BM03 - Crazy Little Thing Called Dead (18 page)

The sour smell of mildew permeated the room. There was some light coming in from the two small windows on the south wall, but the bulb overhead was broken. I knelt next to Hambecker. His face was turned toward me but his eyes were at half-mast. He looked at me with some recognition but then his eyes closed. I reached for his wrist to check his pulse as Victor came up beside me. I ignored him, counting beats.

“Where are we?” I asked, when I was sure Hambecker’s heartbeat was steady.

“Ronnie’s house. We were going to take you to Canada, but he told me Margaret was cooling her heels for a few days, so we brought you back here.” He was holding something, hiding it with his hands.

“How could Hambecker tell you anything? He’s out cold.” I tapped his face again.

“He wasn’t sedated then.” Whatever it was he had in his hands, it had his full attention.

I turned back to Hambecker. “Is he okay? What did you give him?”

“Doesn’t matter, he’ll come out of it in a while.”

I looked up and saw that he had a set of cuffs open in his hands. Before I could react he’d snapped one side onto my left wrist. I opened my mouth to protest and he clicked the other onto Hambecker’s wrist.

“What the hell?”

“Sorry,” he shrugged, “I need to keep tabs on the two of you, it’s easier if you’re both in one place.”

“Let me go, you ass. I can’t help him if we’re handcuffed together.”

“He’s fine. It won’t be for long. Just until I get everything straightened out.” He was backing away from me, slipping the keys into his pocket. “I’ll be back later.” He locked the door behind him.

“Shit! Hambecker, wake up!” I slapped him on the face with the flat of my hand. His eyelids twitched but he didn’t wake up. I looked around the room. Cement floor. The wall with the door was normal; the other three were cement half way up. There were two windows high on the wall, but they were too small for me to fit through, forget Hambecker.

In one corner, there were paint cans piled with a tarp and brushes. I moved as far from the bed as I could without rolling Hambecker onto the floor. This meant I could get five feet from the bed at most. I looked at him. He still unconscious, but he wouldn’t thank me for sitting around, waiting for him to wake up. I grabbed his wrist with both of my hands and pulled. He was unmovable.

“Shit.”

I grabbed his far wrist and tugged. He rolled toward me, and off the bed onto the floor, only now the arm with the handcuff was trapped under his body so I was jerked to the floor as well. I uttered some choice words and struggled to roll him back over again.

By the time he was back on his back, his cuffed hand out from under him, I was sweating and swearing. I still had to get him over to the tools, and then back across the room again. If I remembered Ronnie’s basement correctly, the room next to this one contained the bulkhead door that opened to the outside. If I could get us through the wall we could get free.

The problem was getting him across the room. I stretched his arm as far as I could and then lay on the floor, sliding my feet in the direction of the stuff I needed. I was still a good five feet short. “Fuck.” I climbed over Hambecker, set my back against the bed and shoved him in the gut with my feet. I wiped the sweat from my face with my free arm and tried again. He rolled over onto his stomach. I pushed his side with my feet until I’d stretched my arm to its limit. There were footsteps on the stair, and there was nothing I could do to hide my attempts to move across the room.

The door opened and Victor walked in on us. He laughed when he saw me sitting on the floor. “Getting your exercise?” He pointed to a bruise on Hambecker’s head. “He’s not going to be happy with you when he wakes up.” He put a tray of food down near the bed and grabbed Hambecker under the armpits and lifted him back onto the bed, pulling me along with him. Then he picked up the tray and put it on the bed.

“Eat. You’ll need your strength if you’re going to be pulling him around the room with you.”

I looked at the food and back at Hambecker. “Thanks.” I’d starve before I touched anything Victor was offering.

He stood there, waiting. I picked up the fork and stuck it in a French fry. “You know, I have a really hard time eating when people are watching me,” I said. This from the woman who’d eat anything, anywhere. Victor nodded and got up. “My sister is like that too. I’ll come back later.”

And I’ll be gone
.

I started the whole process over again. Rolling Hambecker off the bed onto the floor, he was going to develop stacking goose eggs. Only this time, when I braced my back against the bed and started to shove, he groaned. I shoved again, he groaned some more. Thank God.

“Wake up.”

“I am awake. What happened?” He went to touch his forehead with his left hand and my arm went with him, nearly upsetting my balance. Just what I needed, to be using Hambecker for a pillow.

“Watch it. We’re connected at the wrist.”

“I see that.” He was looking at the cuffs. “What’s the deal?

“We are in the basement at Ronnie’s house. I don’t know how long you’ve been here, but I joined you less than an hour ago. Victor handcuffed me to you immediately, so mostly I’ve been pushing you around the room. Just when I was almost at the tools he came back and put you back on the bed. I had to start over again.”

He rubbed his forehead with his free hand. “You do this?”

“Sorry. There was no gentle way to get you off the bed.”

He sat up. “Hmm. Wow. Whatever he hit me with was strong. What day is it?”

“It’s still today. You don’t happen to have handcuff keys in your pocket?”

Hambecker rummaged in his pockets. He went to put his left hand in his pocket and my hand went with him. He smiled. “This has some interesting possibilities.”

“Right. Grow up.” My face flushed hot, damn it.

“No keys,” he said. “What’s your plan for getting out of here?”

“The bulkhead door is in the next room. I didn’t get a chance to check the door, but I know it’s locked and there’s also a padlock on the outside. Wallboard, I’ve had some experience with. It wouldn’t take long to bust through into the next room, and it would be quieter than busting down the door.”

“Decent plan. Windows?”

“Too small for either of us to crawl through.”

“Do I smell food?”

“Yeah. It’s on the bed. But I wouldn’t eat it, if I were you. It’s probably drugged.”

“True. I’m going to stand up now.”

We stood up in tandem, and I steadied him. His face turned pale and he broke out in a sweat, and I panicked. If he lost his cookies, I was going to lose my lunch. I don’t have a positive history with vomit.

“I’m ready to move.”

I kept an eye on him as we crossed the room. If he fell from standing he might be knocked out cold again. There was a blue tool among the paintbrushes and stir sticks. I snatched it up and pulled Hambecker to the other side of the room. I didn’t even offer to let him do the job, I just took the tool in my left, unshackled hand and thunked the wall a couple of times creating a hole.

I stopped to listen, but it was quiet on the stairs. I set the tool on the cement ledge and started prying the wall with my fingers. My fingers weren’t really strong enough; it was an inefficient way to take down the wall. I picked up the tool again and used it to demolish the edges of the hole, making it bigger.

Hambecker must have regained his wits. “Here, let me,” he said, and with both hands, my wrist dangling from his, he levered huge chunks away until the sixteen inches between the studs was clear. Now we just had to get through the sheetrock on the other side. The lower, cement, part of the wall stood about four feet high. I grabbed the blue tool and prepared to whack the heck out of the other side.

“Stop. There’s an easier way. I just have to figure it out factoring in the handcuffs.” He looked around the room, taking in the paint can piles and the bed. “Not much here. Help me move the bed.”

Moving the bed turned out to be harder than anticipated. For one thing, we couldn’t stand at either end and lift. Not that I could have lifted it anyway, the wooden frame weighed a ton. We used our combined weight, and Hambecker’s leg strength (I knew rock hard thighs had to be handy for something), and pushed with our backs to the headboard. It moved a few inches, and the whole time I was waiting for Victor to come down the stairs and figure out what we were doing.

We stopped when the foot of the bed was about three feet from the hole we’d made, which confused me. But I followed Hambecker’s lead, not that I had a choice, and went to stand next to him at the footboard.

“This is going to be tricky; because I’m not sure I can control the landing on the other side. I want you on the bed. I’m going to launch myself through the wall, feet first. That should take most of the wall out and I’ll try to land on my feet. But you’ll still have to follow me through, so when I yell ‘now’ I want you to use the mattress as a spring board and dive after me. You’ll have to twist and go through sideways or you won’t fit.”

Whatever Victor gave him must have addled his brains. “Are you nuts? You may be trained to perform circus acts, but I’m not. Can’t we just break through the wall with the blue tool and then crawl through? It seems so much easier.”

“Easier is not always better. This will be faster.”

“I don’t have the skills for this Hambecker.”

“You don’t need skills, but fine. I’ll kick out the wall and then go through easy.” He set both hands on the end of the bed, raised himself up onto his arms so that his back was straight and his feet were flat on the wall. He kicked hard with both feet and the wall popped off and fell to the floor, then he lowered himself back to the floor. “Get off the bed and come stand next to me.”

Chapter Twelve

I did as I was told, and stood next to him. He repeated his handstand, but this time he lowered his legs through the opening, twisting his body so that his hips and shoulders would fit through, and at the last minute pushed off so that his body shot through the hole in a controlled fall. He grasped the cement wall so I wasn’t yanked through the wall after him. That would have hurt.

“What do I do?”

“Come here.” He grabbed me under my arms and lifted, which was awkward in the extreme, partially because my left arm was by necessity wrapped across my chest, and partially because his arms were pressed against my breasts. He stopped lifting when my feet were just free of the ground and grinned.

“More interesting possibilities.” He leaned in, and my heart started hammering as he rested his shoulders on the wall studs and lifted me higher. I got my knees onto the ledge and Hambecker twisted my shoulders to slide me through the opening. My foot caught and I wiggled it free, my legs popped loose and I body slammed Hambecker with my lower half. It was like hitting a brick wall.

We turned to leave and that’s when the left hand cuffed to left hand situation really got awkward. He started forward and about yanked my arm out of the socket. “Hey!” I said, and yanked back, which put his hand level with my groin. Not good. Finally I fell in behind him, matching his stride. When he went to open the bulkhead door he pushed with both hands which yanked me up against his back.

“Watch it.”

“I like this. You’re kind of like a puppet.”

“Puppet my ass.”

“No, puppet
my
ass.” I could hear the grin in his voice. It was highly irritating. I followed him out into the heat, around the house and up onto the porch, my hair sticking to my forehead and the back of my neck. He stopped next to the door, tight against the wall.

“I know this is not in your skill set, but we need to be as quiet as possible.”

“We’re not going in the house? Can’t we just leave?”

“If getting out of here was the priority, that’s what I’d be doing. Follow me.” His shoulders shook with silent laughter.

“Jackass,” I said. Having no choice, I parroted his steps. We crept through the cool kitchen stopping to check the living room. Victor wasn’t on the first floor. Hambecker led me up the stairs, and when he stopped three quarters of the way up my face made contact with his back. I couldn’t believe he smelled so fresh. Like soap even. I smelled like sweat, disgusting. Life was not fair.

We crept through the upstairs, listening at doors and edging them open as silently as only Hambecker could. We reached the room where I’d seen signs of habitation, mattress on the floor, clothes scattered, and I tensed expecting to have to rush forward with Hambecker and subdue Victor. He opened the door and the air whooshed out of me. It was empty.

“Looking for me?”

We turned to find Victor had crept up behind us. He was holding a gun to Claire Perkins.

***

Victor motioned us down the stairs and followed us, his arm tight around Claire, gun to her side. We emerged from the kitchen into the night. Victor directed us to Claire’s Subaru, where I had to maneuver myself over the shifter so Hambecker could get in and drive. Victor and Claire sat in the back, Victor keeping the gun low, but visible to us in the front seat. He was in control.

“Eighty-nine north,” was all the direction Victor gave Hambecker and we rode in silence out Route 110 and up Route 14 to 107 and the interstate. Once on the interstate my curiosity got the better of me and I turned to the back.

“What were you doing at Ronnie’s, Claire? No offense, but you were the last person I expected to see.”

“I’ll tell you later.” She shot her eyes at Victor. “But believe me if I’d have known what was up, I’d have stayed home.”

No duh
.

When we were approaching Randolph, Victor said, “Exit four,” and we drove up into Randolph Center and past the Vermont Technical College. He had Hambecker stop in front of a small cape overlooking the valley and tapped something into his cell. A couple of minutes later Ronnie came running out of the house and climbed in the back seat next to Claire.

“Drive over to Route 14 and head north.” He directed Hambecker for another thirty minutes until we pulled up in front of an isolated horse barn. There were no cars, no sign of horses, just a huge barn with an indoor riding arena attached. Victor had us drive into the deserted arena where we got out of the car.