She Can Tell (22 page)

“Nice of you.”

“I guess.”

“Thanks for your cooperation, David. That’s all for now, but I might have more questions later. Here’s my card. Call me if you think of anything else.” Mike snapped his notebook shut. He didn’t like this guy. Was it jealousy? Stupid if it was. Mike wasn’t getting anywhere with Rachel. There was nothing suspicious about an old family friend helping the sisters out.

They went back into the kitchen. David headed for the exit while Mike pushed through the swinging door into Rachel’s den. Unlike the kitchen, which had been uglified sometime in the seventies, this room was an echo of the house’s original beauty. The wide-planked floor underfoot was darkened and worn from two centuries of foot traffic. A huge fireplace dominated the room, its fieldstones still gorgeous despite the need for some masonry repair.

Sean was by drilling a tiny hole in the window jamb. He looked up and silenced the tool as Mike approached.

“I don’t like the low windows here. Especially after Will Martin threatened Rachel last night.” Mike gave Sean the lowdown on the confrontation at town hall.

“This happened right before the fire?” Sean’s eyes went great white cold. “Where does Will stand on the Lost Lake project?”

“Probably for it, considering he’s so buddy-buddy with Troy, whose daddy brought Harmon Properties into town in the first place.”

“So, there’d be no reason for Will to set the fire.”

“I sure as hell can’t think of one,” Mike said. “I doubt he’d burn down the entire building, stop Harmon’s presentation, and risk his own neck just to get to Rachel.”

“Probably not. Will’s a lot smarter than the rest of Troy’s crowd.”

“He’s definitely the most dangerous, but who knows what Troy’s other low-life buddies have planned. This house needs to be a fortress.”

Sean scratched his chin. “When I’m done, neither Will nor Troy will be able to get in here. Glass breaks, motion detectors, two exterior cameras.”

The swinging door opened with a squeak. Sarah stuck her head through the opening. “Have you seen the girls?”

“No. Why?” Mike asked.

Sarah chewed on her lip. “I ducked into the laundry room to start a load of wash. They were in the kitchen cleaning their pumpkins. Now they’re gone. I was only out of sight a minute or two.”

“Then they can’t have gone far.” Mike scanned the backyard through the window. “Could they have gone to the barn to see Rachel?”

“I didn’t hear the door open.” Sarah stared through the windows that looked over the backyard.

Sean pushed past Mike. “I’ll go check.” He brushed past them on his way outside.

“Why don’t you search upstairs again?” Mike suggested. Sarah’s quick footsteps thudded on the stairs. He went into the kitchen. The table was still littered with pumpkin innards, the chairs pushed back and left that way. He leaned over and picked up a few slimy seeds from the floor. The girls had left in a rush.

But where did they go?

The door opened and Rachel walked in, still clad in riding clothes. “Any sign of them?” Her face was pale, the skin drawn tight as a drum.

Had his kiss messed her up that badly? Or was she worried about her nieces?

“No,” he said.

“Sean and his guys are checking the yard and outbuildings.” She brushed past him to the hallway. Mike followed, not liking the stiffness of her gait. A door at the end of the hall stood ajar.

“Where does that door go?” he asked.

“The basement.” Alarm laced her voice.

He followed her to the door. On the jamb, a foot from the top of the door, a large hook dangled loose from its eye closure. An end table had been dragged across the pine floor as a makeshift ladder. So much for Rachel’s childproofing efforts.

“Smart little buggers,” Mike said wryly.

“I put that lock on the door for a reason.” She turned to him with eyes that were more than worried. “They could fall down those stairs and break their necks.”

“True.” He pulled the basement door fully open and stared down. No bodies lay at the foot of the steps. “But they didn’t. Is there any other way out of there?”

“No.”

“Then they’re down there. We just have to find them.”

“There’re all kinds of tools and who knows what else stored down there.” Rachel’s voice cracked. “Nothing’s been sorted through since my grandfather died ten years ago.”

“We’ll find them. It’ll be OK.”

Rachel grabbed a flashlight from the closet. Boards creaked underfoot as they navigated the steep and narrow staircase single-file, stepping down into a dirt-floored room that spanned the width of the house but only half its depth. She yanked on a short chain. Bare bulbs strung along overhead joists lighted the area. Exterior walls were made of rough-cut fieldstone like the house’s foundation. Interior walls were a hodgepodge of plaster and brick construction. Workbenches and hanging tools lined one wall
of the large main space. There wasn’t anywhere to hide in the open workshop, but the rear portion of the cellar was sectioned off into multiple rooms in a rabbit-warren fashion that spoke of several generations’ additions with emphasis on functionality, not aesthetics.

Mike ducked to avoid a thick beam. “How old is this house?”

They passed through the first area, shelved for long-term storage of canned goods and rarely used kitchen equipment. Mike scanned the space for the girls. No sign of them. The boxes along the walls all bore a thick, undisturbed coating of dust.

“Over two hundred years.” Rachel squatted to peer behind a large box marked
Christmas Decorations
in faded block letters. “They could be anywhere down here.”

“I have an idea.” Mike jogged back up the stairs and out of the house. In the yard, he scooped up an ecstatic Bandit. When he returned, he set the wiggling dog down. “He has a great nose, right?”

“Sure, for food. But it’s worth a try.” Rachel encouraged the pup. “Where’s Alex, Bandit? Where’s Em?”

Bandit snuffled along the floor. Mike and Rachel followed him toward another doorway in the back of the room. Rachel darted ahead into another, smaller space crammed with junk. She pointed to a steamer trunk marked by tiny handprints on its dusty surface. “They’re probably in there.”

Bandit agreed, putting his nose to the crack of the trunk and wagging his tail.

Mike bent his neck to avoid the low header. The wall behind the trunk was stone, like the foundation, but it didn’t look exactly the same. The proportions of the room didn’t feel quite right either.

Rachel tried the lid. “It’s locked.” Her voice rose with nerves.

Mike moved closer. “We’ll open it. Relax.”

“But they can’t breathe.”

“Plenty of air for the five minutes they’ve been missing.” Something moved behind the trunk. Mike leaned down. “They’re not in it. They’re behind it.”

“Alex? Em? Please come out.”

Fabric rustled and a small white face peered out from the dark space between the trunk and the wall. Breath whooshed out of Rachel, and she wobbled next to him.

“Come on, baby.” Rachel knelt in the dirt and extended a hand.

The smallest child crawled out and clambered onto Rachel’s lap. “I told Awex we didn’t hafta hide. You’d protect us.”

“From what, Em?”

“Daddy.”

Mike’s heart dropped into his stomach. They’d overheard his conversation with Sean.

Rachel brushed a streak of dirt from the child’s cheek, then turned back to the darkness. “Where’s Alex?”

Alex’s head popped out of the space. “We found a good hiding place this time. Like the slaves on the underground train.”

“What?” Mike asked.

“Sarah found some documents that claim the house was part of the Underground Railroad,” Rachel explained. “Just come out of there, Alex.”

Alex stopped halfway. Her tiny forehead crinkled. “I’m stuck.”

Mike pulled at the trunk, sliding it away from the wall. The hem of Alex’s jeans was caught on a protruding stone. The little girl pulled. Crumbled mortar rained down. Stones shifted.

Mike reached for her shoulders. “Don’t move.”

But Alex’s eyes went wide and she scrambled, jerking her leg free. Mike threw his body across hers and waited for the wall to collapse on them. Nothing but a small cloud of dirt and dust descended.

The dust cleared as Mike sat up. “What the…?”

A two-foot square section of the wall had swung open toward them like a small door. After lifting the child to her feet and dusting her off, Mike crawled to the dark opening and shone the beam of the flashlight around the hidden space. In the center of the room was a long, narrow depression in the dirt, the approximate size of an old grave.

Rachel focused on the strange expression on Mike’s face. “What is it?”

He shook his head.

“Is someone down there?” Sarah’s voice came down the stairs.

“We found them,” Rachel yelled back. “Why don’t you two go see your mom?”

The girls scrambled to their feet. Pain rushed fresh as Rachel stood and ushered them back to the foot of the stairs. “I’ll explain later,” she said to her sister.

Sarah, already on her way down, hugged the children hard before herding them back up the steps. Rachel heard Sarah asking gentle questions as voices faded.

Relief at finding the girls cut into Rachel’s adrenaline overload. Unsteady, she sat on the bottom step.

“You OK?”

She lifted her head. Mike was squatting in front of her. She’d have to tell him what had happened. But first… “What did you see in there?”

“I don’t want to say until I check it out. Could be nothing.”

Rachel squinted at him. “I don’t need sheltering, He-Man.”

Mike sighed. “I think there might be a grave in there.”

“That’s absurd.”

“I could be wrong.” Mike frowned and shined the flashlight on her arm. “You’re bleeding. Why are you always bleeding?”

“It’s just a scrape. Must’ve hit a rock or something when I fell.”

“Fell off what?”

“The gray horse.”

“You just fell off a horse?” His voice took on an urgent edge, and he started running his hands over her legs.

“My legs are fine. I walked down here, remember?”

“You’re stubborn enough to walk on a broken bone.”

Rachel couldn’t argue with that.

His hands moved up to her hips and back. “What did you hit?”

“Landed on my back.”

His fingers slid through her hair as he prodded her scalp.

Rachel brushed his hand away. “My head is fine. I was wearing my helmet.”

“Good thing.” Cool air played over her skin as he lifted her T-shirt and shined the flashlight over her ribs and back. “You need to go to the ER.”

“Nah.” She shook her head. “I’ll ice it. It’ll be fine.”

“You already have some swelling. You could have broken something.”

“I am well acquainted with what broken bones feel like. Mine are intact.” But how had her Cyborg parts fared? She’d
been warned that her titanium tidbits could shift, and that it wouldn’t be a good thing.

“You can’t even stand up.”

Her knees were a little wobbly, but she could certainly stand up just fine. She started to rise.

His hand on her thigh stopped her. “For Christ’s sake, that wasn’t a challenge.”

Footsteps on the steps above interrupted their argument. “Is it safe to come down? Or are you two…busy?”

“Would you please come down here, Sean?” Mike shouted up the steps.

“What’s up?” Sean’s voice went serious as his boots thudded down the wooded treads.

Mike pointed toward the back room. “There’s a hidden room back there with a shallow depression that looks suspiciously like a grave, and Rachel needs a ride to the ER.”

“I do not.” Her shoulder hurt, sure, but not
that
much. She’d walked back to the barn and cooled out and untacked the horse before Sean’s yell about the missing girls had interrupted her. But now that the kids were found and fine, her battered torso was stiffening up.

Sean was beside her, checking out her bare back in the beam of Mike’s flashlight.

“Do you mind?” Rachel tugged at her T-shirt.

Sean ignored her protest. “He’s right. You’re a mess. What the hell happened?”

“She fell off a horse,” Mike explained.

“Not exactly. And it’s probably just scrapes and bruises.” But she wasn’t sure what exactly
did
happen. One minute she’d been secure and in control, and the next she’d been skidding on damp grass like a slip ’n slide. “Mike is overreacting.”

“Uhm, Mike.” Sean gestured toward the doorway that led to the back of the basement.

Rachel followed Sean’s pointing finger. Bandit stood behind Mike. A long bone was clenched between his doggy jaws, his paws were caked with dirt, and his entire butt was wagging.

Mike turned. “Uh-oh.”

“Don’t chase him,” Rachel warned. Too late. Mike was already lunging for the dog. With a joyful wag, Bandit bounced away and shot through the doorway.

“Come here, boy.” Mike followed, disappearing into the next room. Rachel listened to the sounds of boxes falling and feet scraping and Mike calling after the dog. “Aw, that’s not cool, Bandit.”

Meanwhile, Sean walked up the steps and came back down a minute later with a slice of lunchmeat in his hand.