Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [171]
“It’s certainly a large place,” said Hugo agreeably. Whatever ambivalent emotions had been plaguing him seemed to have subsided. In fact, he no longer seemed at all concerned. Only someone with no psychic sense at all could fail to be worried about this situation.
That would be Hugo. No psychic sense at all. He looked only interested when Polly opened the last door, the door flat at the end of the corridor. It should have led outside.
Instead, it led down.
Chapter 6
“YOU KNOW, I have a touch of claustrophobia,” I said instantly. “I didn’t know many Dallas buildings had a basement, but I have to say, I just don’t believe I want to see it.” I clung to Hugo’s arm and tried to smile in a charming but self-deprecating way.
Hugo’s heart was beating like a drum because he was scared shitless—I’ll swear he was. Faced with those stairs, somehow his calm was eroding again. What was with Hugo? Despite his fear, he gamely patted my shoulder and smiled apologetically at our companions. “Maybe we should go,” he murmured.
“But I really think you should see what we’ve got underground. We actually have a bomb shelter,” Sarah said, almost laughing in her amusement. “And it’s fully equipped, isn’t it, Steve?”
“Got all kinds of things down there,” Steve agreed. He still looked relaxed, genial, and in charge, but I no longer saw those as benign characteristics. He stepped forward, and since he was behind us, I had to step forward or risk him touching me, which I found I very much did not want.
“Come on,” Sarah said enthusiastically. “I’ll bet Gabe’s down here, and Steve can go on and see what Gabe wanted while we look at the rest of the facility.” She trotted down the stairs as quickly as she’d moved down the hall, her round butt swaying in a way I probably would have considered cute if I hadn’t been just on the edge of terrified.
Polly waved us down ahead of her, and down we went. I was going along with this because Hugo seemed absolutely confident that no harm would come to him. I was picking that up very clearly. His earlier fear had completely abated. It was as though he’d resigned himself to some program, and his ambivalence had vanished. Vainly, I wished he were easier to read. I turned my focus on Steve Newlin, but what I got from him was a thick wall of self-satisfaction.
We moved farther down the stairs, despite the fact that my steps had slowed, and then become slower again. I could tell Hugo was convinced that he would get to walk back up these stairs: after all, he was a civilized person. These were all civilized people.
Hugo really couldn’t imagine that anything irreparable could happen to him, because he was a middle-class white American with a college education, as were all the people on the stairs with us.
I had no such conviction. I was not a wholly civilized person.
That was a new and interesting thought, but like many of my ideas that afternoon, it had to be stowed away, to be explored at leisure. If I ever had leisure again.
At the base of the stairs there was another door, and Sarah knocked on it in a pattern. Three fast, skip, two fast, my brain recorded. I heard locks shooting back.
Black Crewcut—Gabe—opened the door. “Hey, you brought me some visitors,” he said enthusiastically. “Good show!” His golf shirt was tucked neatly into his pleated Dockers, his Nikes were new and spotless, and he was shaved as clean as a razor could get. I was willing to bet he did fifty push-ups every morning. There was an undercurrent of excitement in his every move and gesture; Gabe was really pumped about something.
I tried to “read” the area for life, but I was too agitated to concentrate.
“I’m glad you’re here, Steve,” Gabe said. “While Sarah is showing our visitors the shelter, maybe you can give our guest room a look-see.” He nodded his head to the door