Third part (of four) of the Wolf Pinnacle mystery. Any comments are welcome, by the way!

Everyone in the room froze, not daring to make the least sound. A powerful light shone into the cellar. Its glare blinded Nik.

“It’s those girls, all right! What in the world did you have to chase them up the trail in this direction for?”

“I told you it was an accident! How was I supposed to know they’d come all the way to this place?”

“Well, they did! They know everything now.

“You girls back up! All the way back to the end of the cellar!”

They did as they were told. Nik felt a tightness in her chest, as if something were squeezing it so that she could hardly draw a breath.
Now one of the men climbed down the ladder. In his right hand he held an automatic pistol. He pointed it straight at Nik and her friends.

“Okay…what are we going to do with you three?”

The other man above spoke. “We’re…we’re not going to….”

Heather began to tremble. Tears welled in her eyes. “Please,” she murmured. “Don’t….”

The man laughed. It did not sound like a friendly laugh. “You’re really scared I’m going to kill all three of you, aren’t you? I don’t think there will be any need for that—if you do exactly what I tell you to do. First, you’re going to hand over all of your flashlights.” He turned to Nik. “You first!”

Nik slowly came forward and reached out as far as she could to put the light into the gunman’s outstretched hand. He handed it up through the trap door to his assistant.

“Okay, get back to the back. Now you give me your light.”

Lindy approached and surrendered her flashlight. Heather, shaking from head to toe, did the same. Now the only light in the cellar came from the beam of the man standing in the kitchen.

The gunman handed up his weapon, keeping a wary eye on the girls. “You hold the gun and the light on them. Shoot any of them if they try to move. I’ll start handing up the sacks.”

He began to heft the sacks one by one and pass them up through the trap door. It occurred to Nik that as he was doing this he was virtually defenceless. His companion could not possibly see or shoot around him. Just maybe they could rush him….

Nik could not bring herself to try it. She had no weapons of any kind on her. While she considered herself pretty tough, that gunman was probably much tougher. Even if all three of them got together and dragged him down from the ladder, they would have the man with the gun to deal with. He did not sound like the sort who wanted to kill anybody. But he was scared. Nik had heard that scared gunmen were the ones most likely to shoot somebody.

When he had finished moving the sacks, the man in the cellar climbed up out. He pulled up the ladder behind him. With a chill, Nik suddenly realized what he was about to do.

“Might as well make yourselves comfortable girls. I imagine it will be a day or two before anybody comes looking for you.”

“Hey, we can’t just leave them in there to starve!”

“Forget it, Scott, and let’s go!”

“Come on, we can’t….”

“Let’s go!”

The trap slammed shut. The room went completely dark. Overhead they heard footsteps walking toward the front of the house.

Nik heard Heather sobbing. Closer by Lindy began breathing heavily. She panted harder and harder.
“Lindy, are you okay?”

“Nik…help….”

Concerned, Nik reached out and groped until she had Lindy by the arm. She was trembling.

“Lindy, what’s wrong?” Heather asked between sobs.

“Anxiety attack,” Lindy gasped. “Hyperventilating…talk me down!”

“Okay, Lindy, you’ve got to calm down.” Heather’s voice had suddenly gone from terrified to commanding. Nik felt Heather reach her arm around and begin massaging Lindy’s back.

“Come on, girl, calm down. Here, try to sit on the floor.” Lindy began to ease herself down, one hand tightly gripping Nik’s hand. “That’s it. Just try to imagine…try to imagine sunny skies and peaceful clouds. Come on, you can do it. It’s just mind over matter.” Heather tried hard to be soothing. Nik could still hear a little catch of fear in her voice.
Lindy’s breathing slowed. Nik felt her grip relax. Soon Lindy was breathing normally.

“I think I’m okay now. Thank you both.”

“What happened?”

“It—it was an anxiety attack. This has happened to me a few times when I’ve been under a lot of stress. I start to feel like I can’t breathe, so I breathe harder and begin to panic. I can control it if someone is there to help me.”

“Lindy had one of these a few months ago when she was under a lot of pressure at school,” Heather added. “Lucky I had heard about them before! I was able to help her calm down. You’d think I’d be the one to have attacks like this!”

“You sound a lot calmer now yourself, Heather,” said Nik.

“Hey, you’re right. I guess having to help Lindy took my mind off my own worries for a while. Now I’m starting to worry again. I don’t like the dark!”

“I think I can help with that.” A moment later a light clicked on. It came from a small penlight in Lindy’s hand.

Heather gaped at it in astonishment. “You had a light on you the whole time?”

“Yes. I made sure not to let on that I had it when they were taking our other lights. I decided not to say anything until I was sure they had had time to leave the house. Then that trap door closed and…something just snapped. I can’t really explain it. I’m not normally frightened very much of the dark and enclosed spaces. I suppose the overall frightening nature of the situation triggered that natural weakness I have for anxiety episodes. Fear can be very irrational.”

“That light makes me feel a whole lot better,” said Heather.

“It’s also going to help us find a way out of here.” Lindy began exploring the cellar with her tiny light.

“You’re like a Girl Scout,” Nik said. “You’re always prepared.”

“I’ve got to do something to make up for freaking out like that.” Lindy sounded very upset with herself.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Lindy! Even when you were freaking out, part of you stayed in control enough to tell us what was happening. I’m starting to wonder whether you acted like that on purpose to snap Heather out of her own panic!”

“I’m not that good of an actress, sad to say.” Lindy had by now found the trap door. “It’s just a little too high for us to reach. Let’s see…is there anything in here that we could stand on? I think I saw an old bucket over here…no, it’s very rusty. There’s no way it could hold anyone’s weight.”

A few minutes’ more searching turned up nothing useful.

“There are some old boards lying around. Maybe we could use them to push up at the trap door.”

“Great idea, Heather!” said Nik. She went to the remains of the old cellar steps and rummaged until she found a piece of wood that felt fairly sound. Lindy held the light so that she could see the trap door. Standing beneath it, she pounded hard on it. The door did not move.
Nik lowered the board and sighed. “They remembered to latch the door! There’s no way we’re getting out through there.”

Lindy turned from the trap door. “We’ll try the other end of the cellar, then. It lies under the room with the rotten floor. Maybe we can break through.”

They examined the ceiling on that end of the cellar. The weakest spot appeared to be in the outside corner. Nik took her board and began pounding away, trying to hit the weakest spots. The poor light made it difficult to hit the spot she wanted repeatedly. After several tries she heard an encouraging crack.

Nik rested, pounded some more, and rested again. Yet more pounding followed. Finally Nik had made a jagged hole that looked big enough for a fairly slim person to get through.

Lindy studied the hole. “If you’ll give me a boost, I think I can make it now.”

Nik got down on all fours. “Try to hurry. My hands are kind of skinned up. It’s not too comfortable down here!”

Lindy stepped onto Nik’s strong back and grabbed the edges of the hole. With some difficulty, she pulled herself up and through the hole.

“Yahoo!” The hand in which Heather held the light shook with excitement.

Without warning they heard a loud crack from the ceiling. Lindy screamed. Her arms, which had been resting on the edge of the hole, fell through. For a moment Nik thought all of Lindy would plunge into the cellar.

“Lindy, are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m glad I fell straight down, instead of somersaulting into the cellar! Heather, hand me the light.”

Heather gave Lindy the light. The others heard her cautiously crawling across the floor. A few moments later they heard her footsteps in the kitchen. Soon she had opened the trap door and lowered the ladder.

“Oh, it is so good to get out of there!” Heather sighed when they were all safely upstairs again. “What do we do now?”

“Our first order of business needs to be doing something about my hands. I cut them on that splintery wood and the nails. Heather, would you take the light?”

Heather examined Lindy’s hands. “Oh my word, Lindy! Your hands are covered with blood! We need something to bandage them.”

“There’s Lindy’s scarf,” Nik suggested.

“I’d…I’d rather avoid that if possible.”

“For crying out loud, Lindy, this is no time to worry about ruining your scarf!”

Heather had a solution. “I’ve got a bandanna on me that we can use.”

She carefully tore the cloth into two strips and tied them around Lindy’s hands. “This will have to do for now. I hope your tetanus booster is up to date!”

“It is. Now let’s get outside. We have to try to find Jack and Glenn.”

Nik took the light and led them outside. The bank robbers had taken all of their gear and money bags with them. Surely they were well away from here by now!

“Should we stay here and wait until light, or go back to camp?” Nik asked.

“That’s a good question,” Lindy admitted. “At the moment, this is the one place where we know the gangsters are not.”

“We can’t just leave Jack and Glenn out there by themselves!” Heather protested.

From somewhere in the darkness came an odd, whistling sound. Nik perked up her ears. “What’s that?”

They heard the sound again. “It sounds like a whippoorwill call. But you don’t hear them at this time of year.”

“It’s Glenn!” Heather cried suddenly. She suddenly whistled a halfway passable imitation of the call. Another whippoorwill call came in response. Heather whistled again.

A few moments later they heard footsteps in the brush. Two shadowy figures appeared in the moonlight. Nik had never felt so happy to see Glenn and Jack.