Terror Mansion (Decorah Security Series, Book #12): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novella (7 page)

Wyatt was dreaming again. He wanted to claw himself awake, although he knew that what he was seeing was important. But finally the murderous images were too much. He jerked awake, his vision still blurred from . . .

He let the question go as horror shot through him. What he remembered from the dream cut off his breath. It had been so real. Too real, and too filled with diabolical planned danger.

He knew it was important to remember the details, but some of them were fuzzy, like when he’d first dreamed of Kate.

Fear that something had happened to her clogged his throat. But she was with him, wedged beside him, her breathing even. The relief was short-lived when he realized they were lying on a thin mattress over the top of a hard, cold floor.

He stayed very still, trying to figure out where they were. Then his last memories came rushing back to him like a tsunami wave. They’d been in her workshop down by the dock, and someone had come in wearing a gas mask. That was the last thing he remembered—before waking up in a small, dank cell.

Beside him Kate stirred and moaned. Then her eyes snapped open, and she made a strangled sound.

He closed his hand around her arm and moved his lips to her ear. In a barely audible whisper, he said, “Don’t say anything you don’t want Treeman to hear.”

As she took in that information, he saw her struggling for calm.

“He used some kind of knockout gas on us,” Wyatt said. “Did you see him at your workshop with a gas mask on?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“At least I’m assuming it’s him.”

She nodded against his shoulder, then murmured, “What is he going to do with us?”

Wyatt knew pretty much what the bastard had planned. The knockout gas had put him to sleep—and allowed him to dream of the immediate future. Never before had he dreamed of something that was going to happen to him—personally. But he supposed it was because Kate was with him. It was her future too, and the reality made his stomach churn. Yet he knew that if anything could save their lives, it would be the dream.

Before he could say more, a voice boomed out from a speaker high on the wall above their heads.

“I see you’re awake,” a man said, his tone like a king who was about to mete out punishment to two of his unfortunate subjects who had displeased him.

Wyatt sat up and looked around. The cell where he and Kate had been stashed seemed to be about ten feet long and eight feet wide. The floor was concrete, the walls cinder block. There were no windows, and he had the feeling that they were underground.

Kate pushed herself up and moved so that her shoulder was pressed to Wyatt’s. He reached for her hand and knitted his fingers with hers, squeezing reassuringly.

“Okay?” he murmured.

She turned her mouth to his ear. “No.”

Praying that he wasn’t telling a lie, he whispered, “We’re going to be okay.”

Kate raised her face toward the speaker. “Why are you doing this?”

“To make you pay for Billy Treeman’s death,” the man answered. “Do you remember him?”

She winced. “Of course I do?”

“You and your father killed him.”

“No, she cried out. “He dragged me into the fun house and tried to rape me. When I got away from him, he followed me and fell down the stairs.”

A blast of static like bolts of thunder assaulted their eardrums. “That’s a lie. You enticed him in there. You wanted him to fuck you.”

Kate gave Wyatt a startled look. “That’s not the way it happened,” she said, outrage in her voice.

“Don’t give me that shit,” the angry voice shot back. “I was his father. I knew him better than anyone else. He would never do anything like that.”

Kate clenched her teeth in frustration.

Wyatt leaned toward her again. “Let it go. There’s no point in arguing with him. He’s had years to make up his version of what happened that night.”

Her eyes were pleading as she asked in a barely audible voice, “But you believe me?”

“Of course.”

“Your father was here yesterday,” the elder Treeman said in a conversational tone.

Kate stiffened. “Is he okay?”

“Actually, he’s dead,” the man informed them in an offhand manner, like he was imparting a piece of not very important news.

“No,” she cried out, her voice trailing into a sob. “You’re just saying that to scare me.”

“On the contrary, I can show you the proof.”

A grinding noise made Wyatt’s heart jerk up as he slung his arm around Kate’s shoulders.

But there was no immediate threat, only a flat projection screen descending from the ceiling like they were in a lecture room equipped with the latest AV equipment.

At first they saw the image of a leering clown. It was replaced by a video clip.

Wyatt saw a man staggering through a dark tunnel. Then lights flashed on, and Kate gasped.

“Oh God, it’s my father. He’s hurt.”

He was doubled over, holding his middle, and when he fell to the floor, Wyatt saw that the back of his shirt was bloody. As they watched, he tried to push himself up, then lay still unmoving.

“He’s dead,” the voice said. “And you could be, too. But I’m going to give you a fighting chance. You’ll just have to avoid the traps I’ve set up. And you even have an advantage—a partner. Wyatt Granger will join you for the grand tour of my masterpiece.” There was a pause, and Treeman said, “Too bad for him, he got tangled up with you. Did you think you were in danger, Kate? Did you hire Decorah Security?”

Before Kate could answer, Wyatt snapped, “Yes.”

She gave him a startled look, but he shook his head fractionally. When she realized he was warning her not to reveal how he’d found out about her, she pressed her lips together.

“Well, Decorah won’t do you any good,” Treeman went on. “His hotshot detective agency doesn’t even know where you are. You’ll have all the time you need to enjoy the fun house. Some of it’s like that stupid attraction at the Kaiser Karnival. But there are a lot of creative additions.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to give away any of my secrets. You’ll have to discover my genius as you go along, so to speak. You ought to appreciate that, Kate. You fancy yourself an artist, don’t you?”

She gave Wyatt a sick look. “Oh Lord, I’m so sorry. You came to help me, and now you’re trapped here with me.”

When he squeezed her hand, she looked startled.

“Remember, don’t say anything you don’t want him to hear,” he mouthed.

She answered with a small nod.

“Time to play,” Treeman said. “But I think it’s going to be more fun for me than for you.”

oOo

Decorah agent, Ben Walker, clicked on his cell phone and made a call to his Beltsville, Maryland, office.

“I’m at Kate Kingston’s workshop, but Kate and Wyatt are missing.”

“They’re not at the B&B?” Frank Decorah asked.

“I checked there first. Mrs. Babson, the owner, hasn’t seen them since this morning.” He swallowed hard, then said, “And there’s a funny smell in the air. It’s very faint, but I think it’s some kind of gas. My guess is that Treeman used something to knock them out, then dragged them out of here.”

“Shit. And we have no idea where he’s taken them?”

“I talked to Teddy. He didn’t come up with any leads.” Ben walked farther into the old warehouse, looking for anything that might help Decorah find where the perp had taken Wyatt and Kate.

“His laptop is gone, but it looks like he was scribbling some notes before the perp got them.

“What do they say?”

“Hard to tell. I think he was being deliberately vague. Something about a name reversal.”

“Maybe he figured out something Teddy didn’t.”

Ben nodded, wondering if the few cryptic words Wyatt had written could do them any good.

oOo

The door to the cell where they’d awakened swung open, like someone was standing behind it, pulling on the knob, but Wyatt was sure Treeman was nowhere near them. He wasn’t going to take a chance on getting assaulted, unless Wyatt forced the man out into the open.

Beyond the door was a dimly lit corridor. When Kate hung back, Wyatt gripped her hand.

“It’s going to be okay,” he murmured.

She gave him a sick look. “He already killed my father here. Why not us?”

“We’ll beat him,” he answered. He ached to add that he’d seen the two of them in the fun house in a dream, but he didn’t want to give anything away to the man who had planned this diabolical revenge.

“Get going,” the disembodied voice ordered. To emphasize the command, a blast of cold air hit them in the back, almost knocking Kate over. It was like someone had pelted them with ice cubes.

They were both shivering as they stepped into a corridor that was about four feet wide. It smelled like a garbage dump. From the dream, Wyatt had been prepared for the stench, but Kate gagged.

He leaned toward her. “Do what I tell you,” he whispered. “Even if it sounds like bad advice.”

Her head swung toward him, and he saw comprehension and hope bloom in her eyes. “You . . .”

“Yeah,” he answered. He’d seen most of it. He wished some if it wasn’t kind of fuzzy.

He studied the corridor in front of them, glad that what he was seeing looked pretty much like the nightmare. There were several paintings on the walls including a devil, a vampire, and a fanged snake. Somehow the most disturbing was the distorted clown face about eight feet ahead of them.

Kate followed his gaze. “That’s like the clown in the carnival fun house. You’d see it as soon as you entered. He’d blow a blast of air at you.”

“Thanks for the information,” Wyatt answered. He had started toward the clown when eerie music boomed out of hidden speakers. He stopped short, startled. He hadn’t heard the music in the dream. Why not? Maybe it simply hadn’t registered. Or perhaps some details were different.

Kate gripped his arm, and he gave her a reassuring look. “Follow my lead,” he whispered, hoping he wasn’t going to end up getting them both killed.

With no choice which way to go, he advanced on the clown. When he was almost even with the image, he ducked down, pulling Kate with him. They both avoided a tongue of fire that shot from the huge orange lips.

From somewhere above them, Treeman shouted, “Hey, what the hell?”

Wyatt ignored him and kept walking, along a wooden ramp where the floor slanted down. Near the end, the angle changed suddenly, and he let himself stumble over a loose board—maybe in imitation of the stairs at the old carnival attraction. Hoping he looked like he’d tripped over the obstacle, he executed a controlled tumble onto a hard cement floor, keeping himself from getting injured and keeping Kate off the floor by letting her fall on top of him.

She lay against his side, gripping his arm. He stayed where he was for a few moments, looking around, pretending to be hurt and disoriented. Ahead of them, the corridor went off in two different directions. In his dream, he knew that they had taken the right fork, and that they would come to a place where they’d have to get through a spinning wooden barrel that would knock them off their feet again.

He didn’t know what the left fork held, but he figured it was better to go with what he knew. Still, he pretended to be debating, as he brought his lips to Kate’s ears. “There’s a barrel ahead. Watch out because there are knives sticking out from the interior.”

She winced.

He turned back to the ramp where they’d fallen and tugged at the three-foot-long board that had been meant to trip him. It came up easily. He held it at his side as he headed down the right-hand corridor.

A grinding sound announced the presence of the barrel. It was turning slowly, and he pointed toward the knives sticking out at various points. Keeping Kate at his side he started through, pulling them past a set of knife points before they fell to the spinning surface.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m getting dizzy.”

“Yeah. But we have to make a run for it.” He gestured toward the end, where more blades poked out from between the staves. “You go on. I’ll block the knives.”

Kate glanced at him, then started forward. He slapped the board against a sharp point so that she could slither past. She made it out okay, but the blade nicked his arm as he went past.

They both landed on the floor, panting. When she saw the blood on his arm, she gasped.

“Are you okay?”

“It’s just a scratch,” he answered, giving himself a few moments to catch his breath.

She looked at the cut, making a small sound as she saw blood drip to the floor.

“We’ll take care of it when we get out of here,” he said.

“Get going,” Treeman called from another speaker above them.

Kate tipped her head up and gave him a murderous look. When she started to speak, Wyatt gripped her arm and shook his head.

She closed her eyes for a moment then nodded.

Wyatt hauled himself up, and Kate followed. He stared down the tunnel, trying to picture where they were. Ahead was a greased floor where you could fall and crack your head—or worse—if you were running.