Chapter 4 - The Voice in the Wall
"Clara? Can you hear me down there?"
The whisper was faint, breathless, and unmistakable. It was Elena, the night nurse.
I stepped quickly toward the wall beneath the vent, gesturing for Mia to stay quiet on the floor. "Elena! Yes, I'm here! They locked us in the pantry! Salvatore said he's going to kill us!"
"Listen to me very carefully," Elena whispered urgently, her face partially visible through the metal louvers of the narrow air duct. "Salvatore sent his personal physician, Dr. Alan Vance, up to Lorenzo's suite. Vance is his inside man. He’s preparing a lethal potassium chloride bolus to finish Lorenzo off right now while the house is chaotic. Once Lorenzo’s heart stops permanently, Salvatore has ordered Bruno to dispose of you and your daughter in the furnace room."
Nausea surged into my throat. "Elena, you have to call the police! Please!"
"The local police captain is on Salvatore's payroll; they’d hand you right back to him," Elena said, her voice shaking with panic. "The only people who can stop this are Lorenzo’s loyal capos—men who loved his father and suspect Salvatore of treachery. Marco Bellini is outside the estate gates right now with eight armed men. Salvatore refused to let them enter the grounds today, claiming Lorenzo had an infectious relapse."
"How do we reach them?" I asked desperately.
"The air duct you're looking at runs behind the old dumbwaiter shaft," Elena explained rapidly. "The maintenance hatch on your left wall is held by four simple wingnuts. If you undo them, you can squeeze your daughter into the dumbwaiter box. It travels up to the east wing pantry, right next to the terrace garden. The terrace gate opens to the outer perimeter fence where Bellini is waiting!"
My heart hammered against my ribs. Squeezing my three-year-old child into a dark, dusty dumbwaiter shaft went against every maternal bone in my body, but staying in this room meant certain execution.
"What about Lorenzo?" I asked. "If Vance gives him that injection, it's over."
"I took the emergency elevator key and locked the main floor access," Elena replied. "That bought me five minutes, but Vance is taking the service stairs right now. I have a stun gun from my medical kit, but I can't take down Vance and Bruno alone. I need a distraction."
I looked down at the industrial metal shelves around me. On the middle rack sat three five-gallon jugs of commercial cooking oil and four heavy cans of powdered drain cleaner containing high concentrations of sodium hydroxide.
"I can give you a fire alarm," I told Elena, my mind racing through basic high school chemistry and kitchen hazard protocols. "The electrical subpanel for the basement is right next to the dumbwaiter shaft. If I short the main junction, the automated fire suppression system will trip every emergency strobe and trigger the security gates to default open for county fire trucks."
"Do it now," Elena urged. "You have less than three minutes before Bruno comes down the hall."
I turned to Mia, kneeling down in front of her. "Mia, remember the hide-and-seek game we played at the park? Where you had to be as quiet as a little mouse in the tunnel?"
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Mia nodded solemnly, her large eyes looking up into mine. "The mouse game?"
"Yes, baby. You're going to be the bravest little mouse in the world. You’re going to take a ride in the little elevator to find the nice men outside. And Mommy is going to be right behind you."
