Cellar Door

I’m what got him killed.

I squeeze my eyes shut against the painful thought. But the evidence is damning.

In my neurotic quest to find Hudson’s killer, I developed a loose theory for why he was murdered. And I dug in my heels stubbornly. I chewed on that one faint thread until the flavor was lost. The slightest, thinnest clue was the center of my wrecked world. But still I held on.

Myer Keystone Enterprise.

The case of the missing girl—the case that started my fixation and got my partner killed.

I exhale a shaky breath as I look up at the rafters. My gaze follows the beams to the seam where the wall meets the gray ceiling. I hear the thump. The muffled sound reverberates through the walls.

I’m so exhausted, I want to give up, but I can’t fail him again. I will my body to move. Against the aching weakness, I drag my feet, the chain scraping the slab. I grip the spike and breathe, clutching it to my chest, before I roll toward the cellar door.

Fatigued, I first trace my fingers over the cellar door, mapping the rough texture reverently. Attempting to find a crack. Any opening where I can wedge the damn tip of the spike.

This door is my beacon amid the darkness. It’s all I have in the way of hope.

Yet the seams are so perfect, creating one solid mass. I sniff back my annoyance, and try to wedge the tip beneath the door. I bear down on the spike until my palm burns.

With tears rimming my eyes, I fight back defeat. There’s something here. I can sense it on the other side. I try again to wedge the spike beneath the door, but it’s sealed air-tight. I curse and slam the point against the door, the loud clang tears through my sore head.

I beat it against the door in a fit of anger. I don’t stop until the stinging pain in my hands forces me to drop the spike.

It bounces against the concrete floor.

I slump along the door, breaths searing my chest, a tightness in my hands that now throbs with every accelerated heartbeat. One last act of defiance, I kick the stupid railroad spike. Who the hell has one of those anyway?

Psychopaths who murder innocent people in a ravine and lock women in their prefab cellars, that’s who.

I look at the inanimate spike lying on the slab.

The tiniest particles of the floor scraped free where it landed. Easton built this underground hell for a reason.

My heart thunders inside my chest, rocking me into motion.

I’m not physically strong enough to drive the stake through the slab…but I can scrape back layers. I can dig. I can discover what he buried underneath this hell.

As I try to grasp the spike, fiery pain spreads over my palm. I scramble toward my discarded bag and dump the clothes. I pick out a small T-shirt and wrap my hand once, then I angle the point along the slab like I’m filing it down, like I’m sharpening a knife.

That mental image sends a chill skittering across my skin with a flash of memory. Easton kneeling over Hudson, knife held to his throat.

The hunting knife Easton wears on his person. That he brings into this cellar.

I start scraping the floor.

I’m trapped in a stage between sleep and wakefulness. A state of sleep paralysis. Where I know if I can just open my eyes, I’ll wake up fully. My body feels like it’s in motion, like I’m being moved. I panic and try to shake myself out of the dream, but exhaustion and fatigue hold me under.

A shooting pain to my head rouses me completely, and when I sit up and gasp, I see the door opening. My foot blocks its path, and I scramble back as it groans wider and Easton enters.

My body still carries the weight of the dream, a cold awareness rushing over me as consciousness invades, and I realize where I am. I blink up at Easton. He’s watching me intently.

He presses his large hand to the door and forces it closed.

He holds a plate in one hand as he leans a corkboard against the wall. I stare at the board, trying to discern the pages tacked to the front.

He carries the plate toward me and sets a water bottle near my feet. “Here.”

The willful, resentful woman within me wants to kick the bottle. Watch it explode in his face. But I’m fading fast. To survive—if I want to survive—I need sustenance to live.