The man's rough arms lifted Harper off of Opal and tossed her back into the basement with less care than one would give a sack of flour.
Harper stumbled down the stairs, twisting her ankle. She howled in pain when she hit the concrete floor.
Again, finding herself in total darkness, she heard the lock secure once again at the top of the stairs.
Harper searched her body for her phone, but then she recalled having dropped it in the car.
She needed a plan to get out of here, and now she'd have to do it on one leg. Sitting up and gingerly examining her hurt ankle with her fingers, she winced in pain. She couldn't know for sure, but it felt like a sprain.
"Fucking hell," she muttered. "I need a plan to escape the fucking escape room. What the fuck is my life?"
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dash
His visit to the newspaper turned up next to no leads.
Greg had already told him that Harper had never shown up to work that day, so Dash should have known better than to barge in and start questioning people at random at the newspaper office.
However, as he left the Newcastle Dispatch building, he saw coming up the walk a well-dressed group of important-looking people who seemed to be on a mission. At the center of that group was someone everyone in Newcastle would know on sight: the mayor.
When he'd seen Harper speaking to the mayor at the escape room, Dash's memory from Friday propelled him to action. He waited in the lobby as the mayor's staff filed in through the door to the side of the revolving door. The mayor made the mistake of letting himself in through the revolving door, and when it rotated, Dash sprang into the mayor's compartment.
"Excuse me!" the mayor cried in confusion. Grabbing the mayor by the tie and dragging him around and back outside was a crazy thing to do, but Dash felt more and more desperate by the second. The momentary confusion of the mayor's staff, who was now inside the building, gave Dash only seconds to act.
"Have you spoken to Harper Ross today?"
"Who are you?"
Dash still held the front of the mayor's three-piece suit. "My name is Lynwood Fitzgerald, and I'm looking for my missing girlfriend. Harper Ross. Reporter, short, red hair, was talking to you on Friday morning at that event in Dockside. Have you seen or spoken with her today?"
Building security was now outside and closing in, along with the mayor's handlers.
The mayor spoke calmly and put up his hands. "If you take your hands off me right now, I'll answer your questions, and I won't press charges."
Two of the bigger security guards weren't interested in the mayor's leniency. They forcibly put distance between Dash and the mayor. "You're dead meat, asshole. Cops have been notified already."
The mayor smoothed down the front of his suit and put up his hands. "It's all right, boys. I'll talk to this man. He's a constituent and clearly in distress."
The older man possessed an innate ability to bring Dash's blood pressure back down to a simmer.
The mayor addressed Dash calmly and slowly, and Dash knew he was buying time for the cops to show up. "I came here to talk to the editor about the email that my office received on Friday from the young lady you're speaking of."
A police siren wailed from less than a block away. Dude, you're no good to her if you end up in jail.
Quickly, Dash asked the mayor what precisely the fuck he was talking about.
The mayor reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his phone, showing him the email from Harper that had been forwarded to him by an intern. Dash looked at the voice memo attachment and told the man to play it.
When he heard Harper's voice over the scratchy recording, Dash swallowed every urge to let his temper fly. "Your office has been sitting on this since Friday?!"
"I'm very sorry, but the email was received after my interns left on Friday evening. As you can imagine, the mayor's office inbox is quite full by Monday morning.
Dash scrubbed his face and thought. On the street, a patrol car had arrived.
He had one last chance. "Please, will you forward that to someone for me? The police won't search for her for another 48 hours. She's missing, and this man is my last hope."
The mayor looked at him for a beat too long. Two police exited the patrol car and approached, hands on their sidearms.
"It's okay!" the mayor cried out when one of them tackled Dash to the ground and sank a knee into Dash's back. Dash gritted his teeth, refusing to cry out in pain as the cop's knee threatened to crush his spine. Grit from the wet, cold sidewalk lodged into his face as a gloved hand held him in place by the throat.
"Boys, let him talk," the mayor said. "Son, where do I send this email?"
Dash told him the address and watched as the mayor sent the file to Mike's email address.
As the boys in blue hauled him to his feet and dragged him to a waiting patrol car, Dash's fears calmed a little. They were going to find Harper. He knew it.
And then, as they cuffed him and tossed him into the police vehicle, his whole body trembled with laughter. He couldn't help himself because at that moment, the fact hit him. Finally, after all these years, his mouthy little Dockside broad had been heard by City Hall.
Just too damn bad that, wherever she was, his poor Harper must have been terrified.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Harper
"Come down here and face me, chicken shits!"
Mad as a wet hen—both at her captors and at the ridiculous circumstance of being held at
