Lies That Bind Us(71)

“Perhaps not,” I said. “But I want to see her. Give me a moment to talk to her and she’ll come back a lot happier. She may not even want to leave tomorrow.”

I’m not sure why I added that last part. It was instinct. My gut said that Melissa didn’t want Gretchen to go: that it was important she stayed the whole allotted week. Maybe it was an ego thing. Mel, the perfect host, didn’t want people fleeing her party . . .

“Why?” she said, hawklike again. “What are you going to tell her?”

I swallowed, conscious of everyone listening.

“Why I did what I did,” I said.

It was as if the house itself had sighed, a collective breath, a little release of the pressure that had been building up overnight. Melissa gave me another calculating look, processing what I had said, then threw her arms around me.

“Oh, Jannie,” she said. “It’s OK, sweetheart.”

I shuddered, suddenly overcome with real emotion, and squeezed my eyes shut as I buried my face in her neck. When I opened them again, I expected to see relief, contentment in every face, not just because the crisis was past but because their suspicions had proved correct, and that meant that all was right with the world. But that was not what I saw. Not from all of them, anyway.

Marcus looked as unsure as he had before. Kristen looked flat-out stunned and puzzled. And Brad was staring at me with fierce and terrifying malevolence.





Chapter Twenty-Seven

I explore the chamber where the railway line ends, but there’s no way out, just a roughly cut wall of stone behind the buffer. I have to go back, though how far I have to go before I find another route, I have no way of knowing.

For a moment I squat between the steel rails, my back to the buffer, my hands clasped under my chin and my eyes squeezed shut like a child in prayer, which is, I suppose, pretty close to what I am.

I am Daedalus, the great artificer, I think. This is my labyrinth. I will find the way out.

It’s stupid, and desperate, but it holds back the fear like the iron bracing of some great door as the ram batters against it, and from the stillness comes the beginning of a realization.

The curve. I remember the track suddenly curving this way. Perhaps if I got back to that point and go straight, I’ll find that the room I am in now is a kind of siding, a place to store trucks or a small locomotive. Maybe going straight will lead me to a door, to stairs, to safety.

So I get up again and take three cautious steps, arms outstretched, toes feeling for the steel rails set into the stone floor. I can feel the gentle arc of the turn as I walk, but then . . .

What was that?

The tunnel is so silent that every movement I make seems to fill it with sound loud as thunder, the fractional skittering of gravel underfoot, the shifting of my dress, the roar of my breathing, my heart. But I am sure there was something else, something sharper that came from . . . where? Farther along the hall but also somehow above me. It echoed, furring the edge of the sound, but I feel certain that it had been short and crisp, like the snap of a door latch.

I listen, and at first there is nothing, so I eventually raise my right foot to take another step; but then it comes again and is followed by the short, staccato sound of shoes on stone steps.

I freeze once more, straining to hear, to pinpoint the source of the noise.

And then I see the flashlight bouncing crazily off the walls that are a mixture of soft-yellow stone and concrete block. The rails gleam where the light hits them some fifteen yards from where I am standing.

Whoever is holding the light hasn’t appeared yet, and I am caught between hope and despair.

I open my mouth to shout.

Help! I was trapped but I got out. Show me the way up!

But I don’t say anything. Instead, instinctively, I take several long, silent strides back along the track, still facing the person with the light. My feet are almost soundless, and I plant them carefully, exaggerating the downward movement so I don’t inadvertently kick something that will make a noise. The buffer hits me in the small of my back. I grasp it with my right hand and hold on as I go round it and drop to my knees. The buffer is braced with diagonal struts, and I almost lose my balance as I get between them and press myself small and close to the gravelly stone floor, breathing fast.

The footsteps have not altered. The flashlight still feels unguided, almost casual. But then, abruptly, everything stops.

He has reached my cell. That was where he was going, and now he can see that the door is open.

Should I have closed it?

It doesn’t matter.

He is perhaps twenty yards away. No more. I hear his uncertainty, his confusion in the uncanny stillness. Then there is movement again, urgent now, panicked, and the light stabs this way and that, so I bury my head in my hands and try to make myself invisible behind the buffer. I hide my hands and face and hope he won’t make sense of what he can still see.

Keep still.

I do, and in my peripheral vision I sense the flashlight raking the tunnel. The passage is narrower than I had imagined and low ceilinged, no larger than the inside of a train car. Behind the buffer it stops, the blocks ending in a wall that looks like solid natural rock. For the merest fraction of a second, the light hits my skin and the hem of my dress. It’s yellow, and I remember it immediately, though it is filthy now. The light moves on, and I can almost smell his furious alarm, his disbelief.

But then he calms, and the flashlight begins to move more carefully. There is almost complete silence again, and I realize slowly that he has seen something, something worthy of close inspection.