by Riona Kelly
Suddenly, scuffling noises and shouts rose up outside.
Michelle sprang to her feet and dashed to the refrigerator to follow her aunt’s orders. Roberto came right behind her, and together, they shoved the appliance back up against the wall.
More shouting and sounds of activity continued as they fled to the sofa in the room and sat facing the wall as if they had been there all night as they waited for the door to open.
A burst of something sounding like automatic gunfire came from outside the door. Roberto yanked Michelle to him. Her heart pounded as she pressed against his chest, she could feel Roberto’s racing as well.
What was happening out there? Were they coming for them now?
Then the sound of clanks as the locks on the door slid back. With a creaking sound, the door started to open. Michelle caught her breath.
Chapter 24
As Lindy crawled into the narrow tunnel, she paused to pull out one of the candles and struck a match, lighting the wick. A dim light illuminated the area just in front of her so she could see about three feet ahead.
Bugs scrambled from the light, heading to hiding places. She gave them a few moments before she began advancing down the space. As near as she could tell, the tunnel had been shoveled out, long uneven streaks in the clay-like dirt suggesting it had been a painstaking process for whoever had done it. But the bottom was reasonably flat and not too difficult to crawl across.
As an escape tunnel from the barn, it hadn’t been wide or tall, but a pure emergency exit. She had no idea how far it extended or which way it went, but Lindy shoved ahead and hoped the air was not limited, and the end wasn’t sealed.
After what seemed like hours of crawling, but was only about fifteen minutes, she paused to catch her breath and get off her knees for a few minutes by sitting and stretching her legs out. She shifted her shoulders and stretched her arms as much as she could. Lighting the second candle, she snuffed out the little bit left of the first one and set it in the ground. If one candle lasted only a little over fifteen minutes, then she only had enough light for an hour. Would it be enough?
She could crawl in the dark, but she was reluctant to do it. Any small creatures in the tunnel scuttled away from the light, and she didn’t want to meet them by crunching them with her knees. She pressed on, now and then pushing a cobweb aside with the butter knife she’d brought with her. Not much of a weapon, but still useful.
As the second candle began to sputter out at fifteen or so minutes farther on, she paused for another rest and leaned against the wall, rubbing her thighs and calves against the strain of the long crawl. She worried about what might be happening back in the secure room. Were the kids safe? She gazed back the direction she’d come, seeing just a glimmer of the light from the room beyond, so she knew they had not closed off the entrance.
Lighting the third candle, she resumed crawling, her body moving slower now. She grew tired and thirsty, sweating from the effort. How far had she come? Five hundred yards? Six hundred? Where did the tunnel lead?
She shuffled her knees along another ten or so minutes when she glimpsed a wooden barrier at what looked like the end of the tunnel. Encouraged, she picked up her pace, ignoring the aches and pains in her knees and a cramp in her right calf. She would welcome a long soak in a hot tub after this. With the candle almost to its end, she came to the structure she’d seen. A square door about the same size as the tunnel blocked the end of it.
As the candle flickered out, Lindy leaned against the wood and listened for any sounds coming from the other side. Nothing. No voices, no noises of any sort. What was on the other side? She ran her fingers over the wood, catching a splinter and jerked her hand back. Bending her head down, she attempted to pull it out with her teeth.
She managed to grip it, but it broke before she could remove it, so she had to suck it up and leave it in for now. She found a loose piece of the wood and pulled at it until she managed to get a lengthy section off. It felt dry to her touch. She pulled out her last candle, lit it, and examined the piece of wood. About eight inches long and an inch wide by a half-inch thick, it looked like it might burn. She used the candle to get the end flaming, then extinguished the candle to save it for later.
Holding her makeshift torch up, she examined the door looking for a way to open it. Hinges held it to a wooden frame on one side, and they looked old and rusty. She tried the butter knife to pry them loose. While she felt some give, they wouldn’t yield enough. She shoved against the boards, using her shoulders, but not getting adequate leverage to apply enough strength to it.
She set her torch into the dirt and worked her body around so she could kick the door, then levered herself up on her elbows, lifting her hips, and kicked as hard as she could. The first blow cracked one of the boards, so she targeted it with the second and third kicks. The wood broke, but she couldn’t see anything through the gap in the wood. She leaned close, hoping her eyes might adjust to whatever light might be there. She felt air moving on the other side and breathed it in. Whatever waited ahead, at least, it had an open space with air.
After a few moments, she resumed kicking, tackling the next slat, and kicking until she broke it. By the time she broke the third slat out, the others had begun to tilt and shift in the frame allowing her to remove them with little effort.
Lifting the wooden torch, which had now burned half-way down, she held it out in the space beyond the door and tried to see what might be in it. She saw the outline of a machine, maybe a tractor. She could smell manure and hay.
Shoving her head through the opening, she saw the sky overhead and could feel the dampness of moisture in the air. She hauled herself the rest of the way through and looked around as her eyes adjusted to the available light. The tractor sat in a row of a plowed field about five feet from her. She glanced behind her to see the raised bubble of ground, which hid the tunnel’s entrance. Beyond it, the barn and the farmhouse sat in a straight line from it. She had traveled about a thousand yards from the bomb shelter under the barn.
Now, she had to stay out of sight and make it to the long line of bushes flanked the house on the right. From there, she could use them for cover while she worked her way to the road.
She bent low, and ran across the field, hoping no one was looking this direction. She made it to the edge of the bushes and started to work her way into them when one of the men burst out of the back door, slamming it behind him. Peeking through a break in the bushes, she saw him coming her way in a run, and she crouched lower, working her way into the bushes as much as possible.
Lindy considered stopping and holding as still as possible, but the thrashing of the bushes at the other end persuaded her the man wouldn’t hesitate to tear the entire row of bushes out to find her.
She moved on, picking her way through as quickly as possible. Branches slapped her in the face, thorns pricked at her arms, and she kept going. She could hear him moving closer, as oblivious to the resistant bushes as she was.
As she came near the end of the driveway, she burst out of the bushes and ran for the dirt road, her feet flying as fast as they could down it. She didn’t have to look back to know he was right behind her. She heard his shoes hitting the dirt and could tell he was gaining on her.
Abruptly, something hit her, and she stumbled, falling to the ground as his arms locked around her thighs. As she face-planted in the dirt, she realized he’d tackled her. She tried to flip over to face him, her hands fisted and pounding at him, barely making any contact.
It was Javier, a man much heavier than she was. In fury and desperation, she struggled to hold up against him. He grabbed for her hands, catching both at the wrists with one hand, leaving the other free to slap her hard.
“Stop fighting,” he growled, “or I will punch you senseless.”
In response, she tried to head butt him but came up short. He flipped her over in the dirt, pulling her hands behind her and snapped a plastic band around them, tightening it to lock her down. Then he yan
ked her up and hit her in the jaw, sending her head in a jerk to the left.
As he pulled back his hand to deliver another hard punch, a man’s voice said, “Hit her again, and I’ll kill you.”
A British voice. Colin. Lindy couldn’t believe it. Down the road, four more men clambered out of darkened cars and came running toward them.
“Stand down,” one of them yelled in Portuguese. Lindy couldn’t make out the rest of what he said, but Javier released her and rose to his feet, raising his hands over his head. As the officer cuffed Javier, Lindy rolled out of the way and sat up just as Colin stepped around them and rushed to her side.
“Are you all right?” he asked, slipping his arm around her waist to help her to her feet.
“I think so,” she managed to say though the pain in her jaw. “Bruised. Am I bleeding?”
Colin carefully took her face in his hands to examine her face and nodded. “Just a little. You have a split lip. You’re probably tasting the blood. That jerk really clipped you in the jaw.”
She started to react, then remembered and grasped the front of Colin’s shirt as she said, “Michelle and Roberto are in the basement, a bomb shelter below the barn. They’re locked in. We need to get them out. Hurry.”
“It’s okay. Calm down. We’ll get them.” He motioned to the other men, who now pulled in around them. One of them asked her about the basement. Another handed her a bottle of water and a cloth to wipe her face. Taking a sip, she told them everything about the shelter and the guards around it.
“Keep her here,” one man told Colin, then the four of them headed toward the farmhouse first.
“No, they need to get the kids,” Lindy objected, trying to pull Colin toward the barn.
“Hold on a minute, Lindy.” He resisted her pull. “Let the officers handle this. They’ll get them out as soon as they clear the house. The best thing we can do now is to wait.”
“I can’t just stand here and watch,” she objected.
Colin wrapped his arms around her, holding her back as she tried to move forward. “They’re safe in the shelter for now. They’ll get them out in a few minutes.”
“What happened to you? I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
He squeezed her. “I lost your signal once you got here, so I pulled the car up and waited for the police to arrive. Then we weren’t sure where you were until I saw you running toward the bushes. I was above the house on the road.”
She fought her tears. “I thought you’d lost my signal and had no idea where I was.”
His voice broke a little as he admitted, “I was worried, too. There’s another house farther up the road and one across the street. I didn’t know which one you’d been taken to, and I couldn’t go barging in alone. Waiting for the police to get here was hell.”
As he finished saying this, one of the officers came out with a man between them, guiding him toward the road as the other three officers headed for the barn.
Lindy recognized the man as he passed her; the suave guy who’d brought her out, the one she’d called Dapper-man.
He leered at her as he passed, but the officer herding him shoved him onward.
Colin pulled out a tissue from a pocket pack and began wiping Lindy’s cut lip to get the fresh blood off. She watched his eyes as they darted across her face accessing her for any other damage.
“How bad is it?”
His lips curved up in a hint of a smile. “Not too bad, gorgeous. You’re already getting some swelling and the start of a nasty bruise on your jaw. We’ll need to get you checked out after this is over.”
“Great. Now, can we get closer to the barn and the action? I want to be there when Michelle comes out.” She tugged at his arm, ready to break away from him if he held her back again.
But he yielded this time, and they set a brisk pace back up the dirt lane. As she strode with Colin, his right arm around her shoulder, Lindy thought her brother would be very cross with her for this fiasco. But how could she know a young street artist in Spain would lead them into such a twisted adventure? Once more, she was grateful for having met Colin. If he hadn’t come to her aid, who knows what kind of bad ending this might have had?
They stopped right outside the barn door, uncertain what the status was inside. The officers had gone in. Behind them, another vehicle, a police one, pulled onto the dirt road, sped up it, and halted just a few feet from the barn. Two more officers jumped out of it and ran into the barn. One paused long enough to tell them to stay back.
Itching to get inside and see what was happening, Lindy still feared the men guarding the shelter might try to take Michelle and Roberto hostage. This whole thing could still go sideways. She fidgeted, paced, then just couldn’t stand back any longer.
She ran into the barn, heading back to the elevator at the back. Behind her, she heard Colin break into a run to come after her.
“Lindy. Wait! What are you doing? There’s still danger.”
She dashed into the elevator and hit the down button, the doors closing just before Colin reached it. “Sorry. I have to do this,” she called out as they shut.
As the door opened, Lindy peered out before jumping out into the hall leading to the underground shelter. It looked clear, although she spotted the back of one of the officers at the corner. From his stance, she guessed he had his weapon out, ready to fire if needed. She dashed across to the wall and began working her way to the corner as quietly as possible. Before she even reached it, a pair of popping sounds erupted, echoing from the hall. Gunshots followed the noise, and she feared someone was blowing the place up.
Logic would have told her to run back the way she’d come, but she wasn’t listening to her inner voice as she ran to the corner. The officer she’d seen had already dashed into the hallway in front of the shelter. As she came around the corner, she ran into a hall filled with smoke.
Coughing and eyes burning, she backtracked to the corner and almost ran into Colin as he hauled her into his arms. She pointed back to the corridor behind her and choked out, “Smoke. Lots of it.”
He pulled her close to him as the shouts, more gunfire, and scuffling noises boomed from the hallway. She pointed to the opposite side of the wall facing the corridor. “Let’s go over there, just to the edge, where we can see.”
She yanked him toward it, his steps still reluctant to get close to the action, but moving anyway. From the edge, they could get a view of what was going on. For the most part, she saw smoke and the police wearing gas masks as they seemed to be throwing someone on the concrete floor while another man was shoved up against the wall. In a few minutes, the smoke began dissipating, and Lindy could see more clearly.
The officers had subdued and cuffed the men, pulling them to their feet. To her eyes, it appeared the door to the shelter was still closed as one of the officers scouted around the area, maybe looking for the key. Lindy started walking forward, aware she was going into an area she probably shouldn’t, but she wanted to be there when they opened the door. One of the police told her not to enter the area, but she continued forward. Colin stayed a step or two behind her.
The officer in charge came over, planting himself in front of her. “Please go back, ma’am. This is still an active police zone, and I asked you to wait.”
Tilting her head up to meet his steely stare with one of her own. “My niece in that room, frightened, and probably even more so after all this noise out here. I want my face to be the one she sees when the door opens. I won’t interfere with your arrests, but I need to be there.”
The officer glanced over her head to Colin behind her, then looked at her, his expression stern.
“You wait here. Do not go any farther until we get these men out of here and secure the area. Then I will call you forward before we open the door. This is the best I can do.” His voice was firm, his mouth set in a stubborn line, but Lindy saw a hint of compassion in his eyes. She nodded her agreement and stepped back to stand with Colin.
While it seemed li
ke a long time for them to get the two men out of the corridor and to make sure everything in the area was secure, only ten minutes elapsed before the captain motioned for her to come to the door.
A specialist checked the lock to make sure no explosives were hidden in it, then he opened the door. Taking a deep breath and putting a big smile on her face, she stepped into the room to greet her niece.
Michelle and Roberto stood in the kitchen area, and Lindy saw the refrigerator had been shoved back to the wall. As soon as they saw her, relief washed across their faces, and Michelle broke into a grin as she ran into her arms for a deep, grateful hug. Both of them dissolved into tears of relief as Roberto followed Michelle at a more restrained pace.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lindy saw Colin step into the room, moving a few feet around her. He held out a hand to the young artist and pulled him into an affectionate embrace. The nightmare had ended, but where was Marchant?
Chapter 25
Sitting in an outdoor café in Marbella, Michelle sipped her sangria as she and Roberto shared a last “date” before she would be returning to South Carolina. She flipped a strand of hair from her face as she smiled at her friend.
He leaned back in his chair, watching her as if he was memorizing every detail of her face. His eyes showed amusement, but his mouth suggested something much more, a provocative smirk on his lips.
“You have plenty of photos and paintings to remember me by,” she complained. “I need a few of you. So, I think we should do a photoshoot this afternoon with you as the subject.”
“And some together as well. Selfies, yes?”
“Absolutely, yes.”
His eyes twinkled at the prospect. For today, he’d not set up his street shop to sell paintings but had decided to spend the whole day with her. They’d walked the marketplace earlier with Michelle doing some last-minute gift hunting for friends and family back home.