by Riona Kelly
“Will he come looking for you?” Michelle asked.
“Tea?” Roberto offered at the same time.
Lindy turned her glance to the table where a teapot, two cups, and a plate of cookies sat. Her lips tugged to a bitter upturn. They had been having tea when she had been thrown into the shelter.
“Yes, to both of your questions. Tea would be welcome, and Colin will be looking for me.” She leaned in close to Michelle so she could whisper, “Is this room bugged? Do you know?”
Michelle’s eyes grow wider, and she shook her head as she answered under her breath, “Don’t know.”
Lindy sat back and cast her eyes around the space, looking for any possible cameras. She didn’t see anything obvious, but with the little spy devices these days, one or two could be hidden. Best not to chance it.
Instead, she asked, “How long have you been here?”
“Maybe four or five hours,” Roberto answered, setting a cup in front of her. “It’s hard to tell. No clocks, no watch, nothing to give us a clue.”
“Right,” Lindy agreed. “It would have been about the time I realized you weren’t at the hotel. We must have just missed you.”
“You and Colin? He found you?” Roberto asked.
She nodded. “So what about food here? Do you have some?”
“We have bread and water,” Michelle said and pointed to the shelves. “And cookies. The ‘fridge is pretty empty, but we have a toaster oven. I don’t know if they’re going to bring us anything else. Or what they plan to do with us.”
“I guess it depends on if they want Roberto to continue painting or if we’re all liabilities. Since they brought us here, I am guessing whoever is in charge isn’t sure of the plan yet.”
“It was Marchant,” Michelle said with a hiss in her voice. Her eyes blazed as she leaned closer. “He was at the studio when his two heavies grabbed us, and he directed Sasha to bring us to this place.”
Lindy’s blood raced as her niece confirmed Alain Merchant’s direct involvement in their abduction. Not just involved, she amended, but probably in charge. “Damn. We pretty much played right into his hands, didn’t we? I’ll bet he knew we had a connection with Roberto, and his meeting up with us at the plaza was no coincidence.”
“I gather the door is the only way out of this room,” she whispered.
“As near as we can tell,” Michelle replied, her voice as low as Lindy’s. “We haven’t checked behind everything, though, but...”
Lindy nodded. “It’s possible there might be a way out.” She would check out the whole area, including the ridiculously small bathroom, and any vents coming into the room. They had to have vents, didn’t they? She couldn’t just sit here and hope Colin and the police came to her rescue, especially when she was pretty sure the transmission from the tracker wasn’t getting out of this bunker’s walls.
She began with the bathroom, noted the tiny sink and old toilet. And the obvious fact it allowed very little room to even turn around. She saw a narrow vent above the toilet, almost to the ceiling. At barely the size of a legal mailing envelope, it wasn’t big enough for any of them to get through it. She climbed up on the edges of the toilet to see if she could determine if the tube behind it was any bigger, but it was too dark to see more than a couple of feet. She did spot a glimmer of light coming from the side toward the kitchen area. Maybe it was another vent.
Jumping down, she washed her hands, then exited and went to the kitchen. The only thing in the area which might need venting was the small refrigerator. She looked around it and didn’t see anything right off, but then something caught her eye. A section of the wall behind the appliance looked like it had been plastered over more recently than the rest of the room. She could just make out the uneven edges of an area about three feet square. Maybe it was an emergency tunnel from the bunker to the surface and the owner had sealed off. If it remained clear, they could use it to get out.
Straightening up, Lindy called Roberto over and opened the ‘fridge to pretend to look in it. As the kids had said, there wasn’t much in it. A little butter, a jar of already-opened jam, and a small container of cream. Well, at least they wanted them to have cream for their tea and instant coffee. As Roberto leaned in to look, she said, “Look behind this near the baseboard. Do you think it looks like a sealed opening?”
Then she took out the cream and went to the hot plate to heat the tea water again. As she went about the business of making another cup of tea, Roberto checked out the space and went back to the table to sit.
“It looks like it could be,” he replied as she returned to the table.
“Can we get it open?”
“Maybe. There isn’t a decent knife in the drawer here, just smooth-sided ones and they can’t cut anything. I have the tiny knife blade in my clippers, but nothing else.” He didn’t sound too enthusiastic.
Lindy nodded. “We need to move the refrigerator out from the wall a little to get behind it. If our watchers have any cameras within the room, I haven’t spotted them. Do either of you see any possible places they might have placed one?”
“I’ve been through everything on the bookcase, and it’s clean. Also, the food shelf. Nothing there either,” Michelle said.
“I will check the beds now,” Roberto volunteered. “I do not think anything is on them, but I will look carefully.”
Lindy stood, then leaned forward with her hands on the table. “I’m going to just walk around the edge of the room looking for anything in the ceiling or corners suggesting it could be a camera. Michelle, check the counters and the refrigerator along the top and at the bottom in the vent. They may just be cocky enough to figure this bunker is so secure they don’t have to worry about it, but I want to be sure.”
As Lindy turned and began a slow circle of the room, looking at the ceiling and letting her eyes travel over every blank surface in the room, Michelle checked out the counters, opening drawers and cabinets, and running her fingers over the surfaces. Meanwhile, Roberto checked out the bed frames, even the mattresses and edges of the pillows.
Nothing adorned the walls in here, no clock or paintings or anything else giving the impression of anyone living in it. Nothing to actually hide a camera in. Perhaps they hadn’t planned to take them, and they weren’t set up for surveillance. And maybe they thought they didn’t need it with the room seeming so secure.
Lindy motioned the others to the small refrigerator, where they worked together to slide it away from the wall. She squatted down and ran her fingers along the slight ridge she could barely detect.
“Try to cut through the wall here,” she told Roberto, showing him the very thin line. “I think if you can get it started, then it will be easier to follow the rest of it.”
He nodded, pulled out the blade on his nail clippers, and started to try to dig the not-too-sharp point into it. He switched to the sharper point on the can opener blade to get the initial cut into it and rocked it back and forth several times to get a good gash into the wall.
“It looks like it is just a thin layer of plaster over a wooden panel,” he said.
“Let’s hope it’s big enough to get through, and it leads to an emergency exit or venting tunnel,” Lindy replied.
As Roberto worked at cutting around the panel, Lindy sat with Michelle at the dining table. She brought her niece up to date on what she and Colin had learned about Marchant’s business and stealing Roberto’s work. She didn’t tell her they suspected other artists might be victims of the scam, and at this point, they didn’t have proof.
Roberto slid out from behind the refrigerator, his right arm covered with tan plaster dust. Brushing it off, he grabbed a bottle of water from the shelf and came over to the table.
“Need a break,” he said in a low voice and sipped at the water. “I have the first side and partway across the bottom of the panel cleared off. It looks like it will be about as big as you thought. We should be able to get through it if there is a passage behind it.”
; “I’ll take over for a while,” Lindy said, holding her hand out for the blade.
Roberto reached into his pocket, pulled it out, and pulled the dull, short blade out. “Good luck with it. It is only a little sharper than those knives they gave us. But it still managed to rip the plaster off the wall.”
She grinned as her hand closed on it, then she sauntered to the opening behind the refrigerator, sat down on the floor, stuck the blade in the long slot of the opening Roberto had already done, and started sawing against it. She felt the plaster tearing – sawing wasn’t the word. It took more muscle power than the actual blade to force it through the tiny crack between the wood and the concrete wall. After just a short time, she began to appreciate how much energy Roberto had expended in doing this.
She worked at it for about an hour to cover the way across the bottom, and her shoulders already ached with the effort. She turned the blade to go up the other side, poking and digging to try to get it started. Going up would definitely be harder than coming down or going across, she concluded. She pulled the bottle opener blade to get the pointed tip, ran her fingers up the slight bump to where she thought the top was, and began poking and digging with it to make a hole in the plaster.
She felt certain the very old plaster afforded the only reason they made any progress. She suspected it might be close to fifty or sixty years since the tunnel was closed off, and whoever owned the place just sealed it themselves. Once it was painted, no one would really notice the flaw in the wall.
Once she had the opening started, she went back to the larger, but duller blade to begin pushing it in and down the crevice. Like Roberto, her arms were covered with fine dust, and she could feel it on her face as she leaned close to see her work as she cut.
Muscles trembling with all the exertion, she paused, leaned her head against the wall, and closed her eyes. What seemed like only a few moments later, she felt someone touch her shoulder, and she turned to see Michelle’s face right next to hers. Had she dozed off?
“Take a break, Aunt. Let Roberto work on it some more.”
Lindy straightened and dragged to her feet, handed Roberto the clippers, and switched places with him. She pulled herself toward the table, stiffness and aches in all her joints accompanying her. Michelle brought her a bottle of water and a slice of toast with butter and jam.
“Any idea how long it’s been?” she asked.
Michelle shook her head. “No. It feels like much longer than it probably is. It could be the middle of the night, or it could be morning. No way to tell. They’ll kill us, won’t they?”
“We can’t be sure, but it certainly looks like it’s their only option. They might try to persuade Roberto to continue painting for them by using us as leverage. Or they might just cut their losses. They have several paintings for Pablo de Sintra stored up. After all, he is an old man. He could stop at any time or even die.”
“What about Colin?” Michelle asked. “He’s looking for us, right?”
She nodded. “And it seems they haven’t nabbed him yet. But we’re a long way from Lisbon. I don’t know if he was able to follow me.”
“You knew we’d been taken when you went to the studio again, didn’t you?” Michelle’s eyes grew wider as she began to piece it together.
“It was the only thing that made sense,” Lindy answered. “We figured they had to have something to do with the two of you vanishing. So I went into the studio with hopes to get some clues. I saw your bird pendant on the floor there, and I knew. I had to let them grab me to find you. Colin was watching me from a distance. But he might have lost the car before we got this far.”
“He’ll still be looking,” Michelle said. Her eyes held hope.
A sharp curse in Spanish and a scuffle of noise came from the ‘fridge area, and Roberto sprang to his feet, his hand bleeding.
“What happened?” Michelle asked as he went to the counter to grab a paper towel to wipe it, then wrapped more sheets around it.
“I caught it on a sharp edge,” he muttered. He sat down and put pressure on the wound. “It may be a lock or clasp of some sort.”
“Let me see,” Michelle demanded and reached for Roberto’s hand.
He pulled it back. “It’s nothing, carita. Just a little cut, but it bleeds quite a bit.”
“We don’t have anything to wrap it with unless I can salvage some of the duct tape to hold more of the paper towels on,” Lindy said as she went to the trash can and began digging through the pieces they had pulled off. She found a large enough piece to make a couple of strips of one-inch-wide tape.
Meanwhile, Michelle got another paper towel and folded it into a bandage. In a short time, they crafted a make-shift bandage for Roberto’s hand, cleaned up the cut, which was not serious, and wrapped it.
Then, they turned their attention to the door behind the refrigerator.
Chapter 23
Michelle watched her aunt go back to working at the opening as she looked for the latch where Roberto cut his hand. She marveled at the older woman’s resilience and calm in this situation. Her stomach churned, and she couldn’t help thinking about the likelihood of a bad outcome if they couldn’t escape. While she hoped Colin had managed to follow her aunt, she also worried he might be coming alone, and he, too, would be captured. Then who would look for them?
If she or Lindy didn’t call her father in a couple of days, he would be alarmed and begin searching for them, but would there be any way to trace them? She feared not. And if Marchant had them killed, it would be unlikely their bodies would be found any time soon. Their only real hope meant getting out of this room and finding help nearby. She didn’t want to consider how unlikely the scenario looked.
She heard Lindy grunt, then a thunk-like sound, and a scrape of metal. She took a few steps closer to the ‘fridge in the hope of seeing something other than her aunt’s back. The scent of moist dirt filtered into the room, along with a slight stir of air.
Lindy sat back and cast a crooked smile at her. “We have a passage of some sort behind this door. From what I can tell so far, the area just beyond it is like a culvert, although there is concrete right next to the basement.”
Roberto came up behind Michelle and peered over her shoulder. “Can you see a light at the end?”
“No, it may be dark outside or even a cover at the other end,” Lindy answered, sliding back and getting to her feet. “Do we have any kind of a flashlight?”
“I always used my phone,” Michelle said. “But they took it.”
“Same here,” Roberto replied. “But I saw some candles in a drawer under the counter. They’re not big, just little church ones you put out for prayers.”
“Get them,” Lindy ordered as she pulled out the matchbook she’d spotted in the drawer. “At least, they left us matches to light them.”
Roberto handed her four of the votive-sized candles, which she stuck in her front pants pockets. She took off her neck scarf and tied it around her hair. Then she grabbed a butter knife and added it to her pocket. “Okay, I’m going to crawl through the tunnel to the end to see if I can get out. You two stay here and keep watch. If anyone starts to come into the room, shove the refrigerator back against the wall and tell them I am in the bathroom. Stall as long as you can.”
“Be careful, Aunt Lindy,” Michelle said and hugged her briefly before Lindy got to her knees and crawled back into the darkness.
Lingering by the refrigerator, she watched as a candle burst to light, then the flickering began moving down the tunnel and out of sight. Michelle turned and slid an arm around Roberto’s waist. Automatically, he laid a protective arm over her shoulders and hugged her to him.
“I hope my aunt finds a way out,” Michelle mumbled. She didn’t want to admit she was frightened, but the fear sat in the middle of her belly, reminding her she and Roberto had gotten themselves and her aunt into a serious situation. Still, she tried to remain hopeful. If Lindy didn’t come back, then they would both try to get out the same way.<
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“So far, our captors have left us alone,” Roberto remarked.
“Yeah, not even bothering to talk to us or to bring any food,” Michelle agreed. “We have enough bread to last a couple of days, I guess. That probably means they will be back within twenty-four hours, don’t you think?”
“It’s probably night,” Roberto said. “They won’t come tonight. The best thing to do now is to try to get some sleep. Your aunt will either make it out or come back. There’s nothing more we can do to help her.”
“One of us should stay awake,” Michelle said. “If someone comes, we need to hide the opening behind the refrigerator.”
He glanced back at the clearly out of place object, then said, “You sleep first. I’ll keep watch.”
She gave his waist a squeeze. “Wake me if anything happens.”
With the worries and fears, she didn’t think she would fall asleep easily, but she stretched out on one of the beds and pulled the light blanket over her. Roberto turned off half the lights in the room, so only the kitchen area was lit. She turned her back toward it. As she ran the problems though her mind like a litany, she dropped off the sleep.
The sound of a chair moving woke her a little while later. She sat up, her head groggy as she focused in on the room. She’d hoped the whole kidnapping had been a nightmare. Roberto sat backward in the chair, arms resting across the top as he watched the door. He must have slid it causing the noise.
“Is anything happening?” she asked in a low voice.
“No. I don’t think so. I thought I heard someone outside the door, a man’s voice talking loudly. But I couldn’t hear what he said.”
She slipped out of bed and crossed to join him, squatting down by the chair. “Do you think he’s coming in here?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I have not heard anything else. He may be talking to someone, but he’s not near the door.”
For the next few minutes, they remained as they were and listened for any noises coming from outside. It seemed as quiet as it had been since their abductors had brought her aunt into the room.