by Emma Accola
“I already have. ‘Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.’ That will be you, sweet Gracie. Pretty soon you’ll be heard of no more.”
I looked down at the grave, a terrible wound in the part of the Earth that had nurtured me. This area of the property had been one where Glen, Faith, and I made forts out of fallen wood and branches. We splashed in the creek. We rode our horses here. I knew everything about the area. This place was so secluded that I could scream my throat raw and no one would hear me.
“I’m not dying here today,” I said.
Harry Spice smiled and spoke in gentle tones. “Yes, my dear, you are. In the near future this winery will be mine. I’ll own you because your bones will be right here for me to find. I do plan on visiting this site and sitting with you. From wherever you are, you’ll know that I’m here . . . owning you.”
“I’ll kill you before I let that happen.”
“No, you won’t. Because if you don’t die here right now, your beloved Micah will have his hand sheared off and he’ll bleed out all over the floor of his sister’s bakery. That’s always been your weakness, you know, your loyalty.”
I took a step toward Harry Spice, getting so close to him that I could smell leather and his cologne in the heat of his shirt. I laid my palm on his chest. Harry Spice didn’t look a bit frightened or intimidated by me. A hint of mania flickered in his eyes like a tiny red flame. He almost became tender when he spoke.
“Here, at this moment, you care more about Micah than you do your own life.”
“Do I?” I taunted.
“Tick tock. Tick tock. The clock moves inexorably on.” Harry Spice held up the telephone with the beating heart icon. The heart had grown larger on the screen, increasing a bit with each beat. “I wonder what Micah and Sylvie are doing now. Probably proclaiming their love for each other. People do those things, don’t they, in times of stress?”
The raw smell of the earth wafted toward me, heavy and primordial. The grave dominated my peripheral vision, a pile of loose soil, a shovel, and some neatly cut strips of sod. These acres that had been my home for generations would be feeling warm blood.
I grabbed Harry Spice’s arm in a shaky, sweaty grip. “Please. I’m begging you. Don’t do this. Please.”
He glanced down at my hand with an expression that was soothing and gentle. “Come on, Gracie. Don’t get weepy. It doesn’t suit you.”
“No. Please. You can write a different ending to this story.”
“I wrote the ending long ago. It’s all poetry to me.”
“Let me see Micah one more time,” I whispered as I fought a mortal terror that was trying to steal my wits. “Please.”
With an annoyed sigh, Harry Spice tapped in the passcode and turned the screen to me. I could see Micah and Sylvie, their faces frantic as the seconds and minutes slipped by on the large clock that was attached to the buzz saw. Then, as I watched, the screen on the phone changed to another screen, this one showing the outside of the door to the bakery’s back room. Harry Spice glanced at it.
“What’s that?” I whispered, clutching his forearm with my hand.
Harry Spice put his fingertips to my face. “It’s the control for the bomb that will explode if someone forces the door. I needed a failsafe, just in case you thought to harm me while you and I are out here alone. I thought it best to ensure my own survival.”
“What kind of failsafe?”
“There’s a passcode on that control that has to be entered manually from within the bakery, not by phone. I’m the only one who knows what it is. I put that in place so you understand that my safety is a priority.”
“Good idea. Only an idiot would think that I’d be inclined to cooperate in my own rape and murder.”
Harry Spice scolded me with a raised eyebrow before taking off his leather jacket and dropping it on the grass. “You do want me to get back to the bakery in time to save Micah and Sylvie, don’t you?”
“No, just me.”
I plunged a syringe into his arm. Harry Spice hadn’t searched me. He should have because it was up my left sleeve. Thanks to my brother being a drug addict, I knew quite a lot about the acquisition of sedatives and syringes and how to hide them.
Harry Spice’s mouth dropped in shock as he grabbed his arm where it had been injected. “What did you just do?”
“Give me that phone,” I cried.
Harry Spice staggered as the sedative took hold, all the while trying to work the screen on his phone. I smacked him across the face four or five times until his grip failed and I was able to pry it from his fingers. Incoherent, Harry Spice struggled to speak, but the drug was doing its work. He mumbled and fumbled, finally falling flat on his face. Using a couple of plastic ties I had taken from Caleb’s camping supplies, I secured Harry Spice’s hands and feet. Then I rummaged through his pockets.
“Thank you,” I said when I found a set of motorcycle keys.
Harry Spice lay on the ground working feebly against his bonds. He seemed to be fighting to keep his eyes open and trying to speak. Blood trickled from his mouth where I had hit him. Quickly, before he lost consciousness, I rolled him into the grave that he had dug for me. His body hit the bottom with a loud thump. The sound had a finality to it that I liked. His blood would wet the soil, not mine. I kicked some of the loose earth onto him.
“Hey, Harry Spice, time for a little dirt nap.”
Fortunately for me, he’d obliged me every time I had asked to see Micah and Sylvie, and none of those times did he make an effective effort to keep me from seeing the passcode to his phone. While he lay in the grave, I tapped it in. The screen came alive to a beating heart and a row of icons. A countdown showing three minutes was superimposed on the beating heart. I touched the clock icon, the way I had seen Harry Spice do, and the passcode screen came up as five circles. That code I hadn’t seen. What could it be? I wracked my brain. What could it be? I tried Harry, 42779. The phone responded with a rude sound. Trembling, I tried Spice, 77423, and got the rude sound again, though this time with a message that I had two tries left.
“Pull yourself together and think,” I said, speaking aloud as if the sound might loosen the grip panic had on my mind. “What could it be? Five letters. Five letters.”
I tried Micah, 64224, and once again got the rude sound. This time the phone flashed a warning that I had one try left.
Openly weeping, I screamed out in frustration. Five wavering circles appeared, each a chattering skull face. I wanted to jump into the grave and beat Harry Spice over the head until he gave me the passcode. One minute, fifty-nine, fifty-eight, the countdown went inexorably on.
“Think, you idiot!” I yelled to myself.
Harry Spice had said that it was all poetry to him. Could it be that simple? I tried 37678, the name Frost. The heart melted away on the phone’s screen and showed me an image of Micah and Sylvie in the room. The big clock had stopped, but Micah looked bereft. He leaned his forehead down on the saw. Why didn’t he and Sylvie look pleased? The saw wasn’t going to cut off their hands. What did they know that kept them in fear?
Harry Spice’s phone chimed with a text message from someone called Rack and Ruin: It’s set and I’m gone.
That message could only have come from the person Harry Spice had watching the bakery. Only a fool would stay around for an explosion. Deep down inside, without letting the thought become conscious, I had always known that Harry Spice had no intention of letting Micah or Sylvie live. The building would come down and kill the two remaining people who knew the truth about him. There was nothing left to do but go to the bakery and turn the bomb off.
I ran. I ran down the rows of grape vines for everything I had in me. I ran for Micah and my love of him and the sister he cared about. I ran away from Harry Spice and toward the place where the motorcycle had been hidden, cleverly disguised under a camouflaged tarp. I tore it off, slipped on the gloves and helmet, and sta
rted the machine. It rumbled and purred.
“Stupid,” I said. “A Harley.”
Throughout my childhood my siblings and I had ridden dirt bikes around our vineyards. Those dirt bikes were like small ponies and this Harley was a spirited racehorse. Right then, at that moment, I didn’t have time for fear or doubt. Once I got the Harley out onto the paved road, I went as fast as I dared, running every stop sign and stoplight as I headed back toward San Francisco. Other drivers screeched their brakes and blew their horns, but I didn’t care. If I went fast enough and my body was able to keep this beast on the road, I might be able to make it back to the bakery in time.
Once I got onto the 101 freeway, I split the lanes and drove like a maniac through the speeding cars and trucks. The Golden Gate Bridge passed by in a blur. By some miracle I didn’t draw the attention of the California Highway Patrol. My heart pounded quicker than the strokes of the Harley’s big engine.
When I got into the City, I raced along on the motorcycle, running red lights and weaving through the rolling and busy streets of San Francisco. Once I got to the front of the bakery, I drove up on the sidewalk and rammed the door with the Harley. The glass shattered as the metal frame came off its hinges. The Harley tipped, spilling me off. People on the sidewalk shouted at me and pulled out their cell phones. I didn’t even look at them as I climbed through the broken door into the bakery and ran past the counters into the back. I typed the passcode into Harry Spice’s phone so I could see Micah and Sylvie on its screen.
“Micah!” I screamed through the locked door. “Micah!”
Faintly, ever so faintly, I could hear Micah and Sylvie shouting a response. Even though his voice was nearly inaudible through the heavy door, there was no mistaking his frantic tone.
“Gracie! Run! There’s a bomb. Don’t open the door,” Micah shouted.
“Micah, I can turn off the bomb.”
“No,” Sylvie cried. “You can’t stop this. Get away from here. Evacuate the area. Run.”
“No, I’m not leaving you,” I shouted back.
“Gracie, run!” Micah had to have been bellowing, but his voice barely reached my ears. “The timer has thirty seconds. Get out of here now! There’s enough explosive here to bring down the building. Run!”
I had quit listening to them because Harry Spice wouldn’t have set a bomb that couldn’t be turned off. Too many things could have gone wrong with his plans, and he wouldn’t take such risks with his revenge. A control panel with nine numbers had been taped to the door. Its small screen contained the image of a heart. It counted down, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven. Seven tiny little skull faces waited to be filled in with the correct passcode.
What could it be? I doubted it would be something too complicated, because Harry Spice, in his arrogance, hadn’t counted on me being alive and getting back to the bakery in time. He wouldn’t have taken too much trouble with its complexity. My mind spun, ticking through the possibilities, narrowing them down to what I thought his most recent obsession was. His words came back to me: “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” Ten seconds ticked down on the timer.
My hands shook terribly when I typed the numbers into the control: 6222384, seven digits that spelled Macbeth. On the other side of the door I heard Micah and Sylvie whoop with joy. I dropped to the floor and drew my knees up to my chest. A police officer began calling from the front of the bakery, but I was panting too hard to answer her questions. I lost control and began weeping. Micah, Sylvie, and I were safe for a few minutes, but this wasn’t over, not by a long shot. There was still a man I had put in a grave he had dug and the door I leaned upon was likely booby-trapped. I found my voice and told the police officer that she had better call in the bomb squad.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sunset had come and gone, leaving the vineyards in cool darkness. The silence in this house that I’d rented for the week was broken only by the humming of the little bar refrigerator. I entered the enclosed pool area, my shadow black in the blue light reflected out of the water. The faint smell of chlorine tinged the air in the water’s swirling light. I tossed a towel on a chair and dived into the water. The brief shock thrilled my body like a delicious, tiny fright. Back and forth I swam, loving the exertion on my nervous muscles. I had no idea how many laps I’d made before I saw Micah leaning in the doorway watching me. His appearance startled me so badly I almost went under. Suddenly shy, I got out of the water and wrapped myself tightly in my towel.
“How did you get in here?” I cried, my voice sharp with fright.
“You forgot to lock the slider. I came because I thought you still had questions.”
I didn’t look at him. “Maybe. Do you still have questions?”
“Just one.” He paused. “Are you coming home tonight?”
He wanted to know whether I was coming back to his townhouse. I had expected this, and now, at that moment, I didn’t have an answer. My eyes were on the water lapping gently against the sides of the pool. A week ago, the evening of the day he and Sylvie had been freed from the buzz saw, I had told him that I needed time to process what my life had become. Mostly it was because I was afraid of who Micah and I were now that everything had changed.
“I don’t have a home,” I replied.
“I just said that you did.”
I pulled the towel around me more tightly, as if it could offer comfort. “That’s your home. That’s what you got after Harry Spice killed your brother.”
“And here you are, back in the valley where Harry Spice dug your grave.”
His words annoyed me. “Mom and Dad had it filled in once the police were finished.”
“With what? Their apologies? Rote words spoken like they’d come off a plaque at the gift shop?” Micah’s voice rose. “You don’t belong out here anymore. Come back to San Francisco with me.”
“I’m not ready yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because everything feels like we’re living in the ashes of what Harry Spice has left us. He burned down every single thing in my life that mattered to me.”
“Then what are you doing here in these vineyards? Sifting through the ashes?”
“Picking up the pieces,” I said, flinching.
“Leave the damn pieces and come home with me. He can’t hurt us anymore. He’s in jail without bail. He’ll never walk the streets or be allowed near a computer again.”
“That’s all well and good for him, but I have parents I can barely look in the eye because they believed the worst about me. My sister still hasn’t spoken to me because the lies of a psychopath are easier to accept than my truth. And none of them wants to believe that Glen had sold us all out to a psychopath. He’s denying everything and claiming he was framed.”
Micah started unbuttoning his shirt. “I don’t care what your idiot sister or your wine-obsessed parents or your sick ass, drug addict brother think. They’ll get over themselves. I’m here for my fiancée. I’m here for us.”
“Why? What have you and I ever had that wasn’t about Harry Spice?”
He threw his shirt over the back of a chair and began slipping off his shoes and socks. “Are you taking an accounting? What are you measuring from?”
“I’m measuring from what I have with you that wasn’t about Harry Spice and I didn’t come up with much.”
“Then you’re very limited.”
I watched him unzipping his jeans as I absorbed his insult. “What the hell are you doing?”
In a heartbeat Micah was nude. “According to you, we’re covered with ash. I’m here to wash it off.”
I scowled as he came toward me, his feet making padding sounds on the poolside tiles. “What are you talking about?”
“You.” He stopped in front of me and took away my towel, tossing it casually over a chair. “You claim there’s ash. Let’s wash it off.”
“The ash is a metaphor. It’s figurative.”
Micah grabbed me and plunged us into the pool. As the water closed over our heads, Micah’s broad chest felt hot against the cool water. A strong swimmer, Micah swam us to the top and then held me against him as he treaded water. My face was inches from his when he spoke.
“It’s gone. The ash is gone. It’s just us now.” He flicked some water in my face. “You see this? Clean water. We’re free of him.”
“You’re all wet,” I said, my arms around him.
“I’m clean. You’re clean. It’s over.”
“There’s still the court case.”
“He’ll make a deal with the DA and plead.”
I frowned, suddenly interested. “Really?”
“That’s how he rolls. Harry Spice won’t want a court case he can’t win. The police have identified the maintenance man who let him into your and Tamra’s apartment. The idiot still had the video files on his computer. He’s made a statement and taken a plea deal in return for his testimony. Harry Spice is so arrogant that he didn’t try very hard to cover his tracks. He’d planned on burying you in the vineyard and bringing down the bakery on Sylvie and me to get rid of all his witnesses. The DA has a list of charges on him as long as my arm. He’ll be convicted and put away for a long time.”
“The worm has wiggled free before.”
Micah put his hands on the sides of my face. “That was different.”
“I can’t stand different.”
“Stop fretting over what’s past and future. All we have is now. We will live our lives now. The chances of him getting parole after setting a bomb, murdering Caleb and your students, and kidnapping Sylvie, you, and me are impossibly slim.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“Nothing is sure.”
“Because that’s the system we’ve got.”
“That’s right.” Micah swam us to the edge of the pool. “Come home with me tonight.”
“No.” I tried to pull away. “I can’t—I mean I shouldn’t.”
“You’re afraid, aren’t you?”