The Promise (Neighbor from Hell, #10)(90)

No one respected her, especially at work. She’d lost count of how many people she’d trained over the years had been promoted ahead of her. Even though she had the least amount of patient complaints, put in more hours than anyone else in the department, and had more training and experience under her belt than anyone in the emergency department, it didn’t seem to matter to Dr. Adams. When she’d worked up the nerve, and also made sure that she was sitting down just in case, to confront him, he’d pointed out that he was afraid that she’d blackout during an emergency even though it had never happened. Not once in the ten years, she’d worked as a nurse.

She paused in front of the thick oak door, half-hoping to hear Charlie’s scratching demand to be let in so that she wouldn’t have to do this alone. It really was the only thing the dog was good for, she decided. Knowing there was no other choice, Sam took a deep breath, opened the door, and told herself that ghosts weren’t real. Knowing that standing here wasn’t going to help, she reached out and placed her hand against the smooth stonewall as she navigated the steep stone stairs.

Admittedly, the cellar was well put together with its old-fashioned workmanship. It was the one thing that didn’t require Sam to spend her hard-earned money to fix. Whoever built the stone cellar really knew what they were doing. None of the rocks were falling out or even cracking. It remained cool in the summer and winter, and thankfully, had never flooded.

At the bottom of the stairs, she shifted to the side so that she could walk through the small passage that led to the cavernous basement. When she reached the end of the passageway her foot caught on something and she stumbled the rest of the way.

“Damn it!” she muttered, straightening up.

“Who the hell is that?” a man’s voice demanded, making her heart skip a beat as dread filled her.

Sam’s eyes widened when she realized that the normally dark basement was brightly lit by sunlight, flashlights, and her grandfather’s old lanterns. Her eyes shot from a group of six men, a few of them holding sledgehammers, to the wide-open cellar doors that she hadn’t been able to open in years. Her eyes shot to the pile of broken rocks by their feet and then up to the large hole in the wall.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded before common sense kicked in and once it did, she froze on the spot.

Six men had broken into her house and were tearing apart her cellar. Her breath caught when she heard the telltale click of a gun being cocked. Correction six armed men had broken into her basement.

“Drop the flashlight,” a large man with short curly red hair said, aiming a pistol at her.

The flashlight and the box of fuses hit the floor before the last syllable left his mouth. She even put her hands up without being asked to. She wasn’t a wimp, but she also wasn’t stupid. One woman against six armed men in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly hope-inducing.

“Grab her,” the man said, gesturing to two large men, who didn’t look particularly happy to see her. She went to take a step back and take her chances when the men grabbed her roughly and dragged her over to the red-headed man.

“We really didn’t need a fucking complication with this,” he grumbled, rubbing the back of his thick neck as he shot her an accusing glare like this was somehow her fault.

Sam licked her lips nervously. “Listen, I don’t know why you’re here tearing apart my storm cellar, but I think there’s been a mistake. You have the wrong house,” she said, using the same calm, reassuring tone she used when she worked in the emergency room.

He looked around the basement and shook his head. “No, this is the right basement,” he said as he gestured to a large flat grey stone just above the small hole in the wall they’d created. Sam looked at the initials carved into the stone and frowned. She’d never noticed them before. He reached over and ran his fingers over the R first and then the T.

He tapped the spot. “I carved my marker in this rock the day we finished building this cellar.”

“Um,” she cleared her throat, trying to figure out a way to say this tactfully, “this cellar is over three hundred years old,” she pointed out.

“Three hundred and fifty-two to be exact,” the man said with an amused smile.

Okay...

“What I meant to say is that clearly you didn’t build this cellar. So, you’ve got the wrong house,” she rushed to explain when black spots started to dance around her vision. Passing out right now was not a good idea, she told herself, fighting it with everything she had as she looked him over.

He didn’t look a day over thirty, and she already knew that her grandmother had never hired anyone to work on the cellar because there had never been a need. So clearly this man had either just carved his initials into the rock before she’d spotted them, or he was insane.

She was gonna go with insane, she decided, slowly exhaling as the black dots multiplied and threatened to drop her on her ass.

He sighed heavily. “Look, I don’t have time for this. My mate’s being a bitch and won’t get off my ass until I check on something. Unfortunately, you walked in on something that you shouldn’t have seen. Granted, we would have taken care of you before we left,” he said with a careless shrug of his shoulders as she fought to process what he said.

She tried to take a step back only to have her arms yanked roughly behind her back and her hands tied together. Someone kicked out her legs, causing her to drop to her knees on the stone floor, sending sharp pain through her knees and legs.