Jodi Thomas - Ransom Canyon

Reid’s laughter sounded nervous. “That leaves me out.”

Tim jabbed his friend. “You wish. I say you’ll be the first to scream when a dead hand, not connected to a body, touches you.”

“Shut up, Tim,” Reid’s uneasy voice echoed in the night. “You’re freaking me out. Besides, there is no basement. It’s just a half dugout built into the ground, so we’ll find no buried bodies.”

Lauren screamed as Reid kicked a low window in, and all the guys laughed.

“You go first, Lucas,” Reid ordered. “I’ll stand guard.”

To Lauren’s surprise, Lucas slipped into the space. His feet hit the ground with a thud somewhere in the blackness.

“You next, Tim,” Reid announced as if he were the commander.

“Nope. I’ll go after you.” All Tim’s laughter had disappeared. Apparently he’d frightened himself.

“I’ll go.” Lauren suddenly wanted this entire adventure to be over with. With her luck, animals were wintering in the old place.

“I’ll help you down.” Reid lowered her into the window space.

As she moved through total darkness, her feet wouldn’t quite touch the bottom. For a moment she just hung, afraid to tell Reid to drop her.

Then, she felt Lucas’s hands at her waist. Slowly he took her weight.

“I’m in,” she called back to Reid. He let her hands go, and she dropped against Lucas.

“You all right?” Lucas whispered near her hair.

“This was a dumb idea.”

She felt him laugh more than she heard it. “That you talking or the Gypsy’s advice? Of all the brains dropping in here tonight, yours would probably be the most interesting to take over, so watch out. A ghost might just climb in your head and let free all the secret thoughts you keep inside, Lauren.”

He pulled her a foot into the blackness as a letter jacket dropped through the window. His hands circled her waist. She could feel him breathing as Reid finally landed, cussing the darkness. For a moment it seemed all right for Lucas to stay close; then in a blink, he was gone from her side.

Now the tiny flashlight offered Lauren some much-needed light. The house was empty except for an old wire bed frame and a few broken stools. With Reid in the lead, they moved up rickety stairs to the second floor, where shadowy light came from big dirty windows.

Tim hesitated when the floor’s boards began to rock as if the entire second story were on some kind of seesaw. He backed down the steps a few feet, letting the others go first. “I don’t know if this second story will hold us all.” Fear rattled in his voice.

Reid laughed and teased Tim as he stomped across the second floor, making the entire room buck and pitch. “Come on up, Tim. This place is better than a fun house.”

Stepping hesitantly on the upstairs floor, Lauren felt Lucas just behind her and knew he was watching over her.

Tim dropped down a few more steps, not wanting to even try.

Lucas backed against the wall between the windows, his hand still brushing Lauren’s waist to keep her steady as Reid jumped to make the floor shake. The whole house seemed to moan in pain, like a hundred-year-old man standing up one arthritic joint at a time.

When Reid yelled for Tim to join them, Tim started back up the broken stairs, just before the second floor buckled and crumbled. Tim dropped out of sight as rotten lumber pinned him halfway between floors.

His scream of pain ended Reid’s laugher.

In a blink, dust and boards flew as pieces of the roof rained down on them and the second floor vanished below them, board by rotting board.

Lucas reached for Lauren as she felt the floor beneath her feet crack and split. Her legs slid down, scraping against the sharp teeth of decaying wood.

The moment before she disappeared amid the tumbling lumber, Lucas’s hand grabbed her arm just above her wrist and jerked hard. She rocked like some kind of human bell as boards continued to fall, hitting her in the face and knocking the air from her lungs.

But Lucas held on. He didn’t let her disappear into the rubble. He’d braced his feet wide on the few inches of floor remaining near the wall and leaned back.

When the dust settled, she looked up. He’d wrapped his free arm around a beam that braced a window. His face was bloody. The sleeve had pulled from his shirt, and she saw a shard of wood like a stake sticking out of his arm, but he hadn’t let her go. His grip was solid.

Tim was crying now, but in the darkness no one could see where he was. He was somewhere below. He had to be hurting, but he was alive. The others had been above when the second floor crumbled, but Tim had still been below.

Reid jumped into the window frame that now leaned out over the remains of the porch. The entire structure looked as if it were about to crash like a hundred deformed pickup sticks dumped from a can.

Reid didn’t look hurt, but with the moon on his face, Lauren had no trouble seeing the terror. He was frozen, afraid to move for fear something else might tumble.

“Call for help.” Lucas’s voice sounded calm amid the echoes of destruction. “Reid! Reach in your pocket. Get your phone. Just hit Redial and tell whoever answers that we need help.”

Reid nodded, but his hand was shaking so badly Lauren feared he’d drop the phone. He finally gripped it in one hand and jumped carefully from the window to the ground below. He yelped a moment after he hit the dirt and complained that he’d twisted his ankle. Then he was yelling into his cell for help. They were still close enough to town to see a few lights in the distance. It wouldn’t be long before someone arrived.

Lucas looked down at Lauren. “Hang on,” he whispered.

She crossed her free hand over where his grip still held her arm. “Don’t worry. I’m not letting go.”

Slowly, he pulled her up until she was close enough to transfer her free hand to around his neck. Her body swung against his and remained there. Nothing had ever felt so good as the solid wall of Lucas to hang on to.

“Can you walk?”

“I think so. Don’t turn loose of me, Lucas. Please, don’t turn loose.”

She felt laughter in his chest. “Don’t worry, I won’t. I got you, mi cielo .”

They inched along the edge of the wall where pieces of what had once been the floor were holding. “Tim?” she called. She tried to shine her light down to see Tim, but there was too much debris below. His crying began to echo through the night, as did Reid talking to Mrs. Patterson on the phone.

“She must have been the last person he called,” Lucas whispered near Lauren’s ear. “So when he hit Redial, he got her.

Lauren brushed her cheek against his. “She’s the last person I’d turn to for help.”

“I agree,” Lucas answered.

Their private conversation amid the chaos helped her relax a bit.

“Send everybody!” Reid kept yelling. “We need help, Mrs. Patterson.” When he hung up he must have dialed his brother because all at once Reid was cussing, blaming the mess they were in on whoever answered.

“Hang on, Lauren,” Lucas whispered against her hair. “I’ll try to reach the window.”

“I’m scared. Don’t let me fall.”

He bumped the top of her head with his chin. “So am I, but I promise I’m not letting you go.”

Finally Lucas reached the window that Reid had dropped from, and he lowered Lauren slowly to the ground outside.

“I got her,” Reid shouted just as car lights began to shine through the trees. Emergency vehicles turned off the main road and headed toward the Gypsy House—one volunteer ambulance, a small fire truck, along with one sheriff’s cruiser and Mrs. Patterson’s old gray Buick tailing the parade.

Lauren watched Reid move toward the men storming through brush.