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Even petite Hannah couldn’t have gotten through the small window. The most Julie would be able to do was get really stuck.
    “Looks like you’d best wake your cook.”
    “I’m not done yet.” She swung the light toward the coal chute. In movies, people were always wiggling through coal chutes, so she assumed it must be bigger than the other window. The chute was brick and slanted away steeply. Julie held up the light, but she couldn’t get a good look at the window beyond. “I could definitely fit up the chute.”
    “You’ll get dirty,” Daniel said mildly.
    “I’m washable. Can you give me a boost?”
    Daniel laced his fingers together, and Julie steppedher bare foot into them. “Your foot’s ice-cold.”
    “That’s because I left my shoes upstairs when I went to investigate why a guest was skulking around the mansion in the middle of the night,” she snapped.
    Julie took a hopping step up and shoved herself into the coal chute. The sides were steeply slanted, but since Julie filled most of the chute, she could wedge herself in and get enough leverage to creep upward. The rough brick and mortar scraped wherever bare skin touched it.
    Finally, she reached the top of the chute. The crowded space didn’t allow her to use her flashlight app easily. She reached out to feel for the window, but where her fingers should have touched glass, she felt something much rougher. She wiggled and squirmed until she could reach her phone in her pocket, then pulled it out and turned it on. That’s when she discovered the original window was broken. Shards of glass still hung in the frame. “Great,” she muttered. “I could have slit a wrist.”
    Beyond the broken glass, the window was bricked over. Julie groaned, then began the painful crawl back down the chute. As she was wiggling out the end, she felt Daniel’s hands on her waist. He lifted her out of the chute and set her on the floor.
    “Can we make the call now?” he asked.
    “No. I’ll find my own way out of here if I have to tear the door off.” Then an idea struck her.
    Apparently it struck Daniel at the same moment, because she could see him grin by the light of the cellphone. “We can take the door off.”
    Julie nodded. “We just need something to pry the pins out of the hinges. Something with a blade.”
    She turned to look around the cellar. Daniel tapped heron the shoulder and held up a heavy bladed knife.
    “Gah!” she exclaimed and jumped back, causing the light to dance across the deadly blade. It was a knee-jerk reaction, a carryover from her previous line of work. “You walk around armed with that thing?”
    He laughed. “Only when I’m having adventures. It folds up.”
    Daniel strode across the room like a man on a mission, and Julie hurried after him, willing her heartbeat to slow to normal. The space at the top of the stairs was tight, so Julie had to lean against his back to hold the cellphone light while he worked with the hinge pins.
    “You know,” he said, “this adventure is becoming more fun by the moment. I think we make a great team.”
    “Just get us out of here.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Though encrusted grime had to be scraped away to pull the pins, at least they didn’t have to deal with paint. Daniel managed to get all three hinge pins out with minimal muttering under his breath. By the time the second pin was out, Julie had to hold the door upright so that the last pin would slide out. When it did, Daniel wedged his knife into the crack between door and frame on the hinged side and began to lever it toward them.
    The hasp groaned as they forced its small hinge to bend. Julie winced, wondering what damage she might be inflicting on the door. She would have to pay for any repairs since it was her pride that led to the damage.
    Finally, Daniel was able to pull the door open a crack. “You’re smaller than me; see if you can squeeze through. If you can, I’ll rehang the door, and you can let me out the more traditional