Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Freeze-Out
CLIFF
Disoriented from the blast and then from the fact that he had been on top of Jamie Frisco’s body moments ago, Cliff felt a little dizzy.
He pulled on his earlobe, willing his hearing to come back.
His ears had blown out. He helped Jamie up, steadied her, then put a finger in his right ear to jiggle it, and was harangued into the hallway that led to the restrooms. Cliff looked over, registered who it was, and stumbled along, surprised at the strength of Amber’s grip on his bicep as she urgently ushered him down the narrow hallway to the backroom.
“If there’s shit going down, I know a safe place to hide,” she said.
Cliff blinked and still slightly dazed said, “Wait. Where are we going?”
“Follow me.”
Cliff got his bearings and stopped in his tracks. He wrenched loose of her hold on his arm. “Wait a second. We don’t know what is going on. It could be dangerous. If that was a bomb, there could be an another one about to go off, some sort of attack, who knows?”
Cliff thought of Ott and wondered if he had something against him. Something worth detonating a bomb over. It was the only thing he could think of. “I want to get back to Jamie and the others,” he said.
Amber’s mood abruptly changed as she whirled around on him, her eyes full of growing fury. “I try to save you and you’re worried about that hussy?”
“What? No, I mean, yes, I’m worried about all of us. We don’t know what’s going on.”
“I see,” Amber said as she lowered her head. She took a deep breath. “Listen, can we at least talk for a minute? I’m really shaken up.” Her eyes went wide and suddenly she looked like a scared teenaged girl. Cliff instantly switched gears.
“Of course.” Cliff tempered his tone and put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”
Amber stepped aside and opened a heavy door. “Step inside here, it’s more private.”
Cliff stepped into what he recognized as a walk-in freezer.
A half side of beef hung from a large hook in the corner; various bulk containers of dairy products were on shelves.
Cliff could see his breath. Just as he turned to ask Amber if this was a good idea, he saw the door closing.
He rushed to try and stop it from clicking into place, but it was too late.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
He had literally walked right into this one.
Cliff tried to open the door from the inside, but it was no use. He heard another click. The madwoman had locked him in the freezer.
“Amber! Are you crazy? Let me out!”
He heard her muffled answer. “In order to restore things to their natural order, where men respect women, you need a time-out, Cliff.” He heard her jam something in the freezer door and then her low heels clicking as she walked away.
“Amber! Don’t do this!” He wrenched the door again to open it, but it would not budge. Even if it had some kind of safety mechanism, she had blocked it.
Dumbfounded that he had been trapped in a walk-in freezer at the hands of a deranged waitress, Cliff turned around and tried to think. How could he let this happen? He looked at his watch. “Shit,” he muttered. He had to get out of there, and fast.
Cliff looked around the walk-in freezer. A broom hung on a clip by the shelving unit. He removed it and tried to wedge the handle into the door hinge. It didn’t move. It was like trying to break out of a life-sized safe.
“Help! Get me out of here! Jamie! Amber! Rick! Anybody!” he yelled.
But even he knew his voice sounded muffled.
The others were likely still in shock from the blast, their ears ringing just as badly as his were.
He shook his head, still trying to clear the ringing, and tried to think of a way out.
His adrenaline started to wear off and he started to feel the temperature drop, the cold air blasting from a vent in the ceiling.
He just had to think. Could he break out of a safe, rather than into one?
As he rubbed his arms and legs to keep warm, he inspected the vent system on the ceiling more closely.
A fan whirred loudly. If cold air could get in, it meant warm air could get out.
A duct system. A way out. He grabbed the broom and jammed it up into the moving fan, the strength of it jarring his arms, but he held strong and the fan abruptly cranked to a stop.
He looked up through the size of the unit.
It was roughly Cliff-sized if he could shimmy his way into it.
Working quickly, he heaved one of the shelving units directly under the vent.
He climbed up, getting his footing on plastic buckets filled with chicken broth, and held on to a hanging side of beef as he reached for the edge of the ice-cold vent.
His stiffening fingers gained purchase and he grabbed the edge.
The seam didn’t give at first, then it came crashing down, hitting his head and sending him to the floor.
He felt a quick bolt of pain near his temple, then touched it and realized he was bleeding.
He grabbed a frozen lobster tail and held it against his head.
He sat there, taking a breath. This was a shit plan, but it was the only plan he had. Better than freezing to death.
As he sat there before his second attempt, Cliff noticed the walk-in freezer wasn’t much bigger than his cell back in prison.
He wondered not for the first time that week if freedom was too much for him.
Maybe he needed the constraints of jail to keep himself in line.
Maybe he belonged in a cage. Maybe there was no new beginning, just a glimpse of everything he could never have before being shoved back down in the hole.
Maybe he was what everyone thought he was after all, and his dream that he could let himself have while playing guitar with Paul was only that, a momentary fantasy.
His choices were what defined him, and that was the problem.
Scumbag.
He denied the word as it whispered around his brain. He took another look at his watch.
“Shit.” He had to get out of there.
Now.