by Gary Parker
Grimes gulped as one hand reached for his neck and the other lifted his cell phone so he could see it. Blood filled the hand on his neck. The other hand busied itself with the phone.
“G-l-o- . . .” he worked to type the word. “b-e-F-r-e-e.”
He felt cold as he focused on his phone. He saw the loving couple rushing his way, panicked stares on their faces.
“B-a-h-a-m-a-s . . .”
His hand stilled as he typed the last letter and the phone fell to the ground as the couple reached him. The woman bent to his face and Grimes noticed her teeth, so straight and white.
“Send,” he whispered, pointing as best he could to his cell phone. “Send.”
“Stay with me!” the woman encouraged. “Ambulance is coming.”
“Send,” he mouthed, his lips barely moving. “Please . . .”
The woman grabbed the phone and held it up. He tried to speak again but nothing sounded.
“What?” she asked. “What do you want?”
Grimes wanted to raise a hand but couldn’t. The woman leaned closer but Grimes’s eyes closed and he exhaled. Shannon, he thought as he passed out. Shannon will never go to dinner with me . . .
17
Friday, 12:30 p.m.
Wearing black pumps and her cross earrings with a black skirt and jacket over an off-white blouse, Shannon followed the directions of the guards standing outside the Carson Estate and parked her rental on the curb six blocks from the home owned by Rick’s parents. The estate consisted of three mansions, the largest owned by Rick’s grandfather, the smallest by Rick. About a quarter mile of manicured lawn and landscaped gardens separated each house, and Steve Carson’s body lay at rest in the home in the middle. The Carson Acres golf course ran along the back of the estate, its verdant green grass creating a pastoral setting.
After refreshing her lipstick and slipping on a pair of sunglasses, Shannon climbed out and followed the crowd toward the massive colonial mansion. A line at least a block long stretched out the entryway, and Shannon took her spot and eased forward with the throng. A steady sun warmed her head and back, and within fifteen minutes she felt sweat on her forehead. For the most part, nobody said much and Shannon’s mood sank with the somber atmosphere. Although no more afraid of death than the next person, she’d seen more of it in her life than she preferred, and attending another funeral, even that of a stranger, didn’t rank too high on her list of things to do for the day.
She wiped her forehead and shifted her thoughts to Rick Carson. She liked him, might as well confess that. Not that he was her type; not in a million years. A pretty boy, easy with a line and adored by millions. Girls like her didn’t jibe with men like him. Where he zigged, she zagged. Slot A didn’t fit with Tab B. Still . . . he did possess a few redeeming qualities . . .
She reached the portico of the mansion and climbed the front steps toward the entry. A surveillance camera stared down at the crowd and a wave of anxiety hit her, but she wiped her clammy palms on her skirt and told herself to stay strong. The shade offered by the portico cooled her a little and she took a deep breath. The line gradually shifted forward, and she stepped through the front door and spotted Rick’s grandfather standing beneath a family portrait. A regal man, Shannon thought, watching him as he shook hands and hugged the well-wishers who paraded by. Tall, lean, and tanned, with piercing blue eyes even from this distance. Steel, she thought, aged but unbowed.
The line moved again, and within a couple of minutes she stood before him. “I’m Shannon Bridge,” she said, standing tall, determined to go through with what she’d started. “I’m a friend of Rick’s. I’m here to support him and his family during this difficult time.”
“You’re most kind,” he said, taking her hand as she offered it, his eyes locked with hers. “Have we met?”
“No,” she said. “I would have remembered.”
“As would I.”
“I’m sorry for your grief—will offer a prayer for you and your family.”
“Pray for Rick to find his way home. Wouldn’t know where I might find him, would you?”
Shannon smiled gently. “I’m sure it’s breaking his heart not to be here,” she said. “Perhaps he will show up soon.”
“I certainly hope so. His mother and I miss him greatly.”
A couple behind her stepped closer, and Shannon stated her sorrow once more, then moved away, following the crowd as it shifted to a huge dining room just past the entry. Trays of food sat on display before her, finger sandwiches of all kinds, fruit and vegetable assortments, small cuts of different meats, shrimp platters, chicken tenders. A number of servers mingled about with drinks available—alcoholic and otherwise.
Shannon selected a glass of punch and circled the crowd to a set of swinging doors at the back of the room where she’d noticed the servers entering and leaving. A couple of minutes later, she pushed open the door and stepped to the kitchen on the other side. To her surprise, Luisa didn’t meet her as she had agreed to do when Rick had called her. For a second, Shannon considered aborting the mission. Without Luisa she felt unsteady, insecure—a bird with a broken wing.
Holding her breath, Shannon scanned the area and hoped to see Luisa. At least thirty people worked in the industrialsized kitchen, each focused on their work among the giant stoves and refrigerators, cutting boards, sinks, grills, pots, and pans. No Luisa in sight. She checked the corners of the ceiling for more surveillance cameras but saw none. Maybe they only monitored the public areas of the estate.
Still, Shannon hesitated. Without Luisa, her chances of success greatly diminished. And if somebody knew about Luisa, they almost certainly knew about her as well. But so what? Either she found what Rick needed or she didn’t. And if somebody caught her, she’d plead curiosity. “A fan of Rick’s,” she’d explain. “Wanted to see the house where he grew up. Take a few pictures for my friends.” They’d charge her with trespassing or something like that; a misdemeanor, no big deal. Might as well let it all roll.
Her shoulders square, Shannon moved deliberately to the back left side of the room, toward the elevator that Rick had said she’d find there. To her relief nobody challenged her, and she spotted the elevator, stepped to it, and opened the door without incident. Inside, she punched 3 and held her breath as the car rose. Seconds later, she hurried off and rushed down the hall to the last door on the right. After a quick glance around, she opened the door, slid inside the bedroom and shut the door behind her. For a second, she leaned against the wall and let her heart slow down. Then she shifted into action again, hurrying past an arched corridor that separated the bedroom from a sunroom surrounded by glass on all sides except the left. Inside the sunroom she saw a twelve-foot-high interior waterfall just as Rick had described it. A stone wall about three feet high enclosed the waterfall at the bottom, providing a basin for the cascading water. The basin formed a rectangular pond at least ten feet long and four feet wide.
Shannon squatted by the wall and spotted a tan stone shaped like a rose in the center. After a last look over her shoulder, she faced the wall again and reached out for the stone. Her hand trembling, she pressed the rock, then waited as it twisted clockwise. A digital display appeared beneath the stone, and she punched in the code from the DVD, then stood and stepped back. The waterfall immediately shut off, the water in the pond flushed out and a motor clicked. A second later, the wall to her left slid back and a door opened. She hurried through the door to a space the size of a small coffee shop with a row of recessed lights burning overhead. To her right she saw a switch, and she flipped it and the wall behind her whisked shut.
The police monitoring the Carson memorial didn’t notice Shannon Bridge as she entered the mansion, shook the grieving grandfather’s hand, and made her way into the dining area. They also failed to spot her as she slipped into the kitchen or climbed on the elevator or entered the bedroom. But then somebody in the downtown office received an anonymous call advising them of an intruder in the sunroom in the mas
ter suite, and they hurriedly rushed two officers to each exit and sent two more to the sunroom. As Shannon closed the panic room, the two deployed her way rushed to the waterfall just as it started to splash again.
Their pistols poised, the cops stopped by the pond and stared at the splashing water as if seeing a mermaid playing in the spray. The oldest of them, a short man in his forties with cropped brown hair and a name-tag that read “Wilson,” looked wide-eyed at his partner. “You see what I saw, Turley?” he asked.
“The wall just shut,” Turley said, his tone disbelieving. “Must be one of them panic rooms behind it. Saw one in a movie not too long ago.” He stepped to the wall and pounded on it with his fist. “Probably a switch here somewhere to open and close it.”
He and Wilson checked the wall for a trigger mechanism but found nothing. “What you think we should do?” Wilson asked. “Notify the old man or not?”
“Still a long line of folks to see him,” Turley said. “Maybe we should wait a little, let the crowd thin out. Whoever’s in there ain’t going anywhere. Once the crowd’s gone we’ll find out how to open this thing.”
Wilson grunted, then radioed the other guards to return to their previous posts.
“Who you think is in there?” he asked Turley once he’d finished.
“Hard to say. Maybe the boy come home.”
“Maybe he took a woman in there with him.” Wilson chuckled. “He’s got more girls than my wife’s got shoes, see him on the news with a fresh one all the time. Not a dog in the bunch so far as I’ve ever seen.”
“Rich boys.” Turley sneered. “What you gonna do?”
Inside the panic room, Shannon watched as a camera monitor flickered, then steadied to show two cops stationed by the waterfall. Their voices filtered through a speaker under the monitor, their words focused on guessing her identity. Her adrenaline surging, Shannon leaned against the wall and considered her predicament. Somebody—cops or otherwise—had obviously gotten to Luisa. She closed her eyes and fought to hold it together. Although aware that something like this could happen, she had not really expected it. But now she’d placed her head in the lion’s mouth and had to figure a way out before the lion snapped its jaws shut.
She opened her eyes and studied the police. They seemed unhurried, and she realized they were waiting. For what? The code, she concluded. Probably had to get it from Rick’s grandfather; find a moment to whisper in his ear, tell him of the intruder.
Shannon exhaled, grateful for the respite, time to think through things. Stepping away from the wall, she scanned the area. Four bunk beds—two per section—were attached to the wall directly across from her. Cabinets ran along the wall under the bottom bunks and shelves stretched to the ceiling over the top ones. She checked the cabinets and found them filled with canned goods, crates of bottled water, a first-aid kit, and scores of batteries along with several flashlights. Just past the beds she saw a small door and opened it to find a narrow toilet area with rolls of toilet paper stacked on shelves to the ceiling.
Back in the main room again she saw a thin desk across from the beds. Family pictures sat on one side of the desk— images of Rick, his mom, and dad at various ages, in a host of poses and locations. Two different phones sat on the desk with the pictures, plus a laptop computer. She hit the On button on the computer and it sprang to life. She clicked Enter and the main page opened, but nothing unusual showed up so she turned away and kept looking. Hanging from the ceiling above the desk, a blank television screen stared down at her. She hit the power button and the television clicked on as she searched the desk for a remote control and found it behind the computer screen. She punched on the controls and CNN blinked on. She watched it for a moment but saw nothing of consequence, and she almost clicked it off but then thought of something else and hit the list button for recorded programs. The list showed one recording and she keyed it up—eight minutes in length according to the digital display.
She flipped open her cell phone, turned on the video feature, and held it before the television screen. Moments later a history channel documentary began to play on the recorder. The voice of the narrator detailed the background of an ancient battle, fought by two generals with the throne of Rome as the winner’s prize.
The image of the eventual victor flashed on screen.
Then the narrator described a dream the conqueror saw the night before the battle that won him the title of Caesar. In the dream the general saw a fiery sword with a handle edged with rubies shaped like a cross.
A picture of the sword appeared on the screen.
Under the sword, the victor’s dream revealed four Latin words.
Shannon stared at the words as they faded from the television screen and the documentary ended. She dropped her cell onto the desk and buried her head in her hands.
The words said it all—the sum of her fears, the fulfillment of all the warnings she’d ever heard.
Four Latin words.
Words of conflict, death, and doom.
Outside the panic room, Officer Wilson’s radio beeped and he clicked the receiver for the incoming message.
“We got the go-ahead to clear the panic room,” squawked a captain from the downtown station. “And the code is now available. The display is behind a stone shaped like a rose in the base of the waterfall.” He gave directions and Wilson found the rock and pressed and the display appeared.
“You ready for the code?” the captain asked.
“A pen,” Wilson whispered to Turley. “Write this down.”
Turley searched his pockets, came up with his notepad, and flipped it open. Wilson repeated the code as he received it and Turley scribbled it down.
“Hold the intruder there until the chief arrives,” the captain said when he finished. “He’s on the way.”
Wilson signed off and faced his partner. “You ready?” he asked.
“Maybe we need more backup,” Turley suggested.
Wilson weighed the idea, then hit his radio and ordered four more men to the scene. “Better safe than sorry,” he told Turley.
“My sentiments exactly.”
Shannon’s heart raced as she watched Turley and Wilson waiting for their backup. They’d have her in custody in a few minutes; a recipe for bad things for a lot of people.
She needed a way out but didn’t see one.
Unsure what else to do, she focused again on the video, deleting it from the television, then emailing the copy she’d made to the phone from which Rick had called her. A text message accompanied the video. One word—gelato. Then she erased the video and the text message from her phone.
Four more cops showed up outside the panic room while Shannon quickly searched the desk, shelves, and cabinets for a weapon but found none. Another idea came to her. Wouldn’t a panic room have an escape route? Like a rabbit warren? Flee in one side, flee out another.
The cops punched in the code as Shannon re-inspected the room, her fingers hurriedly checking the walls for crevices, hidden panels, secret displays. Finding nothing, she squeezed into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Seconds later, she heard voices in the outer room, then fists pounded on the door, and she almost gave up. Her hands reached to open the lock, but then her eyes landed on the toilet paper holder, a brass stand about three feet high with a round bottom fitted into a cupped area in the floor, a reasonable weapon if wielded with a little surprise and a lot of force. She pulled the toilet paper off the stand, slipped the stand out of the floor indention, and lifted it like a baseball bat, the round end a weighted club.
Legs spread, feet firm, she braced for the cops. Her vision landed at the spot where the stand had stood. A small digital display, inlaid in the stone floor, blinked back at her. She bent to it as the cops pounded on the door. A door hinge snapped.
Her fingers trembling, Shannon punched in the code that opened the panic room but nothing happened. Another door hinge popped. Giving up on the code, Shannon dropped the toilet lid and climbed onto it, her we
apon poised over her head. The toilet moved and she almost toppled off but then steadied herself.
The toilet quivered slightly, then shifted downward, the floor underneath it sliding away into a barrel-sized hole like a slow elevator. Startled, Shannon balanced herself better and placed the toilet paper stand back over the digital display as her body slowly disappeared. Lights flipped on in the tubular passageway into which she dropped. Within seconds, her head slipped below floor level and a floor, now her roof, shifted into place overhead. The toilet descended at least twenty feet, slowed, and settled.
Breathing heavily, Shannon hopped off the toilet lid and peered around. A concrete tunnel, about four feet wide and six feet high, led off into a shadowy passage, lit about every thirty feet with a yellowish glow. Above her head, Shannon heard feet pounding the floor. Calming herself, she brushed down her skirt, smoothed back her hair, then dashed away down the corridor.
18
The message tone on Tony’s cell phone sounded and Rick quickly checked the inbox—a video and a text message. He checked the text first and read one word— gelato.
He slammed his fist into the bed where he sat, his every fiber fighting against the course of action he’d agreed to with Shannon if he got this word. He wanted to go after her, to speed to his family estate, rush to the panic room and haul her out. But they’d decided that made no sense if somebody discovered her. If captured, they’d agreed that she’d send him the prearranged message and he’d drive to a predetermined location and wait for her there. So, no matter how much he hated it, he needed to do just that.
Tamping down his frustration, he forgot about the video and grabbed his already-packed shoulder bag, threw it over his shoulder, and rushed from the room. In the parking lot, he flipped everything into the black Nissan he’d bought at a truck stop that morning, then slid into the driver’s seat. On the street, he turned left and peeled away.