Trust Me

door finally sealed itself with a soft sigh. Desdemona slammed the emergency exit handle downward, locking herself inside the freezer. Then she went down on her knees, facing the door, and hung on to the handle with both hands.
    She could only pray that her weight pulling downward on the locking lever would be sufficient to prevent the intruder from unlocking the door on the opposite side. To open the door, he would have to shove the outside lever upward against her full body weight.
    A chilling silence descended. A very chilling silence.
    Desdemona squeezed her eyes shut and waited for a bullet to come through the thick steel door. She knew nothing about weapons. She had no idea of what kind of gun the intruder possessed, let alone whether it was powerful enough to shoot through a freezer door.
    Nothing happened. No bullets tore through steel. There was no violent upward thrust on the door lever.
    There was a muffled scraping sound and then a jolting crash of steel on the other side of the freezer door. The vibration of the impact reached into the cold room. It took Desdemona a few seconds to realize that the gunman had toppled a large, heavy object directly in front of the door.
    Another silence descended.
    Desdemona sensed that the kitchens were empty.
    After what seemed forever she opened her eyes and got slowly to her feet. She was trembling from head to foot. Cautiously she stood on tiptoe and peered out the tiny thick-paned viewing window in the center of the heavy door.
    From her vantage point she could see most of the interior of the Right Touch kitchens. The gunman was gone.
    Desdemona leaned her head against the chilled door, breathing quickly. When she had caught her breath, she tried to open the freezer door.
    It did not budge. Whatever it was that the gunman had dragged in front of the freezer now blocked the lever from opening. Desdemona was trapped inside the walk-in freezer.
    Trapped inside a space that was smaller than a dosed elevator.
    Trapped in a room that seemed as small as the trunk of a car.
    The old, choking fear welled up inside her. It blossomed into fullblown horror when she suddenly realized that she was not alone in the freezer.
    With a dreadful sense of premonition, Desdemona turned slowly around to survey the small compartment. The blood in her veins became ice when she saw Vernon Tate’s lifeless body propped in the corner.
    There was a terrible red stain on the front of his shirt, and one of his beautifully sculpted ice swans lay at his feet.

14

    She was trapped with a dead man in a room smaller than an elevator.
    The claustrophobic fear nearly paralyzed Desdemona. For an instant she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was going to go mad.
    This was worse than any elevator. It was as bad as being locked in the trunk of George Northstreet’s car when she was five years old.
    The black batwings of her childhood terror assailed her, turning her into a shivering creature whose legs would no longer sustain her weight. The sense of doom was a crushing force.
    Desdemona pressed her back against the icy steel door. Her knees gave way. Unable to take her eyes off Vernon Tate’s body, she slid slowly downward.
    Tony would not rescue her this time. It would be hours before anyone came in to work. Even if she survived the cold, Desdemona did not know if she could survive the awful claustrophobia and the presence of Tate’s body. She wondered if it was possible to die of a panic attack.
    Panic attack. That’s all this was. The shallow breaths, the sense of terror, the rapid heartbeat. A panic attack. Desdemona hugged herself as she sank into a feral crouch.
    She had survived being trapped in the car trunk all those years ago, and she could survive this. Poor Vernon was no threat to her. The only threat was the cold.
    It was the cold, not the walls that seemed to be closing in on her.
    The cold. Desdemona forced herself to focus on that element of the situation.
    She was wearing jeans, a yellow pullover, and her red jacket. The jacket wasn’t exactly a down parka; it was early summer, not midwinter, after all. But the lightweight coat was lined with a cozy fleece. It would hold her for a while. She would not freeze to death immediately.
    If necessary, she could borrow Vernon’s clothes. He certainly did not need them.
    The thought made Desdemona so ill she was afraid she might be sick to her stomach.
    The nausea passed when she promised herself that she would not strip Vernon’s