Oh, screw this, I thought, and forced my lungs to work. “Scout?” I called out. “Are you okay?”
When I got no response, I rounded the corner. The hallway dead-ended in a giant metal door . . . and she was nowhere to be seen.
“Frick,” I muttered. I glanced around, saw nothing else that would help, and moved closer so I could give the door a good look-see.
It was ginormous. At least eight feet high, with an arch in the top, it was outlined in brass rivets and joints. In the middle was a giant flywheel, and beneath the flywheel was a security bar that must have been four or five inches of solid steel. It was in its unlocked position. That explained the metal sounds I’d heard earlier.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that door was keeping out of St. Sophia’s, but Scout was in there. Sure, we hadn’t known each other long, and I wasn’t up on all the comings and goings of her community improvement group, but this seemed like trouble . . . and help was the least I could offer my new suitemate.
After all, what were they going to do—kick me out?
“Sagamore, here I come,” I whispered, and put my hands on the flywheel. I tugged, but the door wouldn’t open. I turned the flywheel, clockwise first, then counterclockwise, but the movement had no effect—at least, not on this side of the door.
Frowning, I scanned the door from top to bottom, looking for another way in—a keyhole, a numeric pad, anything that would have gotten it open and gotten me inside.
But there was nothing. So much for my rescue mission.
I considered my options.
One: I could head back upstairs, tuck into bed, and forget about the fact that my new best friend was somewhere behind a giant locked door in an old convent in downtown Chicago.
Two: I could wait for her to come back, then offer whatever help I could.
I nibbled the edge of my lip for a moment and glanced back at the hallway from which I’d come, my passage back to safety. But I was here, now, and she was in there, getting into God only knew what kind of trouble.
So I sat down on the floor, pulled up my knees, and prepared to wait.
I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I jolted awake at the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door. I jumped up from my spot, the flip-flops I’d pulled off earlier still in my hand, my only weapon. As I faced down the door with only a few inches of green foam as protection, it occurred to me that there might be a stranger—and not Scout—on the other side of the door.
My heart raced hammerlike in my chest, my fingers clenched into the foam of my flip- flops. Suddenly the flywheel began to turn, the spokes rotating clockwise with a metallic scrape as someone sought entrance to the convent basement. Seconds later, oh so slowly, the door began to open, hundreds of pounds of metal rotating toward me.
“Don’t come any closer!” I called out. “I have a weapon.”
Scout’s voice echoed from the other side of the door. “Don’t use it! And get out of the way!”
It wasn’t hard to obey, since I’d been bluffing. I stepped aside, and as soon as the crack in the door was big enough to squeeze through, she slipped through it, chest heaving as she sucked in air.
She muttered a curse and pressed her hands to the door. “I’m going to rail on you in a minute for following me, but in the meantime, help me close this thing!”
Although my head was spinning with ideas about what, exactly, she’d left on the other side of the door, I stepped beside her. With both pairs of hands on the door, arms and legs outstretched, we pushed it closed. The door was as heavy as it was high, and I wondered how she’d gotten it open in the first place.
When the door was shut, Scout spun the flywheel, then reached down to slide the steel bar back into its home. We both jumped back when a crash echoed from the other side, the door shaking on its giant brass hinges in response.
Eyes wide, I stared over at her. “What the hell was that?”
“Litter,” Scout said, staring at the closed door, as if making sure that whatever had been chasing her wasn’t going to breach it.
When the door was still and the hallway was silent, Scout turned and looked at me, her bob of blond hair in shambles around her face, jacket hanging from one shoulder . . . and fury in her expression.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing down here?” She pushed at the hair from her face, then pulled up the loose shoulder of her jacket.
“Exercising?”
Scout put her hands on her hips, obviously dubious.
“I was afraid you were in trouble.”
“You were nosy,” she countered. “I asked you to trust me on this.”