I’M ASHAMED TO REMEMBER THE NEXT QUARTER-HOUR. BLIND in the claustrophobic darkness, exhausted by everything I'd been through, and panicked by the specter of deadly, smothering gas, I broke down. I wept, I screamed for Aaron, I hammered on the door and pleaded with Grace to come back and let me out. Finally, like a child in a tantrum, I flung myself away from the hatch, tripping against the cot and falling heavily against Nickie.
She and I would die here, and the police would find a plausible tableau: two of the kidnappers shot to death in some kind of thieves’ quarrel, the third one asphyxiated by accident along with her victim. Grace would wait for the gas to do its work, then come back and arrange my body outside the bolted door of Nickie's cell, along with a pile of nicely fingerprinted evidence.
Or would she expect Andreas to do that part? No, she would find his vehicle, and maybe his body, when she drove back down toward the café. Unless he was only stunned when the Alfa knocked him flying, and he had come back up the road on foot to meet Grace. The two of them would search the woods for Aaron to make sure he was dead, but I would never know if they found him because I'd be dead too, gassed like a stray dog in a sealed chamber—
Nickie cried out in her drugged sleep and brought me to my senses. She was helpless, but I wasn't. Not yet. I slid to the floor by her side and felt my way down her lace-clad arm for her hand. It was chilled and clammy, so I held it in both of mine, rubbing warmth into her fingers and murmuring wordless reassurances. I closed my eyes, feeling somehow less blind that way, and took a long, steadying breath. I could smell the gas already, a thin rotten-egg odor stealing its way through the heavy atmosphere of the cabin. A utility man in Seattle had explained to me once that natural gas has no smell, that the stink of sulfur is an additive, put in on purpose to alert homeowners to dangerous leaks. They must do the same with propane.
Now think, I told myself fiercely. Is propane lighter than air, or heavier? That was simple enough to determine: when I put my face near the floor, the sulfurous smell was not strong, but it was distinct. Then I stood on the wobbling cot, my feet astride Nickie's legs, bracing myself against the wall and stretching my head up high. No sulfur smell at all. So propane was heavy, it would fill the cabin from the floor up. Would it make us cough and vomit first, or just displace our oxygen, pushing me inexorably into unconsciousness along with Nickie? Was it flammable? An irrelevant question, since Grace had extinguished the lantern, and if the heater had a pilot light she must have turned it off as well. But none of this mattered. The gas was coming; that was what mattered. It was creeping across the floorboards and lapping against our door like a slow invisible tide. And there was an inch-high gap along the lower edge of the door.
I sat down again in the darkness and ran my hands down the length of the cot. No sheet or blanket, just the bare canvas stitched to a metal frame that was bolted to the floor. I pulled vainly against the stitching for a moment, then gave up and felt for the skirt of Nickie's gown instead. The fragile satin gave way easily along the waistband with a loud ripping noise, and I thought as I tugged at it that the wind had died down outside. Was Grace stalking Aaron in the hush beneath the trees? Was he dead, was he dying?
I shook off the thought and lifted Nickie up to a sitting position, with the vague idea of keeping her as high as possible. Then I packed the wadded satin into the crack beneath the door. That would buy us a little time, and time was what we needed, whether the cavalry rode to the rescue or not. If it came to the worst, I swore to myself, I'd wake Nickie somehow, just to let her hear a loving voice before she slipped away for good.
But there had to be something I could do before then. On hands and knees, and then on tiptoe, I explored every accessible inch of our lightless cell, letting my hands take the place of my eyes. No eating utensils to pry at the deadbolt, no furniture to break apart and use as a lever against the bars. Nothing but the empty bucket. I carried it to the door and rammed it, over and over, against the unyielding bars, till I drove myself half deaf with the clanging and cast it aside.
Nickie was stirring. She toppled sideways, and I propped her up again, but she wasn't entirely a deadweight this time, and her head no longer flopped over like a broken doll's.
“Ray?” she croaked. “Ray, I'm cold …”
“Nickie, it's Carnegie.” She began to struggle, like a child caught in a bad dream, so I slipped my arms around her and hugged her to me. It might have been kinder to let her sleep, after all, but it was too late now. “Nickie, you were kidnapped, remember? From the church. But I've found you, and we're, we're trying to get out of this room. Just rest quietly, all right?”
“Carnegie—” She broke off, coughing. I held her for a while longer, until she could sit up on her own, then I went back to the door. She was still groggy, barely awake, and she asked no questions. I was grateful for that.
I leaned my forehead against the bars, and stared toward the invisible front door until my eyes ached. Were those faint lines of moonlight at its edges, and the palest glimmer of reflection on the glass of the lantern, or were they just phantoms created by my blinded mind? Over in the corner the gas leak hissed, like a tiny deadly snake whose poison has almost overcome its prey. I could take off my own dress, and the rest of Nickie's, to stuff into the hatchway, but sealing ourselves into our own coffin would surely be a last resort. First I would try to reach that deadbolt.
I ran my palms along the door, but nothing protruded on this side. I thrust my right arm between one bar and the hatchway edge, glad for once to be long-limbed and skinny, but even with my shoulder jammed against the bars my outstretched fingers clawed at wood and nothing more. I needed a few more inches, and something to press down on one end, or pull up on the other, of the horizontal brass lever.
But which end? I pantomimed the gestures I had used to open the door from the outside, remembering Grace standing behind me, and the stiff resistance as the lever turned. Nickie coughed again, and began to cry and mumble. I ignored her, concentrating furiously. The lever had turned clockwise, in a half-circle, rotating toward the door edge as the bolt inside drew back. To duplicate that motion from the hatchway, I had to pull up on the right-hand end of the lever, or push down on the left. I needed a tool.
The wire handle of the bucket seemed promising at first, and I found it without much fumbling, my sense of touch and direction heightened by the darkness. But I couldn't pry the heavy loops at either end away from the bucket's rim, and I gave up after wasting several precious minutes. The gas smell was growing stronger; my head was throbbing like a drum. What else was loose in the room or on our persons? My watch band was too short, I had no belt … shoes. Nickie was barefoot, but I still had my rubber-soled flats.
No good. Each of my shoes reached the top of the lock when I held it by the toe, but the soft sole of each bent uselessly when shoved downward on the lever, and I lost one and then the other as they dropped from my trembling fingertips. There was nothing else to push with, so I'd have to pull. I needed a loop, a strap … of course. I slipped off my dress, undid my bra, and then pulled the dress back on, smiling bleakly at my inane modesty. Light-headed, almost fainting, I sat next to Nickie and tried to tie my lingerie into a noose.
Sitting down was a mistake. I was weary, tired to death; I wanted to give up and sleep forever. Nickie nestled against my shoulder, and I whispered into her hair as the bra slipped from my fingers.
“I'm sorry, Nickie, I'm so sorry. We tried our best, we really did. Don't wake up, honey. Yo u just sleep, we'll both sleep. Sweet dreams, Nickie, we'll just—shhh!”
The front door of the cabin was creaking open.
Soft, powdery silver light spilled into our cell, brilliant to my dark-dilated eyes. Moonlight. The storm had gone, the moon had come back. Had Grace returned also, impatient to be done with us? Aching, half resentful that I would ever have to move again before my final rest, I slipped off the cot and leaned dizzily along the door near the hatchway. I was bare minutes from passing out, but I had to kno
w.
I looked through the bars, and I screamed. A huge figure staggered toward me in the shaft of moonlight, bloody and groaning, overturning the chair and table as he came, shattering the lantern and falling full length just short of our door with a crash that echoed through the cabin like thunder.
Theo. It was Theo, risen from the dead. As he fell I thought he was dead again, but his weight lifter's arms twitched and began to move, at random and then with purpose. He dragged his useless body inch by inch along the floorboards and I stared, transfixed, as he reached up for the doorknob. His face and hair were ghost-white in the moonbeams, his arms and clothing black with blood. Grotesque, terrifying, and our only hope, he pulled himself to his knees and rattled at the knob of our prison door.
“Theo?” I whispered. “Theo, turn the lever. Please. Oh, God, please, just turn it.”
He fumbled at the brass. I couldn't see his fingers on it, the angle from the hatchway was too steep, but I could hear the stiff metal of the lock sliding, resisting. Stopping. His hand fell away.
“Theo!” His head fell back, his pale eyes focused on mine. “Theo, try again, please. Nickie's with me, I'll get her out, I promise. Just keep trying.”
He reached up, he made a small, agonized sound, and the lever turned through its final arc to set us free. Theo slumped against the door, swinging it inward against the wall with a hollow thump. I grabbed Nickie under the arms and dragged her from the cot, yelling into her ears, slapping her cheeks to rouse her and get her moving. We stumbled over Theo's right arm and kept going, Nickie crying and protesting, me grimly set on getting us both into the outside air.
There was a roaring in my head, and my vision was darkening and closing in to a long dim tunnel, but we made it out of the cabin. The trees. All I could think of, half crazed as I was, was getting out of that deadly clearing and into the safe, clean shadows of the trees. I cursed Nickie, I wrenched at her and hurt her more than Andreas ever had, but I got her across that clearing and behind the giant cedar trunk before I looked over my shoulder.
I would have gone back for Theo. At least I think I would have. But as I leaned hidden against the tree trunk, gasping for air, Grace Parry strode out from the woods behind the cabin, the yellow cone of a flashlight beam swinging before her like a broadsword, her dark clothes absorbing the moonlight and her cornsilk hair throwing it back with a golden spark. She must have been searching for Aaron in the woods, unwilling to take a chance that she had only wounded him, and then come running when she heard the commotion. I shrank into the shadows with Nickie silent at my feet. Grace went straight for the open door of the cabin, pistol in hand, raking the clearing as she went with her furious amber eyes.
I saw what happened in the next few seconds, by moonlight and flashlight and in the final flames. I wish I hadn't seen it, and I was glad that Nickie had fainted by then, and would hear only the softened version that I later told her father.
Grace stepped into the cabin. Theo, with one last effort of vengeful will and one last choking groan, reared up at her like a grizzly bear cornering the hunter who has tormented him to death. I saw him in her flashlight beam, and I heard her cry out in horror as she aimed the pistol at his eyes. He fell upon her, the pistol sparked, and together in the same instant came the crack of the bullet and the vast crumpling sound of the explosion as the rooms full of propane blew and the cabin erupted into a torch that seemed to blossom upward and scorch the moon.
MY HANDS WERE TREMBLING.
I looked down at my bouquet of lacy ferns and lily of the valley and sapphire-blue freesias that caught the color of my gown, and tried very hard to make the damn flowers stop shaking. A wedding is not a scripted performance, I told myself silently, as I'd told every one of my brides. Wedding guests are guests, not spectators. Be graceful, but be natural. Smile.
“You look lovely.” Dorothy Fenner joined me in the narrow corridor behind the roof garden. She laid a reassuring hand on my arm. “Just relax, and let me worry about the details.”
I had to admit, she'd done a marvelous job. The roof garden of the Cortland Hotel had been transformed into a bower of blossoms and greenery, perfect for an intimate yet formal affair. And the reception room inside stood in lavish readiness for the champagne supper to follow. A sideboard with a three-tiered wedding cake, a bit of space for mingling and making toasts, and five tables for eight guests each, in their tuxedos and long gowns. Each table was impeccably correct, down to the last silver napkin ring, crystal candelabra, and handwritten place card.
Sure, I might have vetoed the boysenberry sorbet between courses, and I thought the chamber quintet now playing Bach had one woodwind too many, but I'd agreed to give Dorothy free rein and that was that. Nothing left but to walk down the aisle.
“Go ahead,” said Dorothy. “Carnegie, go ahead.”
I unstuck my cowardly feet from the floor and stepped outside into the late September afternoon. The Cortland overlooks downtown Seattle and its harbor from Queen Anne Hill, a splendid view at any time, and most especially at this moment. Cloudless and serene, the sky was a tender, translucent blue overhead, shading westward by imperceptible degrees to warm gold, to apricot, coral, and finally the blazing vermilion of the setting sun. In the distance the skyscraper windows flashed and sparkled, Elliott Bay shone silver-blue, and the treetops of all the city's parks were a lush green touched with autumn color. Here on the rooftop in the golden light, the affectionate faces of the wedding guests seemed illuminated from within.
I walked, with all the natural grace I could muster, past Lily James, who had fixed my hair for me, past Julia Parry, who'd helped me with my dress, and past Eddie Breen, who hadn't been to a wedding in forty-five years. Eddie had been remarkably gentle with me, ever since he showed up at the Pierce County police station where the firemen had taken me, on the night Grace Parry died.
Grace Parry and Theo Decker. I didn't learn Theo's last name until I attended his funeral. (Andreas turned out to have several last names, as the police discovered once they took fingerprints from his corpse.) The funeral was the first public appearance Nickie had made since her ordeal, and the haggard look on her young face as she laid flowers on Theo's grave was enough to break your heart. I brought flowers myself, and I cried.
Eddie winked at me as I walked past. The night of the explosion he had fetched me from the police station, forgiven me everything, and installed me in Lily's guest room. I stayed with her for much of August, venturing out to the office a couple of times a week. Mom wanted me to come to Boise, but I was just as happy at Lily's, playing with her boys and watching the videos Eddie brought over. Eventually I'd be able to pay him back for the money he sent my mother in my name. He never mentioned the accusations I made, or the tax evasion case in St. Louis, and heaven knows I never did either.
I was very grateful that Eddie had broken his rule about attending weddings, just this once. Grateful to see Joe Solveto, too. He popped out from the dining room to give me a thumbs-up and then went back to his hors d'oeuvres. I kept walking. At the head of the impromptu aisle, marked off by topiary boxwood trees and swaths of white ribbon, stood Reverend Allington. He had agreed to bless this ceremony outside his church, given the unusual circumstances and the publicity-shy guests, and he beamed at me from beneath an arched trellis of ivy and late roses. So did the bridegroom, slim and straight in his tuxedo, black hair combed to perfection, and all the love in the world in his eyes. I beamed back, and tried to look calm.
I should have looked calm. After all, I was only the maid of honor.
As I took my place opposite the best man, Ray Ishigura got his first sight of the bride. Nickie was still thinner than she should be, and after weeks of near-seclusion she was anxious about facing even this small crowd. But the moment her eyes met Ray's she lit up like a candle. Her gown, bought off the rack, was a simple column of smooth pearl-colored silk, lustrous against her olive skin, with a low shawl collar that left her shoulders bare. The silk caught and reflected the rosy
glow of sunset, and the short soft curls framing Nickie's face lifted and stirred in the breeze. Circling her throat was the baroque pearl necklace, the real one, that her father had given her as an engagement present such a brief, eternal time ago.
Her father's wedding gift to her was less expensive, but even more precious: an eight-week-old Welsh corgi puppy named Molly, with a face like a baby fox and a butt like a bunny rabbit. Molly was already Nickie's faithful shadow. It had meant a lot to Nickie, just how much I could only guess, to learn from the police that Gus had been killed not by Theo, but by Andreas. The knowledge helped her to believe what she desperately needed to believe: that all along, Theo had never meant her any real harm.
Douglas Parry watched his daughter from a wheelchair, too weak to walk far as yet. He'd had another heart attack, and then a double bypass, but he was recuperating. Nickie paused to kiss his cheek as she walked down the aisle alone. Soon her father would be fit enough to assist with the federal S&L investigation—a far less daunting prospect, now that he was an innocent witness instead of a possible suspect. Guthridge had cleared his old comrade's name in the process of his own plea bargaining, and admitted that the campaign of intimidation had been meant to secure Parry's silence, not to pressure a fellow criminal.
Just now Douglas Parry simply looked like an ailing but very proud father of the bride, and not at all like the central figure of a courtroom drama. Or like a man whose close friend and family attorney, his wife's lover, his betrayer, had died of blood loss and hypothermia alone on a snowy mountainside.
But I refused to think about that. I'd had to shut the thought away several times each day, and more than several times every night. Of all the tangled emotions I'd come away with, pity for Holt Walker was the least expected, and the most painful. Douglas nodded at me, and I smiled back at him and at his niece Gloria, the former maid of honor who'd cheerfully stepped aside for me at Nickie's request. Behind them sat Mariana, Grace's innocent pawn in the scheme to frame me, already weeping happily into a lace handkerchief.
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