Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Penny
C alvin pulls me out of the bathroom before I have the door completely open.
"Down these stairs." He guides me, not entirely gently, to a set of steps hidden under a trap door that's concealed in the bedroom floor.
"You go through the door at the bottom and you hit the red button on the other side. Hear me?"
My brain spins to process what's happening. We went from making love and planning dinner to Calvin barking orders at me like I'm one of his men on a mission.
He must see the fear in my features because he softens, but only a bit.
"It's a panic room. It's got everything you need to stay safe-- and hidden. I want you to hit that lock and don't move until I come for you. Understand?"
I'm hesitantly making my way down the stair case into a dim green glow coming from the bottom that's somehow scarier than walking into pure darkness.
"Is that smoke?"
The smell hits my nostrils. It's not the comforting smell of wood fire burning in the fireplace, or the smokiness of campfire, it's laced with something acrid and it just smells-- wrong.
"It's okay, it's already out, but I have to take care of this and I can't do that until I know you're safe. Go. Lock the door. Don't come out."
He leans to kiss me and uses the distraction to extract my death grip from his arm.
"I love you, Penny. I'm coming back, I promise."
Numbly, I nod, desperate for him to come with me and understanding why he can't. This is why I came to him, after all.
Cal waits till he sees me get through the thick door frame at the bottom of the stairs, he motions to the wall just inside the space I've walked into and I find a large button glowing a dull orangish-red in the gloom.
I press it while I'm still staring up at Calvin's hardened expression and jump back in surprise as a heavy, metal door closes between us.
Soft white light replaces the eerie glow, revealing a surprisingly cozy space considering it's completely sealed off from the outside world above.
I can't hear anything from outside and after exploring what little there is to see, there's not much left to do but find a book on the shelf and settle into the only chair in the room to pretend to read.
A clock hangs on one wall, ticking far more steadily than my heartbeat.
I look at the door that trapped me away from Calvin and whatever made him send me in here, wondering if I can even get out if I need to.
A phone rings somewhere in the room with me.
The harsh jangle of an old fashioned land line like my grandparents used to have when I was little. It sounds muffled, but insistent, and definitely inside this room with me.
It doesn't take much effort to find the thing hidden behind a panel in the wall.
"Hello?"
"Is Murdock with you?"
A man's voice crackles over what I assume is a landline.
I don't recognize the voice and given how fast everything has gone from zero to a million today; I don't know what I should tell him.
"Ma'am?"
"Who is this?"
"I'm Air-- Is this Penny? Penelope Cook?"
Of course, I nod like an idiot. Then remember he can't hear that and manage to add a squeak of affirmation.
"Penny, this is Harlan Frost. Is Calvin with you?"
Of course, I don't know him, but Harlan's name is a familiar one and it's all it takes to turn me into a blubbering mess.
"Helo, ten! Find lenmmpph...."
The man on the other end of the line shouts away from the receiver. I catch only a couple of words that don't make sense to me before he must muffle the transmitter, then there's a few more sounds before he comes back on the line.
"Penny. Don't move. If Cal comes back, tell him to wait on us."
The line goes dead and I'm left alone with my thoughts again.
Calvin
T he cabin isn't exactly high tech, but it's got its touches.
The panic room is just a buried shipping container, but the doors are state of the art.
The exterior walls are thick and lined with bullet proofing, and the siding is treated with a flame retardant-- which is why it was easy enough to douse the kerosene that been splashed on the porch before the flames were able to get a good bite on the structure itself.
Other than that, the place was just built like a damn fortress.
Which tells me Frost is into higher stakes cases than I'd thought-- with a much better budget than he had the last time I heard about it.
Studying the burn marks on the side of the cabin, it doesn't look like our guy was actually trying to burn the place down. Maybe he hoped to smoke us out but if that was the case, I'd have expected him to jump me as soon as I stepped outside.
The forest is a dark and still as forests get.
I step away from the cabin and peer into the woods around us, letting my eyes fully adjust to the night's moonless dark.
We're far on the other side of the Weeping Wilderness now; that stretch of dense woods with all the crazy folklore distracting people from the possibility that it could be providing cover for real criminal activity.
The bike was a good choice for getting us through, narrow and nimble enough to make it over what's left of the old road.
I've got a new appreciation for the plans to reopen that path now, but planning how we'll do that is a project for another time-- one when Penny's safe in our home with my baby growing inside her, not locked in a basement panic room with a crazed lunatic stalking us like prey.
Right now, all my attention is focused on eliminating that crazed lunatic from the equation.
The earth up here is soft, with vegetation cleared near the cabin and a brief stretch of grassy meadow spanning the distance into the forest.
At first glance, I don't see the telltale signs of human intrusion; the dropped items, or careless footprints that people leave behind when they aren't aware of how easy it is to tell they've been there.
I didn't find any indication that this guy ever served, but there's more ways to develop skills than the military-- looks like our guy Keith might have gone one of those routes.
He should have gone further; it only takes a little more time-- and doing my best to get my personal feelings out of my way-- to notice where the high grasses of the starlit meadow show a trail where they've been recently trampled.
Once I spot the trail through the meadow, the rest of his path comes into focus.
Now I'm thinking the fire was a distraction, maybe a way to get me out here, get us separated so Penny would be alone.
Fucker doesn't know about the hidden room under the floorboards of what looks more like someone's hunting cabin than a carefully designed safehouse.
Going into a trap knowing it's a trap, doesn't mean it's not still a trap.
Judging by the care that was put into hiding his trail, I'd say he's not expecting me to follow him, so that's what I'm thinking of doing-- right up until I notice a second path through the meadow where someone else has circled around the meadow and approached the cabin from the woods on the other side.
Judging from the difference in the way the meadow's been trampled, it wasn't the same person.
It hadn't occurred to me that the asshole had friends. Not the sort that would help him stalk and possibly harm an innocent woman, at least, let alone trail that woman and old SEAL out to a cabin in the middle of the woods.
"Old" is exactly what the punks are probably thinking about me. Hell, I left the SEAL team years before I retired from the service-- looks like they aren't expecting a guy in his fifties who can still break their spines without breaking a sweat.
But it does have me reassessing the situation I'm in.
I find him lurking on the other side of the cabin, standing on his toes trying to get a look through one of the high-placed windows but they're too high for him. Going with the notion that he'll hang himself if I give him the rope, I keep to the shadows and wait to see what he does next.
Sure enough, he enters the cabin. So he knows I'm not inside.
A few minutes later, he rushes out and sprints for the woods.
After a count of three, I follow, all too aware that I'm unarmed, alone, and don't know what I'm walking into.