Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
I followed her, eyeing the curtained windows and seeing no movement, crowding close in case there was someone inside and they didn’t appreciate visitors. We waited, her knocks echoing through the house, but no one came to the door.
“It looks abandoned,” she said quietly.
“It does,” I agreed. “Let’s try around the back.”
We picked our way around the side of the house through the rocky yard. The grass was knee-high and half dead in the summer heat. I decided not to think about snakes or ticks or anything else that could be lurking out of sight. We tried the back door. No answer. Sterling eyed the windows. Locked.
Her gaze dropped to a rock in the yard, and I followed her train of thought. Before I had to talk her out of breaking a window, my gaze caught on the weathered wooden door half buried in the long grass. In a flash, letters after the address made sense.
“Root cellar,” I said. “RC is root cellar.”
Sterling turned from the rock to look at me, pointing down at the grass. Confusion faded from her eyes.
“Oh!” Going to her knees, she swept the long grass away from the wooden door, revealing a weather-worn handle. The door was secured by a simple slide bolt. “Bingo.”
I pulled the bolt back and tugged on the handle. The door resisted, the thick, long grass growing over its hinges holding it down. Sterling curved her hands around the edge of the door as soon as I had it open an inch, and together, we yanked once, twice. On the third hard pull, the door flew open.
We stared into a black hole in the ground. “Please tell me you have a flashlight in the car,” I said.
Sterling slowly shook her head, looking into the dark hole. “Only on my phone,” she said, pulling the device out of her pocket. She tapped on the screen until a beam of light speared out from the back, illuminating the stone steps into the root cellar. Before she could start down, I got in her way.
“Let me go first.” She started to argue, and I added, “I’ll check for snakes.”
“Good point,” Sterling said. “You go first.”
I didn’t see any snakes, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. The root cellar was pitch dark, not a single dusty window to let in any light. The air was chilled and musty even with the summer heat above. “Careful,” I said, feeling Sterling move behind me. The steps were shallow and steep. Finally, there was dirt beneath my feet and the ceiling just above my head.
“How are we going to find anything down here?” Sterling asked, moving her phone’s light across the walls like a searchlight, revealing nothing but damp stone and hard-packed dirt.
Long ago, there had been shelves lining these walls, probably covered in jars of canned vegetables and fruits, jams and jellies, root vegetables stored in burlap sacks. Now, it was mostly empty, with only broken wood and nails as a reminder of the shelves, not a jar or a sack to be seen.
“Maybe the key is in the walls, like hidden behind a stone?” Sterling asked. She looked around, her eyes wide, taking in the hundreds of stones that made up the walls.
“Maybe,” I said. “We better start searching.” After a careful sweep of the cellar for a bigger threat than dust and cobwebs, she headed for the closest wall and began to examine the stones.
We were so absorbed in our task we never heard the footsteps that must have echoed above, vibrations in the ground that couldn’t penetrate our focus. I heard the creak of old wood, but it was too late.
I looked up just in time to see the door of the root cellar slam shut above our heads, the rough slide of the bolt locking us in.
Then, only silence.
Chapter Twenty-Three
STERLING
“Forrest?” I asked into the dark. I knew he was standing right next to me, but in the inky blackness, I felt completely alone. There was a thin blade of light from my phone, another from his, but I hadn’t appreciated how much light the open door had let into the root cellar.
“Someone followed us. Or maybe they were already here? I don’t know,” he said, using the light from his phone to make his way back to the steep stone steps. He climbed a few feet up and shoved at the door. It rose half an inch before it stopped. He shoved again, the muscles of his shoulders bunching under his shirt as he threw his weight into his hands, pushing up.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” I said when he let out a growl and tried to shove at the door with his shoulder.
“I won’t,” he said. “But there aren’t any windows down here. The door is the only way out.”
That was very bad. I didn’t need him to explain it to me. And it was my fault. I’d rushed Forrest out of the house, not wanting to stop for Griffen and Hawk, knowing they’d just slow us down. Hawk would want to send one of his people with us, which meant shuffling the schedule around. Griffen would want to research the property. While all of that was probably useful and smart, I hadn’t wanted to wait.