A paralyzing horror swept through him like a wave of frigid water.
Tuney’s hand gripped his shoulder so hard the fingers dug into his muscles.
He put his cheek closer, until her cold lips grazed his skin.
Then he felt it.
A whisper of breath on his face, the sweetest sensation he’d experienced in his whole life. Unable to speak or move he breathed in and out.
Thank you, thank you.
He was not sure to whom he offered the sentiment, but it flowed out of him straight from his throbbing heart. Then he turned her on her side and slid his fingers along her throat to reassure himself her pulse was still strong.
“Is she okay?” Denise whispered, dropping to her knees on the wet floor. “Please, tell me she’s okay?”
Tuney released his death grip and moved to Denise. “Let him work.”
Brooke coughed and water gushed from her mouth. Victor helped her sit up. The sight of her took his breath away. Never in his entire existence had he seen something so beautiful as that waterlogged woman with her hair plastered around her face and water dripping from her eyelashes.
She blinked at him and her lips broke into a sweet smile. “Thank you,” she whispered, and then she began to cry.
Victor embraced her, burying his head in the wet strands of her hair, squeezing her body to his. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” He was no longer sure if he was talking to himself or to her as his lips found the smooth skin of her neck and he felt the precious pulse beating there like the notes in an exquisite symphony.
She clung to him and he reassured her as best he could, not with words, because his own voice seemed to have failed him, but with his embrace.
You’re alive,
he wanted to say.
You’re alive and I’m not going to lose you.
At that moment it felt as if he had indeed taken possession of a treasure.
Her sobs gradually ebbed until he realized Denise was speaking. He pulled away and let her comfort Brooke, speaking soft words that he didn’t hear. He stood and staggered back, his own legs shaky.
Tuney steadied him and they moved away a few paces.
“Close one,” Tuney said. “You okay?”
Victor nodded, wiping the water from his face that was trickling down from his hair. He tried to get his brain to focus on facts. “Any sign of Stryker?”
“No.” Tuney folded his hands across his chest.
“Thanks,” Victor said. “For what you did back there.”
Tuney shrugged. “I’m not the black-hearted rogue you think I am.”
Victor was too tired to take on the conversation he needed to have with Tuney. Brooke was alive, with Tuney’s help, and it was all that mattered at the moment. More than any treasure, more than vengeance. Something shifted inside him and he wished he was alone, someplace quiet and calm where he could analyze the feeling.
Instead he was in a damp tunnel growing ever damper as the water continued to spill over the side of the bomb-shelter chamber.
Tuney gazed at the tumbling water. “Funny how that water started pouring in just as we started poking around.”
“Yeah, funny,” Victor said. “Almost like someone opened a valve above us.”
“And if someone did that, then we’re definitely not alone down here.”
Victor locked eyes with Tuney. “I think maybe it’s time for us to go and let the cops handle this.”
Tuney nodded. “Couldn’t have phrased it better myself.”
Victor should have felt profound disappointment, the intolerable sensation that accompanied an unmet goal. The Tarkenton, if it was hidden away, would remain that way, possibly forever. He looked at Brooke, now being cradled by her aunt, and found that the treasure didn’t seem to matter anymore.
They rejoined the women. “We’re going back up,” Victor said. “Too dangerous down here, and Brooke needs to be taken to the hospital to be sure there’s no water in her lungs.”
Both women looked at him with the same expression. “But I’m okay,” Brooke said, pink suffusing her cheeks. “Thanks to you two.”
“Someone turned on those pipes intentionally,” Tuney said. “This isn’t a fun game anymore, and staying here is just inviting trouble.”
Brooke got to her feet. “Mr. Tuney, it was never a game to me in the first place.”
Victor moved to her. “I know. I know how much it means to you and your father, but your life means more.” He held her gaze with his own.
After a long moment, she nodded. “Okay.”
Denise shook her head. “You take her up, Victor. I’m going to look around some more.”
“Absolutely not,” he said. “We’re all going.”
She cocked her head. “I’m a grown woman. I can take care of myself. I’ve got a pack of supplies and plenty of flashlight batteries. I’ll look around for a few hours and mark my way as I go. If I’m not out by morning, you can send in the troops.”
Brooke put a hand on her arm. “No,” she said softly. “He’s right. Your safety is more important that the painting.”
Denise shook her head.
Brooke seemed to snap. “Listen to me. It’s a piece of canvas and some strokes of paint,” she said, her voice rising with every word. “It’s a painting made by a man, a regular person like you or me. It’s not,” she said, voice strident, “something to be worshiped more than living, breathing people.” The last word echoed throughout the tunnel.
Victor saw in her face she was no longer talking just about the Tarkenton. Her eyes revealed a deep longing probably born from many years of living with a parent who was passionate to the point of mania about art. He’d encountered people like that often in his line of work, people desperate to own masterpieces, even illegally, even if it meant locking them away in dark rooms where no one would ever see.
“It’s all your father has,” Denise said, her voice breaking. “I’ve got to help him.”
“No,” Brooke cried. “He has you and me and Tad.”
Victor wondered if that would be enough to sustain Donald through the newest round of investigation. What was more, Victor was reminded he would do everything in his power to see the old man punished. He shifted uneasily.
Brooke’s anger seemed to drain away all at once. “Please, Aunt Denise,” she said softly. “Let’s get out of here and go back home.”
The words stabbed at Victor.
Go back home.
Walk away from the treasure.
From him.
What other choice did she have?
Denise considered for another moment. She let out a long, defeated sigh. “Okay, honey. Of course you’re right. Let’s go.”
Tuney shouldered his pack, a bemused expression on his face. Victor took the flashlight from his back pocket, which had mercifully survived the drenching, and they began the long walk back to the ladder.
Tuney kept glancing over his shoulder. “Wonder where Stryker took himself off to.”
Victor wondered, also. Brooke and Denise followed behind him in silence. The water on the floor of the tunnel still trickled along, dampening their already soaked shoes and pant legs. Victor was cold so he knew Brooke must be even more so.
He hurried his pace. Something coiled inside him. A sense of tension that seemed to increase with every passing moment. Was it the realization that he and Brooke were hours away from going their separate ways? The knowledge that Treasure Seekers had failed to complete their task?
He chose to put away the thoughts in favor of action and pressed even faster until he reached the bottom of the ladder. Without his headlamp, which had washed away in his effort to save Brooke, he could see only blackness above him as he began the climb.
The clang of his feet on the ladder sounded loud in the confines of the tunnel. An occasional grumbled complaint from Tuney floated up to him, and some soothing remark from Brooke. How could she still be the comforter? After everything that had happened?
He forced himself, hand over hand, until he felt the air change, warming up several degrees.
“Couple more feet,” he called back behind him.
“Swell,” Tuney snapped, “because my clothes are sticking to me like a second skin.”
He continued up until he saw something that made his heart speed up and his feet stop at the same moment.
“What is it?” Brooke said, her head bumping his calf. “Why did you stop?”
He didn’t answer at first, just moved up another rung and stretched out his flashlight to be sure. The metal clanged like a gong.
He pocketed the flashlight and applied his shoulder to the obstruction before he called back to the others. “The opening is locked. Somebody’s slid the grate back over the top and secured it somehow. It won’t budge.”
“I can’t believe it,” Brooke said.
“I can,” Tuney growled. “Why would our luck change now?”
Brooke tugged on his pant leg. “You’re going to break a bone. We’ve got to go back down.”
Victor nodded and they descended.
At the bottom, Tuney flicked his light on and beamed it around.
Brooke gasped. “My aunt is gone.”
After a second of shock, the two men jogged down the tunnel, past the flooded room. It didn’t take long before they turned around and Victor followed Tuney back, dread bunching in his gut. “No sign of her.”
Brooke stared. “She must have gotten lost, disoriented.” She realized as she spoke that it was not the truth.
Tuney’s scowl was deeper than ever. “She dropped back behind us on purpose. She can’t give up on that Tarkenton.”
Brooke groaned. “We’ve got to get help and find her.”
“Well, we’re not getting out that way,” Victor said, gesturing to the blocked passageway.
“Had to be Stryker that locked it,” Tuney said.
“Doesn’t accomplish much.” Victor rubbed at his shoulder. “He can keep us down here for a while, but eventually my sister and brother will come looking, or Lock will send the cops.”
Tuney’s eyes narrowed.
“You don’t think Lock will send the police?” Brooke asked.
Tuney didn’t answer.
Victor beamed a flashlight ahead. “She can’t have gotten far, and we don’t have much choice here. We wait by the ladder for what could be hours, knowing that there’s probably someone loose who doesn’t want us down here.”
“Someone who might be deranged professor Leo Colda,” Tuney added.
“Or we go after her,” Victor said.
Brooke shifted impatiently. “I say we go, and quickly. We’re wasting time.”
Tuney sighed. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where this tunnel leads?”
“No,” Victor said. “But wherever it goes it will give us plenty of time for you to explain.”
“Explain what?” Brooke asked.
Victor started down the tunnel. “Explain why he’s lying.”
Brooke hurried to keep up. “Lying about what?”
“Tuney wasn’t hired by the university to look for Professor Colda. Steph uncovered that tidbit and told me right before we came down here.” Though he kept his tone casual, Victor’s question was deadly serious. “Since we find ourselves all alone with time on our hands, this seems like an opportune moment. Who do you really work for, Mr. Tuney?”
EIGHTEEN
T
he silence thickened between them as Victor watched Tuney’s face, the beetled brows, the eyes glinting in the gloom.
Tuney hesitated. “In the process of investigating the theft four years ago, I met all the players—Lock, Donald, the security guards, everyone. I kept on it, as you know, over the years because I had a feeling I could find proof that Ramsey did it.”
“For the reward,” Brooke said bitterly.
He sighed. “That would be a sweet payoff, but it’s more the kind of person I am. Ex-cop and all that.”
“Fired cop,” Victor added.
“Yeah, fired for helping myself to a little rent money off a guy who made ten grand a day selling drugs. He deals drugs, I’m a cop with alimony payments and a cheap Datsun. Who gets punished?”
“How do we know that’s the truth?” Victor asked.
“I guess you don’t.”
“So how did you come to be involved in this case?”
“I got a call from Lock that Ramsey had shipped a painting to Colda.”
“That’s interesting,” Brooke cut in. “Dean Lock said he wasn’t sure my father ever really sent a painting in the first place.”
“Lock knew. He remembered my name from the museum fiasco so he called me up. I told you I’ve always been eager to dig into Donald’s life a little deeper. I put Fran on the case, and she followed Brooke. I stayed on the trail after Colda.”
Victor continued on into the darkness, slowed by piles of rock and broken pipes littering the floor. “Did Lock specifically mention the Tarkenton?”
“Not specifically. He said he thought Ramsey might have sent one of the stolen museum sketches to Colda to be fenced or sold. Wanted me to prove it. Then when Colda went missing, he wanted me to find him.”
Brooke stopped dead. “So all this time you’ve been working for Lock to prove my father guilty?”
“That’s what I thought.”
“What do you mean?” Victor said.
“Some things didn’t add up.”
“Like what?”
“Little things. Lock said he barely knew Colda, but I hear he’s been playing chess with the guy on and off for years. He said he’d never been in Colda’s apartment, but I got the impression the place had been searched before I got there, before the police had been notified. Small stuff, but enough to get me thinking.”
Victor turned it over in his mind. He hadn’t trusted Lock from the start, but he had only Tuney’s word against the dean’s, and Tuney hadn’t been forthcoming either. “So you were directed to follow us along in the tunnels in case we found one of the stolen pieces.”
“Or some clue to Colda’s whereabouts.”
“Did Colda fake his own death because he knew Lock was onto him?”
“Could be.”
They stopped short as the passage split into two. Shining their lights down both did nothing to help them decide on a direction. No sound indicated which way Denise might have gone. Each direction stretched out before them, dark and still. The tunnels could lead them farther and farther away from an exit, or closer to another near disaster. Brooke shivered, and without thinking, Victor put an arm around her, chafing some warmth back into her body.
He spread the map out against the tunnel wall. “Steph marked some possible routes, as best she could. I’d guess the left-hand passage winds under the admin offices and toward the Professor House. The right hand is more of a mystery.”