The Dirty Secrets Club (42 page)

She scooted back to the doorway, leaned over the crossed boards and into the next room. She looked up at the hole in the floor. There were only shades of black and gray, and an indistinct patch of starlight filtering through the first-floor windows.

In the other room there was also a long plank propped against one side of the hole in the ceiling. It reached to the floor above. It had been there all along—might have been used as a bridge across the hole, and been knocked down by the quake.

Maybe she could use it to climb up. She could boost Sophie ahead of her, or piggyback her. She looked again at the little girl.

"Can you make a fist?" she said.

Sophie looked at her hand. She worked to squeeze her fingers closed, and her face crumbled. She couldn't do it.

Jo needed to find another way out.

She crawled under the crossed boards and tiptoed across the room to a doorway leading to the basement hallway. The door was missing and there was debris blocking the door frame. Jo leaned out the doorway and shot a burst of light down the hall. She saw a staircase at the front of the building. She saw wood framing and insulation, ripped-out wiring, and drywall half torn down. She saw . . . oh, shit.

Above her in the hall, the ceiling was about to collapse. There was a single four-by-four support beam holding up a precarious piece of the kitchen above. She had a feeling that the glint she saw was a corner of a refrigerator.

She ducked back.

Closed her eyes, turned off the display, slunk back into the coal cellar.

From someplace above came Pray's mechanical voice. "I know you're in the basement. I suggest you tell me what I want to know now. Then maybe I won't burn down this building with you inside it."

Jo didn't answer. Sophie gasped.

"My late acquaintance Skunk, his Cadillac was an amazing vehicle. It had everything, even a wet bar. With gasoline, bottles, and rags, so he could whip up Molotov cocktails. And what do you know, here's one in my pocket."

Jo tried to swallow, but her throat refused. The darkness seemed to compress around her. The whole building seemed to be exhaling like a constrictor. The panic began to vibrate inside her. Heat, smoke, choking darkness, the building collapsing to pin her and Sophie motionless under a burning pyre—all it would take was a match.

Run. Scream, punch, climb the hell out of here, right now.
Every synapse in her nervous system was trembling.

"Johanna," Pray said.

The sound of her name in that flat buzz nearly made her pee her pants.

She lifted Sophie by the armpits. "Come on."

They crawled out of the coal hold under the crossed boards and scurried across the next room to the door. Sophie was unsteady. At the doorway Jo lifted her over the debris into the hallway and climbed out after her.

Wood creaked at the top of the staircase.
Buzz.
"Johanna Beckett."

Jo tried to breathe and her chest wouldn't expand. She felt like she was encased in wet cement. The sweat on her arms was freezing cold.

Pray was blocking the stairs. The coal chute was impossible for Sophie to climb. She glanced down the hallway behind them. It was a dead end.

She knew Pray didn't intend to leave her alive. He had the rage of the maimed. He had the shame of the tortured. He had a blind lust for revenge. She had nothing to give him, no names, no information that could slake his thirst to inflict pain.

She looked up and down the hallway. She looked at the wall.

Her breath came faster. Briefly she lit the cell phone, saw the hole in the drywall. There was a space on the other side of it.

A small space. A crawl space, maybe where central-heating ducts were going to be installed. A tunnel, coffin-wide. Tears stung her eyes.

The stairs creaked. "You keep flashing me. I can flash you, permanently. It'll be very hot." Another creak. "Give me the names."

"Pray." Her voice was a whisper.

No. It was time to shoot with everything she had, everything she could conjure from the cobwebs and crumbling plaster around her. She couldn't slake his thirst for pain.

But she could incite it.

She cleared her throat and hoped her voice stayed level. "Pray. If you burn down the building you'll never find out who ordered the attack on you."

"Why?"

"Because the trail stops with me. I'm the last one who knows." She bent down to Sophie's ear. "While I'm talking, go through that hole in the drywall. Get on the other side of the wall. Get as far from it as you can."

Sophie was shaking. So was she.

"Pray, if you kill me the names go up in flames."

Trembling, Sophie scrambled through the hole in the framing and disappeared into the dark crawl space on the other side. Jo picked up a sawn-off two-by-four, about three feet long.

The stairs creaked. Jo felt pressure on her chest, and the tears broke from the corners of her eyes.

"Let us go. I'll give you the names. Just let us out," she said.

She crouched down and put her back against the half-ripped dry-wall along the wall next to the hole. The hole, a passage, so dark, the size of a sarcophagus. Oh, God. Her head throbbed. She bit back the urge to scream.

"Shall we make a deal?" Pray said.

He was coming down the stairs now. One slow step at a time. He thought he knew where they were. He'd been listening to their voices, and probably figured that they had nowhere to go.

"Yes, a deal. You back off, I'll leave the names right here," she said.

"And I'll cover my eyes and count to ten?"

Fucking joker. "Don't play games."

She heard the quaver in her voice. She pressed her back against the wall. She was going to have to move hellaciously fast, and she had to keep her head out of the way. She could live without her legs. She couldn't live without her brain.

And she had to get him close. So close that he couldn't throw the Molotov cocktail without immolating himself along with her. He didn't want to die. She had to draw him right up beside her, close enough to grab.

And she had seen what happened to Scott Southern when he tried the same thing.

"You want to know who ordered us to rob you?" she said.

His footsteps stopped. " 'Us?'"

"God. You really haven't figured it out, have you?" She laughed. She heard the edge of hysteria in her voice. "I was the one in the mask that day."

No sound. Would she hear him if he was gliding along like a rumor? Like a curse? Like—

"Prayers. You prayed. You cried and
begged."

Creaking. He was coming down the stairs slowly. He couldn't see her and didn't trust her. He wasn't close enough. She had to get him close enough to breathe on.

"Did you actually think we'd let a scuzzy low-level gangster in the club? You think because David Yoshida played in your executive poker game, you were accepted?"

"You did it as a dare. You robbed me for fun."

"It was your fault. You shouldn't have resisted."

"That weedy faggot tried to kill me. And you told him to get the chain." Another step. "For what? For money to fuel your lifestyles and businesses? Your yachts and IPOs? For blackmail?"

The creaking stopped. She forced her breathing to slow. Her heart was pounding in her ears. She braced the two-by-four in one hand. She was going to get one chance, and she had to time it right. She took out the phone. She heard Pray sliding his feet along the floor, feeling his way toward her.

She listened. How close? She counted to ten, aimed her cell phone at the stairway, and lit the display.

In the dark, it was like a flashbulb. Pray manifested like a monster, black and gray and gaunt, standing right above her.

She took the two-by-four and pushed one end against the cracked support beam that was supporting the kitchen floor above. Screaming her lungs out, she shoved with everything she had left. The support beam keened. She heard it splinter. She dropped the two-by-four and crab-crawled backward through the hole in the drywall, into the dank dirt of the hole behind it.

Everything came down in a horrible crash. The support beam disintegrated. The kitchen floor collapsed. Floorboards, bricks, a chimney, and the refrigerator pounded down like a hammer on a blacksmith's anvil. Choking dust blew through the wall. It filled her world.

39

F
irefly lights. Jo had an inkling the blackness was being bombarded with firefly light. It wasn't merely spots in her eyes, not this time. A man's voice, muffled, called out.

"Sophie."

The voice was distant, and cut with an edge of desperation. Jo lifted her head.

"Gabe," she said.

Her throat was dry to dust. Her legs had cramped. Her left hand was stiff from dialing 911, over and over. Her right arm was numb from holding pressure on Sophie's arm.

The little girl was curled under Jo's shoulder, asleep. Please, Lord, let her be asleep. In the tiny crawl space Jo inched her fingers across Sophie's cheek.

"It's your dad," she whispered.

Gabe shouted, closer now. "Jo, are you there?"

"Here." She rasped it. Stroked Sophie's cheek. "Sophie?"

The fireflies clarified into flashlights, and men's voices rose on the air. Footsteps charged down the stairs.

She heard an older man caution, "Wait. We haven't cleared the basement—dammit."

There was more noise. "Jo. Sophie."

Jo inched her hand through the debris field and clawed her fingers out of the crawl space.

"Mother of God. Jo."

"We're here."

Frantic digging on the other side, the debris from the ceiling collapse being scooped out brick by brick. She held on to Sophie. The girl was silent, and so cold.

Gabe and the fire crew dug through the collapsed pile of kitchen debris that was blocking the exit. Then Jo heard the drywall being physically ripped off the wall, saw hands rip through the insulation.

"Sophie."

She drew a breath. "Daddy?"

Jo looked up and saw Gabe literally pull the wall apart. He leaned in, a shadow under the harsh flashlights in the hallway. She breathed. She had never in her life felt so certain she could let go, could release everything, and have somebody else catch it all.

"Sophie needs attention," she said. "Here, take her."

Her voice was only a scratch. Gabe leaned in and reached for his daughter. She was limp in his arms when he lifted her out.

Jo reached up, for the light, for air, and couldn't pull herself up. The firefighters helped her out.

"Time is it?" she said.

"Midnight."

Hours with that cut untreated. In the cold basement hallway, Gabe set Sophie down next to the wall. Jo saw the ugly debris field where she'd brought down the ceiling. It smelled of gasoline.

A firefighter took her arm. "Come on. This structure's unstable."

She pointed at the debris. "There's a man under there."

Their heads swiveled and they leveled their flashlights at the pile. She saw Gabe bent over Sophie, checking the field dressing on her arm. She looked at her own hands. They were stiff with blood.

"Sophie, baby. Look at me." Gabe's voice was harsh. "Cricket, come on, honey."

The firefighters circled the kitchen debris, flashlights swinging. "Here he is," one called out. "Why's there a gasoline smell?"

Jo walked over to him. "He had a Molotov cocktail."

The firefighters glanced at her with alarm. They took a step back.

She looked at Perry Ames. He was looking back at her. The firefighters swung their flashlights over the scene.

"Broken bottle, right there, with a rag," one said.

"All right, let's get everybody out of here," said another.

Pray held Jo's eyes. She climbed onto the debris field and leaned down next to him.

"What are you doing?" a firefighter said.

She put her fingers against his neck and found his pulse. She looked at his pupils. She saw that he was lucid, tracking her, that he had a clear airway.

She said to the firefighters, "He has a preexisting laryngeal injury. He speaks with a voice synthesizer."

His eyes were spinning with pain and an almost feral anger. He formed his lips into words and spoke silently, staring at her.

The firefighters hollered up the stairs for an ambulance. They lifted debris from Pray's torso. He reeked of gasoline. Jo saw him take a deep breath. The refrigerator was across his lower legs. He was pinned, but not on the verge of death.

They lifted a splintered piece of a floorboard and he was able to move his arm.

Like daughter, like father. He had a lighter in his fist. He stared straight at her, and he began to flick it. His thumb was shaky. He couldn't get it to catch.

He mouthed words at Jo again, and kept flicking the lighter. She watched his lips. She wasn't a lip-reader, but there was no mistaking what he was trying to tell her.