Wine and Punishment

by Sarah Fox

  I closed my eyes briefly, picturing the terrible scene in my head—Rhonda chasing Eric through the night, catching up to him near the creek, driving the sword through him.

  Had he yelled for help, with no one around to hear him? Had he suffered or had he died quickly?

  The wheelbarrow rammed into something hard and tipped to the side. I clambered out of the rusty metal tray and to my feet. I charged past Rhonda, running as fast as I could, heading back the way we’d come, hoping that would get me out of the woods to safety. My head throbbed, but I barely noticed the pain. Fear and adrenaline drove me onward.

  I stumbled, my grogginess still not completely gone, but I grabbed onto the nearest tree trunk to save myself from a fall. There was no need to waste time looking back to know Rhonda was after me. I could hear her crashing through the forest behind me.

  I screamed for help, knowing there likely wasn’t anyone nearby to hear me. I kept calling anyway, my voice shaking as I kept running.

  Trees and more trees filled my vision. I couldn’t see the edge of the forest, but that only made me run faster. I tripped on a tree root and went sprawling, landing face-first in a pile of soggy leaves. My head hurt more than ever, so much that tears formed in my eyes. I struggled to my knees, knowing I had to keep moving.

  Before I could get to my feet, something large and heavy plowed into my back. I lurched face-first into the ground again. Rhonda had tackled me. She rolled off my back and grabbed me, hauling me to my feet. I tried to fight her off, but my efforts were feeble and clumsy. Dizziness had joined my pain and nausea, and I didn’t have the strength to do much of anything. I kept struggling anyway, but Rhonda tightened her hold on me and easily dumped me back into the wheelbarrow.

  I knew I needed to stay awake, to attempt another escape, but the world kept fading away around me. I struggled to stay conscious, but that only brought me more pain and nausea. When the wheelbarrow bounced to a stop, I realized that my eyes had closed despite my best efforts to keep them open. I forced my eyelids up and saw nothing but gray clouds above me. We were out of the forest.

  How long had I been unconscious?

  Terrified, I pushed myself up, searching the area for any sign of someone who might be able to help me. We had arrived at a grassy meadow not far from the edge of the woods. The forest bordered the field on two sides, a rocky hillside jutting up on the third side, a line of sugar maples on the fourth, half their colorful leaves shed. I thought I spotted a building beyond the maple trees, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I screamed for help anyway.

  Rhonda grabbed me and roughly hauled me out of the wheelbarrow before pushing me to the ground. I heard a strange clunk, and then she grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked me up off the damp grass. She pulled me a couple of feet to the left and gave me a hard shove. I put out my hands, hoping to break my fall when I hit the grass again, but the ground had disappeared.

  Flailing, I fell into a pit of darkness.

  Chapter 26

  I landed with a splash and a simultaneous shock of pain and cold. A loud thud boomed over my head, and the shaft of gray daylight shining down on me disappeared, leaving me in complete darkness. I gasped with fear. Splashing around frantically, I tried to clamber up toward the place where the daylight had been moments before. In my haste and panic, I lost my balance and fell back down to where I’d started, making another splash.

  Stay calm, I told myself.

  That was hard to do when my mind was reeling with fear, when I didn’t know where I was or what would happen next.

  My breaths were still coming in great gasps, and the sound of them—so loud and raspy—was what snapped me out of my panicked state. I forced myself to stay still and calm down. I needed to assess my situation, to figure out where I was so I could find a way to escape.

  I wouldn’t let myself consider that I might not have time, that Rhonda’s next move might put an end to my life before I had a chance to try to save myself.

  Carefully, I felt the space around me, moving my hands here and there. I was sitting on a set of stone stairs, I realized. No wonder my elbow and hip had hurt so much when I landed. They still ached, though not quite as fiercely as my head.

  I continued my investigation. On either side of the stairway were brick walls.

  My legs were completely soaked, and when I moved my foot down another stair, it splashed into water.

  What was this place?

  I sat still and listened, trying to detect any sign that Rhonda was still nearby. All I could hear was a steady drip-drip-drip from somewhere nearby. My teeth chattered, and only then did I realize that I was shivering, that I was freezing from my unintended dip in the icy water below me. I hugged myself and closed my eyes in the darkness, trying to keep the cold and pain from overwhelming me

  When I opened my eyes again, I tipped my head back, looking at the darkness above me. I blinked, wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me. They weren’t, I realized a moment later.

  A tiny sliver of light punctuated the darkness. Placing my hands on the brick walls to steady myself, I climbed up three stairs until my head bumped against something solid. I felt around the sliver of light. My fingers pressed against solid wood.

  A trapdoor, maybe?

  That would make sense.

  I pushed at it, tentatively at first and then with more force. It wouldn’t budge. I pounded my fists against the wood, but still it held fast, and I only succeeded in getting a splinter in my hand. I sank back down to sit on the stairs, resting my head against my knees, fighting off another wave of despair.

  I was shivering more than ever now, and I realized that Rhonda might have no intention of coming back, of doing anything further to me. She wouldn’t need to. Stuck down here, my jeans soaked with cold water, I wasn’t likely to last long. How many hours it would take for hypothermia to set in, I didn’t know. But I did know that I didn’t want to wait around to find out.

  Forcing myself to move, I tried pounding on the trapdoor again. Then I bent over so I could press my back and shoulders against it. Still it wouldn’t budge. I braced myself against the brick wall and awkwardly kicked at the wooden hatch. I screamed for help, over and over, until my voice grew hoarse and my throat scratchy.

  The temptation to sit down on the stairs and cry was almost irresistible, but I refused to give in to despair. I wouldn’t let Rhonda win, wouldn’t let her get away with doing this to me, doing what she’d done to Eric.

  With a fresh surge of determination, I decided to try a different approach. I balked at the thought of entering the water below me, not knowing what lurked beneath the surface, but I needed to find out if there was another way out of my underground prison.

  Tentatively, I descended the steps. Icy water closed around one foot and then the other, creeping up toward my knees before I reached the bottom of the stairway. Slowly, moving my hands out to the front and side of me, I inched forward. My hands didn’t touch anything, so I stopped. I reached farther to my left, and then to my right. On both sides, my fingers touched brick walls again. I put one hand above my head and found that the walls curved over my head in an arch. I was in some sort of tunnel.

  I inched my way forward again, grimacing at the cold water. When I stubbed my toe against something, I give a shriek of surprise.

  After a moment of blind examination, I realized that I’d run into a wooden rack holding kegs, the bottom of the rack submerged in the earthy-smelling water.

  As soon as I realized what I was touching, I knew where I was.

  The abandoned cellar on Grayson’s property. The one prone to flooding during rainy weather.

  Knowing my location brought me a small measure of relief, but only for a second or two. Since the cellar wasn’t in use, Grayson and his employees would have no reason to come here. I thought I’d caught a glimpse of a building through the stand of maple trees before Rhonda shoved me down in the cellar, but it was a long way off. Nobody there would hear my screams. There was
even a chance that my body would never be found if I succumbed to hypothermia.

  “Not going to happen,” I said out loud, my voice sounding strange in the confines of the watery tunnel.

  Despite my fears of what slithering creatures might be hiding in the water, I continued my progress through the tunnel, constantly checking the walls and ceiling for anything remotely like an escape route. I reached the end of the tunnel a few minutes later and found only a dead end. Shivering uncontrollably now, my legs almost numb, I headed back the way I’d come. When I reached the bottom of the stairway, I searched with my hands until they made contact with the wooden slats of the rack holding the kegs.

  I tested the slats until I found one that felt a little looser than the others. I tugged and pulled and wrestled with it, until it finally broke free. Keeping a tight grip on it, I splashed through the water and made my way up the stairs. I pulled my wet sleeves down over my hands to protect them from getting more splinters, and then got a firm grip on the broken piece of wood.

  Drawing on whatever strength I could find, I rammed the makeshift tool against the trapdoor. I did that over and over again, pausing once in a while to readjust my grip on the splintering piece of wood. Then I resumed my attack on the hatch, channeling all my fear into the onslaught.

  Eventually, I collapsed onto the stairs, breathing hard. My efforts had helped to warm me up a bit, but now I was exhausted. My head throbbed so hard that I felt ill all over, and I had to lean against the brick wall to stop myself from feeling like the world was spinning around me in the darkness.

  When I caught my breath, I looked up above me. At first, I thought all my desperate work had done nothing, but then I realized that the small sliver of light was no longer quite as small. With renewed energy, I pushed myself back to my feet and pressed my fingers against the trapdoor, trying to squeeze one through the crack in the wood. Only my pinky finger would fit, but if I kept hitting that spot, maybe—just maybe—I’d be able to make a bigger hole. And if I made a bigger hole, I might be able to reach through and unlock the trapdoor.

  Motivated by that thought, I went back to ramming the wooden slat against the hatch. I didn’t know how much time had passed while I worked, but when I collapsed onto the stairs for a second time, the wood next to the hole had splintered slightly.

  I wanted to get up and try again, but a wave of nausea hit me so hard that I had to close my eyes and focus on breathing to keep myself from vomiting. When the worst of it had passed, I staggered to my feet and attacked the trapdoor once again. But I didn’t have much strength left and only managed feeble strikes.

  The piece of wood fell from my hands, and another bout of dizziness sent me staggering into the brick wall. I thought of Wimsey, Aunt Gilda, Taylor, and the rest of my family. I couldn’t accept that I might never see them again.

  The first tear I’d allowed myself to shed trickled down my cheek.

  “Hello?”

  I froze, thinking I’d imagined the voice.

  “Hello? Is somebody there?”

  No, I definitely hadn’t imagined it. It was closer now.

  And it was a man’s voice, not Rhonda’s.

  “Help!” I yelled.

  I used the last of my energy to pound my fists against the trapdoor.

  “Help! I’m down here!”

  I heard the sound of a sliding bolt, then a click.

  The trapdoor lifted upward, and beautiful gray daylight shone down on me.

  Chapter 27

  “How did you get down there?” Jason asked as he pulled me easily out of the hole and onto the wet grass.

  I collapsed into a heap, no energy left to stay on my feet. “Rhonda Hogarth pushed me down there.”

  “Rhonda who?” he sounded as confused as he looked.

  “The woman who burned down the antiques store and killed my ex.”

  The confusion fell away from his face. “Where is she now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been down there a while, but I don’t know how long.” I barely got the words out through my chattering teeth.

  Jason shrugged out of his large jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders. I burrowed into it as he whipped out his cell phone. His first call was to someone at the brewery, a terse two-sentence message.

  “We’ve got a situation at the old cellar. Bring one of the golf carts and blankets.”

  He hung up before the person on the other end could ask any questions. Then he called the police.

  “I don’t know exactly what happened,” he said to the dispatcher after making his initial report. “All I know is that I’ve got an injured woman here who says there’s a murderer on the loose.”

  “Rhonda Hogarth,” I supplied again. “They need to find her before she disappears.”

  If that was her plan. Maybe she hoped that with me out of the picture she could go on living her life in Shady Creek, no one knowing the truth about her.

  Jason repeated Rhonda’s name to the dispatcher. After that, I tuned everything out until I heard a low hum of a motor approaching. I hadn’t realized that I’d closed my eyes, but when I opened them, I saw a golf cart trundling our way at high-speed. There were two people on board, and one jumped from the passenger seat before the cart had pulled to a complete stop.

  “Sadie? What’s going on?” Grayson’s gaze went from me to Jason.

  “She was trapped in the cellar.” Jason gestured at the open trapdoor.

  “Rhonda Hogarth locked me down there.” I touched the sore spot at the side of my head. “She knocked me out and brought me here in a wheelbarrow.”

  It only took a second for Grayson to absorb that information. He grabbed a gray blanket from the golf cart and tucked it around my legs while I sat there on the grass, still huddled inside Jason’s jacket.

  “Does your head hurt?” Grayson asked as he tried to get a look at my injury.

  “Does it ever.”

  “Are you dizzy? Nauseated?”

  “A little of both.”

  “Do you think you can get in the golf cart? That way we can meet the ambulance up in the brewery’s parking lot.”

  “I don’t think I need an ambulance,” I said as I tried getting to my feet.

  “I think you’re getting one anyway.”

  Grayson grabbed one of my arms, and Jason took the other, both of them helping me to stand. I returned Jason’s jacket to him with thanks and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders.

  “How did you find me?” I asked him. “I didn’t think anyone would come out this way.”

  He nodded toward one of the closest trees. “Security camera. When I checked the live feed, I saw a woman heading into the woods with an empty wheelbarrow. I wondered what she’d been up to, so I decided to take a look. When I got close, I heard a thumping sound over here by the cellar.”

  “Thank goodness for you and the camera. You probably have footage of Rhonda tossing me in the cellar.”

  “Probably,” Jason agreed.

  That was good. More evidence to give to the police.

  “We’d better get you to the parking lot,” Grayson said, putting a hand on my back to guide me over to the golf cart.

  For once, I had no desire to argue with him. I climbed into the cart next to Grayson’s employee, who was still at the wheel. Grayson and Jason piled into the back, and off we trundled, leaving the site of my near demise behind us.

  * * *

  “You need to rest,” a young female nurse told me as I sat up in my hospital bed.

  Less than half an hour ago, I’d been transferred from the emergency department to a ward where I was to spend at least one night.

  “I can’t,” I said, although I leaned back against the pillow. “Not until I know the police caught the woman who did this to me.”

  “At least try to relax,” she said. “Worrying won’t do you any good.”

  That was true, but it wasn’t exactly easy to relax when I knew a murderer could still be on the loose, a murderer who’
d tried to do away with me only hours earlier.

  Shortly after we arrived at the brewery’s parking lot, two police cruisers had appeared, followed closely by an ambulance. I provided the police officers with a brief account of what had happened, and then the paramedics had taken me into their care. Once we were at the hospital, the attending doctor had ordered an X-ray of my painful left elbow, which I’d struck on the stone steps of the cellar, and a CT scan.

  The final conclusion was that I had a concussion and a badly bruised—but thankfully not broken—elbow. I had a few other scrapes and bruises, but considering what I’d been through, I thought I’d come out of it quite well. My head hadn’t even required stitches, though I was glad to put an ice pack on it.

  My headache wasn’t quite as intense now, and my nausea had disappeared, but I was still experiencing some dizziness, and the doctor didn’t want me going home until at least the next morning. I didn’t argue with her, but I couldn’t help but feel antsy. I wanted news of Rhonda, and I wanted to see Aunt Gilda.

  I still didn’t know where my phone was—hopefully in Harvey’s backyard so I could recover it at some point—but someone at the hospital had called Aunt Gilda for me, and I knew she was on her way. I was eager to see a familiar, friendly face, but it wasn’t until Aunt Gilda appeared on the ward that I realized just how desperately I wanted her there.

  “Oh, Sadie, honey,” she said as soon as she saw me. She hurried over to my bed, and I sat up carefully. “Can I hug you without hurting you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s my left elbow and my head that hurt the most.”

  She wrapped her arms around me and held me tightly for a moment.

  “When I got the call from the hospital saying you’d been injured, I nearly had a heart attack,” she said when she pulled back.

  “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you myself, but they sent me off to get my elbow X-rayed.”

  She pulled up a chair and patted my leg. “It’s all right. As soon as I hung up, Grayson Blake called me and filled me in on all the details he could.”