Read Online When Dead in Greece by L.T. Ryan - Free Book Online

single sink. Grime coated the fixtures. A couple cabinets had been nailed in haste to the walls. Someone had painted them black at some point. The paint was streaked and faded.
    Alik opened the cabinets. They were empty.
    “The fridge,” I said.
    He moved in front of it.
    “It’s crooked,” I said.
    He grabbed hold and pulled it back. “Son of a bitch.”

Chapter 13
    “THERE’S OUR ACCESS.”
    THE DOOR was five feet high, and two and a half feet wide. It had a deadbolt, a chain lock, and swung inward. Alik checked the handle and the door didn’t budge.
    “Help me move this fridge out of the way,” Alik said.
    We dragged it across the floor and left it next to the table. Alik rushed forward and delivered a front kick that landed next to the knob. The door and frame splintered and cracked and separated. The hunk of wood swung hard into the wall. The hinges creaked as it floated back toward us.
    Alik descended the weathered stairs first. I was on his tail. The air smelled musty. My fingers traced the wall, slick with condensation. Alik’s light aimed down. Mine to the side. By the time I cleared the ceiling, Alik was on the ground. I took the remaining steps two at a time.
    “Where the hell is she?” Alik said.
    The narrow space between the stairs and exterior wall wasn’t big enough for the both us, and Alik wasn’t moving. So I pushed him forward and then past him as we stepped into the cellar. The floor was concrete in some spots. Dirt in others. The air was stagnant. Water trickled down the walls in a couple spots, turning the floor into mud where it fell.
    In the middle of the room was a tipped over chair. Rope was tied to the back. It had been sawed through. But that wasn’t the worst of it. A few feet away, underneath where the back door stood above us, I saw a shirt. A white blouse with red thread woven down the buttons. Buttons that weren’t attached to the shirt anymore. Buttons I saw scattered around the room as I panned my light on the floor. The thread wasn’t the only thing red on the blouse, either. There were blood streaks and spatters. I picked it up and held it to my face and inhaled.
    “Lavender.”
    “What?” Alik was walking toward me.
    “Isadora wore lavender perfume. Or, rather, it was in her shampoo, but her hair hung over her shoulders. Left the fragrance behind on her shirt.”
    He nodded and turned and shone his light in the space under the stairs. He took a few steps, bent over and picked something up.
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    He turned and held out a dirty, yellow, folded piece of paper. I took it and held my light over it.
    “A pamphlet?”
    “Looks that way.”
    “It’s written in Greek.” I handed it back to Alik. “What’s it say?”
    “I can barely speak the language. You think I can read it?”
    “Better than I can.”
    He studied the paper for a few moments, unfolding and refolding it. He tapped on the front of it. “Something medical. Some kind of clinic, I think.”
    I took the pamphlet back and unfolded it, studied it, refolded it. There was something scrawled in pencil on the back.
    “Any idea what that says?” I asked him.
    Alik shook his head. “I can’t make out most of the print. You think I can figure out the handwriting?”
    We were getting nowhere, so I folded the pamphlet in thirds and stuck it in my back pocket. Looking around the room, I wondered if we’d seen Isadora for the last time. The blood on her shirt had dried. They’d torn it off her a while ago. We were a couple hours behind, at least. And we had no idea where they might’ve taken her.
    Alik led the way up the stairs. We rigged the door so it wouldn’t fall open and repositioned the fridge in front of it. We walked through the house one last time in search of anything that might indicate where they had gone next. But in the end we found nothing.
    Exiting through the back door, I was hit with humid air and the soft hum of insects. Thought I might’ve heard waves crashing.