Brad shrugged. “I guess he figures he can get back to the site quickly if he has to.”
“Think I should go with you?”
“If you want. Or I can tell him you’re sore from the subway thing.”
“No…I’ll run up and take a shower. And call and invite Joe.”
“Joe. Yeah. Sure.”
“Hey, he’s helping.”
Brad took a deep breath. “Helping? Or reminding you of Matt every single second?”
“They’re two very different people, and I know that, Brad.”
“Are you sure of that?” Brad persisted gently.
“Joe is helping.”
“Joe’s convinced the explosion here was intentional,” Brad said wearily.
“Maybe it was.”
“Who the hell would gain from it?” Brad said.
She wondered if she should be dead honest when she was alone with him in a small underground room, then told herself not to be ridiculous. Melissa knew where they were, not to mention she had worked with Brad for years.
“Maybe someone was trying to kill Matt.”
“And didn’t care about hurting a houseful of other people?”
“A lot of people couldn’t care less about who gets in the way when they have a goal in mind.”
“Why kill Matt?”
“Because his voice mattered.”
Brad looked down for a minute, then took a step toward her. To her amazement, he almost lost his balance and nearly fell face forward on top of her. She jumped, and he swore. “Where the hell did that box come from?” he demanded irritably.
She reached out, steadied him, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and retreated. “Let’s go on up.” She hurried toward the stairs, suddenly afraid that he was going to drag her back.
He didn’t. He followed her up, asking, “So you’re coming to dinner?”
“I think so. If I change my mind, I’ll call your cell.”
“Not from down there, I hope,” he told her, pointing back down the stairs. “I doubt you’ll get a signal down in your basement.”
“I’m not going back to the basement,” she said. “Do me a favor? Tell Melissa I’m going up to take a shower and not to worry about me, just to lock up when she leaves, okay?”
“Sure,” he said, studying her. “You need a vacation, you know.”
“We’ve just started.”
“You still need a vacation.”
She smiled. “Do you really want to miss your chance to be famous? Or infamous? One or the other, anyway.” She laughed. “Now, get out of here. I’ll see you later.”
She waited until he was gone, listening as he talked to Melissa at the exit and then, when she was sure he was out the door, headed back down to the basement. She felt a desire so strong it was beyond resisting to go back to the basement.
Where the hell had the box that Brad had tripped over come from?
“Matt?” she whispered, then shook her head. Was there a feel to the room?
She had discovered the remains of a murdered woman, she told herself. It was natural that the basement would feel…haunted. But as she looked around, she could see various items that had been used to renovate the house. A few rolls of wallpaper, some paint cans, stirrers, boxes of nails and tools. She didn’t feel as if it were a tomb, even though it had been exactly that for the poor woman in the wall. But there was something here that drew her, kept her from leaving. She needed to call Joe, she realized, and let him know that she’d left the hospital, in case he was planning to go visit her, and invite him to dinner. She reached in her pocket for her cell phone, making a tour of the room as she did so.
It was exactly the size of the servants’ pantry above. There was another basement beneath the main house; this area had been used strictly for food and kitchen storage.
From the hearth, she walked around the perimeter of the room, her phone forgotten in her hand. The wall was entirely bricked. She tried to estimate her whereabouts. If she were able to tunnel through the earth and went north, then a bit to the east, she would reach the dig. The crypt she’d found there was quite a bit deeper than this basement, though. If she were to head further east, she realized, she would come to City Hall.
Curious, she laid out the subway construction records she had copied alongside those of the house. By the late 1900s, there had been elevated trains, or els, in Lower Manhattan. At the very beginning of the twentieth century, the first subway lines had gone in. The very first had run from City Hall to 145th Street. By 1910, there had been several lines. On a later map, she could see how many of the original tunnels had been abandoned. There were also work shafts that had once aided the subway workmen, and many of those had been abandoned, as well.
Okay, so there were a lot of holes in the Manhattan earth. What did that mean?
She hesitated, wondering if she was imagining the rush of air and looked around.
“Matt?” she said softly, hopefully. “I know…oh, Matt, there’s something of you here, I know it,” she whispered.
It seemed, she thought, that she felt a touch. A caress, soft and tender, against her cheek. And then a whisper.
Leave…please, leave.
“I can’t.”