Page 63 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

A car door slammed shut with a solid thud.

Oh, God!

Ninety-eight percent.

Nikki was sweating now, her palms and fingers damp.

The back door opened and footsteps sounded.

One hundred percent.

On automatic, Nikki pulled the jump drive out of the CPU, crammed it into her pocket, and shut down the computer as footsteps clicked across the hardwood floor of the kitchen and Nikki heard a rustle of paper—grocery bags?—as she climbed out of her uncle’s desk chair, slid it into place, and tiptoed to the door of Alexander McBaine’s escape route. It was her only way out because the front door was visible through the foyer to the kitchen.

Her throat as dry as sand, she tried the door.

Locked.

Damn!

But she still had the keys she’d found in his desk in her pocket. Maybe . . . Oh, please! With fumbling fingers she extracted the ring and put the first key into the lock. No go! The metal clinked softly. Another key into the lock. It too wouldn’t turn. Surely one of these opened the door. If not . . .

She slid in the third and then the fourth key as the computer’s shutdown music played.

Oh, no!

“Hello?” her aunt called from the kitchen.

Nikki, mentally making up excuses for when she had to face her, tried the fifth key just as she heard footsteps against the marble in the foyer.

Click!

The lock sprang.

Quickly, she opened the door and slid through and, as it shut softly, heard, “What the devil? I was sure I opened these!”

The blinds. Nikki had forgotten to reopen them. Praying not to catch her aunt’s attention, she slowly turned the lock on the inside of the door and tried to ignore the fact that she was in a tight, closed space. Yes, the hallway ran behind her, but she couldn’t move yet, couldn’t take a chance that her footsteps would be heard, so she had to fight the feeling that, in the darkness, the walls seemed to be closing in on her and she was having trouble getting enough air.

“What’s going on here?” Penelope McBaine asked, and Nikki prayed it was a rhetorical question that wasn’t aimed at her, hiding as she was, one six-panel door separating her from her aunt.

Holding her breath, Nikki could only imagine that her aunt was eyeing the computer, or feeling the CPU to find out that it was still warm, or turning it on to view the past history, to see what had been accessed and when.

All this cloak-and-dagger stuff was about to become her undoing. Her entire scalp prickled and she could scarcely breathe. She heard her aunt walk around the room, and then heard a door creak open. The closet. Next, of course, Aunty-Pen tried the door to the passageway, and it rattled in front of Nikki but didn’t move.

What if Aunty-Pen has her own key?

How would she explain herself?

From the other side of the door, she heard: “For the love of Mike, I could have sworn . . . Now, where is that key?” More footsteps. The creak of a drawer being pulled open. “I know I put them in here the last time I used them.”

Nikki closed her eyes. Her blood pounded in her brain. The drawer was shut with finality.

“What did Alex do with them?”

Another drawer was opened and slammed shut. It was only a matter of time before she either realized the key ring dangling from Nikki’s fingers was missing or found another set somewhere.

At that second, her cell phone vibrated in her pocket, jangling the keys. Crap! She jammed her hand deep into the pocket and retrieved the vibrating phone to see that Reed had finally called her back. Too bad. She couldn’t talk to him now.

Carefully, Nikki felt around the wall and found the light switch. Wondering if she was making a horrible mistake, she clicked it on and then removed her shoes.

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