The Red Hunter(85)

He looked at her, frowning with worry, a moment longer. Then he climbed down the ladder after her.

? ? ?

CLAUDIA WAITED, LISTENING TO HIM move around in the basement. It had been about six minutes (she was watching the clock), but it felt like a half hour, more. The phone still hadn’t come back on; she kept picking it up to check. Raven and Troy were still in the barn. Scout had drifted back into his shadowy world, and the sun was dipping low, shadows growing long, the sky a dusty blue. She had decided to quickly head upstairs for her cell phone when she heard a crash down in the basement. She froze, listening, then moved to the top of the stairs.

She stood in the doorway to the basement. “Josh?”

No answer.

“Everything okay down there?”

Nothing.

She should run upstairs and get the phone. Why hadn’t she brought it down with her? She could call the police? And say what? That the handyman she hired was taking too long in the basement finding his level? Maybe she could say that she thought he fell, hurt himself.

“Josh.”

She heard movement, a low groan—pain, frustration?

She started down the stairs. She took one creaking step at a time, looking down at her sparkling genie flats that she’d paid too much for on Etsy. Just as she came to the bottom step, he slipped out of the darkness, sweating, looking frazzled.

She backed away from him, up a step. Her trainer wouldn’t approve. Never back away, he’d say. Move in. Stand your ground. Only run after you’ve delivered the incapacitating strike to the eyes, the throat, or the groin. She knew the drill. Eyes. Throat. Groin. Fingers to the corners of the eyes. Claw of the hand to the jugular. Knee to the groin, hard and fast. Then run. She remembered her training well. Too bad she couldn’t seem to put any of it into action. Fear was the factor you couldn’t predict or control.

They stood a second, regarding each other.

“What are you really doing down here?” she asked.

He let out a long sigh, leaned back against the wall. “How did you know about it?”

“About what?”

He motioned toward the hole in the drywall; it gaped like a mouth.

A vein started to throb in her neck, a dryness tugging at the back of her throat.

“How did you find this? I’ve been looking in this house for years. More than ten years.”

There was something raw and desperate about his energy now, something that made her body tingle with fear. She didn’t say anything, felt her awareness reach out for Raven. Please stay in the barn, she silently told her daughter.

“You need to leave,” she said, marshalling strength to her voice. “Now.”

He shook his head quickly. “That’s just it. I can’t unless I find what I’m looking for.”

What? What did that mean?

“You need to go now before I call the police,” she said. She stood aside so that he could walk up the stairs.

He took a step closer to her, palms up.

“Look,” he said. “Help me and I’m gone. Otherwise, there are some bad people looking for something that may or not be hidden in this house. If they come here, I won’t be able to help you. I won’t even be able to help myself. I need to find it and take it to them, and they’ll go away.”

She shook her head, but she couldn’t find words. This wasn’t happening.

“They have the survey,” he said. “They think there’s a tunnel.”

He took something from his pocket and held it up. A shiny copper key. For a bending, twisting second she thought she might be dreaming. She remembered when she was in the throes of despair after Raven had been born, and her marriage was falling apart, and the dark fingers of depression tugged at her every morning, she saw a past-life regression therapist who told her that she’d lived a hundred lives as a victim—a slave girl in Mississippi, a prostitute in New Orleans, a housewife with four children, no education, and a mean husband who beat her—and that now, in this life, it was her turn to reclaim her power. She’d survived her circumstances and had the strength to create a bright future. Claudia didn’t believe a word of it. She’d never been those things. But she did believe in herself, in her will to survive. I will never be a victim again, she’d sworn to herself that day. And now, here she was, standing before a man she’d let into her home who wouldn’t leave, who said that worse men were coming.

“Look,” she said. She kept her voice low and deep. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out of my house now.”

If that was the key to the locked door, and he found what he was looking for, would he just leave and take her at her word that she’d never tell a soul? If what he was looking for was there, would he leave with a sack of money and trust her to keep his secret? No. He wouldn’t. Her whole body was vibrating. She started backing up the stairs.

“There’s no tunnel,” she said. “Go.”

“There is,” he said. “That’s the door, and I’m going to open it with this key. You stay where you are and don’t say a word, then I’ll be gone. And there isn’t much time.”

“There isn’t any time.”

Claudia spun to see another man, just a tall form at the top of the stairs, blocking her only exit from the basement. Panic traveled through her body like an electric shock.