Billionaire Ghost Tour - Stephanie Fowers Page 0,43
from them. Vin had just destroyed any pretenses that he’d keep them alive. Panic filled her as they dodged down the steps two at a time. Screams of laughter and loud music filled the alleyway from the Yellow Dragon pub to the side. Vin couldn’t keep shooting out here. Someone would hear and call the police, right? Wouldn’t they?
They reached the bottom of the steps. She ducked under the overhanging buildings with Janson, keeping to the shadows, away from the lights. Vin charged down the stairway with Dwayne at his heels. Breathing heavily, Janson ducked behind a car, his arm over Mollie to shield her, as a black Subaru pulled up next to Vin. The window rolled down. The passengers shouted back and forth until three men piled out of the car. How many people were in on this?
Mollie and Janson couldn’t wait here in the shadows to be found. They needed a place to hide. Janson’s stepmother was out for blood. “This way!” Mollie whispered urgently. She knew exactly where to go. They ducked between cars in the parking lot and, as soon as they were far enough away, broke into a run. Once they reached the shadows on the other side, she twisted to see the men still searched methodically through the cars where they’d been.
She stumbled backwards, tugging Janson over to a rusty iron ladder that led up a few stories to a makeshift balcony. It was the old mortuary; now the abandoned stuffed bear building—the same building that she’d told her tour groups was uninhabitable because it was haunted. In all actuality, the last owner, Mabel, had retired from her business and lived comfortably at the Highbury Independent Living Center as a worthy Bingo foe against Charlize’s grandmother. The five-story building was still empty, the only empty building on the street. It would be a perfect hideout.
She grasped the rungs and started to climb. Janson made a sound of disbelief, but he had no choice except to follow her up two stories, fighting with his sling the entire way until they reached a makeshift balcony on the third floor. Mollie had been here a few times as a teenager; one of the many times the building had been unoccupied. She pushed through the trap door and crawled over the rickety wooden slabs. Balancing on the crossbeams, she held the trap door open for Janson. He’d been a lot farther behind than her. His arm was giving him a hard time. If they weren’t facing death, she’d find another way.
He cleared the balcony, and she locked the trap door—not that bullets couldn’t get Vin and Dwayne through. She only hoped they wouldn’t guess where they’d gone. Standing out in the open still wasn’t the safest option. Any light would reveal where they were. They’d need to go one more story up to actually get into the building. This time a flight of steep wooden stairs would take them there. She scrambled up, knocking against the second trap door. It was stuck, though she could tell it wasn’t locked and so, shoving harder, she tried to push whatever heavy thing that was resting on it out of the way.
Janson pressed silently against her back and she took that as a hint, to let him pass so he could try. Pressing his shoulder against it, he forced the trapdoor open. Whatever was against the door made a dull thud as it fell to the side. Janson paused, staring down three stories. Vin’s posse ran up the stairs on either side of the building, while others shone lights into the windows of parked cars. None of the lights came their way. Their pursuers hadn’t heard.
Janson nudged her to go first. She squeezed through the trap door’s scant opening and slid into an enclosed balcony boarded up into a type of cramped treehouse. There was hardly any room to move. At some point, someone had converted the area into a greenhouse that now held very dead plants. The barred windows let in a faint glow from the Basin Park Hotel across the way. She noticed that a heavy bag of soil had been the culprit that had obstructed their way. She eased it away from the trap door, making it easier for Janson to edge inside. They were safe, for now, except Janson didn’t look so good.
He clutched at his sling, his eyes wandering uneasily around the confined space until he found the door leading to the building inside. “Is that