Snakes and Ladders Read online

  “Like a lion in a circus,” he said, his voice barely audible. “In the wild, she could kill a man in seconds, but in the circus they pull her teeth, they cut off her claws, they make her perform tricks. Don’t let them do that to you, Lizzy.”

  Lizzy’s face blanched. “I won’t.”

  Philip tried to pull himself more upright, and failed. “Did you find a way out?”

  “Maybe, but through this door would be better. I’m going to try again.”

  Lizzy braced herself on the stair and banged her shoulder into the door.

  “Lizzy, it’s not going to work,” he said, his voice weak. “You’re too light to break the door down with your shoulder. Kicking it might work if you had a place to stand, but on the stairs you don’t. If you found another way out, you should try it.”

  “It’s … tight.”

  “Try it anyway,” he whispered. “We’re running out of time.”

  68

  Reaching the window was not her biggest challenge. There was an old mahogany dining table directly under the window, and once she wrestled one of the table’s matching chairs on top of it, she could reach the window. Opening the window was not her biggest challenge. It swung up from a hinge at the top, with no bars blocking the way or, as far as she could tell, trip wires to sound an alarm. Evidently whoever had installed the security system hadn’t thought it necessary to protect this window from someone coming in from the outside. It was hard to imagine anyone but a child fitting through it—not only was the window itself small, but from what she could see, it opened into an equally small but deep window well.

  She put her phone in the pocket of her jacket, grasped the edges of the window and pulled herself up, but at that point her arms were useless to pull herself further, and her feet scrabbled against the wall with no purchase. She could have piled more items on top of the table to provide a higher platform, but that wasn’t the only problem. The back of the window well was only about a foot and a half from the window opening, and the well, she could now see, was several feet deep. No amount of yoga stretching would have enabled her to bend her spine backwards enough to fit through.

  She extracted herself from the opening and turned around so she was facing toward the room, with her back toward the outside wall. She grasped the window frame again and pulled herself up. Her feet dangled uselessly, but now she had more leverage with her arms. She squirmed her head and upper torso through the window, then was brought up short. She felt a tug and realized that the back of her jacket must have caught on the window latch.

  She lowered herself back onto the chair, took off her coat, balled it up, and tossed it up toward the top of the window well. She realized almost before it disappeared over the edge that her phone was in its pocket.

  “Crap!”

  She took a deep breath. There was no need to panic—Philip still had his phone.

  She jumped off the table and was partway across the room before she realized that running back to Philip was going to be no help. He had enough to deal with without having to help her deal with her screw ups.

  She climbed back up on the table and chair and hoisted herself up again. She tried once more to pull herself through, but again something was holding her back. She realized the back of her shirt was now caught. She worked one hand beneath her back, trying to dislodge the snag—her other arm shaking under the strain of holding her body in place—and, when that didn’t work, tried to rip the fabric, but there was no way she could do it with just one hand.

  Her heartbeat pounding in her ears, both from exertion and building panic, she lowered herself onto the chair and pulled off her shirt. Mentally checking that she wasn’t about to throw another resource out of reach, she tossed it up to the lip of the well to join the jacket.

  She pulled herself up once again, her arm muscles spasming. Inch by inch, she dragged her torso through the opening, her shoulder blades scraping along the concrete back of the window well, the metal edge of the window frame scoring her lower back. She shivered as the cold nighttime air swirled around her. Finally, she got most of her torso through the window, the weight of her hanging legs digging the frame painfully into her tailbone.

  And then her forward progress stopped. The further she wormed her way into the window well, the less leverage she had to pull herself up with her arms. And there was nothing to push against with her legs. She twisted, trying to find a position that would enable her to push herself forward with at least one arm, but there wasn’t room. Maybe she would have to pile more things on top of the table to provide more leverage. She took a breath, steeling herself for the pain of scraping her shoulders and spine back across the concrete and metal, and pulled against the window frame to drop back into the room.

  Nothing.

  Her heartbeat accelerating further, she pulled again. She realized that the window latch had caught the back of her pants. She scrabbled frantically, now being able to use both hands since she obviously wasn’t in any immediate danger of falling back into the room, but she was too tightly wedged into the space to reach behind her.

  Then she heard the sharp crack of an explosion coming from somewhere above her.

  A gunshot?

  She began to thrash, the concrete wall scraping skin from her shoulder blades, the metal frame cutting into her back. She tried to take a deep breath—breathe in the good energy—but it just jammed her ribs more firmly against the edges of her prison.

  But her mounting claustrophobia wasn’t the only thing that fanned her panic back to life.

  She could smell smoke.

  The house was on fire.

  69

  Lizzy twisted in the coffin-tight confines of the window well, trying to see into the basement storage room through the small spaces on either side of her hips. She couldn’t see any light from a fire, or feel any heat on her legs, but perhaps something was smoldering. Then she wrenched her head to the side to look up, and saw the source of the smoke.

  The window directly above her was emitting a flickering light and smoke was wafting out and up the side of the house.

  She heard the cracking sound again, then felt a stabbing pain in her cheek. She reached up, thinking for a moment that an insect had stung her, but her hand came away wet and sticky.

  When she looked up again, the amount of smoke coming from the window had doubled. Then she realized that the cracking noises were the window panes shattering in the heat of the fire.

  Maybe one of the neighbors had seen the flames—maybe there was a fire truck already in the drive, maybe firemen were right now circling the house, ready to aid any victims. She took a great gulp of air, ready to scream.

  Once again her ribs pressed against the window frame, and a coherent thought drifted above the churn of her panic.

  She took another deep breath just as she had in yoga class—breathe in the good energy—and this time breathed it all out—breathe out the bad.

  The pressure reduced infinitesimally, and she squeezed her fingers behind her and found where her pants were snagged on the latch. She took another breath, jamming her fingers painfully into the window frame, then exhaled again. She was able to twist her body just enough to free the fabric from the latch.

  She breathed in again, then out, her chest contracting with the effort, and pushed against the window frame. Her body scraped up a painful inch, then jammed in place again.

  Another crack sounded above her, another shower of glass shards struck her head and bare shoulders.

  Breathe in the good. She took another slow, deep breath, and breathed out again, trying to empty her lungs completely. Again the grip of the frame lessened almost imperceptibly, and again she pushed. Another inch.

  Three more times she breathed in and out, three more times dragged her bleeding back across the concrete. Each time, she reached up, groping for the top of the window well. She dared not look up for fear that it would be further away than she estimated and that the sight would snuff out her last remaining resolve, but she
could tell from the sound, and from the flickering light now making its way down into the window well, that the fire was building. She reached up once to wipe her eyes, smearing blood and tears together.

  She reached up again, and this time her fingers found the top of the well. She scrabbled at it, unable to get a hold, then, without bothering to blow her breath out, gave one terror-fueled push against the frame. She hooked her fingers over the edge of the well and finally hauled herself onto the blessed cold of the lawn and into the welcome expansiveness of the night.

  Flames lit the windows of a room directly over the window well. In fact, she could see flames in the first-floor windows of the rooms all along this side of the house. She grabbed her shirt and jacket off the ground and pulled them on over her bleeding back, then sprinted for the back door.

  The fire had not reached the kitchen, but as she stepped into the hallway leading to the basement door, the waves of heat momentarily rocked her back. A Persian rug in the foyer at the end of the hall smoldered, and a flame sprang up at its edge as Lizzy watched.

  Shielding her face with her arm, she made her way down the hall to the basement door and disengaged the lock with laughable ease. She swung the door open, and Philip flopped onto the parquet floor.

  She crouched next to him. “Philip!” she yelled over the roar of the fire.

  He didn’t respond.

  She tried to feel for a pulse at his neck, but could feel only the pounding of her own heartbeat in her fingers.

  He was still sitting on the top step, only his upper body on the hallway floor. She grabbed his uninjured arm and pulled. She might as well have been pulling against a block of concrete. Her stomach flopping, she grabbed his injured arm as well, and pulled again. Her feet slipped and she fell back at the exact instant that an unidentifiable boom echoed from the front of the house. She tamped down a hysterical giggle.

  Dropping Philip’s arms, she grabbed the waistband of his pants and heaved him up onto the floor of the hallway.

  She grabbed his arms again and pulled him down the hall toward the kitchen. At that moment the basement door, which until then had been shielding them from the brunt of the heat, banged back against the wall, sucked back by the draft created by the growing fire. Lizzy felt the skin on her face shrivel against the heat.

  When she got to the kitchen, her breath coming in fast gasps, she slammed the door against the fire. She ran to the refrigerator and pulled open the freezer door. Inside, among tidily wrapped cuts of meat and a small container of frozen yogurt, was a large bottle of clear liquid. She grabbed the bottle, wrenched out the stopper, then ran back to Philip and emptied it over his head.

  He let out a sputtering squawk. “What the hell—”

  She tossed the bottle aside and was only dimly aware of it shattering on the kitchen floor.

  “Philip, you have to get up.”

  She grabbed both his arms and pulled him into a sitting position.

  “Goddamn it!” he croaked. “Watch my arm!”

  “Your arm’s the least of your problems,” she retorted. “Get up!”

  She slung his good arm over her shoulder, wincing as it pressed the cloth of her shirt into her raw back, and hauled him to his feet. “Come on—up you go!”

  He staggered, then regained his balance. They passed through the mudroom, then made their unsteady way down the outside stairs. Lizzy was dimly aware of flames licking at the branches of a large maple tree next to the house. As they crossed the lawn, headed for a marble bench, Philip stumbled and almost fell, but the night air seemed to revive him, and he recovered his footing and made it to the bench. Lizzy lowered him onto it, then stood doubled over, her hands on her knees, her sides heaving.

  Philip was having trouble catching his breath as well. After half a minute, he said, “What happened?”

  “I think Louise set the house on fire.”

  “Did you call 911?” he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  “No.” She fell onto the bench next to him. “Do you want me to call them now?”

  He shook his head and Lizzy had to bend to hear his words. “No. Not yet.”

  “If you think you can get to the car and drive a little distance,” she said, “we could call an ambulance and maybe no one would make the connection. You wouldn’t even have to drive as far as the hospital, just get far enough away that people don’t assume you were involved with the fire.”

  Philip raised his head, still panting from exertion, the light from the growing fire flickering in his eyes. “I think I can make it to the car. You sure woke me up.” He licked his lips. “What did you pour on me?”

  “Vodka.”

  He let out a weak laugh. “Vodka? Where did you get it?”

  “From the freezer.”

  “Well, that would explain why it was so friggin’ cold. Why in the world did you think of looking in the freezer for vodka?”

  “Dad used to make some kind of drink for him and Uncle Owen and he kept the vodka in the freezer.”

  “What if there hadn’t been vodka in the freezer?”

  “I figured I’d find something in the fridge. Maybe orange juice,” she said, a smile hovering on her lips.

  “I like the vodka better,” he said.

  She began to smile, then her eyes, directed over his shoulder, widened in alarm.

  “What?” he asked, turning to follow her gaze.

  “The garage is on fire.”

  70

  Ignoring Philip’s strangled calls for her to stop, Lizzy ran for the garage. The flames had spread from the maple to the cedar shakes on its roof, and fingers of fire crept down the sides of the building.

  She peeked around the corner to where she and Philip had rolled Mitchell Pieda’s unconscious body.

  He had regained consciousness: Lizzy could see him struggling next to the foundation. However, the slight dip in the ground made it impossible for him to roll away from the building, and the fact that he was lying on his zip-tied hands prevented him from using them to lever himself up from the ground. She watched him for a few moments longer, then called out softly.

  “Mitchell.”

  Through the duct tape on his mouth, he made a sound that she thought might have been Louise!

  “Mitchell, I’m going to come and move you away from the building, okay?”

  He made another sound, this time with a rising inflection: Louise?

  “I’m not Louise, but I’m a friend of yours and I’m going to help you, okay?”

  He made a frantic affirmative sound.

  She stepped out from behind the building and walked carefully toward him, as if walking through a minefield.

  Did he believe she was a friend? If he didn’t, could he squeeze her even if he wasn’t looking at her? She cast her mind back through her own experiences and couldn’t think of a time when she had squeezed someone without looking at them.

  “Mitchell,” she said, making her voice as soothing as possible, “I’m going to grab your legs and pull you away from the building to where you’ll be safe.”

  He said something that might have been Untie me!

  “I can’t untie you right now, but you’ll be safe.”

  She grabbed his feet and hauled him on his stomach up the small slope, away from the building. As soon as he got on the flat ground, he used his momentum to roll himself over, pulling his legs from Lizzy’s grip.

  As he was still rolling, she ran back behind the edge of the detached garage, the heat from the fire singeing the back of her neck, then looked carefully around the corner. He continued rolling until he was about fifty feet from the garage, then struggled to a sitting position and pulled the tape from his mouth.

  “You’re Elizabeth Ballard,” he said loudly.

  She was silent.

  “Louise set the fire. She set the fire to cover her tracks, and she left me tied up behind the garage to burn.”

  Lizzy felt it was important to keep him calm. “Maybe she didn’t know you w
ere there.”

  “Oh, she knew I was there,” he replied bitterly. “I’ve been in that safe room in the basement they use as the wine cellar. There are monitors everywhere—you can see the grounds as well as the inside of the house. One of them points right at the detached garage—I remember it. I’ll bet she was there, watching Castillo knock me out, watching the whole thing.” His voice started to spin up. “Waiting for the fire to get to the car and explode the fuel tank. That would have been a fun way to go—burning to death with my hands tied.” He bent his knees and began pulling at the ties on his ankles with his bound hands, then paused and looked toward where Lizzy stood. “That guy from Sedona—Philip Castillo—shot Millard.”

  Lizzy said nothing.

  “Castillo injured Millard, but you killed him. You … ‘squeezed’ him. That’s interesting that you think of it as the squeeze,” he rattled on. “I always thought of it as the crush.”

  Lizzy stepped tentatively out from behind the corner of the building.

  “You and Castillo are going to try to get to your car,” continued Mitchell.

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Because where you got the squeeze, I got the ability to read minds.”

  The heat from the fire was mounting, and she took a few steps away from the building, and toward Mitchell Pieda. “But you can squeeze people too. Or crush them.”

  “Not all the time. Just when Louise gave me some steroid drug she created.”

  “Is that what the glass container in your pocket is? With the needle?”

  His tied hands went toward his jacket pocket. After a moment he said, “Yes.”

  “Why were you carrying it in your pocket tonight? Were you supposed to crush someone tonight?”

  “No. It was just in case I ran into trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble were you planning to run into?” she asked, her voice turning hard.

  “It was just in case,” he repeated, his voice becoming a bit shrill. “Owen McNally had survived, you were probably in the area, no one knew where Castillo was. I had to go out to help my aunt. Louise didn’t want me to, but she finally agreed as long as I had a way to defend myself.”