Scott’s face is a silhouette in the square of yellow light above me. “Should be.”
“Should be?”
He shrugs. “I only go down there when absolutely necessary, which is almost never.”
“Super encouraging.” With each step, the ladder protests less and less until my foot touches what can only be a dirt floor.
“There’s a light fixture overhead. Feel for the pull-cord. It should only be a couple of steps from the foot of the ladder.”
I spin and take two steps, but when I wave my hand, there’s no sign of the string. The longer I stand here in the dark, the heavier it feels, like it’s growing around me. “I can’t find the cord.” My voice has a hysterical quality I don’t like.
“Take another couple steps. You’re shorter than me.”
“Okay.” I let out a shrill cry as something brushes my face.
“What is it?”
“Oh, for crying out loud. Found it.” The room bursts into view around me, every nook and cranny illuminated.
A second later, Scott’s beside me. “There it is.”
Another black opening yawns before us—the entryway to the tunnels.
“Is there a light in there?”
“It’s not wired for electricity past this room, but Oscar keeps a flashlight for when he sets mousetraps. Here it is.”
“Mice?” I hop away from the doorway.
“Let’s hope there’s still juice in the batteries.” Scott gives the flashlight a shake, then clicks it on.
“How far in do you think we need to go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Still freaked about the enclosed space?”
“No . . . I don’t think so.” He smiles, mocking himself.
I hold out a hand for the flashlight. “Give it up.” Without even pausing to think, I plunge into the tunnel, and it’s not so bad. With armed criminals two floors up and a body above us, a stone corridor with some rodents feels like kid stuff. I keep up a fast clip, Scott tight at my heels. The first time we encounter a bend, I freeze and he bumps into me.
“Sorry,” he says.
Craning my neck to peer around the corner, I aim the light into the gloom ahead, a mirror of the gloom at our backs. “I guess we keep going. How long do we have?” And how much time has passed? It feels like both hours and mere seconds.
“Five minutes. We’d better hurry.”
Scott and I make six turns. The farther we go, the faster my pace. Every time we come to another bend, I expect to find the way blocked by a fall of rock or dirt or both. Every time the path stretches clear before us, a new flare of hope ignites within me. Before long we’re jogging.
We’re going to make it. We’re going to get out, get to a phone, call for help. Save the day.
“Nine one one. Please state your emergency,” the dispatcher will say. A woman. It will be a woman who answers.
I rehearse my words so I don’t waste a single precious second. Later, when the cops replay the recorded conversation, they’ll marvel at how clearly, concisely, and calmly I communicated the information they needed.
The passage shifts to the left, then climbs uphill.
This is it. We’re almost there.
“Winny, slow down. Be careful.”
I don’t listen. Another corner and three steps later, I skid to a stop.
A wall of cracked concrete, fallen stone, collapsed dirt, and tangled roots blocks our path.
“No. Nononono,” I whisper, but I’m not giving up. I aim my light at the barricade. “Maybe it’s not too thick. Maybe we can shift some of this debris and make an opening.” The beam can no more penetrate the avalanche than I can, but I sweep it back and forth, checking for a break in the mass, starting at the top where a foot-high gap separates the pile from the tunnel’s stone ceiling all the way to the ground. Nothing. The opening up top is the only gap.
“That’s it, then. It’s over. We have to go back.”
“No! What if we can squeeze through?”
“Even if you fit, those rocks could shift. You could get crushed or trapped.”
“Or I can go back up there and get shot.” I glare at him, daring him to try to stop me even though the thought of trying this craziness causes my throat to tighten and my chest to lock up. The tunnel is one thing, but crawling in a narrow passage of rock is totally different. I don’t watch shows about cave explorers because it makes me so claustrophobic. Still, there’s no way we’re going back without at least checking.
“Win—”
“I said no!” My sandals aren’t great climbing shoes, but I search for footholds and gain an inch, then a few more. The mound shifts beneath my feet when I’m halfway to the ceiling, and I skid down several inches, scraping my elbow on some jagged rock.
“God! Careful.”
“Almost there.” Arm burning, I make it the last few feet and peer into the opening.
“What do you see?”
Although the gap offers close to two feet of space at this end, it narrows down to only a couple of inches in several places before the way is blocked entirely. The mound must come to an end at some point. It could be just beyond the glow of my light or miles from here. Either way, it’s too far for us to reach.
There’s no choice. We have to go back. What was any of it for? Sneaking away for the phone? Moving the poor dead woman?
Scott pulls me into a hug when I reach the ground. “You tried. At least now we know.”
I hug him back like there’s no such thing as rejection and angry ex-girlfriends. What do those things matter with death hanging around upstairs? And right now I need this, to feel close to someone, cared for. Maybe because this may be my last chance ever, the pull to raise my head and brush my lips against his is almost too strong to resist. His hands move over my back, and he brushes the nape of my neck with his thumb, making me shiver.
“We’d better head back. We can’t wait any longer.” Scott tightens his arms around me.
He’s right. We’re running out of time. For Toto’s deadline. For everything. Around us, the minutes tick faster and faster, and they drag us along with them, my future growing shorter and shorter. Forever doesn’t even exist anymore. I’ve wasted enough of my life, wasted chances. The explanation I’ve been waiting to give him dances at the tip of my tongue. “Scott?”
“Yeah?”
I suck in a breath to say the words that have been hounding me since the winter, then hesitate. What if I’ve been reading all of his signals wrong and his feelings for me are truly gone? Sure, he and Becky are broken up now, but I could still be too late.
Again.
Scott’s not mine, but I can’t lose him, not now. Not during this nightmare.
Greet the Devil, and he’ll eat you. Don’t greet him, and he’ll eat you, anyway, my mom says in my head.
Before I make up my mind, he drops his arm. “Seriously, we’d better hurry. They’ll come looking to see what’s taking so long soon.”
“Yeah.” I nod and point the flashlight back toward the darkness we came through, the darkness that will lead us to the last place in the world I want to go.
As we retrace our steps, the hope that had grown nearly to bursting fizzles out, replaced by dread that oozes and seeps into the crevices of my soul, drowning any remaining belief that we can survive this night.
Barely bothering to aim the flashlight, I stumble along, bouncing off the centuries-old stone. I nearly miss a bend and careen into a wall, but I catch myself and change course before I can do any real damage.
“Here. Let me go first.” Scott gently takes the flashlight from my hand.
When I straighten my fingers, my muscles ache, and I realize I’ve been clutching the barrel like my life depended on it. And then I want to laugh, because my life does depend on it.
The trip down the tunnels had felt like it stretched for ages, but the return one is over before I’m ready. Not that I’ll ever be ready. The light from the room at the bottom of the ladder comes
into view as we round the last bend, and we’re back.
Scott pauses, one hand on the ladder, and cocks his head. “Shit!”
“What?” But I hear it, too. Toto’s voice.
Calling us.
If any of those guys comes down to the basement and finds it empty—except the body, of course—who knows what they’ll do.
Scott pulls himself through the opening and reaches to help me up. By the time we lower the trapdoor back into place—the hinges letting out a tortured creak—Toto is at the top of the stairs. His voice carries to us, loud and clear.
“We’re coming!” Scott calls.
“Get your asses up here.” His glare greets us from the top of the stairwell.
“I told you,” Scott says, “we’re coming.”
I flinch away from Toto’s grasp when I reach the ground floor. “Don’t touch me.” Pushing past him, I make my way into the café, back to where this whole nightmare started.
20
SCOTT
FOUR HOURS AND FIVE MINUTES BEFORE CLOSING
You’re kidding me, man,” Scott said to the sweaty thirty-something standing across the counter from him.
“Sorry.” The tech shrugged. “It’s cheaper to replace one of these than fix it.” He shook Scott’s pitiful phone, and an ominous rattle sounded from within. “Hear that? It takes a major event to knock something loose in there. These things have no moving parts at all.” The phone buzzed in the guy’s hand and he passed it back to Scott. “Looks like you’re getting a call. At least the phone function still works.”
“Yeah, I’m a lucky guy.” His dad was calling. Again. Scott swiped it to voice mail. “So, we’re in agreement that it’s well and truly fucked, but what about data stored on it? Is there any way to retrieve something that got erased when the thing got damaged? I mean, they’re always warning people that nothing is ever one hundred percent deleted on these things, right?”
“Was that file open when it fell?”
Scott didn’t bother to correct the guy and inform him that it had been hurled across the room or that it had landed on a tile floor. “Yeah, it was playing.”
The bell over the door rang as a trio of kids came in and clustered around the counter. “You guys have the new Galaxy?” a boy no older than thirteen asked.
The hot lava tried to flood Scott’s brain. “So, the video?”
“Be right with you kids,” the tech said before turning back to Scott. “You have two options. You could send it back to the manufacturer and see if there’s anything they can do for you, but they can’t, so don’t bother.”
Scott forced his voice to stay calm. “Okay, then we’ll go with option number two. Which is?”
“There are a few different apps you can try. They retrieve lost files. If your video was running when the phone was damaged, it could be that it just got deleted. Maybe when your fingers slipped, they hit the wrong button. That’s the best I can do, dude. Sorry.”
“No, I understand. Thanks. What are those apps?”
The guy scribbled a few names on a sticky note, and Scott shoved it into his pocket as he headed out the door and back to his car.
“Please let these be free,” Scott said as he searched the app store for the first one on the tech dude’s list. His battery was getting low, and as the program downloaded and installed, the charge dropped from twenty-seven percent to twenty-four. His dad called again. Scott ignored it—again—and ran the first video-retrieval scan. After about ninety seconds, his display lit up with random images and GIFs, but not the video he was looking for. His charge dropped another couple units. He tried the next app. And the next. With his power hovering at seven percent, he waited for the last scan to run then checked the results.
More GIFs. A dog video Becky had sent him the week before. And there it was. A screenshot containing the image of a box of generic rice puffs.
“Holy shit!” Scott tapped the icon and a dialog box popped up, asking him for $24.99 to pull the video from wherever data hid when it went missing. “Fuck.” Did he have enough in his account to cover that? Back inside the store, a kid barely into puberty was shelling out bucks for an upgrade, and Scott wasn’t sure he could make an in-app purchase.
He hit AUTHORIZE PAYMENT and held his breath.
A green box and a check mark appeared.
He had it! Just to be sure, he hit the GALLERY icon and there it was, in the video folder. A slow smile spread across his face. Scott was back in business.
Then a red battery flashed on his screen. Warning, battery is critically low. No problem. He’d go home and charge this bad boy up. It was all good.
And then the whole display went dark.
21
SCOTT
ONE HOUR AND EIGHT MINUTES AFTER CLOSING
Something must have happened while we were exploring the tunnels, because Toto is losing it with Ryan. “This is your fault, man. All your fault!”
Ryan holds up his hands. “Just calm down, okay? Will you listen to me for a minute?”
“We’re dead, you realize that? Nah. Not me. You’re dead. You, motherfucker, cause when those guys come in here, I’m telling them who they’re really after.”
“Toto. For God’s sake . . .”
They continue arguing.
“What happened?” I ask Oscar as I slip onto one of the stools.
“He called the dudes he owes,” Oscar whispers from the corner of his mouth. “Asked if he can get them the money tomorrow.”
“So he has another way of getting it? Other than your register?”
“Yeah.” Oscar gives a dark laugh. “He has my bank account. But it sounds like those guys didn’t go for it.”
“Why?” Winny asks.
“They don’t want to wait until tomorrow, I think,” Oscar says.
“What about an ATM?” Winny asks.
Oscar laughs. “Sweetie, you can’t get the kind of money they need from an ATM. The guy did give them a little more time tonight, though.”
“Instead of midnight, they now have until 3 a.m.,” Pavan says.
“More time, but that’s good, isn’t it?” Winny asks. “They can maybe get their money some other way?”
“I don’t think it matters to them, I’m afraid,” Pavan says.
None of us dare to look at our captors, but they’re not even trying to keep their discussion under wraps now.
“I just don’t get it,” Ryan is saying. “I mean, if they can have the money they want, why not give us the extra time?”
“’Cause they think we’re bluffing. And hey, either we give it to them, or they get rid of us and put someone better in our place.”
“They wouldn’t do that.”
“They wouldn’t, huh? They’ve been looking for an excuse to get rid of us ever since you got your ass fired from this place and our revenues dropped.”
“But we’ve still got plenty of clients,” Ryan says. “Twitch’s college friends—computer geeks—and the yoga moms, doing their shopping at the all-natural grocery store.”
“If that was enough, why do you think they’ve been all over you to get your sister to sell this place? We were raking it in back then. I’m telling you, man, we’ve been on the outs with the Chef and Aaron for a while. Why do you think Shell and I are skipping town?”
“What does it mean,” I whisper to Oscar, “that they’re saying all this in front of us?”
He shakes his head, then stares at the floor again.
We are seriously low on options at this point. We can’t get out through the tunnels and our captors have the only exit from the café blocked. There’s the door off the back hall, but it’s not like they’re just going to let us saunter out that way. Even if we made a run for it, they’d be on us in two ticks. Our final hope is my wrecked lump of plastic sluggishly charging below the register.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
“Fuck,” Toto echoes.
Ryan holds up his hands. “Will you just listen? I’ve got a plan, okay.
”
“What plan?”
Ryan’s face is red; both men are sweating. Hell, we’re all sweating, with the exception of Winny and Sylvie. Twitch, who hasn’t budged from his spot in the corner, is drenched. Then again, he’s done a shit-ton of meth, so I guess he’s the only one with a real excuse.
“Okay, what’s this plan?” Toto asks.
Ryan pulls him around the corner of the L-shaped counter, where they’re partially obscured by a tall display shelf that faces the front door. If we can’t see them, they can’t see us. I hope.
I slip off my stool and duck.
“What are you doing?” Sylvie mouths, eyes wide.
“My cell,” I mouth back.
Ryan and Toto remain focused on their conversation. So far, so good. I crawl behind the counter from the far-end pass-through, giving me a perfect profile view of their show, and giving them a full view of me if either one of them so much as glances in my direction. The tighter I stay pressed against the counter, the better.
“Listen,” Ryan says. “Why don’t we use this situation to our advantage?”
I wince when the floor creaks under my knee, but neither seems to notice.
“How?” Toto asks.
“You want a clean break, right?”
“You know I do.”
“Think about it. Even if we get the Chef and Aaron their money, what guarantee do we have that they’ll just let us walk out the door?”
Toto clenches his jaw and flares his nostrils as he takes a shaky breath. “If we do what we’re supposed to do, then the Chef has no reason not to let us walk out that door. They think we’re still working for them. By the time they’re any wiser, Shell and me will be gone.”
“And where does that leave me?”
“You can keep sucking up to them and do your thing, man. You don’t need me.”
“True, but that doesn’t mean they’ll like seeing you go. And you don’t think they can’t track you down?” Ryan gives Toto a long, hard stare. “Think this through. Take your time. I can wait.”
“You can’t know that.”
“True, I can’t know anything for sure, but . . .”
“But it could be. Motherfucker.” Toto knocks a glass sugar jar off the counter, which explodes against the black and white tile like a bomb going off. To my right, Winny lets out a small scream, and I scramble back in case Toto spotted me. I get lucky. This time.
Ten After Closing Page 11