Free The World House by Guy Adams Page B

As the blue and yellow afterglow of the lighter flame faded from his eyes the darkness moved in. Turning around he saw a thin beam of light ahead and walked towards it. He stuck out his hands to stop himself bumping into anything. After a few seconds, his palms hit the far side of the room. Rubbing the surface he decided it was wood and therefore, as hoped, a door. Moving his hand down he groped for where he would expect a handle. His hand gripped metal, he turned it and the door swung open bringing the light from outside with it.
      On the other side of the door was something completely unexpected: a large oldfashioned kitchen, filled with wood and tile, large dressers and stone work-surfaces. It was the sort of kitchen you saw in old movies, where fat cooks wore white hankies over their hair as they chopped up meat and vegetables. The sort of kitchen that really shouldn't be in the basement of a New York bar.
      "Bad jive, daddy-o," Tom whispered, before deciding that there would be time enough to worry about where they were once he had seen to Elise. They had landed in the kitchen's larder, sacks of flour perfectly placed to offer a soft landing. Except… the ceiling above was intact, no sign at all of where they might have fallen in. He propped the door open with a clay bottle of oil and – trying not to look at where he had been sick – grabbed Elise and carried her out of the larder.
      As soon as he'd lifted her on to his shoulder he realised this was the wrong thing to do. You weren't supposed to move someone who had been in an accident, just in case you made things worse. He paused, not knowing what to do next. He wasn't a man used to making executive decisions, definitely a "go with the flow" kind of guy. Well, there was little point in worrying about it now; he'd picked her up, the damage – if there even was any – was done and there was no going back from it. He lay her down as gently as he could on a large marble-topped preparation table. He brushed her hair from her face and gently unbuttoned her raincoat. He felt her arms and legs delicately. She seemed OK, nothing obviously twisted. Elise mumbled something… Tom, hyper, had his ears to her lips in seconds. "What was that, Elise, honey?"
      " Cnt muvve ," she repeated.
      "I know that…" he replied, trying not to sound exasperated. "You'll be fine, it's probably just…" he had no idea what it might be "…shock or something." That was lame and he knew it. "Just relax, everything's going to be fine." That was somewhat overconfident too, wasn't it? At that moment though, her hand twitched and grabbed his, which made him so stupidly happy he was willing to continue thinking positive. Then it occurred to him that if they were beneath Terry's bar – Except you know it ain't so, don't you, Tom? We ain't in Kansas no more and the sooner you admit the fact the better – perhaps the gunman was going to follow them down to finish the job? In a surge of panic he moved around the room hunting for the door so he could block it, get some kind of barricade going.
      There was no door.
      A large stove took up one wall, several thick chrome pipes leading off it and into the bricks behind. It made him think of a church organ. Thin wisps of smoke were escaping from its various hatches and seals, like a steam-trawler boiler ready to blow. There were rows of saucepans hanging from a rack on the roof, old and beaten like a wardamaged knight's armour. A heavy porcelain sink took pride of place on another wall but where, above it, you would have expected to see a window there was nothing but red brick. The wall was painted with dust and cobwebs, suggesting the kitchen hadn't been used for some time, though the fire in the wrought-iron grate said otherwise. Logs crackled and spat their disapproval as Tom moved around the preparation table, checking out every part of the room. A large hatch in the wall to the left of the fireplace was probably a dumb waiter, he