KILEY STOOD OVER THE SOFA, where she’d made Jack lie down. John, Maya and Chris had left, at Jack’s insistence. He swore he knew what he needed to know now, thanked them for their help and told them to go.
“I’m not sure what happened back there, Jack.”
He closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his forehead. “Neither am I.” He held her gaze. “Only thing I am sure of, is that I need to see that basement.”
An icy shiver rippled through her entire being. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“I think it’s the only way to end this thing, Kiley.”
She pursed her lips. “It’s not safe down there.”
“You stay up here. I just need to take a look.”
Firming her jaw, she shook her head. “No. Not alone. If you’re going down there, I’m going with you.”
He studied her face for a moment. “You sure?”
She nodded.
Sighing, Jack reached out to cup her cheek. It was a touch that seemed tender, protective in some strange way. “You’re braver than you look, you know that?”
“Is that supposed to pass for a compliment?”
“Just a fact.” He got to his feet.
“Oh,” she said. “You meant, right now?”
“No. No, not right yet. There’s something else, first.”
“Is there?”
He smiled softly, reached for her and pulled her to him. “This.” He cupped her face and tipped it, so that he could kiss her the way it suited him. He took his time, probed and licked, tasted and explored. Kiley felt herself melting for him.
“Jack,” she whispered.
“I know. This is no time for—but God, Kiley, I can’t stop thinking about how it felt when we—”
“I know. I know.”
He slid his hands down to her waist, then up again, raising her little T-shirt with them. She lifted her arms overhead, so he could take it off her. No bra. He hadn’t brought her one when he brought her clothes, and she had no doubt that was deliberate. His hands covered her breasts, then he bent her backward and used his mouth instead, tasting, suckling. She let her head fall backward and stopped fighting the moans of pleasure. He was wrestling her jeans free now, shoving them off her hips and driving a hand down the front of her panties, cupping her there. He held her, arched backward over one arm, mouth attacking a breast, hand attacking her center. It was almost too good.
“Jack, please…”
He laid her on the sofa, tugged the jeans off the rest of the way, stripped away her panties. Then he yanked off his own jeans, frenzied now in his rush. She was on fire, gripping him, pulling him to her even before he had his jeans off. And then he was there, sliding inside her, filling her just as he had before. But this time he didn’t stop. He drove into her, and when she clutched his buttocks and dug her nails into his firm flesh he did it again, harder and deeper with every thrust. She twisted her legs around him, tilted her hips to take him, cried out his name with every breath he forced from her lungs. His hands held her butt, pulling her hard to him so he could plunge even deeper. His mouth took her nipple, and he used his teeth now, in gentle bites and nibbles that made her cry out in sweet anguish. He moved faster, harder, driving her to the edge of what she could bear, and finally, beyond that edge, into sweet oblivion. The orgasm broke like a tidal wave, and she shrieked his name as her entire body shuddered in spasms of release. And then he was there, too, groaning deep in his throat as he drove more deeply than ever, and held her to him as he poured into her. She felt the rhythmic pulse in him, the milking contractions in herself, and she clung to it, rode it out, until slowly the waves receded and her muscles relaxed.
He slid onto his side, pulling her close, wrapping her in his arms. “That was incredible.”
“It was supernatural,” she agreed. “Why did we waste so much time hating each other?”
He leaned up, kissed her earlobe and held her for another ten minutes while their heart rates returned to normal. And then, finally, she sighed and got to her feet. “Shall we get this over with?” she asked.
“It’s as good a time as any.” He got up, found their clothes, helped her to dress, sliding her panties over her feet and pulling them slowly up for her. Every touch was a caress. He repeated the process with the T-shirt. She took the jeans from him, because if he kept this up he was going to make her decide to do something else besides explore the basement.
Hell, what was this now? Were they casual sex partners, or something more?
She looked past him at the darkened windows, heard the wind picking up outside. Branches moved, scraping gnarled limbs over the sides of the house, like demons trying to claw their way in. She shivered, all the fears he’d made her forget returning in force.
Jack slid an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry, Kiley. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Especially not now.”
The way his voice thickened on those words made her look up at him quickly. “Don’t wax mushy on me, Jack. That would be scarier than the basement.”
“Come on.”
She walked with him, wished he couldn’t feel her shaking, but not so much that she would give up the reassuring arm around her. In fact, she walked as close beside him as she could. At the basement door, she drew a breath.
Jack reached out, closed his hand on the knob and opened the door. She stared into a rectangle of utter blackness. Then she reached past him, into the inky dark, which felt like a physical thing, cold and dense. She found the light switch, flicked it.
Light flooded the stairway. She swallowed her fear. “We’re coming down here to keep our promise, ghost. We’re checking out the things you’ve been trying to tell us, but I’ll tell you right now, at the first sign you’re fucking with us, we’re out of here. Understood?”
There was no sound, no sign of any reply.
She looked at Jack. He nodded. “Let’s go, then.” Still holding her near his side, he started down the stairway. It was a solid stairway, modern, obviously not the original set. They walked down, thirteen stairs, to the bottom, a smooth concrete floor.
“So?” she asked. “Where was it you saw in this…vision?”
He looked at the ceiling, evenly spaced studs, with cross-pieces in between them. Steel pipe ran along the edges of some boards, laying a hot-and-cold running trail from the basement to the bathrooms and the kitchen. Then he lowered his gaze, scanning the basement. “Over here, I think.”
She walked with him across the basement. He moved slowly, and Kiley wondered if he was feeling the same things she was. It seemed to grow colder with every step they took. And there was something else in the air. Something electric and alive.
He stopped, and seemed to be staring at the floor.
“Is this it?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”
“What do you think we should do about it, Jack?”
He sighed, looking around the room. She followed his gaze. There were some old tools hanging from hooks in the wall. Hoe, rake, shovel. They were old, battered, dusty. They’d been here when she bought the place, and she hadn’t bothered to get rid of them. She hadn’t even touched them. Hell, she’d only been in the basement once, with the real estate agent. For some reason she hadn’t been able to come back down here since she’d moved in.
He seemed about to answer her, when a loud clattering sound made Kiley jump six inches and clutch her chest. Her heart racing, she scanned the basement to find the source of the sound. The old shovel lay on the concrete floor. It had fallen off its hook. She swallowed her fear, took a calming breath and looked up at Jack.
He said, “I think we need to dig up the floor.”
“Yeah. I kind of picked up on that.”
He nodded. “We’ll need something stronger than a shovel to break through concrete.” Taking her hand, he turned and started back toward the stairway.
From the corner of her eye, Kiley saw something flying toward them. She swung a hand to the back of Jack’s head, pushing him forward and down, ducking along with him, and the thing whizzed over their heads so fast and so close that she felt the breeze it caused, heard the sound of it passing. It slammed into the wall on the other side of them and stayed there.
“Holy Christ,” Jack muttered, straightening and staring.
She stared, too. The rounded end of the shovel was embedded in the wall, its handle sticking straight out, still quivering from the impact.
“That could have taken off your head,” Kiley whispered.
“Yeah.” He was staring behind him, eyes wide and watchful.
“Goddamn it!” Kiley turned and shouted. “What are you, stupid or something? We can’t dig the effing floor up with a shovel. It’s concrete, you blithering idiot. We’re going to need a jackhammer or something. So unless you’ve got one of those to hurl at us, knock it the hell off!”
Jack stared at her, then looked around the basement.
“You think it got the message?”
“Hell, you scared me. Should’ve worked on the ghost.”
She searched his eyes, suddenly, acutely aware of how ridiculously much he had come to mean to her. “It better have,” she said. She ran a hand through his hair, kissed his chin.
Then, turning, they took another step toward the stairs. Nothing happened, so they started up them. They made it almost all the way to the top, before the creaking, splitting, cracking sounds alerted them to trouble. Jack grabbed her waist and shoved her ahead of him and through the open doorway. Then he vanished behind her. Kiley shrieked, and spun around in time to see the entire staircase collapsing and taking Jack with it. “Jack!” She shouted his name, reaching for him. But the door slammed in her face.
JACK HIT THE FLOOR HARD, then curled into a protective ball as debris rained down on him. He was pummeled, his head, back, shoulders, his hands and arms where he clutched them around his face like a makeshift helmet, pounded by falling debris. He thought he heard Kiley screaming his name, but he couldn’t be sure with the roar around him. And then, suddenly, there was just silence.
Swallowing hard, Jack tried to move. It hurt when he straightened. Boards fell off his body, clattering to the floor around him. He got upright, brushed some of the dust from his shoulders and tried to take stock. His shoulder throbbed. Lower back wasn’t feeling too pleasant, either. Above him, he could hear Kiley, pounding on the door, shouting and swearing.
He cupped his hands and hollered in her direction. It took two or three tries before she heard him and stopped her own shouting to listen. “Jack?” she called.
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Thank God.” He lowered his head, smiling a little at the level of relief that came through in that one simple declaration. “Jack, I can’t get the door open.” But he was looking at the floor now, frowning at the way the debris had come to rest on the other side of the basement. Broken boards formed a rectangle, framing the area where he’d seen the man laying concrete. He walked over there, bending low, moving the boards away. Frowning, he looked more closely.
“Jack?”
“Just a sec!” he called.
He bent closer, noticing now the way the dust had gathered into a tiny crevice, which, like the broken boards, formed a rectangle in the floor. He brushed at the dust, running his fingers along the fissure, realizing this piece of concrete was separate from the rest, not a part of the floor, but something else.
He looked across the room then, at the forgotten tools in the corner. Spotted a crowbar. “Okay, I get it,” he said softly. “We don’t need a jackhammer.”
He heard a soft creaking sound and turned to see the cellar door swinging slowly open. On the other side, Kiley stood with a baseball bat in her hands, and it was raised up as if she’d been about to pound the door with it. She blinked down at him.
He said, “Is there another way in and out of here?”
She nodded. “A hatchway door that leads outside.”
He nodded.
“You going to come out that way, Jack?”
He thinned his lips. “I’m afraid if I try, that exit will get annihilated, too. No, I think we need to dig this thing up now.”
“But—”
“The cement’s sectioned here. I think I can pry it up.”
She stared at him, then at the area around him. “What, you couldn’t just say so? You had to risk killing him?”
The lights flickered off, then on again. Jack said, “Maybe you should stop yelling at them, Kiley?”
“Fuck them. I’m coming back down. See you in a minute.”
She vanished from the doorway. Jack went to the corner to grab the crowbar, then tugged the shovel from where it was embedded in the wall and carried both back to the spot with him.
A few minutes later, Kiley arrived at his side. She had found another crowbar and knelt on the basement floor beside him. “Are you really okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll be a little sore, but nothing serious.” He was jamming the flat end of the bar into the crack, moving it back and forth. The crack grew wider with every movement.
She did what he was doing, working in the other direction, and they made their way around the entire rectangle. She said, “You have a little blood on your face.”
“A few of the boards landed on me when the stairs collapsed.”
She pursed her lips, frowning hard. He smiled at her. “It does my ego a world of good to know you care, Kiley.”
“It’s not by choice, Jack.”
The edge he was prying rose up a little. “Here, quick, get your bar over here,” he said. Kiley hurried to his side and jammed her bar underneath, helping him pry the slab of concrete upward. Jack dropped his own bar, gripping the edge with his hands, pushing and lifting. Kiley used her bar to help him, until finally they managed to overturn the slab. It hit the floor and split into several pieces.
Jack looked at Kiley and she licked her lips as if she was nervous before handing him the shovel. He eyed the dirt, began scraping it aside with the shovel blade, felt something underneath. “It’s shallow,” he said.
She nodded. “It’s cold again. Hell, Jack, I can see your breath.” She rubbed her arms. “We must be close.”
He nodded and continued scraping away the soil, revealing a square of metal, two feet by two feet.
“What is it? A box, is it some kind of box, Jack?”
He ran his hands over the thing, tracing its edges. “I feel…hinges.” He lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Jesus, Kiley, I think it’s some kind of a…a door.”
“A door?”
He nodded.
“A door to what?”
Goddamn good question. The word hell popped into his mind, but he decided not to share that with her.