Swim Deep - Page 57

“Anna?” Valeria asked anxiously. I realized she’d seen my shudder of fear.

“I really am fine. I feel okay now. How did you find me?” I asked, realizing that she’d come after I’d ceased my banging and shouting.

“One of the construction workers came upstairs to the kitchen, looking for Evan. He said they’d found something in the viewing room when they were ripping down a cabinet there—a box of some kind. Here, let me help you,” Valeria said when she saw me start to stand. “Hold on, Anna,” she warned when I wavered.

I sat back down while she turned off the shower and stepped out of the stall to get towels for both of us. When she was satisfied that I was strong enough to stand and keep myself steady, we walked back out to the changing room. I sat down while I toweled off my hair.

“Did the construction workers hear me banging?”

“The guy who came up to the kitchen mentioned that he’d thought he’d heard some banging, and he didn’t think it was from the crew. When he said that, about the banging, I realized how long you’d been down here. I started to get worried, and came to look for you.”

“Maybe it was him,” I breathed out. “Maybe he was the one who was holding the door closed.”

Valeria blanched. “I can’t imagine why he would do that. I know him. Kind of, anyway.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Jesse… Jesse Martin, I think? He’s my younger brother’s age, like twenty? Twenty-one? They were both on the football team. He’s a good kid. Why would he try to lock you in the sauna?”

“I don’t know,” I said, just as confused as Valeria appeared to be. “You didn’t see anyone else when you came to the dressing room? Anyone near the exercise room, or anywhere else they shouldn’t have been?”

“No. The only person that wasn’t where he usually would have been was Jesse, but he’d already returned to the viewing room to work by that time.”

“How long was it after he left the kitchen before you came down here?”

She shrugged, thinking. “Almost immediately. I thought about what Jesse had said about the pounding for maybe a minute before I decided to check on you.”

“I couldn’t get out of there. I almost passed out from the heat, but the door wouldn’t budge,” I said, staring around the changing room, looking for some sign of an intruder’s presence there. I saw nothing out of place. It took me a moment to realize Valeria hadn’t responded.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her when I saw her uncertain expression.

“But… there’s no lock on the door. Anna, it opened easily for me the second I got here.”

“Someone was holding it closed,” I insisted. “I’m telling you, Valeria. Someone was out here, holding that damn door shut. I could see their feet under the door!”

“Okay, I believe you,” Valeria assured, holding up her hands, her eyes wide in alarm.

“I saw movement. Or at least… I thought I did.”

At that moment, I’d recalled the black spots I’d been seeing as I started to pass out, and the shimmering haze over my vision. Had those spots been responsible for what I’d thought were shadows on the other side of the door?

“But who would do something like that? Are you saying someone was trying purposefully to hurt you?”

Kill you?

Valeria didn’t say the last, but I heard the voice in my head. It sounded melodramatic. Ridiculous. I stared at the sauna door, my mouth sagging open. Valeria hadn’t shut it all the way when she’d helped me up off the floor. It hung open several inches, the exposed, smooth side of it making it clear there was no lock. It appeared benign. Innocent. Even if a very strong man had been holding it shut, I would have felt a give in the wood when I pressed against it. Wouldn’t I have? Instead, it’d been like pushing against a ten-ton slab of rock.

“It happened,” I said, but my voice shook as my confidence wavered.

Valeria nodded. “Then we’d better call the police,” she said, digging in her shorts pocket for her phone.

“No… wait.”

She blinked at my terse command.

“Do you think the door could have just been stuck?” I asked hesitantly. “I had the temperature in the sauna up really high. Maybe t

here was some kind of heat expansion on the door, and it made it stick?”

Tags: Beth Kery Romance
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