NINETY-SIX

IMPOSSIBLY, everything seemed to be going as planned.

Owen greeted Quinn with a handshake and invited him inside. The alarm system had been disarmed, and I found that the kitchen window was cracked enough for me to open it wider and crawl through.

There was a harrowing instant when I bumped an aluminum pasta strainer hanging under the window—but I managed to catch it before it clattered to the tiled floor.

Gingerly, I hung it up and proceeded.

As I moved through the house, I could hear Quinn and Wimmer talking, but I couldn’t make out their words. The voices came from that messy study, far from the part of the house I was looking for.

Though this massive mansion seemed labyrinthine, it took me only a few minutes to locate the sterile, artless, all-white abattoir of a room with the glass walls facing the night-shrouded woods.

Though the recessed lighting was dim, I could still make out those five gargoyles on the room’s wall, each one set in a decorative panel. As Madame had done in the Gotham Suite, I pushed on their grotesque heads, one after the other.

On my third try, the middle panel swung inward. Warily, I peeked inside. The darkness made it impossible to see anything clearly, but I knew something was terribly wrong from the awful smell. Foul, stale air with the reek of human sweat and worse emanated from that black pit.

I pulled Quinn’s flashlight from my pocket. The beam revealed a room about the size of the one I had been kept in, minus amenities like a window and a bathroom.

There was a bed, though, and I gasped at the emaciated figure lying on it. Annette was still wearing the black dress from the cake tasting. Now stained and torn, the garment was loose on her frame. Her blond hair hung in greasy ringlets.

“Annette, wake up,” I whispered, gently shaking her. “It’s me . . . Clare Cosi . . . I’m here to rescue you.”

But she was dead to the world, and when I checked her pulse, I feared she was nearly dead.

I’d never considered this situation. I thought I’d find an incoherent but conscious Annette. It was going to be impossible for me to carry an unconscious woman out of here!

I discovered why she was so weak when I looked on the bedside table. There were legal documents stacked in a neat pile beside a pen. There was a handwritten note, too—

Sign your last will and testament and maybe I’ll give you food.

I didn’t need a signature to know who had written it: A depraved monster named Owen Wimmer.

I was glad to see Annette had resisted. Those legal documents were unsigned, which was clearly the reason Owen had continued to keep her alive. Thank goodness it was long enough for Quinn and me to find her.

As I set the papers aside, I heard a resounding clatter from the kitchen—the pasta strainer hitting the floor. I froze, cursing myself for not hanging it properly.

The dull murmur of conversation between Quinn and the lawyer ceased, too. Next I heard scuffling, then a crash, followed by more silence.

I waited a full minute before I left the secret room. Just when I concluded that I was safe, the lights snapped on, and I blinked against the glare. When my vision cleared, Owen Wimmer was standing in front of me, a gun in one hand, a poker in the other.

I lunged with Quinn’s Taser, but he struck it away with the poker. That’s when I realized it was stained crimson. I had no doubt it was Mike Quinn’s blood.