Chương 2
“What?” she asked.
Lorenzo blinked.
“My father.”
“What about him?”
“Move the bench.”
Claire stared at him.
Boots splashed through mud outside.
“Move it.”
Claire wedged both hands beneath one edge and pulled.
The bench did not move.
“Help me.”
Lorenzo almost laughed.
Claire glared at him.
“Fine. Don’t help me. Bleed elegantly.”
She braced one shoe against the cracked concrete and dragged harder.
Wood screamed across the floor.
The sound was enormous.
All three of them froze.
Outside, the footsteps stopped.
Claire felt Emma’s fingers touch the back of her leg.
The dog barked.
A beam of light swept beneath the door.
Then a voice farther away shouted, “Barn!”
The footsteps moved again.
Claire exhaled once and pulled until the bench cleared a rectangle of loose floorboards.
Beneath the dirt and sawdust lay a black iron ring.
Lorenzo stared at it.
His face changed for the first time.
Not pain.
Something closer to disbelief.
Claire tore the boards aside and grabbed the ring.
The oak trapdoor resisted, swollen from years of dampness. She pulled until her shoulders burned.
Old hinges groaned.
Cold black air rose from below.
A narrow staircase of stone disappeared beneath the shed.
Lorenzo whispered, “My father’s storm room.”
Claire looked at him.
“Then stay alive long enough to use it.”
He tried to stand.
His knees nearly folded.
Claire caught him under the arm.
For a man whose name was associated with control, violence, restaurants, trucking companies, construction firms, and three bodies nobody had ever convincingly tied to him, Lorenzo Duca was astonishingly heavy when gravity stopped respecting his reputation.
Claire took most of him across her shoulders.
Emma climbed down first.
“Slow,” Claire told her.
Emma nodded and stepped backward, one small shoe searching for each stone stair.
She reached up and held three of Lorenzo’s fingers.
“One step,” she whispered. “Stay awake.”
Lorenzo looked down at her.
He obeyed.
The shed door opened above them.
White light flooded across the floor.
Claire almost lost her footing.
Lorenzo’s hand tightened on the stair wall.
Emma did not scream.
That frightened Claire more than if she had.
She pulled the trapdoor downward over their heads just before a flashlight beam crossed it.
Darkness swallowed them.
Claire crouched on the stairs with one arm around Emma and the other supporting Lorenzo.
Above, boots crossed the shed.
A man said, “Blood.”
Another voice answered, “How much?”
“Enough.”
A thin blade of flashlight light pierced a crack between the floorboards.
Claire covered Emma’s mouth.
Emma’s breath warmed her palm.
Lorenzo leaned against the stone, eyes shut, sweat cold along his hairline.
The boots stopped.
“There’s blood under this bench,” a man said.
Wood scraped across the floor.
Slowly.
The terrible sound traveled through the old beams and into Claire’s teeth.
Lorenzo opened his eyes.
In the darkness, he looked directly at her.
His lips barely moved.
“Down.”
Claire guided Emma lower.
The scrape continued above them.
Then stopped.
A flashlight beam crossed the trapdoor seam.
Claire could hear a dog panting.
Someone touched the iron ring.
Emma trembled against her.
Lorenzo’s hand went under his jacket again.
Claire caught it.
He looked at her.
She shook her head.
The trapdoor lifted half an inch.
A voice from outside shouted, “Car at the south gate!”
The ring dropped.
The trapdoor slammed.
Boots turned.
“What car?”
“Black Escalade. Two men.”
“Duca’s?”
“Don’t know.”
The footsteps moved quickly toward the door.
Another man remained.
Claire could hear him breathing.
The dog sniffed near the floorboards.
Lorenzo slowly drew his hand away from the pistol.
The dog scratched once.
Claire closed her eyes.
Emma’s stuffed rabbit was still upstairs in the shed.
The realization came with absurd force.
Of all the things Claire should have been thinking about—the armed men, the bleeding criminal beside her, the possibility that she had just placed her child in the middle of a murder—her mind fixed on that rabbit.
Bun-Bun had one button eye because Emma had chewed the other loose when she was eighteen months old. Claire had promised to sew a new one on roughly forty times.
The dog whined.
The man above said, “Come on.”
Claws clicked toward the door.
It shut.
Rain reclaimed the roof.
Nobody moved for several seconds.
Then Emma pulled Claire’s hand gently away from her mouth.
“Bunny.”
“I know.”
“He’s up there.”
“I know, baby.”
“He gets scared.”
Lorenzo lowered his head against the stone wall.
Something moved in his throat.
Claire could not tell whether he was swallowing pain or laughter.
“Not funny,” she said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to say the rabbit’s having a better night than I am.”
Emma considered this.
“He only has one eye.”
“That does make it tougher.”
Claire almost told him to stop talking.
Then she realized talking was useful.
“You know where these stairs go?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Storm room.”
“You established that.”
“Tunnel after.”
“Tunnel to where?”
Lorenzo’s eyes drifted closed.
Claire slapped his cheek.
Not hard.
Enough.
His eyes opened.
“Where does the tunnel go?”
“Old pump house.”
“How far?”
“Maybe two hundred yards.”
“You haven’t used it?”
“I was twelve.”
“That’s comforting.”
“He made me carry canned peaches down here before hurricanes.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
“The feared Dominic Duca prepared for hurricanes with canned peaches?”
“He distrusted peaches.”
Claire stared at him.
Lorenzo breathed shallowly.
“Thought they lasted too long.”
Emma whispered, “I like peaches.”
“Good,” Lorenzo said. “One person in this family should.”
Claire took the cracked lantern from a hook beside the stairs. It had probably hung there since the elder Duca’s lifetime. She shook it.
Nothing.
She found her phone in her pocket and turned the screen brightness almost all the way down.
No service.
Of course.
May you like
“Move,” she said.
The stairway ended in a small stone chamber with shelves along two walls. Rusted metal cans had collapsed in places. A cot sagged under mildew. An old hand-crank radio sat beside a kerosene lamp. There were sealed water containers, most too old to trust, and an emergency cabinet mounted crookedly near the doorway.
