Elevator, The (25 page)

He cries out in dazzled agony as a flashbulb explodes behind his eyes. His strength fails as his body sings with pain, then he folds gently at the waist and crumples onto the dusty rooftop, letting the darkness claim him.

Gina runs her hand down her throat as she watches Michelle slip into the nylon harness. Though it’s a hard truth to admit, she can now see why Sonny desired the younger woman. Michelle tackles challenges with capable confidence, yet she disarms people with friendliness. This beautiful young woman must have swept Sonny off his feet, binding him to her with smiles and laughter and an absolute refusal to make demands.

When he was with her, he must have felt as free as an eagle.

Yet Gina knows her husband, and, given complete information, she has always been able to predict his behavior. If Michelle had told him about the baby and insisted that he marry her, he would have refused. He would have broken off the relationship, and probably come clean about his existing marriage.

So perhaps this elevator mishap has been a mercy. Now Michelle will never have to know the sting of Sonny’s rejection or the pain of his betrayal. And though earlier Gina told the woman that Sonny would never accept another child, now she would like to recall those words. Not for Sonny’s sake…but for Michelle’s.

Sonny Rossman was a lout…but he was also much loved. In fact, some still-functioning part of Gina’s brain marvels that his mistress could even think about climbing out of this elevator to rejoin the world. She ought to be bowed with grief and stunned by loss.

She couldn’t have loved him, not really. If she had, she wouldn’t be able to imagine a world without Sonny.

Michelle snaps the buckle across her chest, then tugs on the line that dangles through the opening. “Okay, it’s secure.” She absently pats the pockets of her jeans, then her gaze falls on her purse. She crouches, pulls out the cell phone and her keys, and slips them into her pockets. “I guess I’m ready.”

Gina bends her knees and catches a breath as Michelle places a sneakered foot in her locked hands. Isabel whispers something in Spanish—a prayer?—while Michelle leans on their shoulders.

“Okay,” she says. “I know this is the hard part, but I need you to straighten and lift me as high as you can. I don’t think I’m strong enough to pull myself up otherwise.”

Gina catches Isabel’s eye. “Ready?”

The maid nods and Gina counts: “One, two, three!” They stand and launch Michelle upward. The effort requires less strength than Gina imagined, and she blinks when Michelle catches something beyond the opening and pulls herself onto the top of the car.

Gina steps back, impressed. The girl is stronger than she looks.

“Wow,” Michelle calls, her voice like an echo from an empty tomb. “It’s creepy up here. And dirty.” She dusts her hands, then looks down at Isabel. “Want me to give you the harness?”

Isabel considers the question, then shakes her head. Apparently she’d rather fall than repeat her previous experience.

Gina retreats to her corner by the door. Those two young women have more energy than brains. They may climb out of the shaft, but this is a tall building and at any corner they could be blindsided by a piece of flying shrapnel or accosted by a crazed homeless person. She, on the other hand, might spend another forty-eight hours in this car, but she’ll be safe when the hurricane is over. When power is restored she’ll ride the elevator to wherever it lands, then step onto a solid structure, alive and well.

But alone.

A new sound catches her ear, a hum that seems to come from overhead. She frowns. “You hear that?”

Beside her, Isabel stiffens. “The wind?”

“I don’t think so.”

From somewhere above them, Michelle calls, “Hang on. I see a toolbox—”

The overhead lights come on, blinding Gina with sudden brightness, but though she can hear the sounds of movement in the shaft, their car does not rise. She reaches for the railing, bracing for a delayed reaction, but the elevator refuses to budge.

She looks toward the escape hatch, which looks far less promising in the light. Of course! The mechanic said the elevator wouldn’t move if the hatch—

Before she can finish her thought, darkness overtakes the car again. An instant later, the emergency light flickers and begins to glow.

The bulb, however, seems less bright than before. Is it dying, too?

5:00 p.m.

E
ddie dreams of bees. They surround him in an angry swarm, stinging his chest, his leg and his ankles as they carry him off. He feels the breath of movement on his face and swats at the buzzing creatures, but not until he strikes his breastbone does a dart of pain bring him back to reality.

He’s still on the elevator, and it’s moving. Startled, he reaches for the solidity of the crosshead, then he laughs, not at all surprised to hear a note of hysteria in his voice.

Whoever decided to bury Tampa’s downtown power lines deserves a medal. Despite the fury of this storm, electricity is flowing and the elevator is descending. After so many outages, the controller has undoubtedly lost its awareness of the cab’s position so, like the others, this cab will descend to the lobby to reestablish the connection.

Eddie’s laughter halts as suddenly as the elevator. The electric hum ceases, the car stops, and the brakes clamp down, holding the car firmly in position. Eddie pushes himself up and studies the front wall of the shaft. His brief ride carried him in the wrong direction, so now he’ll have to climb sixty feet, not thirty.

But he will climb…because apparently his arms, legs and soul need a vigorous workout.

Before turning again to the rail, he leans across the car and hits the Stop button—no sense in risking any further movement of the car. He reaches for the guide rail with both arms and pulls himself upright, ignoring the shaft of pain that rips through his wounded leg. Hopping on his left foot, he swipes his damp hands on his jeans, then grips the rail again.

“I’m comin’, Sades.”

He lifts his gaze to the horizontal divider beam a few feet above his head and pulls himself upward. His broken tibia protests, but he braces himself against the pain and tries to remember how good it felt to finally reach the top of the rope in his middle-school gymnasium.

Ten strong pulls should take him to the first resting place in this concrete crypt. Ten individual efforts, then he can swing his good leg onto the beam. The broken bone will hurt like a mule’s kick every time it strikes the rail, but at least he’ll be able to use the muscles of his thigh on the climb. And his ribs—well, he has to breathe. His lungs will have to withstand the pain.

He climbs until the muscles of his arms and thighs burn, then he reaches the divider beam. His ribs stab at his lungs with every gasping breath, but he manages to shift his weight to his good leg and cling to the vertical rail with one hand, allowing the other arm to rest.

Despite the warm humidity of the shaft, a chilling thought threatens to freeze his scalp to his skull. This climb may be the most difficult ordeal of his life. Once he reaches the twenty-fifth floor, he will have to maneuver along a horizontal beam crowded with vertical hoistway ducts. It’d be a tricky maneuver under the best of circumstances, but he’ll be exhausted, wounded and wet from the trickle of rainwater that persists in falling from above.

Eddie closes his eyes and lets his forehead fall to the steel in front of his face. It’d be so easy to let go. A quick plunge down the shaft would bring an end to this agony and might even earn him some kind of posthumous award for service beyond the call of duty. A plunge to the bottom of the shaft would end everything—his regrets about his marriage, his guilt about Panama City and his doubts about the future.

But this life…is not his to throw away. He didn’t create it, and despite a desperate willingness to hand it back, he’s still here.

The drowned boy, the women in the elevator, even himself…how presumptuous to think he could wield the power of life or death over any of them.

He can only commit to his present task and do the best he can. The Creator of life, and storms, and seas, will have to do the rest.

So he won’t give up. Sadie’s out there waiting for him, along with three women who shouldn’t be in the building, but are. Because one of them looked up at him with trust and confidence shining in her eyes, he will keep climbing.

Maybe she needs her soul strengthened, too.

Michelle is trying to untangle the lanyard from a beam at the top of the car when a new sound causes her to freeze—could that be the whoosh and hum of a moving elevator? Beneath her, the car brightens and for an instant her soul floods with hope, then she remembers what Eddie said: as long as the escape hatch remains open, their car isn’t going anywhere.

When the lights go out and the electrical hum fades into the hurricane howl, she leans toward the opening in the roof. “Isabel? You ready?”

The corners of the housekeeper’s mouth are tight, but she nods and moves beneath the hatch. She shoots a timid glance at Gina, who stands next to the elevator panel, the emergency light sparking in her red hair.

“Gina, if you can boost Isabel to the railing, it’ll support her weight until I can pull her up.”

When the redhead compresses her mouth into a thin line, Michelle is afraid the woman will refuse to help. She has no real reason to balk, but no one wants to be left alone.

But Gina squares her shoulders and moves forward, bending her knees as she laces her fingers together. “I still think you’re making a mistake,” she says.

A flicker of uncertainty creeps into Isabel’s expression, but she places one foot into Gina’s linked hands.

“This is going to be a little tricky, but we can do it,” Michelle says, straddling the sturdy crossbeam. In front of her dangle a half dozen cables as thick as a man’s fingers. The hatch lies to her right, but to her left, a pair of open doors lead to the twenty-eighth floor and freedom.

Eddie’s pet, she realizes with mixed feelings, has apparently given up its vigil at the doorway. Though Michelle has never had a single sympathetic feeling for a canine, she finds herself admiring the dog. The animal has exhibited more courage than she has, because she can’t bring herself to look down the shaft that claimed Eddie.

With the lanyard and one leg hooked around the crossbeam, she bends at the waist and extends her right arm into the opening. “Ready when you are.”

Isabel nods, her countenance immobile, and Gina yells, “Now!” Isabel stretches upward; Michelle clasps the girl’s wrist and Gina staggers beneath the cleaning woman’s weight. Michelle pulls, straining until nearly every bone in her body feels out of joint.

Somehow, Isabel gets both arms out of the car and braces them on the edge of the hatch. Michelle helps the girl hoist one leg onto the roof, then Isabel rolls against the center beam and stares up at the collection of cables that stretch into the darkness like some kind of industrial-age beanstalk.

The girl’s eyes are wet when they meet Michelle’s.
“Muchas gracias.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Michelle steps over the housekeeper and peers at Gina, who has retreated to the pool of light cast by the emergency bulb. “Won’t you come? You’re thin—the two of us can pull you out.”

Gina edges closer to the control panel. “I’m not breaking my neck up there.”

“But Eddie was right—it’s only a small step down to the landing. After all this, getting to the stairwell will be a cakewalk.”

For a brief instant Gina’s face seems to open. Michelle sees uncertainty, a quick flicker of fear, then the return of stubborn inflexibility. “I’m staying,” Gina says. “I’m safe here.”

“You’re in a box hanging by a few cables. You know that rocking we felt? There are rails out here, and one of them is bent. That’s why this car’s not stable.”

“Maybe I’m used to this car.” A smile spooks over the woman’s lips, fading almost as soon as it appears. She jerks her chin upward. “You girls go ahead and fight the wind and rain. Get smacked around by debris. Take your chances with looters. I’ll be fine, and heaven help anyone who tries to bother me.”

The comment makes no sense until Michelle glances at Gina’s hand. She’s holding the gun, which shines dully next to the glitter of the diamond bracelet.

“Michelle? Look!”

Michelle turns toward Isabel, who has stepped closer to the landing. Eddie’s dog, a white-muzzled golden retriever, is standing near the open doorway, her nails clicking on the threshold as she covers Isabel’s bare knees with kisses.

It’s a beast, but it looks friendly. More important, the beast was Eddie’s.

“Keep it away from the shaft,” she calls. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Michelle leans down to give Gina one last chance. “Are you sure you won’t come with us?”

“Quite sure.”

“Have it your way, then. If we make it down first, we’ll send someone up to help you.”

“I doubt I’ll need your assistance, but thank you, all the same. Now, would you please close that hatch? When the power comes on, I want this car to move.”

“Whatever you say.” Michelle touches her forehead in a mock salute, then lifts the hinged cover and drops it back into place.

With Gina’s words ringing in her ears, Michelle steps over the center beam and picks up the flashlight Eddie left beside his toolbox. She is about to duck under the edge of the doorway and step onto the landing when she hears a cry—a sound that is definitely human.

Eddie?

A thin blade of foreboding slices into her heart as she turns to face the darkness of the shaft. Is Eddie in agony somewhere below? She can’t bear the thought of his suffering, but she’s no nurse and she has no way to reach him. Still, she can’t leave him alone, not after what he did for them.

“Eddie?” She wipes her damp hand on her jeans, then clings to the sturdy beam on the top of the car and shines the flashlight over the sides. The back wall is only a few feet away, but the shaft is wider than she expected, with darkness stretching to the left and right. “Eddie, is that you?”

The frenzied wind screeches an answer, punctuated by pounding rain, and then, barely audible, she hears another reply that sounds like
hello….

“Eddie?”

From a distance, a weary and broken voice: “Still here.”

A flush of relief rises to Michelle’s face. “Are you all right?”

She strains to hear a ripple of broken laughter. “I’ve been better…but I’m still hanging around.”

For a moment, she cannot speak. She presses her hand to her chest and feels her heart thump against her palm. This situation is not hopeless. Against all odds, Eddie Vaughn is alive.

Somehow, Someone has seen them and answered Isabel’s prayers.

She shines the flashlight into the open space. “Can you tell me where you are?”

The incessant roar of the storm obscures his reply, but it is enough to know he is alive. Michelle feels suddenly light on her feet, as if she could fly down the stairs without any effort at all.

“Eddie—” she releases the crossbeam to cup a hand around her mouth “—Isabel and I are out of the elevator. We’re heading to the stairwell. We’ll look for you, okay?”

She listens intently as the building stretches and groans. “Eddie?”

No answer, but a roaring bedlam rips through the air, freezing Michelle’s skin like the howl of a banshee. Despite her relief at Eddie’s survival, the voice of the storm reminds her they are not safe yet.

Before joining Isabel at the landing, she stares into the darkness one last time and, emboldened by the girl’s example, whispers a prayer for Eddie Vaughn.

At first, Eddie thought he was hearing angels. His grandmother, according to family legend, sat straight up on her deathbed, stared at the red-and-white flowered curtains, and announced that angels had arrived on a golden ladder, so she was ready to go home. Then she lay down, closed her eyes and committed her soul to Jesus.

The voice he’d heard, however, belonged to one of the women. He wasn’t sure which woman had called to him, but he definitely had his preferences. Her high voice had cut through the noise of the storm, but he wasn’t sure she’d heard his replies.

He clings to a vertical rail and smiles, glad to know at least two of them are out of the elevator. If he doesn’t climb another foot, the results will have been worth the struggle.

He draws a deep breath, peers into the inky darkness below, then lifts his face to the upper portion of the shaft. Rainwater is falling more steadily now, so the wind has definitely taken out a few more windows.

Might as well climb while he still can.

Though Felix is officially still two hours away, the wind has already uprooted a landscape of carpet and smashed the window at the end of the landing. Michelle feels its blows to the side of her head as she crunches shards beneath her sneakers and maneuvers around a pair of toppled chairs that have blown into the center of the hallway.

The stairwell has to be right around the corner. She yells at Isabel, urging her to follow, but the wind snatches her words and leaves her as silent as a mime. She makes a come-on gesture and runs, hoping the housekeeper will follow.

She turns the corner and skids to a halt on the wet floor. A soft-drink machine, dark and without power, lies on its side in front of the door that leads to the stairs. Michelle stares stupidly until she feels a nudge on her arm. Isabel stands beside her, her wet hair plastered to her face, her eyes as wide as platters. Gooseflesh has prickled her arms and a trickle of blood runs from her lip. “What do we do?”