“Fine, I’ll go first,” Adrian said without hesitation. “Good thing Mrs. Honeycutt stayed upstairs. She can call for help if this fucker gives way,” he added after the stairs began to tremble after a particularly loud groan.
After careful maneuvering, we made it safely down to the cellar. I shined my flashlight around the large, cavernous concrete room. I could easily imagine men, women, and children hiding down here feeling both fear that they would get caught and exhilaration at the prospect of becoming free. If those walls could’ve talked, they would’ve had a lot to say. I wished they could help reveal where in the hell Georgia might’ve hid the evidence of her blackmail scheme. There were several shelves that looked to hold canned goods and storage trunks placed throughout the room. Unfortunately, there was no X that marked the spot.
“Let’s split up,” Adrian said. “I’ll take the right and you take the left.”
“Sounds good to me.” I began looking through trunk after trunk, but found nothing but clothes from previous decades or even centuries. I heard a thud and what sounded like Adrian groaning. “You okay, partner?” Adrian didn’t respond and I worried that he’d done something to hurt himself. “Adrian?” I called out once more and then rose to my feet from where I’d been kneeling over a trunk.
A cold chill worked its way through my body that had nothing to do with the damp coldness of the cellar as I made my way to where I had last seen Adrian. The beam of my flashlight landed on Adrian lying prone of the floor. I rushed to his side and knelt down beside him. There was a bloody gash on his forehead and a large goose egg was starting to form. I pressed my fingers against his pulse point and found that he was still alive, just unconscious. I looked around for the source of his injury but found nothing.
I suddenly had a sense that Adrian and I weren’t alone in the cellar. I circumvented my training to make sure the space was clear of threat in my rush to help Adrian. I switched my flashlight to my left hand and reached for my gun with my right as I rose to my feet. I heard a noise behind me and spun around with my gun out in front of me.
I walked toward the noise with my gun and flashlight sweeping from left to right as I went. I had just rounded a corner of shelves set up in the middle of the room when something hit me hard in the back of the head. I dropped my gun and flashlight as I fell to the concrete below. The last thing I saw in the beam of my flashlight before I lost consciousness were small feet encased in black leather flats.
Next thing I knew, I heard Adrian’s voice calling my name as he felt around my head and neck for injuries. I slowly opened my eyes but the room was as dark as when I’d had my eyes closed. “She must’ve taken our flashlights,” I told Adrian.
“Thank fuck you’re alive,” my partner said in relief. “She took our goddamned guns and phones too. I can’t believe I was outsmarted by a seventy-year-old woman.”
“She moved like a ninja,” I told Adrian. “How the hell didn’t we hear her walk down those rickety-ass steps?”
“There must be another entrance to this room,” he replied. “We’ll never find it in the dark though. Our only way out is to take those fucking steps.”
I tried to get up but I was overcome with a wave of dizziness and nausea. “I need a minute,” I told Adrian. “I can’t see it, but I know the room is spinning. I’ll be ready…”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Adrian said. “You must’ve really pissed her off because she really did a number on your head.” Adrian patted me gently on the shoulder then I heard him rise to his feet. “I’ll feel my way up the staircase to the door. There has to be a way to release the door from the inside.”
I wanted to argue with him that I was fine to make the trip upstairs, but I knew he was right after another failed attempt to sit up. “Be careful,” I told Adrian. “Sally Ann needs you returning home in one piece.”
“At this moment, I wish she hadn’t talked me into giving up cigarettes because I’d at least have a lighter on hand.” Adrian began the slow journey around the obstacles to find the staircase. “I have a general idea of where it is,” he told me.
“Keep talking to me so that I know you’re okay,” I called out to him.
“Will do.”
I couldn’t say for sure how long we’d been down there because I didn’t know how long we had been knocked unconscious. It seemed like it took days of Adrian shuffling around the room and slowly walking up the creaking steps before he reached the top. He found the door release relatively fast once he reached the door. Of course, I kept fading in and out the entire time so it could’ve taken him twenty minutes or twenty days.
“Hang in there, Gabe,” I heard him call from the top of the steps. “I’m going to use the landline to call for help.”
“Okay,” I said, my word slurring.
The last thing I remembered before my world went dark again was Adrian hollering down the steps, “The cavalry is on the way.”
IWOKE UP FEELINGat peace with my life even though I only had a few hours of sleep. The world seemed like a brighter, better place. I realized that I was well and truly on my way to falling in l-l-like with him. Okay, it was stronger than like, but I was nowhere near ready to admit that to myself.
I lingered a little longer over my coffee than I normally would have, therefore it was closer to mid-morning before I got in the shower. I paid special attention when I styled my hair and trimmed my beard because I was almost certain I’d be seeing Gabe again after he was through working for the day. I fed my pets and headed down to the salon around noon to work on inventory and review the schedule for the upcoming week.
I cranked up the music louder than I would if I had clients inside and got to work. I finished up the inventory and schedule quickly and decided to restock the stations. My mind was on Gabe the entire time and more than once I caught myself grinning like a fool in the mirror’s reflection. “Take it easy, kid,” I told my reflection. “Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your faith in…somethings.”
The phone rang several times while I worked, but I let it go to voicemail since the salon was closed. Chaz would return the calls and schedule appointments when he came to work on Tuesday morning. I noticed that the phone was busier than usual, but didn’t give it much thought. I wished that I had when I heard loud knocking on the front door of the salon. I turned around and saw a frazzled looking Adrian standing on my porch. Our eyes met and he waved his hand urgently for me to come to the door.
I knew whatever he had to say wasn’t good news, but that didn’t stop me from going to him. “What’s wrong?” I asked Adrian. He was wearing a large bandage over his forehead and didn’t look so good, but he was at my salon and Gabe wasn’t. I tried so hard not to panic, but it wasn’t working and was evident in my voice when I asked, “Where’s Gabe?”
“He’s at County General,” he replied. “Our cellphones were taken so I didn’t have your personal number, only the salon. I called several times but you never answered so I drove over. Grab your coat and I’ll take you to him.”
I quickly grabbed my coat and followed him to his car that he’d left running out front. “What happened, Adrian?” I asked once we were on the road. My heart was up in my throat by that time.
“We were following a lead and let our guard down when we shouldn’t have.” He removed one hand off the steering wheel and pointed to his bandaged head. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
“I’m freaking out here, Adrian. What kind of condition is he in?” I let my guard down to let Gabe in, against my better judgement, and was terrified that he’d be taken away from me.
