with that damned rag stuffed in her mouth… I cannot throw up. I must not throw up. I will choke on my own vomit and die a horrible death like Mr. Jimi… She flopped back down to the damp earth, beads of sweat trickling down her forehead. Breathed slowly and evenly through her nose, in and out, in and out. Steadying herself until the nausea passed. But she would have to take it easy. Was showing all of the classic symptoms of a concussion, including that weird memory muddle when she’d first come to. Thinking Mitch would be there by her bedside. Whew, how ill was that?
She could hear sirens now. And cars approaching. Lots of cars. Brakes squealing. Doors slamming. There were rapid footsteps on the creaky kitchen floorboards directly over her head, followed by the murmur of angry voices. She did not hear a girl’s voice. No Molly. Just the two men, Clay and Hector. She couldn’t make out what they were saying. Only that they were arguing about something.
The gunshots, of course.
The troopers on the barricade had heard Clay open fire and now the cavalry was coming. Which meant she hadn’t been out for more than twenty minutes. Also that Clay and Hector were in some deep, deep trouble. Armed SWAT teams would soon be boxing them in from every direction. As her fuzzy brain grabbed hold of just how utterly screwed those two were, something else dawned upon Des:
I am their hostage.
They hadn’t dumped her down in this cellar to rot. She was their human bargaining chip. And Molly? Molly must be dead. Had to be dead. Why else would they bother to keep me alive? She’d gotten the poor girl killed. Should have called Rico as soon she’d heard from Jen. Shouldn’t have gone in solo. But she had and Molly Procter, age nine, was gone.
Des lay there, grief-stricken and tormented by guilt. And yet also curiously aware that she’d be spared from having to cope with these awful feelings for long. Because she and Molly would be linked for eternity on this night. She was not going to get out of this alive either. It would not end well. She felt it. She knew it. Not because her life was passing before her eyes right now so much as because it was exposing itself to her. Allowing her, once and for all, to see the absolute truth of things with incredible clarity. Like the real reason for those dizzy spells. The elevated blood pressure and pulse rate. The constant clenching in her stomach. Abandoning the art that had given her life so much glorious purpose. Put it all together and it added up to fool. She knew that now. Knew what her own body had been trying to tell her all along:
I should have stayed with Mitch.
She’d convinced herself that she was happy with Brandon. He felt right. Their life together felt right. Hell, it was the life that she was supposed to lead. And Brandon was the man who she was supposed to be with, until death do us part. Except she’d been lying to herself these past three months. She hadn’t taken Brandon back because she loved him. She’d done it because she was nothing more than a great big wuss. Brandon was the easy choice. The safe choice. Not to mention so handsome and accomplished that there wasn’t a sister on the planet who wouldn’t trade places with her in a heartbeat. None of which counted for a damned thing, she realized now- when it was too late to make it right. But at the very least she could admit the truth to herself as she lay here in the Procters’ root cellar on this the last night of her short and unheroic life.
I should have stayed with Mitch.
Instead, she’d blocked out her feelings. Refused to recognize how happy she’d been with that tubby, schlubby Jewish man who’d spent most of his own life sitting in dark rooms staring at a wall. How desperately she’d missed him. Mitch Berger had been her soul mate. When they hooked up she finally became the woman who she’d always wanted to be. Someone who never had to hide a single feeling. Someone open, unafraid, confident, herself. Even now the doughboy was still inside of her. Just hearing from Bella that he’d be working in L.A. from now on with Miss Hawaii had been enough to floor her. And yet when he’d handed her his heart, free and clear, she’d wimped out. She who wasn’t afraid to walk into the line of fire.
God, what a mess I’ve made of everything.
And now she knew it. Now when she would never get the chance to tell Mitch how sorry she was. Because her time had run out. All Des had left were these last precious moments in this dark cellar where she could see things so very clearly. And maybe, before death came, take care of one final piece of personal business.
Des closed her eyes and she prayed.
CHAPTER 14
“Okay, we have to be really, really quiet now,” Molly gasped in his ear as they neared the edge of the woods. “Got it?”
“Got it,” Mitch whispered, his chest rising and falling from the dash they’d made across the Nature Preserve.
“We can’t use our flashlight either-these woods are crawling with Feds. But I know the path home. Just follow me. And try to stay down, will you?”
Into the darkened woods they plunged, hunkered low like two woodchucks in sneakers. Molly a silent, sure- footed creature of the night as she led them along the invisible footpath, her damp little hand clutching his. Mitch bringing up the rear blindly and not at all nimbly. He stumbled repeatedly over fallen branches and exposed tree roots. Fell to the ground more than once. But he found Molly’s hand and kept on going, nose to the dirt.
Thunder rumbled overhead. Off in the distance there was a flicker of lightning. The all-out summer downpour that ace storm tracker Jim Cantore had promised would soon arrive in Dorset. For now the night air remained warm, drizzly and dead calm. Mitch was drenched with sweat, mosquitoes feasting on him.
Molly had won out. He’d agreed to go along with her rescue plan. Hadn’t called Yolie. Hadn’t so much as thought about it. Des needed him. That was all that mattered. It meant everything in the world according to Mitch, which was to say the world according to MGM, RKO and the brothers Warner. When a woman from out of your romantic past needed you, you answered the call. So what if she’d broken your heart? If she was in danger you showed up. You didn’t wonder if it was the right thing to do. You didn’t hesitate. Did Cagney? Did Errol Flynn? Coop? The Duke? Hell no, pilgrim. Neither did Mitch Berger. Which explained why he was now dog-trotting his way through these woods with this strange, fearless little girl, armed only with a little flashlight that he couldn’t use, a pair of wire cutters and Saul Mandelbaum’s old Baby Terrier-the pocket-sized iron pry bar that his grandfather opened crates with back when he drove a produce truck to and from the Hunt’s Point Market.
Here was how Molly had laid out her plan before they left:
“Our root cellar has four air vents, see?” she explained as she made a quick sketch on a notepad at the table. The vents resembled small windows in the farmhouse’s foundation. Mitch’s place had similar such vents. “They’re covered on the outside with quarter-inch wire mesh to keep the little critters out. Under the wire there’s this inch- thick plywood vent cover that gets screwed into place from inside the cellar. We put the covers in over the winter to keep our pipes from freezing. Once spring comes my dad takes them off or the kitchen gets all mildewy. Except he was so messed up this year he forgot. So the vent covers are still on, okay?” Molly paused to finish her glass of milk, licking her upper lip clean. Bella offered her more. She politely declined. “I bet Clay and Hector have never noticed them,” she continued. “It’s dark down there. And it’s not their house. So why would they even care, right?”
“Right,” Mitch said, standing over her with his eyes on the notepad.
“Anybody who’s standing outside can see three of the vents.” Molly ticked them off one by one with her pencil. “This one in front. And this one that faces the driveway. And this one over here by the chimney. So forget them. The troopers will spot you right away and blow the whistle.” She grinned up at him. “But thefourth one faces the barn in back. And it’s underneath the deck my dad put in when he installed those French doors. It comes out sixteen feet from the back of the house and it’s raised twenty-eight inches off of the ground. That should give you okay head clearance. And the vent is twenty-two and a quarter inches wide by fourteen and three-eighths high.”
“Um, okay, just exactly how do you know that?”
“Because I measured them for my dad when he was cutting new plywood covers. The old ones leaked. They’re not all the same size, even though they look that way from a distance.” Molly studied Mitch with a critical eye. “The old you might have had trouble squeezing through it. But now that you’re Mr. Six-Pack Abs you shouldn’t
