There was a clatter as the shelves gave way and objects fell around the giant as he went down. Finn stood over him for a moment to make sure he wasn’t getting up before he turned to Casey, now curled up against the tunnel wall with a look of horror on her face. She was covered with dirt, her clothes filthy and her T-shirt torn. She’d never looked more beautiful.
“Are you all right?” he asked as he dropped down next to her.
She nodded and seemed to come out of her shock to throw her arms around his neck.
For a moment, he just held her tightly before lifting her to her feet. “We have to get out of here. We can’t go the way I came in. This way.”
He led her down through the underground tunnel, moving aside boards and debris that threatened to block their way. They both coughed, having breathed in so much of the dust that was only now starting to settle.
She could feel Finn’s anxiety and knew that, like her, he feared that they would reach a dead end or a cave-in and not be able to get out. Or, worse, that at any moment they could be buried alive down here.
Then in a dim overhead light she saw what was ahead and felt her heart drop. It was a dead end. Panic rose up in her like a primitive wail. She must have let out a cry, because Finn turned back to her. “Look, there’s a ladder up the side of the wall. That means there must be a trapdoor up there.”
She hadn’t seen the ladder. All she’d seen was the end of the tunnel.
“Stay here for just a minute,” Finn said.
She didn’t want to stay, but he was already climbing the ladder to try to open the trapdoor. That was when she heard movement behind them. Emery. He was coming. “Hurry,” she cried, even as Finn disappeared upward. She could hear him trying to force whatever was covering the exit. Heart in her throat, she could see more debris drifting down. With a final shove, he managed to get the cover to move a few inches, and she caught a glimpse of blue sky, sunshine and pine trees.
Her heart soared until she heard the rumble back down the tunnel. “He’s coming,” she cried, feeling the panic rising in her again as she looked around for something she could use as a weapon, but she saw nothing. She doubted she could fight Emery off again anyway. Just the thought of stabbing him again made her sick to her stomach. “Emery’s coming!”
Finn swore and groaned as he shoved harder, the trapdoor splintering as he threw his body into it. Sunlight poured down through the dust. She gasped in relief as Finn began to climb back down and reached for her hand. She started up the ladder, grasping for his hand, when she felt fingers lock around her ankle. She screamed and kicked with her free leg as she felt her hold on the ladder begin to give way. She heard one of her kicks connect. There was a loud snap like cartilage breaking, followed by an angry cry of pain.
She kicked again and felt the fingers release. Finn grabbed for her and pulled her up, pushing her through the hole left by the splintered trapdoor. She scrambled into the daylight and reached back for him.
Suddenly the ground beneath her began to shake again. She saw a flash of light in the direction of the hotel and heard what sounded like an explosion and then another.
Finn grabbed her hand, and she pulled him up through the opening and onto the dried pine-needle-covered earth beneath her. Then they were on their feet, running away from the tunnel. Behind her, she heard it begin to cave in.
They didn’t stop until they were a safe distance away. As they looked back, the tunnel continued to fall in on itself—and Emery.
Casey buried her face in Finn’s shirt as he took her in his arms and held her, whispering that she was all right now, that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her, that she was safe and that it was over.
Except Casey knew it wasn’t.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
LEROY LOOKED UP in surprise as Finnegan and Casey came out of the woods. The sky was filled with smoke and dust, still obscuring the area where the hotel had been. He rushed to them, seeing that they were covered in dust and dirt. “I thought you both were dead.”
“We almost were,” Finn said. “The tunnel caved in behind us. The man who took Casey didn’t make it out.”
“Emery Gray,” Casey said. “He got me out of the hotel before he blew the hotel up. Did everyone get out?”
Leroy nodded. “Emery?”
“He was the on-site maintenance man for years,” she said, her words coming faster. “He didn’t kill Megan. Or Claude. Or Devlin.”
“He told you that?”
She nodded and coughed, no doubt from all the dust. “He kept a notebook of the women he’d killed. I recognized the handwriting from one that Finn showed me he’d found in a notebook hidden in the hotel. He wrote down the names of every young woman and any information he had about them as if keeping a record for the parents when the day came that he’d have to confess what he’d done. His sister Vi knew. He said she told him not to write anything down, but he said he had to—for the women he’d killed.”
Leroy was shaking his head. “That doesn’t mean—”
“Marshal, I think you’d better listen to her,” Finnegan said.
“The person who killed Megan, Devlin and Claude, it wasn’t Emery,” she
