I remembered that his hands had been bound behind him with duct tape, as mine were now. It took me a while, but eventually I positioned myself so that we were lying back to back. He must have passed out again or fallen asleep by the time I reached his hands. A horrible third alternative occurred to me, and I called his name.
“What? Huh? Oh…Irene?”
“Try to stay awake, Max. I think you have a concussion. Talk to me while I try to get the tape off your hands.”
So he talked while I fumbled with his hands and tried to find an edge or end of the tape. His wrists had been bound much tighter than mine. I noticed his wristwatch was missing, and only then realized that my own was gone, too. While I worked at freeing him, he told me about Estelle, his adoptive mother. He told me about the military school, and about befriending the son of one of the instructors, a boy who was also a student at the school, of that boy’s family virtually adopting him into their own. His voice kept that sleepy quality. As I gradually started to work the tape off-a process that was not as easy as it looks on television-I urged him to keep talking. Every now and then I’d hear him start to drift off, and I’d yank a little harder, and he’d keep going. I began to wonder if he would pass out just as I got his hands free and be unable to help me.
But when that moment came, he was awake and fairly focused. I heard him let out a breath in the darkness. “Thank you,” he said. It took a little while for the circulation to return to his fingers. Both that and his head injury must have been painful, but he didn’t complain. He rolled toward me and, as soon as the numbness left his hands, tried to free mine.
It took him less time to return the favor, but undoubtedly longer than it would have if he hadn’t been injured. I spent a moment savoring the easing of the tension in my shoulders and back, then went to work on the tape around my ankles and helped Max to do the same.
We moved to our knees on the hard floor, staying close to each other, at first holding on to each other’s shoulders just to steady ourselves. Without speaking, we embraced in the darkness, held fast to each other in sheer relief. He felt strong and warm and good, and I could not help but think of how much worse it would have been if I had been there alone.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded against his shoulder. “Yes, and you?”
“I’m doing okay.”
“Dizzy?”
“A little. Weird in the dark.”
“I don’t think they took us far. I can still smell the ocean.”
“Yes, I can, too. Maybe we’re in the basement, just some part of it I haven’t explored yet. There was a laundry room and another storage area that I didn’t look into.”
“I guess we’d better try to find a way out of here before they come back to finish what they started.” I thought for a moment. “Maybe we should crawl along on all fours, shoulder to shoulder. Trying to walk might cause us to trip over objects we can’t see, or run into things, or fall into a pit or something.”
He agreed with this plan. It wasn’t the fastest or most comfortable way to move, and was especially hard on the palms and knees, but it seemed the safest.
Before long, we realized that the space we were in was long and relatively narrow, and its walls as well as its floor seemed to be made of concrete. The utter darkness made it hard to be sure of much, though. We decided to stay along one of the walls, thinking we’d eventually come to some kind of opening or stairway. I took the position along the wall, since Max seemed to be having difficulty keeping his balance.
We came to a turning and moved to our right.
A glimmer of light came from some distant source, and we could hear the sea. The dampness increased, but the air was fresher. I felt wisps of my hair brushing against my face with a breeze. I could hear sounds of surf and wind.
This cheered me immeasurably. It also relieved some of the disorientation I had been feeling in the pitch darkness of before. And where light could get in, maybe we could get out.
It suddenly occurred to me where we were. “The bootlegger’s tunnel.”
“What?”
I told him what O’Connor had told me about the passageways.
“Then this leads to the house or the beach, right?” he asked.
“My guess is, we’re nearer the beach right now. Let’s try to stand.”
We traded places so that he could lean his right hand against the wall. We took careful, shuffling steps forward. Eventually, I felt a change in the surface under my shoes. We were still walking on concrete, but there was something gritty on it-sand. The air continued to grow cooler and fresher.
We reached the end of the passageway. The light turned out to be moonlight, coming in through chinks in an opening sealed with a thick, iron-plated double-door. On our side, a wide iron bar secured with heavy padlocks held the doors shut. The other side of the doors seemed to be covered with a thick lacing of bougainvillea vines. The wind caused the bougainvillea’s sharp, needle-like thorns to scrape against the metal doors as if it wanted to come in out of the weather. We tried dislodging the bar, to no avail. We pushed against each of the doors. They didn’t budge. We called out again, but I could tell that no one was nearby.
Max sat down, leaning his back against one of the walls.
“Let me rest a little,” he said. “Then I’ll try to think of something.”
I felt around the hinges, which were on our side of the doors, but they seemed rusted in place. Next I looked at the bottom edge.
To my delight, the concrete floor came to an end five inches or so before it met the doors. I began to claw at the sand with my hands.
“What are you doing?” Max asked, coming closer to see. “We can’t fit between the doors and the concrete.”
“No, but I think I could get an arm out, and maybe wave something to attract attention. Plus, it might give us more light and air.”
“Or a better chance to be heard,” he said. “Let me help.”
He lasted five minutes before he passed out cold again.
48
F ORTY MINUTES AFTER THEY HAD DISCOVERED THE ROOM WITH THE bloodstains, Lefebvre and the rest of the LPPD were making every effort to find Max and Irene. O’Connor tried-and failed-to comfort himself with that thought.
The “be on the lookout” order for what Lefebvre had since admitted to him was Eric Yeager’s black BMW had been expanded to all local jurisdictions-an all-points bulletin saying that Eric and Ian Yeager were wanted for questioning in connection with an assault and kidnapping.
The crime lab team was at work on the shoe print, bloodstains, latent prints, and other forms of evidence from the scene.
Matt Arden was on his way, with another detective, to talk to Mitch Yeager. When O’Connor asked Lefebvre if Arden would have the balls to pressure Yeager, Lefebvre laughed. “Matt? He’s wanted to have a go at Yeager for a long time now.”
“Why?”
“You think you’re the only one who believes Mr. Yeager isn’t as respectable as he’d like everyone to believe? Besides, Eric and Ian have been thumbing their noses at the department for years. Skating just so close, just managing to keep clear of an arrest.”
“Paid-off witnesses and the like. No need to tell me.”
“You can trust Matt. He’s good at interrogation, you know.”
“I hear you’re better.”
“I learned from him, that’s all.” One of the uniformed officers came up to him just then and said that Haycroft
