Page 33

Chapter Thirty-Three

Well, fuck .

Kate wore out her voice and her fists banging on the wall and screaming for help. She tried fitting her hands into the crack where the walls joined, but they were made of metal and completely immovable. She also tried feeling around the space, but quickly abandoned that as it seemed to be cluttered with years of junk and spiderwebs. She scrubbed her hands against the sequins of her dress, trying to dislodge some of the stickier webs.

Loretta ran her hands over the wall, curling her lip at the spiderwebs. “Spiders. Why did it have to be spiders?”

Nope, that was Indiana Jones, not Loretta Starling.

Loretta zipped off her leather boot, wielding it menacingly at the wall. “Just try to get me, you damn dirty spiders!”

And that was from Planet of the Apes , definitely not Loretta. What was wrong with Kate? The harder she asked herself What Would Loretta Do ? the murkier the answers became. And what would Kate Valentine do? certainly hadn’t done her any favors. She couldn’t even summon Loretta right now, in her literal darkest hour of need. Why had Loretta forsaken her?

Because Loretta never would have been so easily fooled. She would have solved this thing come morning and celebrated by making everyone Tequila Sunrises to go with their wedding day breakfast. But Kate knew she was nothing like Loretta. Loretta had always been a fantasy for Kate; sure where Kate was doubtful, confident where Kate fretted, sexy where Kate was awkward and insecure. Everything about Loretta’s life had been an escape, from the carefree bartending nights to the super sleuth investigations of the daytime. Kate’s life was nothing but a computer screen, death investigator websites, and takeout dinners. She’d been lying to herself and everyone else, pretending she could ever be normal this weekend.

She sank into a ball in the pitch black and let herself be miserable, just for the moment. She hadn’t ever grieved, not properly, and felt like now was as good a time as any. Because the truth was, she did grieve her relationship with Spencer. Not because of Spencer, but because of her future. She’d had everything planned out, and even if her life had sometimes made her hyperventilate, at least she’d known what was to come. There had been comfort in that, an organization to the chaos. And when he’d broken up with her, he’d broken up her plans for the future and left her unmoored in the chaos.

She might be unmoored, but she was still alive. Though she wouldn’t be for long if she didn’t find a way out. She stood up and turned back to the door, running her hands over the wall on each side, looking for a release that might open the doors. The space itself was relatively narrow—she could touch the wall on both sides by stretching out her arms—and her hands brushed something rough and woven. A rope, running up the side of one wall. She gave it a tug, thinking it might lead up to another floor or a light.

What she didn’t expect was the entire floor of the storage area to lurch and drop several inches. She stumbled back as something overhead groaned and screeched like the metal teeth of a disgruntled dragon. The floor kept dropping, the wall slipping away from her as the small space filled with a series of thuds and screeches.

“No, no, no, no!” she huffed as she scrabbled for something to hold on to, each “no” climbing the octave until they came out as a succession of squeaks instead of words. The opening Cassidy had pushed her through had just enough of a lip that she could hook her fingers onto it, but the floor was descending at a much faster rate. She stretched onto her tiptoes and out of her shoes, trying to keep hold of the ledge. The floor was completely gone, but the screeches and groans kept going for several moments more, until the space filled with a resounding thud and everything went silent.

“Help!” Kate gasped against the brick wall. Her bare feet scrabbled for purchase, little bits of brick dust crumbling away beneath her toes as the sequins on her dress caught against the rough surface and ripped off. After a few tries, she was able to notch her toes into an opening so she wasn’t hanging by her fingers alone. She took in a jagged, shallow breath, the expansion of her rib cage pushing her precariously away from the wall.

She screamed for help, as much as her position would allow, and got a puff of stale breath back in her face for the effort. Somewhere in her mind Kate wondered if this, actually, was her lowest point. But no, her lowest point waited wherever the rest of the room had gone, possibly hundreds of feet below in the pitch black.

Panic set in, making her arms tremble and her heart pump so hard she was afraid it was going to push her right off the wall. She couldn’t even suck in enough breath for a second scream, and what good would it do her, anyway? Nobody could hear her.

Something creaked overhead and suddenly Kate could see the brown brick in front of her face. She looked up through a haze of cobwebs and swirls of dust, and twenty feet above was a head of glorious golden curls looking down at her through a shaft of pale light.

“Kate?” Jake called.

“Jake!” she cried, nearly losing her toe grip in the process. “Jake, help!”

“What are you doing down there?” Jake asked, completely bewildered.

“Can I explain when I’m not hanging by my fingers and toes?” Kate asked, trying (and failing) to keep the hysteria out of her voice.

“It looks like there’s some kind of pulley system up here,” Jake said. “Kate, I think this might be an old manual lift.”

Well, that would explain the floor suddenly dropping out from underneath her feet. “Can you pull the rope? I’m a bit indisposed at the moment.”

“Hang on, let me give it a go,” Jake said, and then the narrow shaft was filled with creaking and groaning and shrieking again. Only this time she knew it wasn’t a dragon, but the pulley system of the elevator that probably hadn’t been oiled in several decades. Her fingers ached and she was pretty sure she felt something crawling over the top of her foot, and she squeezed her eyes shut and willed her hands to hang on for just a few minutes longer. But she wasn’t a rock climber, and soon her fingers were slipping and uncurling no matter what she threatened to do to them if they let go.

“Jake, I’m slipping!” she cried.

“This rope is full of splinters,” Jake grunted. “It’s hell on my hands.”

“My hands are doing just great!” Kate said sarcastically.

“I think I see the lift coming up!” Jake said. “Just a second longer!”

But Kate had used up all her seconds, and her trembling hands lost their grip entirely. She screamed as she plummeted down into the pitch-black abyss below.

Or would have plummeted down, except Jake was right about the lift coming up. Instead of crashing several stories below and breaking all her bones, she landed on her backside with a muttered “ shit” and only a slight bit of bruising to her tailbone.

“Are you okay?” Jake called.

“I’m okay now,” she said, grimacing at the network of spiderwebs between her and the top of the elevator shaft. Maybe she would have been better off plummeting to her death. “How did you find me?”

“Well,” Jake grunted, hauling her through the sea of webs, “the Hempsteads were all arguing about who wanted to kill their aunt more, and next thing I knew I turned around and you were gone. I thought you might have gone to the room for your suspects list, but you weren’t in the attic. Then I heard this awful screeching sound, which I thought might be you screaming, but turns out it was just these unoiled pulley gears. And then you really did scream, and I found this cabinet door here in a bedroom, and when I opened it up there’s a lift door behind it. And here we are.”

The elevator platform had reached the top of the shaft, and Kate was now covered in cobwebs and face-to-face with Jake, who had the nerve to grin at her.

“Don’t you dare,” she said, holding up a wispy finger.

“Caught you in my web,” Jake said, his eyes gleaming.

“I hate you,” Kate said miserably.