Page 65 of Twisted Empire

18

Tatum

I woke up with a groan.

My head hurt, one of those aches that slowly creep up the nape of the neck. My eyes stung and my muscles ached, my limbs restless. My insides hurt too, like my stomach was a fist squeezing itself as hard as it could. I tried to curl into a ball to ease the pain, but I felt sluggish, and when I tried to move my arms and legs, they felt pinned to the floor by some powerful force.

I was trapped again. Held captive in some sort of box.

The terror jolted my mind fully awake, thoughts ringing louder and louder like an alarm bell in my ears until it all came flooding back. This was good. A victory. I was in the coffin in the Catacombs, just like Elias and I wanted. That meant he’d succeeded with the first part of the plan. He’d returned to the Lodge without incurring the deadly wrath of his asshole of a father, and he’d convinced him to ‘bury’ me down here, hidden away in this underground cavern to rot forever and ever.

Now it was my turn to contribute.

Taking a few deep breaths, I tried to slide my hands into the sides of my jeans, searching for the phone and the mini-tools. It was a laborious process. The muscles in my forearms corded and strained, and I let out a grunt and squeezed my eyes shut. This was harder than I thought. The drugs had worn off in my brain, but my body hadn’t entirely caught up yet.

I took another deep breath and tried again. My fingertips finally brushed against something hard and sharp. I tilted my hips, coaxing the item out. It was one of the screwdrivers. I reached up and held it between my teeth while I freed the other tools—a larger screwdriver, a pocketknife, and a small pair of pliers. Then I balanced them on my chest as I rooted around on my other side for the phone.

Letting out a sigh of relief as I finally grabbed hold of it, I unlocked it and switched on the flashlight app. Let there be light.

The first thing I did after that was reach up and press my hands against the top of the coffin. The tools might not even be necessary if I could just push the lid up and off the casket. No such luck, though. As Elias had predicted, the whole thing had been hermetically sealed. That meant my coffin was airtight. If I didn’t make it out of here, I’d suffocate.

I didn’t let the grim thought bother me, though. I still had time to get out. We’d made sure of it when we came up with the plan. Even if the sedative didn’t wear off for two hours after the coffin was sealed, I’d still have three and a half hours to escape before the air ran out. Apparently that was exactly how much air the average coffin held: five and a half hours’ worth of oxygen.

Clutching the pocketknife, I felt around the edge for the hermetic rubber seal. All I had to do was slice along it all the way around me. Then the seal would be broken and I could push the lid up.

I began the process of slicing the rubber. It wasn’t an easy task, given how little space there was for me to move in, but around fifteen minutes later, I’d cut through the center of as much of it as possible.

Bracing the soles of my feet against the bottom of the casket, I placed both hands above my head and pushed. For a moment nothing happened, but then the lid above me yielded with a low creak. With another hard push, the top half swung right off me.

Breathing another deep sigh of relief, I put the tools in my jeans pocket. I’d assumed the knife would be all I needed, but both Elias and Dr. Paulson had insisted I take the other stuff just in case there were any interior bolts or screws that needed to be loosened. Luckily for me there weren’t, because that would’ve made things a hell of a lot harder.

I sat up and looked around me. There were no burning torches lit around the chamber like there were last time Tobias forced me down here. Aside from my phone flashlight, it was pitch dark. The inky lake water sloshed around the tiny island my coffin had been placed on, just like last time, and it shimmered like thousands of shards of broken glass as I moved the phone around, casting the light into the blackness.

I carefully climbed out and exhaled deeply as my feet hit solid ground. With a satisfied groan, I stretched my aching muscles and then opened the photo gallery on the phone. When I first came up with the idea to sneak into the Lodge via the Catacombs, Elias had drawn a map from memory and taken a few photos of it for me to use. Without it, I’d be lost for hours.

I headed across the lake bridge and made my way to the chamber’s main entrance. If I kept following the winding tunnel all the way up, I’d end up at the Catacombs entrance that Tobias and his guards had dragged me through all those weeks ago. That wasn’t where I wanted to go, because it would only lead me outside the mansion. I needed to make a left at a smaller connecting tunnel in about five minutes and make my way deeper into the labyrinth.

If I followed the first set of directions on the map, I’d eventually reach an exit that came out in a massive storage cupboard in the main kitchen. There were spare aprons in there for the cooks, and I needed to put one of them on to cover my bloodstained pants. After that, I had to keep my head down and quickly dart over to a coatroom near the kitchens. Elias told me there were always spare masks and outfits in the back of that for guests who may have forgotten to pack party clothes.

It was a risk for me to go through the kitchens and down the hall to the coatroom, but as long as I was careful for those few minutes, I shouldn’t be noticed by anyone. After all, I was a dead girl. No one was looking for me or expecting to see me wandering around the Lodge anymore.

Once I was dressed and masked in the coatroom, I had to go back to the kitchen cupboard tunnel and head down into the Catacombs again. Even though it was unlikely that anyone would notice me in the mansion, it was still safer for me to walk around the underground tunnels rather than up in the halls just in case someone happened to recognize me despite the mask.

There was another exit to the Catacombs on the other side of the mansion, in a storage cupboard right near a stairwell. All I had to do after I reached it was head up five flights of stairs and make an immediate right once I got to the top floor.

Tobias King’s study was there, along with all the evidence we needed to send to Greer.

I found the smaller tunnel which veered off to the left of the one I was currently in, and I cursed under my breath as I stumbled over a large rock, nearly losing my footing. Once I’d fully regained my balance, I hesitated and knelt to pick up the rock. Elias told me hardly anyone ever came down to the Catacombs, but just in case I did happen to run into anyone, I could use the rock for protection. It certainly made me feel safer than the teensy pocketknife in my jeans.

After consulting the map again, I briskly continued along the tunnel and made a right. Then a left. I eventually found myself in another large chamber. In the center of it was a long granite table with stone benches all around it.

I left the room via the exit on the opposite side. Massive rocks shaped like menacing claws towered over me, casting terrifying shadows as I crept along. Gulping down my uneasiness, I picked up the pace and scurried through another connecting tunnel, my heart racing. Moments later, I froze as I heard voices coming from somewhere ahead.

A girl was shrieking and begging. “Please stop, Master! Don’t make me do it. I hate it down here!”

“You should’ve thought of that before you refused me at the party,” came a gruff voice in response.

I turned my phone light off and ducked into a nook on the side of the tunnel.

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