Short-circuited wiring. Nick leaped forward, shoving Jackie back toward the sitting room, and the chandelier crashed to the center of the floor, showering Nick in tiny shards of glass.
“Son of a bitch!” Jackie muttered, climbing back to her feet.
“All right?” Nick kicked off the mangled light and stood up, shaking the glass off his coat.
She nodded. “Yeah, thanks. I-”
“Oh, good show. The sheriff saves the poor damsel in distress.” Drake’s voice was hollow, echoing from out of the ventilation ducts.
Nick glanced around and caught the faint, wispy glow of a ghost drifting back through the wall in the rear of the sitting room. “The show is just starting, Drake!” Nick shouted into the room. “I won’t miss this time.”
“Well, he’s in here at least,” Jackie said, sounding a bit more like her usual pissed-off self.
“Waiting and ready,” Nick added. So far, so bad, Nick figured. Cornelius had it all choreographed, and it was up to Nick to figure out a way to alter the game plan in their favor, but so far, nothing brilliant was coming to mind. He pointed toward the office, and Jackie nodded. They approached, guns out and ready.
The room was empty of the living or dead, with a doorway leading down a short hallway toward the back of the house. Likely the former kitchen, and that meant the entry to the basement.
Nick shouldered up to Jackie to whisper in her ear. “If he’s feeding when we find the girl, I’ll try to grab her. You put as many holes in Drake as you can, and whatever you do, do not look him in the eye. There should be a back door here close by. We’ll get out that way if we can.” Jackie nodded once and kept her gaze focused on the hall.
The hall had a small bathroom on one side and an oversize closet that was floor-to-ceiling coffin samples, dozens of doll-sized miniatures to pretend your loved ones were getting buried in. Past that was the kitchen, beyond which a door in the back led to what was likely the former mud room. A door led out, and another led down. Next to the door, a small electric lift sat waiting where the dumb-waiter likely was.
Drake’s hollow, distant voice came drifting up through the vents once again. “Dear boy, you are dallying. This cute little thing is getting droopy-eyed. I would think for your last effort you would be giving it that one hundred and ten percent. Agatha deserved no less. I would have done the same for my boy, were he alive today, but, alas, he is not.”
Nick reached over and grabbed the mudroom door’s handle. “Be wary. We’re walking into a trap.” She nodded, and Nick opened the door. At that moment, the ringing thrum of Deadworld began to abate. “Damnit. He’s stopped feeding.”
The heavy, metal basement door was unlocked, and Nick shoved it open and leaped down to the landing. Jackie tried to run after.
Summoning up the bit of extra strength he could, Nick braced himself for the landing so he would keep from slamming into the opposite wall. He had both guns out pointing out across the basement floor when his feet touched down.
A single fluorescent light burned in the middle of the room, an all-too-familiar setup. Its blue-white glare cast a ghostly cone of light down on the cadaver’s table, upon which the Agatha lookalike lay. She was still clad in Winnie the Pooh pajamas, and her listless arm hung over the side of the table, fresh blood dripping from the small puncture in her arm.
Of Drake, there was no immediate sign. Guns held out before him, Nick leaped the last six stairs to the floor. Behind him, Jackie stopped on the landing, crouched down on the balls of her feet, Glock scanning across the room.
“Cover me,” he said and ran over to the little girl. Be alive! Please, just be alive! Nick picked up the dangling arm, his fingers clamped across her wrist, and he found a faint pulse. “She’s alive!”
“Where the hell is he?” Jackie said in a hushed voice.
Nick dug in his pocket for his pocketknife. The girl’s other wrist and ankles were bound with the familiar zip-ties. “I don’t…” He stopped after taking a single step. Above them, at the top of the stairs, the basement door slammed shut. It was followed by the loud and unmistakable sound of a dead bolt being slid into place. And then the light went out. “Shit.”
Jackie squeezed off two quick shots. “Fuck! Nick, it’s a solid steel door. What the hell?”
“Call Gamble now, Jackie.” The trap had been sprung. The question was just how tightly were they being held?
“Gamble? Get them here. Now. Fire, ambulance, everyone. We’re locked in the basement of Tanenbaum’s Funeral Home.”
In the pitch blackness, Nick fumbled around for the girl’s hands and feet, hoping he did not cut her skin getting her free.
“Nick? You smell something?”
He did the moment she said it. Smoke. “Yeah. Something’s burning.”
The dim light of her cell phone came back on. “Gamble! Tell them the building is likely on fire, so the sooner the better. No. The power is out down here, I have no fucking idea how we’re getting out. Yes, I tried! It’s a metal fucking door. Just get them over here!”
“Keep the cell on, Jackie. We can use the light to see with.”
She began to walk toward him, but a thunderous boom shook the house, knocking her down the last three steps to the floor.
Floating through the foul air, Drake’s voice quietly taunted. “Speed, dear boy. Once again, you have gone for the rescue over the kill. I’d hoped just this once you would give in on that choice, but it seems you will be stubborn to the end. I am still the gentleman, however, and have given you one last chance. Figure it out, and perhaps we shall dance again. You are too predictable, my friend. Good-bye. I shall see you on the other side.”
Drake’s laughter faded into the smoky darkness.
“There has to be another door out of here,” Jackie said.
There should be, and odds were it was securely sealed like the other one. “There should be windows though,” Nick answered. “Painted over, maybe. If they’re big enough we might be able to push the girl through.”
“Okay,” she said, moving over to a wall and stumbling over something metal on the floor. “Ow! Goddamnit.” Her voice had a tinge of panic to it, and Nick could hardly blame her for that one. Trapped in a burning building was not high on his choices of ways to go.
Smoke was beginning to thicken in the air. Another boom, and there came the sound of something crashing on the floor above. The second-floor ceiling perhaps? If they had looked upstairs first, they might have found whatever materials Drake had situated to take the house down.
Carrying the girl in one arm, Nick felt his way along the back wall, lined with stainless-steel counters and cupboards. There had been a full-sized door for something over on this end of the room.
“Hey, I found a window!” Jackie called out. “And it’s maybe six inches wide. We’ll never get her through this, Nick.”
“Okay,” he said, finally finding the door that had been to the left of the stairs and across the room from the foot of the cadaver table. “Office or storage room here. Maybe an extinguisher inside.” Not that it would do them a lot of good in the end. It might buy them a minute or two. Holding the girl, Nick kicked the door in and was greeted by a shimmering wall of heat and bright flame. He turned his back to the fire to protect the girl. “Christ. The ceiling is down in here.”
That meant the first floor was already engulfed in flames-likely began the moment they came downstairs. They needed that basement door opened. It was only a six-foot span across to the back door through the mudroom. Even with the house on fire, they could make that leap without dying. Probably. Jackie had the same thought.
“Gamble! We need that basement door unlocked, or you’re going to have a very crispy agent down here.” She coughed several times against the thickening smoke. “Yeah, I realize the place looks like an inferno, but we’re dead if it doesn’t get open. Got it?”