“Jonathan! He’s just arrived home, and if he sees you’re here—”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”
Wolf ushered me from the office, still rolling himself along in the chair. “Take my word. He would mind. Not the main door!” he hissed as I headed for the exit. “Take the back way!”
He slid back what I thought was a glass window—you could see the Chicago skyline through it—and revealed a dark staircase just wide enough for one person.
“It will lead you down a few floors,” Wolf said. “Then you can take the elevator back to your room. Go, go!”
He pushed me into the hidden hallway and slid the fake window back into place. My heart pounded as darkness fell.
10
Blackness pressed against my eyes as my toes slipped over the edge of the first step. I gasped and backed up, pressing my spine against the wall behind me. The bricks shifted, threatening to give way. I willed myself to take a deep breath and calm down. Never before had I been claustrophobic, but I had also never been trapped in a hidden stairwell at the very top of an old building.
Once I managed to get a hold of reason, I wormed my phone out of my pocket and turned on the light. It was a good thing I hadn’t tried to navigate the staircase blindly. The LED illuminated a set of deep steps, so deep that they disappeared into the darkness. Each one was coated in a layer of slime and mildew. With extreme caution, I lowered myself along.
The passageway had no windows and no doors. I kept one hand on the damp wall, to steady myself and to feel for discrepancies in the architecture. No other entrances gave themselves away, not until my ankles began to ache from the pressure of moving downward.
The stairway ended so abruptly that I almost ran into the brick wall. For one brief, heart-stopping second, I couldn’t find the door. Then I noticed a narrow groove etched into the wall. I fit my fingers into it, pushed and pulled, but the door didn’t budge. My heart rate quickened.
Panicking, I jiggled the door in every direction and discovered it slid open to the left. I practically fell out of the hidden passageway and into a vending room. In my haste to get out, I bumped my shoulder against the ice machine. When I slid the secret door shut, it clicked into place. It couldn’t be opened from the outside.
In the hotel hallway, sweating and shaking, I made my way to the elevator. The passageway had spit me out on the twenty-fifth floor. I’d walked down twelve flights of stairs. My legs shook like Jell-O.
As I rode the elevator to my room on the fourteenth floor, I pulled up the blueprints I’d studied in the museum downstairs. Squinting past the glare, I zoomed in on the penthouse details.
The secret passageway was not marked on the drawings.
As I reached my room, a bout of giggling erupted from the opposite end of the hallway. I hurriedly swiped my key card, hoping to get inside before the bridesmaids or anyone else spotted me. The light on the key reader flashed red. Groaning, I swiped again.
“Jack!”
Marie and Ned, it turned out, were the source of the giggling. They emerged from their room, holding each other around the waist, cheeks pink and flushed.
“We’re playing hooky,” Marie announced. “I wanted to thank you for arranging our escape earlier.”
“It took our parents hours to track us down,” Ned added. “I can’t thank you enough. We needed a break.”
“No problem.” I flashed my card again. The reader turned green. I made to step into the room but doubled back. “Wait, where’s Evelyn?”
Marie and Ned exchanged a confused look.
“She’s not with you?” Marie asked.
“We were together earlier,” I explained. “But she got a phone call. She said you needed her for another wedding errand.”
Marie shook her head. “I didn’t call Evelyn. Ned and I have been in our room all morning.”
Hurt and confusion pulled at my heartstrings. Evelyn had lied to me again, after promising she never would. Marie sensed my distress. She shoved Ned along, and he returned to the room while Marie stood by me.
“Is everything okay between the two of you?” she asked. “I’m sensing a rift.”
For some inexplicable reason, my eyes grew hot with tears. Furious, I wiped them away. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“Hey,” she said softly, taking my shoulder. “Evelyn does this. She gets secretive and weird sometimes. Hell, she’s hardly helping with the wedding.”
“She’s not helping?”
“Barely,” Marie said. “I don’t take offense, and you shouldn’t either. She’s done this since she was a kid.”
“Not to me,” I said. “She always told me what was happening in her life. I don’t know why that’s changed all of a sudden.”
Marie cupped my cheek like a loving mother. “You should talk to her about it. Make her sit down and tell you what’s really going on.”
“I’ve tried. She won’t—”
“Evelyn loves you,” she said firmly. “She loves you more than anyone else. That might include me,” she added with a sad smile. “You should cherish that. Not many people have earned Evelyn’s full affection. Be patient with her. She’ll come around.”
My throat too tight to speak, I nodded. Marie squeezed my shoulder once more before skipping back to her room. I watched as Ned pulled her inside. Another giggle echoed down the hallway before their door closed.
Emotional exhaustion overtook me, and I napped in the loft for a solid two hours. Evelyn did not return from whatever wayward errand she’d sent herself on, and my heart dropped deeper into my stomach. For another hour, I numbly flipped through TV channels and felt sorry for myself. I grabbed my phone and navigated to my text message history with Evelyn.
Where are you?
No reply came. The minutes dragged by, and as each one passed, my sadness evolved into anger. Why was I sitting around moping in my room,
