him a Buck knife and Jack used it to pry the first board up from the floor. Beneath it was indeed the o-ring metal loop to a trap door.
They all helped pull the remaining slats of wood up, and in the space of a few short seconds, the door was uncovered.
At that moment, the back door to the kitchen, which was connected to the back porch, rocked in its frame. Someone was slamming into it from the other side.
Jack jerked the metal loop upward, revealing the dark space below. Annabelle wasted no time in leading the rest of the team down the connected metal ladder into the darkness. She took the rungs quickly, holding on to the sturdy sides even as she still held on to something in her right hand.
“There’s a light switch on the left,” Jack told her as her head disappeared below and Cassie was the next to descend.
Annabelle felt along the dark wall for the switch, found it, and flicked it on. It worked like a charm, lighting up the underground chamber. A connecting tunnel lit up as well, portions buzzing to life one after another.
Soon, the entire group was down the ladder and once Jack and Sam had both made it down as well, the two worked together, turning toward the ladder and grabbing hold of it to slide it along two connected metal rungs to steel couplings on the other side of the trap door hole.
Annabelle was highly impressed with the mechanism. The ladder drew a thick metal sheet behind it and then locked firmly into place, sealing off their passage so that no one could follow them down.
“It’s bullet proof, right?” She found herself asking, simply needing to be sure.
“It was taken and compiled from the sides of a German King Tiger Tank,” Jack answered, shrugging slightly. “So I can’t personally vouch for it. Germans, and all.”
Annabelle breathed a sigh of relief, but Sam and Jack didn’t give them time to get comfortable.
“Keep moving,” Sam urged, and Jack spun Annabelle around to face the corridor that led off to God-only- knew-where. The lot of them ran down the corridor, and before long, the reverberating sounds of metal upon metal followed them through the man-made tunnel. The bad guys were trying to get through.
There were no turn-offs or tributaries the way there had been with the corridors beneath Buell Hall and Columbia. Instead, the escape route led them about a quarter of a mile straight ahead, and then curved slightly to the left.
Here, the air grew cooler and the carved-out walls more damp and Annabelle wondered if they were bordering a river. At one point, they passed under a small steel door, set into the cement ceiling of the tunnel. They kept going, past this door, and Annabelle couldn’t help but question what it was. And, with the darkness and dampness and the low ceiling above them, she also couldn’t help but wonder how Jack was holding up.
She glanced back at him. At once, she caught sight of the blood that had seeped through the bandages around his midsection and left thigh. Her heart leapt into her throat. He wasn’t healed enough yet for all of this.
They traveled a distance further before the tunnel ended in a steel door. It looked like the kind you’d find in a submarine, with the giant wheel used to pry the door open.
There was a circuit breaker box on the wall beside the door, and next to the box was a strange key pad. Jack popped the door open on the box and ripped out every wire, leaving them dangling free. The lights went out. No one moved.
In the darkness, Annabelle could hear Jack and probably Sam working on the wheel of the submarine door. Far down the tunnel, in the darkness they’d left behind, there was an explosion. It rocked the corridor and particles of dirt and rock fell from the ceiling above them to skitter across the ground.
And then Jack had the metal door open and light streamed into the tunnel. No one wasted any time climbing up out of it. Jack stayed behind long enough to turn back to the key pad on the wall and punch in a series of numbers.
Then he, too, climbed up through the exit and he and Sam swung the door shut behind them. It automatically sealed itself tight, emitting a slight popping noise as it did so. From beyond it, Annabelle could hear the sound of sudden, rushing water.
“You flooded the tunnel,” she stated. It wasn’t a question. She was simply recalling the metal door in the ceiling that they had run underneath when things had gotten more damp and cold. It must have been an opening to a body of water above them.
“Yes,” Jack said simply, and they all stood up to look around.
They were in a ditch next to a taller mound of dirt, covered with vegetation of different kinds. Annabelle pressed against the mound of dirt and climbed up, peeking her head over the edge. Before she even looked, she knew what she would find.
Blue water stretched out before her, and in the distance, she could see the trees that surrounded Jack’s mansion. They’d just tunneled underneath a small lake.
“Cor, tha’s bloody brilliant, da’,” Clara said from where she’d climbed up beside Annabelle.
Behind her, Jack leaned against the opposite mound of dirt and watched Annabelle climb back down the other side. She was still holding something in her right hand. She’d been holding on to it ever since her escape from beneath the bed during the grenade attack.
Though he was practically dizzy with pain and waning adrenaline, his curiosity got the better of him. “Bella, what have you got in your hand?”
Annabelle turned and straightened and then looked down at the smudged bit of white in her right palm. She carefully dusted it off and unfolded it, revealing two small booklets of Wild season tickets. She gave a small shrug and, without looking back up at him, she said softly, “I really wanna go.”
Sam’s boat settled into a rhythmic bouncing motion as it rode the waves of New York’s harbors. Annabelle could tell that they were headed back in the direction they’d originally come, but Jack was being particularly close- mouthed about their next destination.
She chalked it up to exhaustion and blood loss and tried to relax.
Poor Reese had been let out of his trunk days ago and had been under close guard by Sam’s men on the boat, in the open water. Jack wanted him alive for questioning, and Sam had to agree it was a good idea, as long as Reese was in the middle of a vast expanse of murky water, unable to either retrieve or give away information that might put Jack and their group in any further danger.
For the most part, they’d kept the assassin drugged up. It gave Annabelle chills to think of how many times they must have stuck needles into his arms. Still, she realized it was probably the best way. He wouldn’t fight if he was asleep, and the men guarding him could take breaks to use the restroom and eat. It made sense. It was just creepy.
Right now, the well-dressed balding man was seated on the very trunk he’d been trapped in several days before. He still wore his suit and wool trench coat, though his attire had taken some understandable damage. His glasses were also missing.
His wrists were secured behind his back in a pair of metal cuffs that Annabelle had never seen before. They were smooth, devoid of key holes or notches and she wondered how the hell they came off and on.
The rest of them were standing more or less on the opposite side of the cabin, except for Craig, who’d gone to use the boat’s tiny restroom, and Beatrice and her daughter, who were seated side by side on the ship’s prow, holding on to the railing as they enjoyed the roller-coaster-like rise and dive of the boat’s movement over the waves.
It looked like a lot of fun, actually, and Annabelle would have joined them if it hadn’t been for her shoulder. The sprain hurt a little more today than it had yesterday and she wasn’t sure she could hold on to the railing tight enough to keep from going overboard.
The others were busy talking about Max’s suicide letter. Annabelle wasn’t sure whether she was toning out because she really wanted to go and ride the waves or because she didn’t actually want to talk about Max.
Either way, when she mentally rejoined them, Dylan was sulking on one of the attached wooden and metal stools beside the captain’s table. His expression said that he had once more surrendered to his deeper thoughts.
“They certainly messed up the suicide, itself,” Cassie was saying. “It’s really hard to kill yourself with
