Maybe I can weaken it, break it down—
She fired again, targeting the frame itself. The thunderous shot tore apart wood and chipped marble, but not enough, not even close. The ceiling continued its clattering descent, now less than ten feet above her head. She was going to be crushed to death. God, don’t let me die like this—
“Jill? Is that you?”
A muffled voice called from the corridor, and she felt a sudden, desperate hope course through her at the sound.
Barry!
“Help! Barry, break it down, now!” Jill shouted, her voice high and shaking.
“Get back!”
Jill stumbled away as she heard a heavy blow strike the door. The wood shuddered but held. Jill let out a low cry of helpless frustration, her terrified gaze jumping between the door and the ceiling. Another solid, shaking hit to the door. Five feet overhead.
Come on, come ON—
The third pounding blow was joined by the crunch and splinter of wood. The door flew open, Barry framed in the entry, his face red and sweating, his hand reaching for hers.
Jill lunged forward and he grabbed her wrist, liter-ally jerking her off of her feet and into the corridor. They crashed to the floor as behind them, the door was crushed off its hinges. Wood and metal squealed as the ceiling continued smoothly down, the door snapping in a series of harsh cracks.
With a final, resonating boom of impact, the ceiline met the floor. It was over, the house again as silent as a tomb. They staggered to their feet, Jill staring at the doorway. The entire frame was filled with the solid block of stone that had been the ceiling, at least a couple of tons of rock.
“Are you alright?” Barry asked.
Jill didn’t answer for a moment. She looked down at the shotgun she still held in her trembling hands, remembering how confident she’d been that there’d been no trap—and for the first time, she wondered
how they were ever going to make it out of this hellish place.
They stood in the empty front hall, Chris pacing the carpet in front of the stairs, Rebecca standing ner-vously by the banister. The massive lobby was as cold and ominous as when Chris had first seen it, the mute walls giving away none of their secrets; the S.T.A.R.S. were gone, and there were no clues as to where or why. From somewhere deep in the mansion, there was a heavy rumbling sound, like a giant door being slammed. They both cocked their heads, listening, but it wasn’t repeated. Chris couldn’t even tell from what direction it had come.
Terrific, that’s just great. Zombies, mad scientists, and now things that go bump in the night. Priceless. He smiled at Rebecca, hoping that he looked less rattled than he felt. “Well, no forwarding message. I guess that moves us to plan B”
“What’s plan B?”
Chris sighed. “Hell if I know. But we can start by checking out that other room with the sword key. Maybe we can dig up some more information while we wait for the team to reassemble, a map or some-thing.”
Rebecca nodded, and they headed back through the dining room, Chris leading the way. He didn’t like the idea of exposing her to further danger, but he didn’t want to leave her alone, either, at least not in the main hall; it didn’t feel safe.
As they passed the ticking grandfather clock, some-thing small and hard cracked beneath Chris’s boot. He crouched down and scooped up a dark gray chunk of plaster. There were two or three other fragments nearby.
“Did you notice these when we came through before?” he asked.
Rebecca shook her head, and Chris ducked down, looking for more of them. He didn’t remember if they’d been there before, either. On the other side of the table was a broken pile of the fragments. They hurried around the end of the long table past the elaborately decorated fireplace, stopping in front of the shattered pile. Chris nudged at the gray pieces with the tip of his boot. From the angles and shapes, it appeared to have been a statue of some kind. Whatever it was, it’s garbage now.
“Is it important?” Rebecca asked.
Chris shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Worth a look, anyway. In a situation like this, you never know what might turn out to be a clue.”
The echoing tick of the old clock followed them back to the hall door and into the smell of decay that filled the tight corridor. Chris pulled the silver key out of a pocket as they headed right—
• and stopped, quickly drawing his Beretta and moving closer to Rebecca. The door at the end of the hall was closed; when they’d left, it had been standing open.
There was no sense of being watched, of movement in the hall, but someone must have come through while they’d been in the lobby. The thought was disconcerting, reaffirming Chris’s uneasy feeling that secret things were happening all around them. The dead creature to their left was in the same position as before, its blood-filled eyes staring blindly at the low ceiling, and Chris wondered again who had killed it. He knew he should examine the corpse and the unsecured area beyond it, but didn’t want to go off on his own until he got Rebecca somewhere safe. “Come on,” he whispered, and they edged to the locked door, Chris handing the key to Rebecca so that he could watch the hall for attackers. With a soft click, the intricately paneled door was unlocked, and Rebecca gently pushed it open.
Chris could feel that the room was okay even as he did a quick check and motioned for Rebecca to step inside. It was set up like a piano bar, a baby grand dominating the floor across from a built-in counter, complete with stools bolted along its length. Perhaps it was the soft lighting or the muted colors that gave it such an atmosphere of calm stillness. Whatever it was, Chris decided that it was the nicest room he’d encountered so far.
And maybe a good place for Rebecca to stay while I try to find the others. . . .
Rebecca perched herself on the edge of the dusty black piano bench while Chris did a more thorough search of the room. There were a couple of potted plants, a small table, and a tiny alcove behind the wall where the piano was situated, a couple of wood bookshelves pushed in back. The only entrance was the one they’d come through. It was an ideal spot for Rebecca to hide.
He bolstered his weapon and joined her at the piano, trying to choose his words carefully; he didn’t want to scare her with the suggestion that she stay behind. She smiled up at him hesitantly, looking even
younger than she was, her spiky red bangs adding to the impression that she was only a child......, A
child who got through college in less time than it took you to get your pilot’s license; don’t patronize her, she’s probably smarter than you are. Chris sighed inwardly and smiled back at her. “How would you feel about staying here while I take a look around the house?”
Her smile faltered a little, but she met his gaze evenly. “Makes sense,” she said. “I don’t have a gun, and if you run into trouble, I’d just slow you down. . . ”
She grinned wider and added, “Though if you get your ass kicked by a mathematical theorem, don’t come crying to me.”
Chris laughed, as much at his own faulty assump-tions as at her joke; she wasn’t one to be underesti-mated. He walked to the door, pausing as his hand touched the knob.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said. “Lock the door behind me, and don’t go wandering off, okay?” Rebecca nodded, and he stepped back into the hall, closing the door firmly behind him. He waited until he heard the bolt drawn and drew his Beretta, the last trace of a smile falling away as he started briskly down the corridor.
The closer he got to the rotting creature, the worse the smell. He took shallow sips of air as he reached the body, stepping past it to see if the hall continued on before he examined it for bullet holes—
• and he stopped cold, staring at the second corpse stretched out in the alcove, headless and covered in blood. Chris studied the slack, lifeless features of the face that lay a foot away, recognizing them as Kenneth Sullivan’s—and felt a surge of anger and renewed determination sweep through him at the sight of the dead Bravo.