Without a sound he pointed at three sets of dusty footprints overlaying the pristine floor. A set of trainers, a pair of boots and a smaller set of trainers. Alicia felt a rush of fear not for herself but for the men, women and children lodging here. No telling what Jensen might do. Carefully, she placed a hand on Crouch’s shoulder.
“Shouldn’t we get everyone out?”
“Probably.” The boss sent a longing glance after Russo. “But I’d like to know where we’re going first before we warn Jensen.”
Alicia considered it. The truth was, the footsteps might not be Jensen at all. Another truth was, this could be yet another wild goose chase.
It felt right though. Validation ran right through the bricks and mortar of this place, from its fifteenth-century foundations to its connection to Morgan and the subterfuge surrounding his last voyage. A man knowing he was going to his death wouldn’t take his spoils all the way to the government’s front door now would he?
She nodded. “Ten minutes.”
They crept through the kitchen and entered a large, mahogany paneled room with a pool table at the center. Chairs lined the walls and a darts- and chalkboard too. Some kind of function room. Russo pointed to the bare floor and retreated, soon silently padding into another room with high, curtained windows, tables and several armchairs scattered about. Darkness was their nemesis here, drowning out their small flashlights as they looked around. Again, nothing appeared out of place and no footprints lined the floor. Russo led the way through two more rooms as the minutes ticked away.
“Boss, we gotta do this right,” Alicia said finally. “Lights on. People out. We’re blind here.”
They switched around and headed back to the kitchen. Crouch turned on the lights as the others leaned against worktops. Alicia got a better look at the dusty prints and noted that they never actually left the room.
Crouch clucked and smiled. “Look at this, guys.”
Alicia was talking to Caitlyn. “Any chance you can use that magic of yours to find an old blueprint of this place? We need to separate the old from the new.”
“Not a chance, I’m afraid. Info regarding Llanrumney Hall is pretty sparse around the Net and Google Maps can’t penetrate through walls.” She shrugged and added: “Yet.”
“That we know of,” Crouch pointed out and then caught their attention. “How about this?”
Alicia looked across to see a small, red fire alarm button. Russo frowned. “You think it’ll open a secret door?”
“No. But I do think it will clear the place out.”
“Ah, yeah. Good idea.”
Crouch pressed the button and listened to the klaxon sound of alarm bells. Lights started to go on and, after a few minutes, the sound of feet descending the stairs and sleepy voices could be heard. Someone was trying to calm the residents down and a man’s voice stated that he was “off back to bed”. The team saw more and more illumination as they watched through the open kitchen door.
Crouch was wasting no time though. As soon as he had pressed the alarm he enlisted Russo’s help and started moving units. Alicia took a different stance on the matter, checking the floor for scuff marks. Caitlyn examined the walls and inside cupboards. It stood to reason that the kitchen would be the oldest room in the house, but after five minutes they had found nothing. Alicia took another careful look at the footprints as they watched people start to walk toward the front doors.
“They do actually leave the kitchen area,” she said. “Look.”
Outside, the residents and landlord of the pub noticed people standing in the kitchen. Some started drifting over. The bulk of them milled around as many started to question the fire’s authenticity. Alicia shook her head. “If it were a real fire some of these people would wait to go crispy duck before they started to run.”
They followed the prints again, ending at a dark-wood paneled wall in which was set a six-foot high door. Crouch reached out to push it open.
As it moved inward a red wire stretched, a fuse exploded and an incendiary device went off. The door had been booby trapped from the inside. The entire house plunged into darkness.
“Damn, he’s prepared for us.”
Screams sounded out from behind. Men yelled for someone to get the doors open. In utter darkness, the house and the countryside took on a more menacing aspect. As Alicia watched a man fell over, struck his head on a table and didn’t get up. A woman screamed. “He’s dead! He’s dead! He just fell. Oh God, there’s a killer among us!”
So much for the power of television. Without hesitation someone lifted a vase and threw it through a patio door window. Someone else wrenched at the frame, drawing blood and shrieking. A young man saw the blood and leaped away.
Crouch pushed open the door and looked down, shone his flashlight. “Appears to be a cellar. Some steep steps here so watch out.”
The team descended into the inky, creepy blackness, taking care and wondering what might lurk in the far corners of the room. Pitch black and utter silence fell over them, making Alicia feel smothered. The stairs were their only safe harbor, the rest of the room could have been a pit leading straight to Hell. Russo took point, followed by Crouch, Caitlyn and Alicia, who made sure she closed the door at their backs. They didn’t want anyone falling through an open door by accident.
“Watch out for any other traps,” Crouch said.
Russo grunted, finally reaching solid ground. The cellar was a vast place, the walls just rock and chipped stone, with the roots of a desiccated tree running through. Alicia immediately got an impression of age, refuted by the modern strip-lights and piles of boxes, cans and drinks, but it was the overlying feel of the place that spoke to her bones. This cellar had been hewn at the same time they built the house.
Still, it was just one big oblong room. No passageways leading further underground. No doors that they could see. And no clear footprints to follow.
“Split up,” Crouch said. “Examine every nook and cranny.”
Alicia brushed a spiderweb away to reach into a far corner. The walls were solid. Caitlyn called them over to investigate a niche at the bottom of the far wall, but no seams were evident. They moved boxes and crates but found nothing, the light from their tiny flashlights barely any use at all. In the end, Crouch sat on a crate and let out a long, frustrated breath.
“What are we missing?”
“Dinner,” Alicia breathed back. “I really missed that last night, and pretty soon I’m gonna be missing breakfast too.”
“Proper tools would help,” Caitlyn said. “We could check for spaces behind these walls.”
“An awful lot can happen in four hundred years,” Crouch said. “Maybe this was where Morgan left his treasure.”
“And somebody found it? Kept it quiet?”
Crouch shrugged. “Maybe. It would be a fitting end to this bloody quest.”
“I don’t think so,” a voice said from the shadows. “It would be too damn easy, Michael.”
Jensen leapt for Crouch, aiming for the man’s throat. The deeper shadows erupted with figures, arms and legs and twisted faces, like demons leaping up from the caverns of Hell. They wielded knives and their eyes flashed in the reflected flashlight beams. Alicia stumbled back in shock, tripping over Caitlyn and falling to the floor. Russo almost managed to cover a little shriek, at the same time stumbling across a crate of water bottles.