“What on earth are you saying, Luther? You didn’t save me. I wrote a motion and it freed my client. I was never in any danger.”
“Your motion? Your motion didn’t free James Klodd. Our family’s money did.”
“What the hell are you saying?”
“Don’t you see, Darren? Isn’t it obvious?”
Darren saw the three sheets of paper as Issabella handed them to him. He saw the grim sadness that hung over Izzy as she handed them over, the way she stared at the floor as he took them in his hands. He saw the names of officials who had been corrupted and bought by The Fletcher Group. The third page had been torn in half.
“Your motion was never going to prevail. Attacking probable cause on a case of child abduction? I’ve never argued a criminal case in my life, and even I know any judge who wants to get re-elected isn’t going to grant that motion. So I made certain that she did.”
“That’s a lie.”
“No. It’s the truth, Darren.”
Darren saw Deputy Dan Finch spinning him around as he conducted his pat down in the court hallway. A bomb threat. That’s what Judge Hodgens’s man had told him. It was easily believed. Threats on a judge were commonplace. He hadn’t given it a second thought. She’d summoned him, so he’d gone to her. That was the nature of their friendship.
“Chelsea,” he heard himself say.
“Yes,” Luther agreed.
Slowly, Darren reached into the pocket where he had slipped the key to Gil’s suitcase after Theresa had given it to him. When he pulled his hand back out, it was empty. The key was gone. It was gone but the memory of Dan Finch’s hands expertly patting him down was very much still with him.
Luther drained his whiskey and stared at the empty glass with a sour frown.
“I bought your judge,” he said. “So she upheld the motion, ‘James Klodd’ got clapped away inside this house, and you stayed alive.”
* * *
The stink was like a physical presence inside the basement hallway. It was a fetid, revolting co-mingling of unwashed human and rotted food, of body fluids and soiled clothing. Issabella gagged again and refocused on breathing through her mouth, but even that was nauseating. She felt like she was swallowing a film of mulch with each indrawn breath.
Joe Link shot her a curious look and said, “You get queasy easy, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she gasped.
“It’ll pass. If you breathe through your nose you’ll get used to it.”
Carmen was more sympathetic. She produced a folded napkin and tore off two pieces. She handed them to Issabella and said, “I always keep a tissue on hand.”
Issabella rolled the pieces of paper into balls and didn’t feel the least bit self-conscious about wedging them into her nostrils. It was better. She stopped gulping air and holding it in. Breathing naturally through her mouth didn’t bring any hint of the stink, though she still felt like she was exposing herself to poison.
“Thanks,” she said. “So you think he’s behind this door? This is his, what? His prison cell?”
“I’m not sure,” Carmen answered. “But listen.”
They all three fell silent. Issabella stared at the steel door and the intercom plate beside it. There was a numeric keypad beneath the speaker. Carmen had told them that she’d tried the door and that it was as firmly locked as every other door in the house.
Issabella strained to hear anything. Far away, in some other area of the basement, a mechanical hum droned on and she assumed it was an air conditioner. Beyond that, there was nothing.
“I don’t hear anything,” she whispered.
“Hush,” Carmen whispered back.
“I need to go find Darren. He’ll worry.”
“Shh,” Joe said, leaning forward toward the door. “I think I heard something.”
Issabella listened.
Joe was right. From behind the door, she could just faintly make out the sound of a human voice, if not the words being spoken.
Then, another voice. Deeper, but still too faint for her to discern what was being said.
“There’s two people in there,” Issabella whispered. “And they’re arguing.”
“About what?” Joe said.
She didn’t know. One voice was rasping, almost a croak. The other was flat, a weird monotone that muttered mechanically.
Carmen straightened away from the door and looked up the stairs behind them. Issabella followed her gaze and understood what the woman was thinking. There didn’t appear to be a way out of the basement aside from that stairway.
As Issabella looked on, Carmen produced a phone. She thumbed the screen and it lit to life.
“They’re arguing about us, I assume,” Carmen said. “About us and how to get out of this house.”
“Who’re you calling?” Joe said.
“Nobody. This is John Krane’s phone.”
“Who’s John Krane?” Issabella asked.
“The man I killed upstairs. He held Joe captive for the past three days. From what I’ve been able to piece together, he’s been acting as James Klodd’s jailer.”
“Why do you have his phone?”
Carmen’s answering smile was slight, but her dark brown eyes shone with satisfaction.
“Every access point in this house is protected by a numerically coded security panel. I counted them as I was searching each floor. There are thirty-seven panels. Each access point must have its own individual code, otherwise Krane would be locking or unlocking all the points every time he used a security panel, right?”
“Yeah,” Issabella agreed. “That makes sense. But so what?”
“So that’s a lot of codes. I counted the number of times he tapped the panel on the deck slider door when we first entered the house. The code to open that door was nine digits long. So we can assume there are at least thirty-seven different nine-digits codes for this house. If I had to keep that all in my head, I’d probably have them backed up somewhere just in case.”
Carmen held the phone up. Its screen was filled with a column of nine-digit numbers.
“This Klodd is a child killer, right?”
“Yes,” Issabella said.
“No doubt,” Joe agreed. “Issabella’s boyfriend is upstairs with Luther right now. He’s the brother I told you about, the one who keeps getting the kid’s teeth in the mail.”
Carmen nodded her head and pursed her lips while her eyes slid over to rest on Issabella.
“Then you need to make a decision. Do I open that door and put a bullet in his head right now, or do we wait and let your boyfriend do it?”
Joe Link brightened and smiled at Carmen as if he was seeing her for the very first time.
“Marry me,” he said.
* * *
“I’m sorry if this all comes as a shock to you, Darren.”
“Go to hell,” Darren snapped.
Luther looked perplexed and shook his head, seemingly amazed.
“What did you think? That a seasoned judge would let someone like that just walk away?”
“Chelsea Hodgens is my friend, Luther.”
“You don’t sound so certain of that.”
“You’re lying,” Darren insisted, but it rang hollow in his own ears. Dan Finch had taken the key to Gil Sharps’s suitcase. There was only one reason he could think of for that to have happened. It made him sick inside to think it, so he pushed the terrible notion away.
“She took the money, Darren. It was offered and she took it. It happens every day, everywhere in the world. Why do you think she’s watched over you ever since? Why would she bother guiding you back to your feet when you fell all to pieces? She fed you work when no judge would have you. She helped you get sober enough to take cases. And when you slipped up and wound up in the
drunk tank for a night or two, she kept it off your record. Why, Darren?”
Darren hunched over in his chair. His stomach was a clenching knot. He strained to keep the anguish out of his voice.
“Because she’s my friend.”
“Because I paid her.”
“You’re a liar.”
“I saved your life. I bought a judge to keep you alive and nurse you back to some semblance of a functioning human being.”
Darren screwed his eyes shut, curled into himself. Visions of Chelsea Hodgens played through his mind. He saw her patient, worried face. Always worried about him. And beneath that worry, there had been a deep and constant sadness—the shared sadness of failing to account for a little girl’s death. But now, as he confronted his memories of her, he wondered if it had been sadness after all. Maybe it hadn’t.
Maybe it had been guilt. Guilt over having struck an infernal deal. Pieces of silver in exchange for leaving a monster free to roam the countryside.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and Darren jolted straight in his seat. Luther was sitting on the edge of the desk in front of him. His brother squeezed his shoulder and for the first time he saw something new in Luther’s eyes.
Sympathy.
“I know you hate me,” Luther said softly. “I know you have cause. But you’re alive, Darren. And I’ll settle for that.”
“Prove it.”
“How?”
“Give me James Klodd. Give him to me, Luther.”
His brother nodded and let out a long, tired sigh. It seemed to Darren that Luther had already come around to that decision on his own, though he couldn’t know if it was to prove anything to him or if it was merely another calculated move for the good of the Fletcher Group.
Either way, Luther sounded earnest as he said, “Yes. He’s locked away in here somewhere. And he’s yours if we can get to him. This has all spiraled too far out of my control. Joe was right. I see that. But I was scared. The Senator is a powerful beast, Darren. He’ll lash out when he discovers what’s happened. If we doom his son, he’ll do his best to ruin us both.”
Atop the desk, a single green light flashed to sudden life.
A croaking voice, thick with fluid and venom, rose up out of the desk’s phone.
“Oh, you can be damned sure of your mutual ruin, Luther. I swear that to you both.”
Luther’s handsome face grew very pale.
“Senator Chalmers,” he whispered.
The speakerphone issued a rasping, spiteful laugh.
“Did you think I don’t mind my own son? That I wouldn’t watch him from afar, even if I could not bear to be near him? Krane was a good dog after all. He alerted me to what was being said...what was being plotted by your brutish employee. Quite cunning, to dine with me and wear that ingratiating smirk of yours and agree to investigate your own incompetence. It might have worked. But I have watched and I have listened to it all, Luther. And I am sorely disappointed in your betrayal.”
Darren stood up on shaky legs.
“Ah, the lawyer gets to his feet! Don’t bother, son. There is no argument to be made. I allowed you and your lady friend inside for one reason alone. Perhaps you should sit back down and reconsider that drink. My men are on their way and will be there soon enough to attend to each and every one of you.”
Darren knocked the chair over in his haste to get out of the room. He raced to the door and charged out into the unfamiliar, shadowed corridors of the mansion.
Izzy.
The Senator’s hateful laughter hounded after him.
Chapter Sixteen
Issabella peered around Joe Link’s wide back and watched as Carmen tried another series of numbers. She tapped them into the security pad beside the door, frowned, and held the phone up to her face again.
“I should really go find Darren,” Issabella repeated.
“And I said go ahead,” Carmen muttered, an edge of annoyance in her voice as she typed in a third series of numbers. She shook her head and consulted the phone again.
Joe looked over his shoulder at Issabella.
“I told Darren I’d stay with you,” he said.
“I don’t remember you saying that.”
“It was implied. He’s a man. It was understood.”
“Then let’s you and me go.”
“I can’t leave Carmen. There’s at least two people behind that door. Just stay behind me, alright?”
“Carmen can come with us.”
Carmen huffed in irritation and stopped what she was doing to cast a reproachful stare at Issabella.
“If we all leave, that gives Klodd the opportunity to open this door and make a break for it,” she snapped. “I watched Dick Sims get murdered because of this sick freak. He isn’t going to get away.”
“What makes you think he can open the door?” Issabella shot back. “From what we know, this isn’t his house. It’s his prison. Don’t you think if he could just waltz out he would have done it before we ever came down here?”
Carmen ignored her.
Issabella boggled at the two of them. In a span of seconds, the situation had transformed from asking her what she thought should be done and into an outright dismissal. Carmen and Joe were singularly fixated on the idea of getting through the door and dealing with James Klodd in violent fashion.
That fact reminded her of a truth she had temporarily forgotten. These were not her people. No matter how friendly Joe Link had been toward her, and despite the fact that he and Carmen were as trapped inside the house as she was, these were strangers. They were strangers who carried guns and wielded them in Luther Fletcher’s direction.
The thought made her feel suddenly very alone and very vulnerable. She was trapped in a cement hallway in a basement prison with two people she could not necessarily trust. What were their real intentions? Did she even know? Everything she knew about the Fletcher Group told her that it was an utterly malignant organization of criminals masquerading as a corporate firm. If these two were so hell bent on getting to James Klodd and putting an end to him, wasn’t it the height of foolishness to assume their motive was purely righteous outrage?
Wasn’t it more likely than not that killing James Klodd was an act that would somehow protect the interests of Luther Fletcher and the Group?
As she decided that, yes, that was far more likely, she saw Carmen tap in another unsuccessful code. Joe was watching Carmen intently, his big mass vibrating with the desire to charge through the door once it was open.
Issabella took a deep breath, shored up her resolve, and bolted straight away.
“Hey!” Joe blurted, but she was already well past them both.
Her feet found the stairs and she took them two at a time, intent on getting back up to the library and to Darren. She shouldn’t have left him. She shouldn’t have come here at all. Frantic self-recrimination overtook her. Back in Winkle’s Tavern, she’d shown Darren the address listed under James Klodd’s real name because she’d wanted to be the one to guide him to closure. They would find the man who’d haunted him for years, and put the entire tragic affair to rest. Darren would be free.
Instead, she’d lead them both into a locked trap full of dangerous people bent on violence.
She quickened her pace, lunging up, desperate to get back to Darren and find a way out of it all.
When she hit the platform and spun to charge up the remaining flight of stairs, Issabella collided straight into him. Darren let out a gasp of shock and relief. She was reeling backwards, but he was lightning-quick. His arms shot out and he grabbed her as fiercely as if she were a lifeline appearing out of the dark.
“Izzy!” he cried out and crushed her against his chest.
She breathed in the smell of him and, enveloped in his warmth and his sudden realness, she s
urrendered to that comfort and forgot her fears, if only for a moment.
Loud, hurried footfalls grew louder from behind him and she opened her eyes to see Luther come to an abrupt halt a step above them both. He was breathing hard and the wild panic on his face reignited her awful fears about their predicament.
He sucked in a gale of breath and looked ready to voice that panic when a series of loud, metallic sounds rang throughout the mansion.
“The doors,” Luther said. “All the doors.”
Just as abruptly as it had begun, the drumbeat halted and the mansion was silent.
Then, from below, Carmen’s triumphant declaration: “Bingo!”
Darren shot Issabella a questioning look.
“They’re getting into Klodd’s cell,” she told him.
“Oh no.”
“What? What’s oh no?”
Luther sagged against the wall and when Darren didn’t answer he said, “They know. They know everything we’ve said and done. They’ve been watching us the whole time.”
From below, gunfire erupted. It wasn’t the sharp crack of a pistol. What screamed around them was the furious, repeating burst of a fully automatic machinegun.
Darren spun her in his arms, shoving her up the stairs, past Luther.
“Run!”
More gunfire, this time single pistol shots.
Issabella ran. She ran without conscious thought. The machine gun fire screamed again. She heard the sound of it chewing into cement walls, so loud she felt it vibrating through the steps, up her legs and spine, an electric, alive thing that quickened her pace.
Bizarrely, as if out of another world, a hysterical voice filled her ears. Only as she bounded onto the first floor landing did she vaguely comprehend that the voice was crackling out of the speaker plate on the wall. No, not just that speaker plate. All of them. It was reverberating and sounding from every direction, caught in its own echo, colliding off itself until it was the multi-mouthed voice of some unseen creature.
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