For a moment, Vince simply stared back at her. Then a slow smile twisted his face.
“She’s smart,” he said in an approving tone, glancing at Joe. “Real smart. Yeah, the Mitchell girl’s dad ripped me off, too. I had to send a message. The other girls—well, they were there in the house. They weren’t part of the message, so we brought them down here.”
So many years, so much loss, so much pain—that he could dismiss those bright, young lives snuffed out, the anguish to the parents, the years spent searching, with little more than a shrug sent flames of fury shooting through Nicky’s veins. Before she thought, she spat in his face.
For a moment, the world seemed to stop. Everything, time itself, seemed to freeze. The spittle had only reached his chin, and Vince stared down at her with widening eyes as he seemed to register its presence. Then realization hit and his face contorted. With a roar of rage, he reared back . . .
And a gun exploded, loud as a bomb in that enclosed space.
Vince shrieked and fell back.
“Roll against the wall, Nicky,” Joe screamed, and in the split second it took her to hear and obey, she saw that he was lying on his stomach, unbound hands stretched out before him clutching a pistol, taking two-handed aim . . .
As she rolled, more bullets exploded as the bad guys started shooting back.
Then she was against the wall, huddled as tight against the cold, hard stone as she could get, screaming, eyes closed, ears ringing, nostrils filling with the acrid smell of gunfire as bullets smacked into rock all around her and then ricocheted around the walls like deadly pinballs with whistling screams that echoed her own. Joe, somehow totally free now, crouched over her, snapping off shots.
A man yelled, “Shut the door! Leave ’em!” and she thought it was Vince, but she was too scared to look around to make sure, and then there was the clang of metal on metal and, finally, silence.
Eerie, echoing silence.
“Are you okay?” Joe asked after a moment, sounding breathless. He was moving, doing something with her handcuffs. Even as she nodded yes, she heard a tiny metallic click and then her hands were free.
That caused her eyes to pop open.
“How?” she asked, daring to move, sitting up and chafing her wrists and staring at Joe, who was now unfastening the cord around her ankles.
“I had a handcuff key in my pocket.” He grinned at her as the cord came off, and it struck her that he was looking all cocky and sure of himself and full of himself—in a totally sexy, charming way, of course, because this was Joe, and sexy and charming was what he did. She could tell that he was giving himself a big mental “Attaboy,” and that made her smile because it was clear that at heart, her big, bad cop was still just a little kid.
“The gun?” she asked.
His grin broadened. “I always keep a spare for emergencies.” Then he pulled up his trouser leg to show her the holster strapped around his ankle. “Just thank your lucky stars nobody ever taught these guys the right way to do a pat-down.”
Nicky had to admit it: She was impressed.
“Wow,” she said.
“You can thank me properly later.” He met her eyes with a glint in his that left her in no doubt about what he had in mind. Then he stood, pulled her up and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Oh, yeah.
Only they couldn’t, as they discovered within minutes. Six running steps in the opposite direction from which Vince and company had taken, and they were in a passage, a narrow, cavelike passage. A passage that was closed off with an iron door. An iron door with a mesh peephole the size of a schoolkid’s notebook near the top of it. As they approached the door, water started gushing through the peephole, spilling down the door like a waterfall, splashing on the floor. Puddling on the floor. Pooling on the floor.
“Shit,” Joe said, staring at it.
Nicky tugged at his hand. “Let’s try the other way.”
They retraced their steps, racing through the chamber that widened off the passage like the bulge of prey in a snake’s belly, only to narrow again into another passage—that ended in another door. A door without a peephole. A locked iron door. A locked iron door with the lock on the other side.
“Shit,” Joe said again, bestowing one final kick on it as all efforts to open it proved futile.
Nicky was starting to think that that was the understatement of the century.
She turned and looked back the way they had come as the rushing sound of water filled her ears.
That was when she faced the awful truth: They were locked in an underground passage that was rapidly filling with water.
Only dignity and a total wish not to humiliate herself in front of Joe kept her from clapping both hands to her cheeks and screaming “We’re all gonna die!”
But she didn’t. She took a deep breath and tried to think.
“There has to be some way out of here,” he said. His face was grim. Clearly, his thought processes had more or less mirrored her own. He was looking at the ceiling, feeling the walls. . . .
She could hear the water hissing and splattering as it poured in through the peephole. Soon it would reach them. . . .
Cold, dark water. The stuff of her worst nightmare.
Her heart was beating in sharp little slamming strokes against her breastbone. Her breathing was fast, erratic. Her hands were cold and clammy, and panic, pure panic, was shutting down her brain.
Please, God, please, God, please, God . . .
Suddenly, it hit her.
“I think I know where we are,” she said. He looked at her questioningly. She clasped her freezing hands together in sudden excitement. “I always heard stories about this place, but as far as I know no one—except Vince and his crew, obviously—really thought it existed. It’s a tunnel that was once part of the Underground Railroad. It’s supposed to run from Salt Marsh Creek under some of the old houses. Harry’s a Civil War buff, you know, and I’ve heard him talk about it.” Her voice faltered. “If it’s underground, and its entrance is somewhere on the bank of Salt Marsh Creek, I bet it floods when the tide rises.”
“Great.” Joe looked a whole lot less excited than she felt. “That leaves just one question: How the hell do we get out of here?”
Nicky’s bubble burst as it occurred to her that just because she had figured out where they were, that didn’t necessarily mean they were saved.
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “But there’s got to be a way.”
The door was clearly impassable. Even shooting the lock off was impossible because, as Joe pointed out when she suggested this to him, it was on the other side. Meanwhile, trickles of water were starting to run past their feet.
“There’s got to be some kind of ventilation shaft,” Joe muttered as Nicky fought back panic. “It’s too dry down here for there not to be.” He grabbed her hand. “Come on.”
She ran with him back into the snake’s-belly-bulge chamber, which was now ankle deep with cold water that just kept spilling in through the door.
“Look up,” Joe yelled, and she did. The ceiling was in bad shape, with roots poking through the stone in places and dirt only in other places, where the stones were missing. She was so busy looking up, in fact, that she would have missed the stone in the wall with the writing on it if a strand of her hair hadn’t snagged on a jagged corner of it. She glanced around to free herself and saw the primitive letters carved deep into the rock: JOSIAH TAYLOR, 1863.
For a moment, she simply stared at it as the water rose around her calves and all kinds of thoughts—from Please, God, don’t let me die this way to Ohmigod, that was written by somebody standing right where I am almost a hundred and fifty years ago during the Civil War—ran through her brain.
Then the surname Taylor registered, and, at the same time, she saw the little brass tube protruding from the crumbled mortar above the stone. It had a wad of filthy cloth wedged in it. She pulled the cloth out and stuck her fingers in the tube. It led both up toward the
driveway and sideways, parallel with the passage. Even as she realized that, several things became clear simultaneously: One, they had to be under, or near, the Old Taylor Place, because this passage almost certainly had to end in its cellar; and, two, the shape of the tunnel, at least as far as she could tell, closely followed the driveway; and, three, that being the case, and given that Karen had been walking down the driveway when she had been attacked, it was probable that this tube, which Nicky recognized as a speaking tube, had carried Karen’s screams inside the house, where they had provided the ghostly finale for Leonora’s first appearance on Twenty-four Hours Investigates.
The corollary thoughts came lightning-fast: There would be people inside the Old Taylor Place tonight—her crew—waiting for her, probably frantically trying to locate her by now, as they prepared to film the live-at-nine version of the show.
Water was rushing in faster, swirling around Nicky’s knees, rising. Her feet and calves were already numb, her jeans were soaked to the crotch, and she was freezing. She glanced down at the dark surface of the water. Terror made her dizzy. Her heart pounded. Her breath rattled in her throat like a dying man’s.
“Help!” she screamed into the tube, praying that she was right, that somebody could hear. A few feet away, Joe let loose with a startled “What the hell?” which was apparently provoked by her sudden screech, but that didn’t even slow her down. “It’s Nicky! Joe and I are trapped in a tunnel under the driveway! It’s flooding! There’s a door in the cellar! Come and let us out!”
“What are you doing?” Joe was beside her now, looking at her as if he feared that she had lost her mind.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a speaking tube,” she told him urgently. “People used them to communicate with their servants and whoever a long time ago. I think you can hear it inside the Old Taylor Place, and I think that explains the screams that we heard the night Karen was murdered: It must have an outlet up near the pine trees, probably so whoever was helping the escaping slaves could talk to them through it.” A thought occurred to her. “Do you think the mayor and his friends are still hanging around?”
The possibility that the bad guys might hear their cries and come back made every tiny hair on her body leap to prickling life.
“They should be long gone,” Joe said. “Vince was scheduled to be at a press conference to announce the capture of the Lazarus Killer at nine.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s eight-thirty-five now.”
Live at nine, she thought, registering that Twenty-four Hours Investigates was scheduled to start in twenty-five minutes and she wasn’t there. Then came the newsflash from her overburdened brain: As far as live TV was concerned, “dead reporter” was worse than “dead air.”
“Here, let me do that, my voice is stronger than yours,” Joe said, and moved her aside to put his mouth to the tube. He, too, started to yell.
Meanwhile, the water kept rising faster and faster.
“We can’t stay here,” Joe said as it finally swirled up past Nicky’s waist. She knew he was right, but she hated to abandon the speaking tube, which seemed to her like their only hope. But the passage sloped upward, and the door without the peephole was on higher ground. Clutching Joe’s hand, and almost losing her footing several times in the swirling water, Nicky sloshed with him toward the passageway.
By the time they got to the door, the water was only knee-deep.
“Oh, God,” Nicky said, staring back in dread at the filling chamber behind them. “How long do you think it’ll take to reach us?”
The answer was, obviously, not long. The water, which had been knee-deep minutes before, was already creeping up her thighs.
Joe was doing his best to kick the door down. It didn’t even budge.
As the water rose, fear was replaced by horror. The thing she had always feared the most was going to kill her. She was going to drown—in cold, dark water. . . .
And Joe, too. She could hardly stand that. Knowing that he was going to drown with her made it ten times worse.
He was right beside her, leaning against the door, panting, resting as he paused from throwing his weight against it. It was a futile effort, she knew, but she honored him for making it, for trying to save them. . . .
The look on her face must have been a study in fear and sorrow, because he reached out and pulled her into his arms. With the freezing water swirling around her waist, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder. She could feel his mouth against her hair.
“I love you,” she said fiercely, because she wanted him to know before they died. “Love you, love you, love you.”
“I love you, too,” she thought she heard him say, but she couldn’t be sure because his voice was drowned out by the clang of metal on metal. Nicky straightened with excitement as it became clear that the bolt was being drawn on the other side of the door.
Then the door opened, and she and Joe, along with a tremendous surge of water that almost knocked them off their feet, went through it.
“Sorry it took so long,” Gordon gasped, “but we couldn’t find the door in the cellar.”
Nicky looked past him to see Bob, Tina, Cassandra, Mario, Isabelle, Dave, her mother, and a whole crowd of other people clogging the passage.
Then they ran to escape the still-rising water.
“Nicky,” Isabelle said urgently over the cacophony of voices as they made it up a set of steps and into the safety of the Old Taylor Place’s cellar, “we’ve got six minutes until you’re supposed to be on the air.”
This time, Nicky reflected as the door was slammed behind them and she paused to lean against the nearest wall and pant for air, she was just thankful to have the chance to be live at nine.
“Okay,” she said, straightening. “Let’s do it.”
EPILOGUE
A WEEK LATER, it was one more beautiful day in paradise. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the locals were out in force. It was just after nine a.m., and Joe stood at the curb in front of his house with Nicky beside him, waving, as Dave pulled away from the curb in a candy-red convertible Corvette with Cleo sitting in the passenger seat beside him. The two of them had come to say good-bye because this was Joe’s last day as a permanent resident of the island. Two weeks from now, he would be back in Jersey—Newark, to be precise—in his new job as an agent for the DEA.
It was funny how much respect busting the biggest drug ring on the East Coast got you.
It worked for Dave, too. He was the new Police Chief. The town was still searching for a new mayor.
In fact, it was good news all around. According to Nicky, Leonora had her groove back. Now that the danger to her daughters was past, she was seeing spirits right and left. Livvy was on a roll, too. She was happily divorcing her cheating husband and planning to embrace life as a single mother. She was also planning to work as a hostess in Ham’s restaurant, which would have its grand opening the following month.
Joe and Nicky would be back for that.
Oh, yeah, and that was the other thing. He and Nicky were definitely in a relationship. In fact, they were traveling north together. Driving. Making a vacation out of it. See, she was moving to New York City, because she’d been offered the job she wanted. Live in the Morning had called the morning following her last Twenty-four Hours Investigates broadcast to offer her the job. They had, they said, been impressed.
New Jersey and New York were only separated by a river. And he and Nicky both had to apartment-hunt when they got there. Who knew how that would work out?
“I think we’re ready,” Nicky said to him, when Dave and Cleo were out of sight. They had been loading their car, a rented Lincoln, with the last of the stuff from his house, and were standing beside the trunk at that moment.
“Good enough.” He looked at her, at the glorious red hair shining in the sun and the beautiful face and figure and, most of all, the warmth in her eyes as she smiled at him, and he thought, Oh, yeah, this is definitely a woman to keep. “
I love you, you know.”
Her smile widened into a grin.
“Careful,” she said. “You never know. I might just read a commitment into that.”
Okay, he could handle it.
Just to prove it, he bent his head and kissed her. Then he went inside, walking quickly through the house.
And there, in the kitchen, he encountered Brian, leaning against a counter, big as life.
Or not.
Joe stopped and glared at him. “Well, look who it is. Long time no see. My guardian fucking angel.”
“Hey,” Brian said. “I saved your life.”
“Saved my life? I already knew you shot me, you asshole. What I didn’t know was that you ripped off half a million dollars, then set me up to take the fall.”
“Notice you’re alive?” Brian crossed his arms over his chest. “Notice I’m dead? Looks to me like it worked out for you. Anyway, the reason you’re not dead is I deliberately didn’t kill you. It was all part of the plan.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” Brian said. “Okay, I ran a little scam and set you up to take the heat. But half a million dollars, Joe! Jesus, who could resist? I admit, I sold you out to Martinez. But, see, I knew all along he’d tell me to whack you, because that was the way he operated. Whoever brought you in took you out if the need arose. So I was prepared. I just eased those bullets alongside your head, nothing fatal at all. I knew he’d tell me to get rid of the body, too, so I figured I’d haul you out of there in one of those big garbage cans, and then we’d ease on down the road with half a million dollars to split when you recovered.”
Joe narrowed his eyes. “You expect me to believe that?”
Brian held up his hand. “Hey, it’s God’s honest truth. You ever known a guardian angel to lie?”
Okay, so Brian had him there.
“Anyway, I’m outta here.” Brian straightened away from the counter. “I’m through with the guardian-angel bit. You won’t be seeing me again.” He seemed to reflect. “At least, as long as you’re alive.”
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