5. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
H e should have listened to her.
Tony realized they should have taken the steps. He inwardly groaned. Why was it that hindsight was always twenty-twenty?
He thought the elevator would give them a chance to talk in private. There was an awkwardness between them that hadn’t been there when they’d been kids. He missed the easiness they used to share.
And now every time he was around Lily, he never knew what to say to her. She was by far the most beautiful woman on the island with her big brown eyes with gold flecks and her smooth golden brown complexion that looked as though it had been kissed by the sun.
However, none of that mattered now that they were stuck in this elevator. Lily had a death grip on his hand. His fingers were starting to lose their feeling.
Lily released his hand as she moved away from him. Her gorgeous face had paled considerably. “I’m sorry for falling into you. Are you all right?”
As he stood upright, he noticed pain across his back where it had slammed into the handrail. But she didn’t need to know about that. He didn’t want her to feel bad. “Uh, yeah. I’m fine. How about you?”
“Thanks to you, I’m fine.” Her gaze moved to the control panel. “Why aren’t we moving?”
“I don’t know.” He wished he had a better answer for her.
She moved to the panel and started pressing buttons. The elevator still didn’t move. “We have to get out of here.” She stabbed her finger at one button after the next. “Work!”
He stepped up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. In a calm voice, he said, “That’s not helping.”
She continued pressing the buttons, as though she hadn’t heard him. “Why isn’t anything working? Was there a power outage?”
“The light wouldn’t be on if we lost power.” His hands wrapped around her upper arms and pulled her away from the control panel. “We don’t want to make our situation worse by breaking something else.”
She swung around and faced him. “How can it get any worse?” Panic flashed in her eyes. “We’re stuck in an elevator.”
But they would be all right. There wasn’t any reason to think they wouldn’t. He said the first thing he could think of to try to comfort her. “People get stuck in elevators all of the time.”
She sent him a doubtful look. “This is your fault. You should have listened to me and taken the stairs.”
Since he agreed with her, he remained silent.
He actually didn’t use the old elevator very often.
He preferred to use the stairs, since he sat at his desk for far too long attending meeting after meeting.
He would prefer to get out of the office more and interact with his constituents, but those meetings were how he helped to improve Bluestar.
He wished he could find some sort of happy middle ground.
She turned back to the doors and resumed pounding. “Help! We’re stuck. Help! Can anyone hear me?”
Her panicked reaction led him to believe she had claustrophobia. And he had absolutely no idea how to help her. But banging on the doors wasn’t helping.
“Lily.” When she continued to pound on the doors, he raised his voice. “Lily!”
She turned to him. Her breathing was quick and shallow. “Help me. We have to get out of here.”
“Let me call for help.” He held up his phone.
“Oh, yes. That will help.” She leaned back against the wall.
He had his assistant, Theo, programmed into his phone. He pressed the button, but the call didn’t go through. How could that be? He lowered his arm to look at the screen.
“What’s wrong?”
He immediately saw the problem. “I don’t have a signal.”
“What? That can’t be right.” She pulled out her phone. She held it up. She moved all around the car. “I don’t have a signal either.”
“It must be the car. The walls are all metal. It’s blocking the signal.”
Her slim shoulders drooped. “How long until someone notices the elevator is stuck?”
He didn’t have anything positive to tell her, so he averted his gaze while quietly shrugged his shoulders.
“Don’t do that,” she warned. “How long until they find us?”
He restrained a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know. Most people use the steps—”
“Like I wanted to do.”
He ignored the I-told-you-so tone in her voice. “And when people do go to use the elevator, they get frustrated waiting for it and just use the steps.”
“What about the maintenance man? He’s supposed to meet us at Aster’s office. When we don’t show up, he’ll tell someone, right?” There was a gleam of hope in her eyes. “And they’ll come searching for us.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe.”
“ Maybe.” Her voice rose in pitch. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That Joseph has been around a long time. He knows I get pulled away quite often. I’ll start in one direction and something urgent will pull me in another direction. He’ll probably wait a few minutes, and when we don’t show up, he’ll just move on to whatever is next on his schedule.”
“And that’s it?” Her voice was raised, and it was quite loud in the small elevator car. “No one is going to notice that we’re stuck in this”—she glanced around—“in this tin can.”
She was right. If they were going to get out of there any time soon, they were going to have to rescue themselves or at least figure out a way to call for help.
His gaze immediately moved to the two metal doors. He didn’t think they had much chance of prying them open without any tools, but it wasn’t going to stop him from giving it a try.
He moved toward the doors and then signaled for her to follow him. “Step over here, and let’s see if we can get these doors open.”
Lily sent him a look of disbelief. “I think we’d have better luck with the control panel.”
He frowned at her. “Just stand on one side, and see if you can get your fingers between the doors.”
He tried, but his fingers were too big to fit in such a narrow crack. He could only hope her slender fingers would fit.
Lily slipped her fingers between the doors. “Now what?”
“Pull.”
She widened her stance and then began pulling. She groaned, and her face turned red as she pulled with what looked to be all of her might, but the doors didn’t so much as budge.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re going to have to come up with another plan.”
He looked all around the car for something he could use as a pry bar, but there was nothing. Then he moved to the control panel. It was old; therefore, it might have a secret panel with a telephone behind it. He poked and prodded but there was nothing to help them.
“Look up there.” Lily pointed to a hatch in the top of the car. “It looks like we’re going to have to go up.”
He shook his head. “There’s also a big sign that says do not open.”
“Who cares what it says? It’s a way out of here.”
He shook his head. “There’s a reason it says that. What if we open it and make things worse?”
“How can they get any worse? We’re stuck in an elevator, and no one knows we’re here.” She jumped up and missed touching the hatch by a mile. “You try it.”
He reached above his head. He couldn’t reach. Even when he lifted up on his tiptoes, he was at least an inch too short.
“That’s not going to work,” she said. “Give me a hand. I want to see if we can get that door open.”
He sent her a hesitant look. He knew all too well what could happen when you didn’t follow the rules. When you least expected it, bad things could—and would—happen.
“Mr. Mayor, we are doing this.” Her voice brooked no argument. “Now, how are we going to get me up there?”
“You can stand on me.” It was a good thing he got up extra early every weekday and went to BYL (Beach Yoga Love). The facility had recently expanded by adding a room with workout machines and weights. Who knew he’d been in training to help get them out of a stuck elevator?
Weight lifting was one of his favorite routines. He was going to need all of that built-up strength for this.
“How much do you weigh?” he asked.
“What?” She looked appalled that he would ask such a thing. “I’m not telling you that.”
“I just want to be sure I can lift you. Come on, Lily. Work with me.”
She hesitated, but then she revealed her weight. He felt confident he could do this without hurting either of them. He took off his bowtie and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he undid the top two buttons on his shirt.
“We can do this one of two ways. First, take off your shoes.” When she sent him a hard stare, he said, “Just trust me. Can you do that?”
With a huff, she took off her shoes. “Now what?”
“Now I’m going to lace my hands together, and you’re going to step on them. I’m going to lift you upward. You see if you can pop the hatch.”
She sent him a doubtful look. Still, he squatted down, careful about how he positioned his back so he didn’t pull anything. He laced his hands together, and then she placed her foot on his hands. Man, this looked so much easier when they did it on television.
Even though she didn’t weigh that much for her height, having all of her weight funneled down into one foot, it took all of his strength and concentration to lift her.
“You’re moving too much.” Her hand pressed to his head.
“Stand still,” he grunted.
“Quit jerking me around. I keep losing my balance. Let me try with my other leg.”
They tried this way and that way, but after a few tries, they knew it wasn’t going to work.
He was winded, and she was frustrated. He knew one other way to get her up there.
He didn’t like the idea, because it wouldn’t be easy on him.
But he didn’t see how they had any other choice.
Waiting for someone to notice they were missing and then for them to figure out that they were in the elevator, well, it would take a very long time.
He glanced over at Lily as she tried once more to make the buttons on the control panel work.
Her breathing was once again quick and shallow.
At least when they were trying to escape this old elevator, she was so focused on the task that she didn’t have time to get worked up about the confined space.
“Come here.” He needed to do this before he talked himself out of it.
She turned to him. “What?”
“Just come here.” After she took a step closer, he said, “I’m going to crouch down, and I want you to climb on my shoulders.”
“What? No. I can’t do that.” She shook her head.
He wasn’t expecting pushback from her. After all, the hatch was her idea. “We don’t have a choice. We have to give this a try. It’s the only way one of us will be able to make a phone call.”
She worried her bottom lip as though she were weighing the options, but in reality they were running out of options. In fact, other than them waiting this out, this might be their only option for letting people know where they were.
“We can do this,” he said with more conviction than he really felt. For all he knew, the hatch might be locked from the outside.
“There’s no way you’re going to be able to lift me.” Worry reflected in her eyes.
“That sounded like a challenge,” he said. “Your brother used to always challenge me as a kid. I’ll have you know that I won more challenges than I lost.” He crouched down. “Now, climb on my shoulders.”
“I don’t know.”
“Lily, do it now!”
The next thing he knew, she was settled on his shoulders. For a moment, it was like they were back in high school, and they were taking part in some ridiculous stunt.
His legs muscles groaned as he attempted to straighten. This. Was. So. Much. Harder. Than. He. Imagined.
He used every single muscle. Inch by inch they rose. It was such a slow process.
However, this attempt was going much better than the last one. Lily reached out with one hand and used the wall to help balance herself. That in and of itself was a huge help.
Ever so slowly he kept rising. His teeth ground together as he used every muscle in his body. The last thing either of them needed was for him to pull a muscle or worse, drop her.
“I can touch it.” Her voice took on a note of excitement. “Just a little further.”
That was good because his quads were taking the brunt of this. Those muscles were reminding him that he needed to push himself harder at the gym—less time on the treadmill and more time with the weights. Not that any of that would help them now.
At last he was standing fully upright. “Can you open the hatch?” When she didn’t immediately respond, he asked. “Lily, can you open it?”
“It’s stuck. I’m going to have to push harder. Are you ready?”
He braced himself for the additional pressure. “Okay. Do it.”
Her weight shifted ever so slightly to the side. And then he felt her pushing. She let out a groan that was soon drowned out by the screech of metal. “I did it!”
He wished he could be as enthusiastic as she was, but right now all he wanted to do was put her down. But the thought of lifting her up again was not the least bit appealing.
“Hurry! Make the call.”
“Who am I calling?”
“Nine-one-one.” He wasn’t going to deal with his staff or the maintenance guy. He wanted people there that could get them out quickly and safely.
Creak!
“What was that?” she asked.
He didn’t even want to think about it. “Just make the call.”
“Okay. I have to get the phone out of my pocket.”
When she shifted her weight to reach for her phone, he momentarily lost his balance. He stepped forward, trying to steady them. At the same time, he heard something crash to the floor. What now?