at it as she is.”

There were voices in the background, and she could tell that Adam had placed his hand over the phone. When he got back to her, he said, “Kendra, I have to take a call. Promise me that you’ll stick close and take care until this is over.”

“Are you crazy? Of course I will.” She hit the end button. She intended on being damn careful.

Kendra stepped onto the elevator, followed by Will Fletcher, her new and somewhat reluctant guardian. Reluctant, she suspected, only because it was obvious that he hadn’t wanted to leave Miranda under guard of another agent, especially an agent he didn’t know and trust. But orders were orders, and Will did seem to be making an effort to be courteous and companionable.

Kendra, on the other hand, was impatient to leave the confines of the hospital. With the arrival of Miranda’s parents, she felt like a fifth wheel. Add to that the fact that the Cahills’ daughter had been injured trying to protect her, and Kendra’s level of discomfort had risen throughout the morning. She’d called Selena, but there’d been no answer. She could be seeing patients, as she often did at home. Kendra left a message on the answering machine that she’d be stopping by within a half hour.

“I hope you don’t mind stopping at my friend’s house,” Kendra said somewhat apologetically. “I haven’t been able to reach her by phone, and I was hoping to be able to stay with her tonight.”

“Not a problem,” Will replied. “Where you go, I go. Doesn’t matter where. At least until your regularly scheduled guard shows up.”

“Do you know who that will be?” she asked.

“No clue.” He shrugged as she turned onto her road. “I don’t think I’ve met any of the agents who work in this district. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t even be here, except for the fact that Mancini thought that I might want to be with Miranda—that is, with her and her family, since we’ve known each other since the Academy.”

“So you’re old friends, then.” She slanted a glance in the direction of the passenger seat.

“More or less.” He nodded noncommittally and stared out the window.

As she pulled into Selena’s driveway, Kendra made a mental note to ask Miranda about Will Fletcher.

Selena, however, was nowhere in sight. Even the gate to the backyard was closed. Usually, when Selena left the house to go to her office in town, she left the gate open so Lola could come and go as she pleased. Today the gate was latched. Kendra searched for Lola for a minute or two before giving up, assuming that Selena had taken the dog with her.

“She must be seeing patients in her office in town,” Kendra said as she got back into the car. “I’ll try to call her again later.”

Kendra drove down the road to her house and pulled in the driveway. Yellow crime scene tape stretched across the back steps, and several police cars were still in the drive. She sat in her car for about ten minutes, watching investigators come and go.

“Want to go see how they’re doing?” Will asked, obviously unaccustomed to sitting on the sidelines.

“Sure.”

As they walked toward the house, Kendra commented on the number of law enforcement personnel on the scene.

“Yeah, well, you’ve got your feds, your local police, and your state police.” Will nodded. “And looks like some county agency, judging by the van there on the end.”

“Why so many?”

“Any number of reasons. You have a federal agent injured, you have a break-in at the home of the daughter of a former U.S. senator, you’ll get the feds. But you have some local jurisdiction, county, and state. Everyone wants in on the action.” He stopped momentarily to survey the scene. “Hard to tell whose detectives are whose, isn’t it? All those tweed-jacket types look alike to me.”

She stood in the backyard and watched the activity around her while Will tried to find a fellow agent to check in with.

While she waited, she called Selena’s office in town, but ended up leaving a message there, too.

“Call me. It’s very important,
please
.” Practically the same message she’d left on Selena’s home machine, but she wasn’t feeling very original right then.

A tall man wearing a navy jacket with the bright yellow FBI across the back came through the open barn doors and walked toward the house.

“Oh, my God.” Kendra shook her head. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of it sooner?”

Kendra started toward the house, looking for Will. The agent who’d just come from the barn stopped her before she reached the grass at the edge of the drive.

“Sorry, miss. This is a crime scene,” he announced importantly.

“I know. I’m Kendra Smith.”

“Sorry. We’re still not permitting anyone inside,” he told her. “The crime scene crew is still at work. Is there something you wanted from inside?”

“No. But I need to speak with whomever is in charge of the investigation.” She tried to watch with detachment, but found she could not. This was her home, and it had been invaded. “I think I know how he got in.”

“I’ll get Chief Logan.” The agent disappeared into the house.

Minutes later, Chief Logan of the local police department came down the back steps accompanied by Will Fletcher.

“Kendra! You’re all right?”

“Yes, Chief. I am.”

“Thank God.”

Logan took her by the elbow and stepped aside as the photographer emerged from the back door.

“We’ll get copies of these to you as soon as they’re ready,” he told the chief.

“Fine. Great. Thanks.” Logan nodded.

“Chief, I think I know how he got in. You may want to keep him”—she nodded toward the photographer—“here for a few.”

Logan called to the photographer to wait up, then turned back to Kendra and said, “Go on.”

“Well, you know the stories about this house being a stop on the Underground Railroad . . .”

“As many of the houses back here were,” he nodded.

“There used to be a tunnel that went from our barn into the basement. There’s a trap door in the basement floor.”

“Show me . . .”

The steps going down into the basement of Smith House were narrow and steep, only one of a number of reasons why Kendra almost never ventured down. The floor of raised wood planks had been built over years ago by Kendra’s grandfather, but prior to that bit of modernization, the floor had been dirt. Smith House, like others in the area, still took in water during heavy storms. The floor, elevated several inches off the dirt, had always reminded Kendra of a boardwalk.

One light hung in the center of the ceiling, but it shed little illumination in the dark, windowless area. Logan turned on his flashlight, shined it around the perimeter, which followed only the later additions to the house.

“Where would this trapdoor be?” Chief Logan asked.

“In the corner on the right.” Kendra walked carefully across the wood floor to the far corner. “Here. The boards lift . . .”

She bent down to grab hold of the boards, and Logan stopped her.

“Let me get one of the men upstairs to open it up. I don’t want your fingerprints on anything down here that they’re not already on.”

Two more agents and one of the local detectives responded to Logan’s call for assistance. With gloved hands, the detective lifted the trapdoor where Kendra pointed, and shined his flashlight down into the hole. A wooden ladder descended several feet into the earth.

“Let’s see where this leads . . .” he said as he lowered himself onto the ladder.

“I’m with you.” One of the agents followed.

“Do you remember where in the barn this comes out?” Logan asked.

“Someplace near the back wall, there used to be a door there that opened out right onto the creek. I guess so that the runaways could get out of the canoes and just slip right in the back. Years ago, after one of the fires, the barn was rebuilt slightly closer to the house, and the back door was omitted. I never went into the tunnel. It was too dark and confined and I didn’t like the idea of what could be down there with me,” she laughed nervously, “but yes, I know where the door is. I’ll show you.”

Chief Logan and one of the FBI agents followed Kendra out to the barn, cautioning her to wait outside until they confirmed that no one was hiding inside.

“If someone is in there, they won’t be hard to spot,” she told them as she stood aside the open door. “There’s nothing in there to hide behind. There used to be stalls, but after the last fire they weren’t rebuilt.”

The area declared safe, Kendra stepped inside and went directly to a section where scattered straw still covered the floor.

“At one time, a long time ago, my family had goats. There wasn’t enough grass to support cows here, but there was plenty for the goats to eat.” With the shoe of one foot, she kicked at the straw. “It should be right around here. There’s a broom on the wall there.”

She went to lift it and the agent stopped her. Drawing on a pair of gloves, he took the broom and swept in the area she’d designated. A square cut into the floor emerged, and he lifted it to expose a dark hole similar to the one in the basement. He turned on his flashlight, then called to the men who’d gone in from the basement side. A call in response came from the bottom of the hole.

“The floor is dirt,” the detective reported as he raised himself from the ladder, “and covered with footprints. Someone has definitely been down there recently.”

“So you trampled them good, I suppose.” Logan looked pained.

“We tried to walk along the sides of the tunnel to preserve as much as we could,” the detective said. “There are plenty to get impressions from.”

“Then let’s get the team in here for prints. Finger and foot.” Logan led Kendra back out of the barn. “It looks as if we’re going to be busy here for a bit longer. Where can we get in touch with you if we need you?”

“I was going to stay at Selena Brennan’s, but I haven’t been able to get in touch with her. I think maybe I’ll go over to Father Tim’s until she gets back.”

“That’s good,” the chief replied, waving to his small crew of investigators. “Want me to send a car with you?”

“That won’t be necessary, thanks. I’ll have a guardian, complements of the federal government. He should be here soon, I imagine. Besides, I can’t think of any place safer than Father Tim’s.”

Father Tim spread mayonnaise on two slices of bread and proceeded to stack it high with ham and cheese. A little lettuce, a little onion, and the priest’s favorite lunch was ready.

As always, the lunch hour at the Mission of Hope was serve yourself, and at some point between eleven-thirty and one-thirty or so every day, that was exactly what the residents did.

“So, Jimbo,” the priest asked as the tall thin man came into the kitchen. “How’s the job search going?”

“Not so good,” the man they all called Jimbo replied. “But I’m not giving up, you know.”