Second Honeymoon

Chapter 3

“WHAT DO YOU mean the door won’t open?”

In a split second, the smile had disappeared from Abby’s face.

Ethan pulled harder on the handle, but the sauna door wouldn’t budge. “It’s like it’s locked,” he said. Only they both knew there was no lock on the door. “It must be jammed.”

He pressed his face against the glass of the little window for a better view.

“Do you see anyone?” Abigail asked.

“No. No one.”

Making a fist, he pounded on the door and shouted, “Hey, is anyone out there?”

There was no response. Silence. An annoying silence. An eerie silence.

“So much for it being the maid,” said Abby. Then it dawned on her. “Do you think we’re being robbed and they’ve locked us in here?”

“Maybe,” said Ethan. He couldn’t rule it out. Of course, as the son of a billionaire, he was less concerned about being robbed than being locked in a sauna.

“What do we do?” asked Abby. She was starting to get scared. He could see it in her eyes, and that frightened him.

“The first thing we do is turn off the heat,” he answered, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He hit the Off button on the control panel. He then grabbed the ladle sitting by the lava rocks and held it up to show Abby. “This is the second thing we do.”

Ethan wedged the ladle’s wooden handle into the doorjamb as though it were a crowbar, leaning on it with all his weight.

“It’s working!” she said.

The door shifted on its hinges, slowly beginning to move. With a little more muscle Ethan would be able to—snap!

The handle splintered like a matchstick, sending Ethan flying headfirst into the wall. When he turned around, Abby said, “You’re bleeding!”

There was a gash above his right eye, a trickle of red on his cheek. Then a stream. As a doctor, Abby had seen blood in almost every conceivable way and always knew what to do. But this was different. This wasn’t her office or a hospital; there were no gauze pads or bandages. She had nothing. And this was Ethan who was bleeding.

“Hey, it’s fine,” he said in an effort to reassure her. “Everything’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out.”

She wasn’t convinced. What had been hot and sexy was now just hot. Brutally hot. Every time she breathed in, she could feel the sauna’s heat singeing the inside of her lungs.

“Are you sure the sauna’s off?” she asked.

Actually, Ethan wasn’t sure at all. If anything, the room was beginning to feel hotter. How could that be?

He didn’t care. His ace in the hole was the pipe in the corner, the emergency shutoff valve.

Standing on the bench, he turned the valve perpendicular to the pipe. A loud hiss followed. Even louder was Abby’s sigh of relief.

Not only had the heat stopped, there was actually cool air blowing in from the ceiling vent.

“There,” said Ethan. “With any luck, we’ve triggered an alarm somewhere. Even if we didn’t, we’ll be okay. We’ve got plenty of water. Eventually, they’ll find us.”

But the words were barely out of his mouth when they both wrinkled their noses, sniffing the air.

“What’s that smell?”

“I don’t know,” said Ethan. Whatever it was, there was something not right about it.

Abby coughed first, her hands desperately reaching up around her neck. Her throat was closing; she couldn’t breathe.

Ethan tried to help her, but seconds later he couldn’t breathe, either.

It was happening so fast. They looked at each other, eyes red and tearing, their bodies twisted in agony. It couldn’t get worse than this.

But it did.

Ethan and Abby fell to their knees, gasping, when they saw a pair of eyes through the small window of the sauna door.

“Help!” Ethan barely managed, his hand outstretched. “Please, help!”

But the eyes just kept staring. Unblinking and unfeeling. Ethan and Abby finally realized what was happening. It was a murderer—a murderer who was watching them die.