A Perilous Pursuit

by Diane Gilmore

  She must have made a noise, for the boy suddenly whirled around.

  “Por Dios!” he cried, clearly startled at her presence. The dishes he was holding fell from his hands, shattering the mug and spraying glass shards out in different directions. He choked back a cry and looked around frantically, as if searching for a place to hide, his young mind slow to register the fact that he had already been caught.

  Then he looked at Taylor, and she saw his eyes come alive with fear and his face flush, as if he’d just gotten caught red-handed stealing candy from a corner drug store.

  “Julio?” Taylor called to him. Though they had never spoken to one another, she recalled Robert telling her the boy’s name, should she ever need him to do any physical work for her.

  Julio didn’t answer at first but continued to stare at Taylor as if he were looking at a ghost. Then his voice cut the icy silence. He cried out another curse in Spanish and attempted to flee the cellar.

  Taylor caught him as he hit the stairs. She grabbed his arm. “Julio, wait,” she said. “Are you all right? What’s the matter?”

  Julio didn’t answer, but wrenched himself free from her grasp and bound up the cellar steps as fast as his young legs would carry him.

  “Julio!” Taylor called after him. “Come back!”

  But the boy was long gone, and Taylor could hear the soft thumps of his feet running somewhere in the house.

  She certainly didn’t mean to scare him. What on earth would send him running like that? The dampness of the room seemed to go straight to her bones, and she walked slowly across the room, rubbing her upper arms to keep the chill from them while she glanced around. The room was completely windowless. It was no wonder the smell of mildew prevailed here, she realized. There was no way for even a sliver of sunlight to penetrate the thick concrete walls.

  Suddenly she heard something.

  She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was a soft sound, a brief movement she couldn’t quite identify, but it came from behind the door of the room Julio had come out of.

  She heard it again, and this time a strange tingle ran down her spine. A voice? It was a faint trickle of sound, like a tiny moan, almost a soft whimper, barely within her hearing range. Then a whisper of another sound. Metal?

  Something was behind that door.

  She was more curious at this point than afraid. Perhaps she simply heard the pipes creaking. Maybe that room held the washer and dryer. Perhaps it was a heating element cooling down, or clothes coming from a brisk tumble to a standstill. Or perhaps the dim, spooky atmosphere of the cellar was making her mind play tricks on her.

  Taylor surveyed the broken pieces of the ceramic mug that littered the floor and wondered if there were animals in the tiny room. The dogs? Pushing the thought aside, she walked to the door and reached for the doorknob.

  Suddenly she heard steps echoing loudly from upstairs. She turned to see Carlos, accompanied by two other huskily-built men, clamoring down the cellar stairs at full speed, creating an almost deafening din. In a flash, he was across the room to where she was standing. His hand shot out and grabbed her arm, roughly pulling her away from the door and whirling her about to face him.

  “What are you doing down here, Señorita?” he demanded, his voice cold and furious. “How did you get in here?”

  “I’m sorry, my clothes—” she began, but she was too surprised by his angry stare drilling into her to do anything more than stammer the words out.

  His eyes narrowed to a threatening slit. “No one gave you permission to come down to the cellar. You are not allowed in this part of the house!”

  Taylor could only stare at him blankly. She was still completely stunned.

  “Señor Cabrera makes the rules here,” Carlos barked coldly. “Only a Yanqui houseguest would not abide by the wishes of her host!”

  He had pulled Taylor uncomfortably close to him by now and she felt her arm begin to pulsate with pain from his tight grip. He was still dirty from the outdoors and reeking from the odor of the stables. The grimy stench, along with his hostile, condescending attitude, made Taylor recover her wits in record time.

  “Let go of me!” she demanded. She tried to struggle free from his hold.

  Carlos began to smile as he gripped her tighter. “You like to fight a man, no?”

  With all her strength, Taylor stomped hard on his instep, a move that instinctively came to her from a self-defense class that she and Susan had taken a few months ago.

  Carlos let go of her and cried out from the blow. “Stupid girl!” he shouted, his eyes widening with shock.

  Taylor angrily pointed an index finger to his face. “Don’t ever try that again!”

  “Never mind,” he said curtly. He obviously felt it beneath him to exchange verbal squabbles with a female. “You have no right to wander around another person’s house. You will go upstairs now.”

  “For your information, I was looking for the washer and dryer to do some laundry,” Taylor said with equal determination. She folded her arms defiantly in front of her. “But since we’re standing here and this is obviously not the utility room, what’s behind the door?”

  Her defiance made him stiffen as though she’d slapped him. “If you must know, Señorita,” he said in a cold voice that carried a deliberate sting, “this room is a wine cellar. You are satisfied now, yes?”

  “A wine cellar?” Taylor repeated sharply, abandoning all courtesies toward him completely. “You come flying down here after me, grabbing me and scaring me half out of my wits, because I was about to walk into a wine cellar?”

  “There are priceless vintages in that room,” Carlos shot back. “They are kept under lock and key to keep intruders, even the staff, from tampering with them without permission. That includes you, Señorita.”

  “I’m sorry, but I saw no harm in going to look for a damn washing machine, Carlos.”

  “We have a couple of Señor Cabrera’s dogs in that room, to keep watch while we are out working,” Carlos said. “The boy comes down here daily to feed them. They are trained not to bark and to attack any stranger on sight. You should be grateful that I showed up when I did, Señorita. If you had wandered into that room alone, the Dobermans would have easily mauled you.”

  Taylor gave an involuntary shiver at the thought.

  “Basta! Enough talk!” he barked, his tone remaining unfriendly. “In the future, Señorita, I think that if you would like a guided tour of Señor Cabrera’s mansion, perhaps you should ask him to take you and not wander where you might get hurt, and ask us about anything you may need.”

  His concern for her welfare was a crock, and Taylor knew it. There was no congeniality in his eyes or his voice. His message was clear. He was attempting to frighten her into never venturing past the main parts of the house again.

  Taylor, escorted by the three men, walked back up the narrow steps. Once in the confines of the kitchen, Carlos firmly turned the tumblers in the lock of the door and placed the keys in his pocket. He cast her a dark look before walking out the back door with his companions.

  Taylor retrieved the dinner that Maria had prepared for her from the refrigerator and heated it in the microwave oven. She then retreated to her room, where she could avoid Carlos Rodriguez as much as possible. She found her laundry already washed and neatly folded on her bed.

  So much for doing my own laundry, she thought. Her upper arm still ached from Carlos’ grip. Okay, so she underestimated the temper of one Mexican man, even if he was right that she had no business as a houseguest thinking she could just wander at will around the home of her host without permission, even if it was for a valid reason. However, Mexican tradition or not, she would speak to Robert about the attitude of the help toward her, and especially about Carlos. If she were going to stay in this house as Mr. Cabrera’s guest, even for a sho
rt time, then the staff would simply have to accept it and stop trying to make things difficult for her the minute Robert wasn’t around.

  She had just taken off her shirt as she headed toward the bathroom to draw a hot bath when she stopped in her tracks. She looked around the room. Something didn’t appear right. Her eyes scanned the room, studying the dresser, the bed, the night table. Then she saw it. Her phone —or lack of it. Her cell phone was missing. She bit her lip with rising concern. Where was her phone? All her contacts, her photos, accounts, everything was on that phone. She wouldn’t just leave it anywhere.

  Did she leave it somewhere else and forget where she’d put it? No. She always left her phone on the bedside table. She’d left it there before she went riding earlier, and now it was gone. She walked over and checked around the table, in the drawer, under the pillows and mattress. It wasn’t there.

  A cool shiver of fear wafted down her spine. First her car, now her phone. Her pulse began to increase. She suddenly felt like a prisoner with no way to reach the outside world. Was Carlos trying to harass her by taking her things to scare her? She would speak to Robert about that as well upon his return, she decided. If Carlos was behind these juvenile games, she would be the one to call him out on it.

  She went to the door and locked it securely. She took a hot bath, which served to calm her nerves and relax her muscles after the long day in Bonita’s saddle. Then she laid back on the soft down comforter that covered the bed and picked up a book she had wanted to read. As long as she kept her mind occupied, she would not succumb to the ceaseless agonizing over Craig or, even more recently, her missing things and the raw tension in the house that threatened to completely engulf her.

  As much as she tried to concentrate on the book in front her, her mind wasn’t in it. Her thoughts kept going back over the events of the day and worry over her missing phone. Finally, she put the book down and closed her eyes, turning her thoughts loose in her head.

  She had felt a strangeness about the house from the moment she arrived, but it was only since Robert was gone that the house seemed to change from a magnificent mansion to a hostile, foreboding mausoleum. And he was only gone for one day.

  Too many things were happening, too many strange things. There had to be something to her car missing, the locked cellar door, and the attitude of the staff, and now her missing phone. A deep, indisputable conviction began to grow inside her, a conclusion that the occupants of the house were not as much unfriendly as they were guarded. It was as if they were hiding something, some unpleasant secret that she was not to learn under any circumstances or tell anyone else about.

  Could that secret be found in the basement?

  Her anger had not yet subsided from that episode with Carlos. But more than that, her curiosity was more alive than ever about what was down there that had caused such a stir at the mere thought of discovering it. Carlos’ excuse about the wine cellar didn’t sound right. Perhaps if she found out what was there, the discovery would help her understand the reasons for a lot of the attitude that pervaded the house.

  She made up her mind. She would at least make the effort to look for the key and go back down to the cellar. She knew it wasn’t ethically right to just snoop around the home of one’s host, but if she didn’t, her mind would begin to go wild again with frightful imaginings, and she simply had to know.

  She waited until 3:00 a.m., when she was sure the house was quiet. Barefoot, she silently padded past the darkened hall and down the main staircase. The entire first floor was dark, except for a few low lights on here and there. She figured the key might be in Robert’s desk. She slipped into the library and gingerly pulled on the top drawer.

  It was locked.

  She tried the other drawers, but they were shut tight as well. Damn, she moaned to herself. She should have known the drawers wouldn’t be left open if Robert were not at home. Suddenly she felt silly, prowling about the house like a common burglar. She could just as easily ask Robert about the cellar later instead of sneaking around the house in the middle of the night.

  She was about to go back upstairs when the moonlight that streamed through the window caught a glint of metal on top of a shelf behind Robert’s desk. She pulled it down and gasped. In her hand were the keys that hung on the cellar door earlier, along with the small brass key that Julio had as well. Carlos must have tossed them up there and then forgotten about them.

  She hesitated, wondering if she should just put the keys back where she found them and go back to her room, but the need to learn the secret of the cellar overtook any feelings of apprehension she might have had about slipping downstairs in the first place.

  She stealthily crept into the kitchen. The stairs to the staff quarters led up to a dark, silent wing. She had to be especially quiet, lest she rouse that part of the house. Carefully, she slipped one of the keys into the bolt lock on the cellar door and turned it.

  The lock wouldn’t budge. Wrong key.

  She took a deep breath. One down, four to go. She plucked out another key from the set. That one was much heavier than the rest, made of a thicker metal than the others. She put it into the lock and turned it.

  The tumblers cranked with a loud, heavy rasp as the key turned smoothly in the lock. She opened the door only wide enough to let herself in, so that the creaking of the door hinges wouldn’t wake anyone. She flipped on the light switch. Then, holding tightly to the rough wooden railing, she descended the stairs.

  The room was exactly as she had seen it before—empty, cold and damp. Silence pervaded every corner, except now, in the dead of the night, the cellar seemed even more dark and frightening. The skin on her arms began to creep, and for a moment, she wanted to follow her impulse and flee as fast as she could, back to the safety of her bedroom. But the need to enter that room beckoned her to the brass doorknob once again. No sound came from behind the door this time. She remembered Carlos’ warning about the dogs. What if she opened the door and was greeted by the jaws of a couple of vicious Dobermans?

  She felt a twinge of guilt for wandering around where she didn’t belong, but she had to find out, even if she faced the consequences of whatever came of it later. She could always just turn the smaller key into the lock on the door. If dogs were waiting behind it, they would probably make some sort of noise and she could run as quickly as she could back up the stairs.

  With that comforting thought in mind, she placed the key in the lock and turned it.

  Nothing happened.

  Taylor strained to listen for the slightest sound, but she heard nothing.

  Tightening her hand on the doorknob, she thrust aside the fear she felt and opened the door a crack.

  She expected to see the Dobermans spring at her, but there were no dogs. In fact, there was nothing but darkness.

  She opened the door more fully this time and found the room to be completely empty. There was no wine cellar and no sign of dogs ever having been there. Suddenly, she felt horribly alone and vulnerable, the fear beginning to rise from the pit of her stomach.

  She quickly locked the door and went quietly back upstairs to the kitchen. She locked the door securely and returned the keys to the shelf in the library, exactly how she’d found them. Then she hurriedly retreated to the warm enclosure of her bedroom.

  She climbed into bed, but she couldn’t sleep now even if she wanted to.

  She was suddenly shaken about what she had just done. Raw fear began to gnaw at her. She was sure she heard noises in the tiny cellar room earlier, before Carlos stopped her from seeing what was inside. Now the room was empty. Surely her mind wouldn’t play tricks on her, making her hear noises that didn’t exist. Or would it?

  Was she going crazy?

  The worst part of it all was that there was no one she could talk to about it, to sort out her thoughts with. There was no one here she could trust
completely, not even Robert Cabrera. The people she loved and trusted—her father, Steve, Susan—were all back in Los Angeles, seemingly a million miles away, while she was here, alone in this strange house and now having no way to reach them. She couldn’t even find her car to leave. Those she loved were far away, and she had no choice but to face her fears on her own.

  The lies about the cellar. Her missing automobile and phone. The oddly stocked library. The wariness of the staff. She wanted answers to the puzzles in this house, and she felt an urgency about it, as if she had to find out quickly before she became part of something terribly dangerous, although of what she did not know. She only knew that she had to muster up all the courage she could in order to face whatever mysteries permeated this house. Her first step, she decided, would be to talk to Robert, just as soon as he came home.

  With that thought in mind, her body relaxed and sleep finally overtook her.

  Chapter 21

  By now Craig had fallen into the work regimen. He had progressed from the very bottom of the men’s twisted pecking order to a position of strength, regarded with a wary kind of respect from his fellow inmates. He purposely avoided getting involved in any of their activities. Instead, he kept to himself and learned to become completely engrossed in his work, waiting for the time when Cabrera would finally set him free from the horrors of his surroundings.

  While he steadily toiled away in the fields, his mind was elsewhere. He would spend the time thinking about his situation, finding his brother, and getting as far away from Robert Cabrera and his hierarchy as possible.

  He and his group were getting up from a break to return to the sea of poppies, when Craig happened to glance over toward the truck.

  Someone was sitting there on the ground, alone. His back rested against the truck’s massive, dirty white wheelbase, which shaded his frail frame from the brilliant afternoon sun. He stared off blankly at the brown hills, oblivious to his surroundings.