The silence lengthened and my heart started to pound.
I felt my way toward the outside door. In the complete, unnatural silence I heard the scraping sound of my brick being moved and the door closing. A second later someone put the lock into the hasp and snapped it shut.
If I didn’t get out of here soon, the CO2 would build up again and it would kill me.
Chapter 22
Carbon dioxide works fast.
Like Fitz, I could die of asphyxiation. The fermenting wine bubbling merrily around me was filling the enormous room with lethal quantities of toxic gas. While Fitz’s death had been instant—with only pure CO2 in the tank—mine would be slow as the gas gradually sucked all the breathable oxygen out of the air. With no power and no fans there was no fresh supply of oxygen.
I had no idea how much time I had. More than a few minutes. Less than a few hours.
Though I knew my way around the barrel room, I had the temporary disadvantage of no night vision. If I made the trip across the room to the steel door—which I already knew was locked—I’d use up oxygen and time. I looked around for other ways to escape, but it isn’t called a “cave” for nothing. My pulse was racing like a rabbit’s and my heart thudded in my chest. I tried to slow my breathing.
Wine ages and ferments best in a cool, dark place. But for some reason our architect had mistakenly put in three slatlike casement windows located near the ceiling behind the stainless-steel tanks. They were sealed shut after the building inspector showed up and nearly had a coronary, since anything that lets in both air and light doesn’t conform to code. I don’t know how my mother talked him into it but we didn’t have to spend the extra money to brick them up or even paint them over as long as they remained permanently closed.
The windows were too narrow for me to climb through, and even if I could shimmy through the opening, I’d be doing a swan dive from two stories up onto drought-hardened terrain. But if I could prop our twenty-foot extension ladder below the window and then break the glass with my cane, at least I’d be breathing oxygen instead of CO2.
My vision was improving and the huge steel tanks became looming shadows lining the far wall. The ladder should have been hanging from an oversized set of hooks on the adjacent wall, near the hoses. I hadn’t noticed if it was there when the lights were on. If it was gone that was it. I’d be dead when someone finally found me in the morning.
I knew from Jacques’s repeated lectures that one of the early symptoms of CO2 poisoning was anxiety. Later came dizziness, confusion, and finally loss of consciousness and death. Already the room seemed stuffy. Wasn’t it too soon for that to happen? God, who knew?
The anxiety had started.
I walked slowly toward the wall using my cane to orient myself as a blind person would. The extension ladder was exactly where it belonged on the hooks. I leaned my cane against the wall so I could use both hands to get it down, just like Jacques and the crew always had. I don’t know why I assumed it would practically float into my arms but it was heavier and more unwieldy than I’d bargained on. My bad foot buckled as I jerked the ladder up and over the hooks. It slipped out of my grip, crashing onto the concrete floor. By some miracle it missed landing on my feet. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, feel it pulsing behind my eyes.
I half-dragged, half-shoved the ladder along the floor until I was below the bank of windows. Dizziness seeped into my brain. I bit the back of my hand until it hurt to keep from screaming.
I’d read stories about people who found some kind of superhuman strength that enabled them to pick up a car or move a collapsed wall because it was a matter of life or death. Wherever that burst of strength came from—divine intervention or adrenaline-fueled fear—I picked up the ladder and placed it against the wall like it was suddenly made of balsa wood.
The metal latch in the extension mechanism clanked against the rungs as I pulled on the rope. The ladder grew toward the window like Jack’s beanstalk. I heard the lock snap into place and tied off the halyard. Then I hung my cane on one of the rungs and gripped the sides of the ladder. My hands were so sweaty they slipped.
I am, unfortunately, acrophobic. An accident involving me and a rickety tree house when I was eight. I wiped my wet hands on my skirt and looked up. The windows seemed to float above me. I shook my head and blinked hard until they finally stopped moving. Then I put my foot on the first rung—and climbed. After a couple of rungs I hooked my cane over my arm so I wouldn’t keep bumping against it. I’d made it to the fifteenth rung before the cane hit the side of the ladder. It slipped, ricocheting off one of the steel tanks before clanking on the concrete below. I rested my head against one of the rungs and sobbed.
CO2 pools in low places. The top of the ladder was better than the bottom and I was nearly there. There was no climbing down to get the cane. I counted four more rungs, then I was at eye level with one of the windows and moonlight was glinting through the caked-on grime. I rubbed the glass with my hand even though I knew there would be nothing to see except a field leading to the woods. This was the far side of the building. Anyone who strolled by below was somewhere they didn’t belong.
My head ached. Concentrating was a chore. Open the window. That’s all I had to remember. Just one thing.
I banged on the glass with my fist but it might as well have been steel. Nothing moved. I tried the joint between the glass and the frame, running my finger along the caulked seal.
The caulk was old and brittle and there was a piece missing. I dug at the hole with my fingernail and another long chalklike piece fell out. My breathing was more labored now but I kept pulling at new ragged edges, as more and more caulk broke off. CO2 poisoning is supposed to leave an acid taste in your mouth. By the time I finished mine tasted of blood from biting the tip of my tongue.
I pushed on the glass again, willing it to move. It was stuck as firmly as when I’d started. The window was caulked on the outside, too.
I thumped the glass again with my fist, this time beginning in the lower right-hand corner and working my way around the perimeter of the window. If there was one spot where the caulk had fallen out, maybe I could shove the glass out of the frame. I heard a small crack and something gave way. I pounded some more.
The glass swung like a hinge, about two inches out of the frame. I put my mouth and nose to the opening and gulped fresh air. My head throbbed and my heart felt like there was a vise around it, but at least I wasn’t going to die yet.
In the distance, music from the jazz concert floated across the sultry stillness and the cicadas sang to me. There were no other sounds. I was alone.
Unless whoever kicked that brick away from the door was still around. If I called out now he’d know I was alive. Then he’d come back and rattle the ladder until I landed like Humpty Dumpty on the concrete floor below.
I clung to the window ledge and listened to a jazz riff that sounded like someone trying to sound like Mangione. All I had to do was stay here until morning when Quinn or Hector opened the door to the barrel room and discovered me perched atop the ladder like a bird in a treetop. Guarding a warm room filled with tanks of very expensive vinegar.
I hooked one arm through the rung of the ladder and held on to the windowsill with the other. And waited.
The voices came after what seemed like hours. At first I thought I was dreaming them. Then they grew closer. Coming my way.
“I can’t imagine what happened to her.” Kit, sounding worried. “We agreed to meet at the villa at eight-fifteen.”