Free Deadly Visions (Nightmare Hall) by Diane Hoh Page B

although she went over every inch of the place, scanning the shelves, moving the toppled boxes this way and that, poking behind the cartons of art supplies and the cans of paint thinner, she found no purse.
    The shoulder bag was gone.
    And with it her credit cards.
    And … Aidan’s smock. Rachel flushed guiltily, remembering that she had confiscated the paint-stained smock, rolling it up into a ball and stuffing it inside her purse. But she’d had a good reason, hadn’t she? And now it was gone, gone with the purse and the credit cards that might have helped her out of this mess.
    Her back against the door, she sank to the floor, and put her head in her hands. All she wanted was out of this horrible, smelly place. Was that so much to ask? Checking, she discovered that her head was still bleeding, and wondered how much blood you could lose before you sank into unconsciousness. If she fainted, and no one checked the closet, she might not be discovered until the following morning when the art students arrived and came for their smocks or supplies.
    The thought of spending the entire day and, worse, a whole night, in the narrow, smelly closet was more than Rachel could bear. She pulled herself to her feet again, leaning against the door for support. There had to be a way out of here. Another door, a window?
    And then she remembered the dumbwaiter. Used, Aidan had said, to tote art supplies to the upper floors from the lobby.
    Where was that dumbwaiter? Where on the tenth floor did it stop?
    Wouldn’t a dumbwaiter in the art building logically unload into the supply closets of the studios? Wouldn’t that make the most sense?
    Leaving the door, Rachel unsteadily walked the length of the closet, glancing on both sides of her, looking for a little door to the dumbwaiter.
    The walls were covered end to end with shelving and those shelves were crammed full of supplies. If there was a small door behind there somewhere, how would she ever find it? Take everything off the shelves? That would take years.
    Aidan had said he used the dumbwaiter a lot. So it wouldn’t be hidden. It would be where he could get to it easily to unload it.
    Rachel felt defeat sweeping over her, dragging her down. Maybe the dumbwaiter didn’t empty into this closet, after all. It could go to any one of a dozen other studios on the ninth and tenth floors.
    Unwilling to give up hope, she got down on her hands and knees and crawled along the floor, tears gathering in her eyes. She had to keep swiping at them with the back of a hand to clear her vision, and her head seemed to be on fire.
    Crawling laboriously, scrutinizing the space underneath the bottom shelf as she slowly moved along the floor, she had almost reached the rear wall, where she would have to give up hope entirely, when she saw the stack of canvases leaning unevenly against the back wall in a small, bare space beside the end of the shelving unit. The carelessness of the way they were perched, slightly tilted, gave Rachel the impression that someone had tossed them there in a hurry. Maybe … maybe they weren’t usually there. Maybe they were usually on the top shelf, where she’d seen the other canvases. Maybe whoever had stashed them there hadn’t even realized they were covering up something important. Like a small door in the wall …
    In her eagerness, Rachel misjudged the distance between the end of the shelving unit and the wall, and as she lunged forward to push the canvases aside, she drove her forehead into the sharp metal edge of the second shelf. The blow sliced a gash two inches long, and blood flowed freely, running into her eyes and further blurring her vision.
    Not even feeling the pain, Rachel muttered an oath, grabbed the first thing at hand, a paint-stained rag on the bottom shelf, to staunch the flow, and when it seemed to have eased, she reached out again to shove the canvases aside.
    And there it was … a wooden door just like the one in the lobby, a small metal knob