“We’re going to get out of here, Melissa.” Tonya turned toward the area where she’d heard the door close. She ran her hands over it like she was smoothing wallpaper, seeking a seam where the door connected to the wall or some sort of unlocking mechanism. “You and I are going to get out of here.”

“Who are you?” The voice echoed from a new location. For a moment, Tonya wondered if Melissa was even in the room. Perhaps the woman’s ghost was visiting her, demanding that she own up to what had happened before meeting their maker.

“Tonya Sayre,” she answered, praying that her name meant nothing to the other woman, that Philip hadn’t engineered some sort of blind cage match between the jilted wife and naïve paramour. “I’m one of Philip’s waitresses.”

A long exhale ended in a coughing fit. “He plans to pin it on you, then.”

The voice sounded right behind her. Tonya whirled around, one hand in front of her body, the other protecting the gash on her side. “What?”

“He left me here to die, thinking that the police would assume I’d done it and gone missing. But I kept telling him that they’d never believe I’d leave my daughter without either of her parents.” Tonya flinched as something warm and fleshy brushed against her arm. “I’m sorry. I thought he would let me go. I guess he found another solution: blame the other woman.”

Tonya wanted to defend herself, to explain that she’d never carried on an affair with Nate, that the relationship had been struck under false pretenses and quickly abandoned. But every sentence uttered seemed to expel more blood from her side. She needed to conserve her energy.

Tonya returned her attention to the cool metal expanse of the door, feeling along its grooves for a handle or knob. Fingers wrapped around her bicep. Tonya heard a wheezing, a death rattle inches from her face. Speaking was difficult for Melissa, Tonya realized. Had she been fed at all during her captivity? Or had Philip shut the door and forgotten about her?

“This room was a bank vault,” Melissa whispered. “The door only opens from the outside.”

Tonya hastened her pat-down of the walls. “It was a restaurant. There must be a way out. A fire exit, maybe?”

“I’ve felt along every surface and haven’t found one,” Melissa said. “I think because it’s a restaurant inside another one that it got some sort of exemption.”

“A window?”

Melissa’s hand traveled up and down Tonya’s arm. She must have meant the touch to be comforting but being stroked by a stranger’s bony fingers in the darkness felt like being caressed by a skeleton. “It was a vault. We’re stuck.”