Cream Puff Murder (Hannah Swensen, #11)(89)

Her purse. If he forgot and left her with her purse, everything would be okay. Her cell phone was in her purse and there would be no interference in the sauna. She could call Mike and…

“You won’t need this.” Frank grabbed her purse and tossed it aside, and then he thrust his hand into the long patch pocket of her sweatshirt and drew out the bag with the rose. “What’s this?”

“It’s a rose. My sister gave it to me.”

“Nice,” he said, opening the door, shoving her inside, and tossing the rose in after her. “If it doesn’t melt, it’ll be a nice start on your funeral flowers.”





Chapter Thirty




Of course she had tried the door. It was the first thing she’d done. He’d locked it from the outside, and there was no way she could force it open. She prowled around the walls, searching for any weak spots she could use for ventilation. The south wall bordered the parking lot, but she’d leaned up against it yesterday, talking to Andrea after their morning class, and it hadn’t been any warmer than the wall on the other side of the backdoor. Even if she did manage to pry off a section of redwood, or cedar, or whatever wood it was, she’d only encounter a thick concrete wall between her and the outside world.

It was getting hotter. The warmth that would have been welcome only minutes ago was now her enemy. Hannah wiped the moisture from her forehead with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. How hot was it? How long would it take her to lose consciousness? Was it true that your life passed before your eyes when you were about to die? She didn’t want to know. Not now. Not ever.

It hadn’t been long, or at least she didn’t think that much time had passed, but she felt dizzy, disoriented, light-headed. Her skin felt hot and it reminded her of sausages on the grill. They split open if you didn’t score them with a knife. Would her skin split open before anyone found her?

Heat rose. The moment she thought of it, she dropped to the floor. Could she dig her way down to safety? But the floor was tile and under the tile would be a concrete slab. Out of luck. She was trapped. There was no help to be had below her.

The ceiling. She hadn’t checked that out yet. But the ceiling was perfectly smooth…except for something that made her draw in her breath sharply. Hope bloomed as she stared up at the round white disk with the holes ringing its circumference.

The conversation with Herb about the alarm systems in the sauna came back to Hannah with startling clarity. It was a smoke alarm, not a heat alarm. If it was set off, it went straight to the Lake Eden Fire Department. Hannah glanced down at the rose she’d placed on the bench of the sauna. Some plastic smoked when it melted. The rose Andrea had given her could be her lifesaver!

It was her only chance. Hannah took a deep breath of the stifling hot air and did her best to pull herself together. Then she forced her body to move. She was so hot, so enervated, but she couldn’t give in to the lethargy that threatened to leave her gasping. She’d be a lifeless puddle on the floor if she didn’t act now.

Fire. Plastic. Smoke. The words flashed in her fading mind. She had to hold the rose close enough to the heating coils to ignite it. And then she had to climb up on the bench, stand up as tall as she could, and hold the rose up to the smoke alarm.

Hannah crawled. She couldn’t stand upright. She was simply too weak. She crawled to the source of the heat, the coils that were so mercilessly draining her life away, and held the rose directly over them. Her vision was wavy, but she saw the rose send up a wisp of smoke and start to melt, the red petals of the flower sinking into the green of the leaves. And a horrible smell began to rise from the smoldering, smoking, melting plastic.

Now, Hannah’s mind told her, and she forced herself to climb up on the redwood bench. It took all the strength she had, but somehow she managed to raise her arm and hold the melting, malodorous rose as close to the smoke alarm as she could.

There was no way she could breathe. The stench of the smoking plastic or the smoldering wire, she wasn’t sure which, was unbearable. She was probably breathing in carcinogens, but that didn’t really matter in the giant scheme of things.

Hannah held her position until her arm muscles spasmed and what was left of the rose dropped to the floor. She was right behind it, collapsing on the bench and giving way to the horrible lassitude that consumed her body and her mind.

Time passed, how much she wasn’t sure. Life passed and there was a loud, awful ringing in her ears. Images of family, of friends, of things near and dear to her came, and faded, and changed, until they all melded together in one unfinished life. Hannah crawled her way to the wall, the farthest she could get from the cloying lethal heat. And then she curled up, her ears almost deafened by the ringing, her nose to the floor, praying for a breath of fresh air.

“Hannah?” a voice called her name. “Hang in there, Hannah! I’m here!”

A dream. Mike’s voice. It was the last voice she’d hear in this world.

“Hannah!” Mike lifted her in his arms. “I’m getting you out of here now. Don’t worry. I’ll never let anybody hurt you again.”

That’s nice. That’s good, Hannah thought, as her mind began to revolve in concentric circles.

“We got him. We got Tad Newberg. Stella got the call while I was there. He was the stalker at Macalester.”

“Not Tad. Frank,” she squeezed the words out of her parched throat. “Frank…killed Ronni. And he tried to…kill me.”