th
die . . . silence flows
through.
the
ceiling
like sky
Chapter Ninety-Nine
Kiersten
Maybe the thumping of her heart would serve as a signal ... a beacon ... a distress call ...
Helpme.Helpme.Helpme.
A feeble hope, but the only hope she had left.
She’d been down on her hands and knees, digging through the ancient boxes filled with emergency supplies, searching for a weapon of some kind. A shovel. A knife. A tool to dig under the door, out of the basement.
She found a spoon, a can opener, a corkscrew. These tools would have to do.
Tiny pebbles of concrete cascaded down the wall, and she looked up. Then someone pushed a flexible black rubber tube downward, through the hole in the ceiling.
It’s happening again.
Peggy’s words reverberated through her mind.
She grasped the end of the tube and tugged hard, just as Dottie had done with the blanket. The person above pulled back harder, and the tube slipped from her hands.
The person in the garage readjusted it, leaving it flush with the opening in the ceiling. Not enough pipe to tug on, but enough to channel the carbon monoxide directly into the fallout shelter from the exhaust pipe of the unseen car.
Panic clawed at the edge of her mind. She dug her nails into her palms.
Stop. Stop. Stop. Think. Think. Think.
How long had she been down here? What time was it?
She checked her phone. She’d been gone for over an hour. She’d left her purse sitting on the front seat of her car with her keys. Surely they’d start looking for her soon?
She’d taken the diaries out of Margaret’s black Queen Elizabeth purse and hidden them and the scorecards with Dottie’s last words inside a game of Monopoly, beneath the money and the gameboard. Then she placed everything back where it had been for the last sixty years, the board games obscured by candles, first aid supplies, and rusting canned goods.
Margaret—or Peggy, as she preferred to be called—had curled up on the cot in the corner, as tiny and vulnerable as a child taking a nap.
Kiersten adjusted the woolen blanket she’d spread over Peggy when she’d started shivering from the cold in the underground bunker.
What had Peggy’s life been like, all these years, shackled to a monster like Dickie?
Suddenly, the muffled sound of voices came from the garage above. “Just stick it through and connect the hose to the back of your car,” someone said.
“Chip!” she yelled. “Is that you?”
The voices lowered to a whisper, followed by silence.
Then, minutes later, the locks on the outside of the door began to rattle. The dead bolt clattered back.
