Okay, fine, the candle was actually the number “5” and it had dried frosting on its foot, the forgotten marker of someone who was that age. Or 15. 25. 35 . . .
Pinching the bottom of the number between his fingers, he was careful going down the rough staircase.
Well . . . what do you know. There was a candelabra on a stand right at the base, as if the owners had had their electricity go off a lot and wanted to be prepared. Using the 5, he lit the cobwebbed four-arm and felt like Vincent Price as he moved the anchored flames around.
Fabric, everywhere. And tubs, which he assumed were for dyeing. Also long tables that looked like they’d been built in the cellar from assembled wood.
“Pretty fucking perfect.”
Putting the candles down, he gathered up bolts and bolts of fabric, and shook them out to make a soft bed. He chose behind the stairs as a location—so that if anyone descended the steps during the day, Rio’d have time to hear it and be ready to shoot whoever it was.
She would be safe here—at least that was what he told himself.
And he wasn’t going to be gone long.
At least not while it was still dark out.
The next time Rio woke up, she was stretched out on a bed in a candlelit room. As she went to sit up, the world spun around so she laid back on the mattress.
Except it wasn’t a mattress. It was . . . heavy sheets. Layers and layers of—no, fabric, like you’d find at a Jo-Ann’s, all kinds of different patterns, weights, and colors.
Totally disorientated, she tried to see beyond the halo of golden light thrown by the grouping of candles. Where the hell was she—
It all came back in a waterfall: The white-haired man with the switchblade coming at her as she was bound and gagged on the floor. The dog attack. Luke freeing her and carrying her out to a car. This abandoned house, which she had a hazy recollection of being moved into.
Now she was here, in the cellar, on this bed of multi-colored fabric—
Voices up above. Now footsteps that made dust fall from the boards over her head.
A door opening and a beam of light piercing down the steps ahead of her. “Rio, it’s me.”
At the sound of Luke’s voice, she shuddered in relief—and became aware that she’d lifted up a gun and pointed it at the open-board stair-case in front of her.
The reality that he hadn’t left her undefended meant that he, and anybody with him, did not intend to hurt her. But considering how much rescuing he’d been doing over the last little bit, did she really still doubt his savior act?
Then again, old habits of self-protection died hard.
“I’m here,” she said in a rough voice.
“I have help.”
There was a pause, and then she saw his legs at the top of the rough wooden stairs. She knew they were his because he was wearing those strange, tight, too-short black pants—and through the open frame of the stairs, she watched him take things one step at a time. Was he injured?
No. He was helping someone in a tan-colored robe, someone who seemed to have bad balance.
It was slow going.
And when he was finally on the concrete floor, he put out his arm for whoever was with him and brought them around, into the light . . . oh, so it was a limp, the person had a limp, a bad one—and their whole head and body were covered, nothing showing of the face, a mesh drape hiding the features.
“She’s here to help you,” Luke explained.
Rio glanced at him, needing to refresh everything she knew about his face, his body, his energy. In the flickering light, he looked ferocious and his body seemed huge. Next to him, the robed figure was slight and came up to his pecs.
It was a woman under there, Rio thought.
“Will you allow me to examine you?”
The voice was, in fact, female, and also smooth as silk, and for some reason, Rio pictured whoever was under there as having long, dark hair.
“I got hit on the head,” Rio said on a mumble.
“So I may examine you?”
The accent was odd, a mixture of French and something Romanian. Not that she was a linguist.
“Sure.”
She didn’t even bother to ask whether the woman was a doctor or a nurse. Or a vet. Anything was better than nothing, and it was not safe for her to be seen at so much as a doc-in-the-box. Mozart had resources everywhere in and around Caldwell—
“You’re a nun,” Rio blurted as she put the gun aside. “That’s what you are.”
As the woman lowered herself down onto the edge of the fabric pile, she relied heavily on Luke’s arm—and then addressed him. “You will leave us now, and allow me your flashlight. Thank you.”